In this paper we propose a strategy for forecasting the term structure of interest rates which may produce significant gains in predictive accuracy. The key idea is to use the restrictions implied by Affine Term Structure Models (ATSM) on a vector autoregression (VAR) as prior information rather than imposing them dogmatically. This allows to account for possible model misspecification. We appl...

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a progressive, fatal, motor neuron disease with no effective long-term treatment options. Recently, TDP-43 has been identified as a key protein in the pathogenesis of some cases of ALS. Although the role of TDP-43 in motor neuron degeneration is not yet known, TDP-43 has been shown to accumulate in RNA stress granules (SGs) in cell models and in spinal cor...

      In the present study, aqueous solutions of some copper-complexing ligands were screened for their cytotoxicity using brine shrimp lethality test. Among the ligands tested, diacetyl-bis(N4-methylthiosemicarbazones) (ATSM) proved to be the most safe and non-toxic compound (2% lethality at 10 ppm), while pyruvaldehyde Bis(N4-methyl)thiosemicarbazone (P...

introduction: [64cu]diacetyl-bis(n4-methylthiosemicarbazone) ([64cu]atsm) is a well-established hypoxia imaging tracer with reproducible production and significant specifity. in this work the high yield production and quality control as well as imaging studies in healthy rabbits is reported. methods: copper-64 produced via the 68zn(p,an)64cu nuclear reaction (30 mev protons at 180 µa) was used...

Rapid multi-tracer PET, where two to three PET tracers are rapidly scanned with staggered injections, can recover certain imaging measures for each tracer based on differences in tracer kinetics and decay. We previously showed that single-tracer imaging measures can be recovered to a certain extent from rapid dual-tracer (62)Cu - PTSM (blood flow) + (62)Cu - ATSM (hypoxia) tumor imaging. In thi...

Copper-64 (T(1/2) = 12.7 hours; beta(+), 0.653 MeV [17.8 %]; beta(-), 0.579 MeV [38.4 %]) has decay characteristics that allow for positron emission tomography (PET) imaging and targeted radiotherapy of cancer. The well-established coordination chemistry of copper allows for its reaction with a wide variety of chelator systems that can potentially be linked to peptides and other biologically re...

Patients with Parkinson's disease often experience non-motor symptoms including constipation, which manifest prior to the onset of debilitating motor signs. Understanding the causes of these non-motor deficits and developing disease modifying therapeutic strategies has the potential to prevent disease progression. Specific neuronal subpopulations were reduced within the myenteric plexus of mice...

BACKGROUND Aberrant biometal metabolism is a key feature of neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. Metal modulating compounds are promising therapeutics for neurodegeneration, but their mechanism of action remains poorly understood. Neuronal ceroid lipofuscinoses (NCLs), caused by mutations in CLN genes, are fatal childhood neurodegenerative lysosomal storag...

The existence of common factors in international bond markets is an important cause for modelling different term structures of interest rates jointly. This paper investigates the common factors of US and UK treasury yields in the period of 1983 to 2012. A principal component analysis motivates the type of joint ATSM for modelling the yield curves of two distinct economies. In sum, two common fa...