This paper describes a model of adaptation to remapped auditory localization cues that is based on previous decision-theory models of psychophysical performance. The present model extends earlier work by explicitly assuming that past experience affects subject perception and by quantifying how training causes subjects' responses to evolve over time. The model makes quantitative predictions of t...

Cholera in the nineteenth century has proved an enduring topic for historians. In 1961 Asa Briggs called for analysis of cholera as an under-utilized yet potentially powerful tool for the emerging discipline of social history.2 Researchers in the field responded with a plethora of works on this most brutal of epidemic diseases. Despite methodological and interpretative differences, the literatu...

BACKGROUND In the field of forensic medicine, it is very difficult to know prior to autopsy what kind of virus has infected a body. OBJECTIVE We assessed the potential of the genome profiling (GP) method, which was developed in the field of bioengineering, to identify viruses belonging to one species. METHOD Two species in the same family, JC and BK viruses, were used in this study. Using p...

Recent studies have identified a Pacific lineage (2E) of JC polyomavirus (also designated as JC virus or JCV) that occurs in both Island Southeast Asia and Oceania, but not in mainland Asia. It has been postulated that this lineage traveled with Austronesian-speaking people who are now spread throughout Island Southeast Asia and Oceania (excluding Australia and inland and southern New Guinea). ...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the prevalence of the urinary excretion of BKV and JCV in HIV-infected patients without neurological symptoms. METHODS Urine samples from HIV-infected patients without neurological symptoms were tested for JC virus and BK virus by PCR. Samples were screened for the presence of polyomavirus with sets of primers complementary to the early region of JCV and BKV genome (AgT)...

AIM To investigate the possible aetiological role of BK and JC viruses in immunocompetent and immunocompromised children with suspected encephalitis and meningoencephalitis. METHODS The polymerase chain reaction and microplate hybridisation method was employed for the detection of polyomavirus DNA in 266 CSF specimens collected from immunocompetent and immunocompromised patients. RESULTS BK...

Progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy is caused by JC virus and mainly affects human immunodeficiency virus infected patients. The disease is exceptionally rare in children. The diagnosis is based on magnetic resonance imaging and on the detection of JC virus DNA in the cerebrospinal fluid. This is a report of a 14 year old girl, not previously known to have human immunodeficiency virus, w...

Over 50 years of polyomavirus research has produced a wealth of insights into not only general biologic processes in mammalian cells, but also, how conditions can be altered and signaling systems tweaked to produce transformation phenotypes. In the past few years three new members (KIV, WUV, and MCV) have joined two previously known (JCV and BKV) human polyomaviruses. In this review, we present...

JC virus was previously isolated from the urine and from diseased brain of a patient with progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy. The DNAs of these isolates, MAD-7 and MAD-8 respectively, were shown in this study to be mixtures of several different full-length genomes. By differences in their restriction endonuclease cleavage patterns, the genomes were categorized into two types. Type I DNA...

The JC polyoma viral coat protein VP1 was analyzed for amino acid sequences homologies to the IDSP sequence which mediates binding of VLA-4 (integrin alpha 4) to vascular cell adhesion molecule 1. Although the full sequence was not found, a DSP sequence was located near the critical arginine residue linked to infectivity of the virus and binding to sialic acid containing molecules such as integ...