A critical component in automated fluorescent DNA sequencing is good quality of DNA template. In an effort to reduce the dependence of sequencing success on DNA template quality, the effect of heat-soaked PCR on automated sequencing reactions has been examined. We have found that the heat-soaked PCR protocol considerably improves the overall quality of sequence data and significantly reduces th...

The standard template provided with the statistical software package SPM’99 was originally developed for O-H2O PET scans in resting condition with eyes closed. This template is commonly applied regardless of the tracer actually used in the scans being analyzed. This work studies the effect of three different normalization templates in the outcome of the statistical analyses of PET scans, as com...

BACKGROUND The genome of retroviruses, including HIV-1, is packaged as two homologous (+) strand RNA molecules, noncovalently associated close to their 5'-end in a region called dimer linkage structure (DLS). Retroviral HIV-1 genomic RNAs dimerize through complex interactions between dimerization initiation sites (DIS) within the (5'-UTR). Dimer formation is prevented by so calledLong Distance ...

A convenient method has been devised for analyzing ultracentrifuge film records of human serum lipoproteins. It is based on a template that can be constructed by the investigator according to the operational factors peculiar to his ultracentrifuge system. The film patterns are projected and traced on the template, the boundary limits of each lipoprotein class are located by reference to the tem...

The loosely bound chromatin proteins of Ehrlich ascites hyperdiploid cells have been prepared by extraction of chromatin with 0.35 M NaCl. Sodium dodecyl sulfate gel electrophoresis of the 0.35 M NaCl-soluble chromatin proteins reveals high heterogeneity with a molecular weight range of 10,000 to 170,000. The 0.35 M NaCl-soluble chromatin proteins contain many components similar to the more tig...

Animating pictures is an interesting and useful visual effect in entertainment industry. In this paper, we present a system that allow user to animate a character in pictures in 3D space by applying 3D motion data. We use a 3D character mesh with skeleton rigged as template model. The user need to cut out silhouette of the character in pictures, and assign correspondence points between 2D chara...

Fibril formation resulting from protein misfolding and aggregation is a hallmark of several neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. Despite the fact that the fibril formation process is very slow and thus poses a significant challenge for theoretical and experimental studies, a number of alternative pictures of molecular mechanisms of amyloid fibril formation ha...

Vaccinia virus DNA polymerase will utilize a substrate consisting of phi X174 DNA primed with a strand of a unique restriction fragment, but the reaction is inefficient. Examination of the reaction products by alkaline agarose gel electrophoresis revealed a few discrete fragments, each corresponding to an extended primer strand. This result implies that specific barriers exist on the phi X174 t...

Scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM) was used to investigate the nucleation and growth of palladium clusters on two different, ultrathin, epitaxial, titania films grown on a Pt3Ti(111) surface. The first oxide phase, z'-TiO x , is anisotropic and consists of parallel stripes separated by trenches. Defects (i.e., oxygen vacancies) in this structure are confined to these trenches and act as nucle...