bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Neuregulin isoforms in dorsal root ganglion neurons: Effects of the cytoplasmic domain on localization and membrane shedding of Nrg‐1 type I
Authors: Zhang Zhiyou , Prentiss Lisa , Heitzman Deborah , Stahl Richard C. , DiPino Frank , Carey David J. 
Published: April 2006

AbstractEmbryonic sensory neurons express membrane‐anchored growth factors that stimulate proliferation and differentiation of Schwann cells. The most important of these are members of the neuregulin‐1 (Nrg‐1) family that activate the erbB2/erbB3 receptor kinase on Schwann cells. Nrg‐1 growth factors display a complex pattern of alternative mRNA splicing. We investigated the expression of the Nrg‐1 type I in rat embryo dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons. Nrg‐1 type I mRNA was abundantly expressed in DRG neurons; molecular cloning identified three distinct isoforms. The most prominent structural difference produced by alternative splicing was truncation of the C‐terminal cytoplasmic domain. In sensory neurons and other cells, Nrg‐1 type I proteins with the full‐length 374‐amino‐acid cytoplasmic domain were expressed on the cell surface. In contrast, an isoform with a partially truncated cytoplasmic domain was retained in an intracellular compartment. Deletion studies demonstrated the presence of a cryptic intracellular retention signal that was exposed in the truncated cytoplasmic domain. Cell surface Nrg‐1 type I molecules were subject to protease‐dependent release of the biologically active ectodomain. As a consequence of their intracellular localization, the Nrg‐1 type I isoform with a truncated cytoplasmic domain was not subject to membrane shedding. Nrg‐1 type I ectodomain release was accelerated by factors present in Schwann cell‐conditioned medium. In cells with active Nrg‐1 type I ectodomain, shedding products corresponding to the cytoplasmic domain were not detected, because of rapid γ‐secretase‐ and proteasome‐dependent degradation. These results demonstrate that sensory neurons express alternatively spliced neuregulin polypeptides with distinct subcellular localizations and processing. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Influence of detoxified Indian vetch (Lathyrus sativus L.) on sensory and protein quality characteristics of composite flour chapatti
Authors: Ur‐Rehman Salim , Paterson Alistair , Hussain Sarfraz , Bhatti Ijaz Ahmad , Raza Shahid Muhammad Akmal 
Published: April 2006

AbstractWe studied the effects of different processing treatments, including soaking, steeping, boiling in water and germination and chemical treatments with H2SO4, HCl, lime and NaHCO3, on the removal of a neurotoxin, β‐N‐oxalyl‐L‐α,β‐diaminopropionic acid (β‐ODAP), from Indian vetch (Iv) and addition of detoxified Iv in chapatti. The toxin level was quantified by using thin‐layer chromatographic and spectrophotometric methods. Maximum removal was observed after steeping in water at 60–70°C for 8 h with seven rinses. The samples were dried, milled into flour and added to chapatti at different levels. Sensory attributes revealed that the chapattis were most acceptable by judges when supplemented with up to 200 g kg−1 of flour. The protein level of Iv flour increased from 124 to 174 g kg−1 as result of supplementation at 300 g kg−1. Biological studies with albino rats showed that detoxified Iv had a better impact on nutritional status. Copyright © 2006 Society of Chemical Industry
Fluence rate as a modulator of PDT mechanisms
Authors: Henderson Barbara W. , Busch Theresa M. , Snyder John W. 
Published: April 2006

AbstractBackground and ObjectivesMolecular oxygen in the tissue to be treated by photodynamic therapy (PDT) is critical for photodynamic cell killing. The fluence rate of PDT light delivery has been identified as an important modulator of tissue oxygenation and treatment outcome. This article provides supporting evidence for the role of fluence rate in PDT and discusses the underlying mechanisms.Study Design/Materials and MethodsIntratumoral pO2 was measured polarographically in murine tumors before and during PDT light treatment using the Eppendorf pO2 Histograph. Tumor response as a function of fluence rate and fluence was also assessed in murine tumor models. Changes in vascular permeability as a function of fluence rate were determined in murine tumors by measuring tumor uptake of fluorescent beads (200 nm diameter).ResultsSevere oxygen depletion is shown to occur within seconds of illumination at a fluence rate of 75 mW/cm2 in radiation‐induced fibrosarcoma (RIF) tumors photosensitized with AlPcS2. This effect was reversible and consistent with photochemical oxygen depletion, which has been shown by us and others to be fluence rate dependent. It is demonstrated that fluence rate affects the PDT tumor response in the Colon 26 tumor model, high fluence rate diminishing or even totally inhibiting tumor control, low fluence rate promoting tumor control. The influence of fluence rate is not restricted to cytocidal effects, but can also be seen in sublethal conditions such as vascular permeability.ConclusionsFluence rate of PDT light delivery exerts far‐reaching control upon treatment outcome through its oxygenation modulating properties and possibly other mechanisms yet to be identified. This has been shown to be true in the preclinical and clinical setting. Further development of in situ dosimetry will be necessary to take full advantage of these discoveries. Lasers Surg. Med. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Absorption of diode 810 nm used for transpupillary thermotherapy by blood. An in vitro study
Authors: Morales Ana Muñoz , Lapuente Carlos Ruiz , Peyman Gholam A. , Kivilcim Muhamet 
Published: April 2006

AbstractBackground and ObjectivesTo evaluate the in vitro energy attenuation by transpupillary thermotherapy (TTT) using an 810‐nm diode laser after the treatment of exudative age‐related macular degeneration.Study Design/Materials and MethodsIn this experiment, an 810‐nm diode laser was coupled to a slit lamp to deliver laser energy to a laser‐power sensor adjusted in the track of the laser light. The spotlight was 0.5 mm in diameter; duration of exposure, 3 seconds. Citrated Pasteur pipettes were filled with blood diluted in saline in several concentrations and placed in the path of the laser light. The absorption of the light measured by the power sensor was tested for various delivered irradiances between 50.92 and 509.29 W/cm2. The differences were analyzed statistically.ResultsThere were significant differences in laser blockage comparing various conditions for all power levels (P<0.05). Increasing the proportion of blood resulted in more laser blockage with all irradiances (P<0.05).ConclusionsBlood significantly blocks the transmission of the 810‐nm diode TTT laser. Lasers Surg. Med. 38:643–646, 2006. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Moyamoya syndrome following childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia
Authors: Kikuchi Akira , Maeda Miho , Hanada Ryoji , Okimoto Yuri , Ishimoto Koichi , Kaneko Takashi , Ikuta Koichiro , Tsuchida Masahiro ,   On behalf of the Tokyo Children's Cancer Study Group (TCCSG)
Published: April 2006

AbstractBackgroundLong‐term survivors of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) sometimes suffer from adverse long‐term sequelae. We analyzed the incidence, clinical course and prognosis of moyamoya syndrome (MoS) following childhood ALL.ProcedureA total of 1,846 ALL patients were treated with four consecutive TCCSG ALL protocols (L84‐11, L89‐12, L92‐13, and L95‐14) between 1984 and 1999. We surveyed the MoS cases among these patients in the follow‐up studies.ResultsSix patients with MoS were identified: four boys and two girls whose ages ranged from 2 years and 1 month (abbreviated as “2y1m”) to 14y 1 m at diagnosis of ALL. None of the patients had central nervous system (CNS) leukemia. All six patients received prophylactic cranial irradiation with a dosage of 18 or 24 Gy. Although one patient died of brain infarction due to MoS, no leukemic relapse was observed in the group. The cumulative incidence of MoS in our series was 0.46 ± 0.02% at 8 years. Among several clinical characteristics, use of cranial irradiation was the only factor that appeared to be significantly related to the development of MoS.ConclusionsMoS occurs with increased frequency in children treated for ALL, and might be associated with cranial irradiation. Prophylactic cranial irradiation should be used cautiously in ALL patients who can be cured by other CNS‐directed therapies. Pediatr Blood Cancer 2007;48:268–272. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Design, synthesis, and characterization of main‐chain, aromatic polyesters based on 3,4‐ethylenedioxythiophene
Authors: Ojha Uma P. , Kumar Anil 
Published: April 2006

AbstractA series of new thermoplastic polyesters based on 3,4‐ethylenedioxythiophene (EDOT) with flexible aliphatic spacers have been synthesized and characterized for the first time. The thermal properties of these polyesters based on EDOT are comparable to those of conventional polyesters based on the 1,4‐phenyl unit, indicating that EDOT is a viable replacement for the phenyl units. The glass‐transition and melting‐transition temperatures decrease monotonically with an increase in the spacer length. Theoretical calculations have revealed that the core angle for EDOT is comparable to that of unsubstituted thiophene and hence should be compatible with the formation of the mesophase. This has been confirmed experimentally by the synthesis of a main‐chain, thermotropic, liquid‐crystalline polyester based on EDOT that exhibits fluid birefringence. In fact, this is the first report in which a main‐chain, liquid‐crystalline polymer based on 3,4‐disubstituted thiophene has been successfully designed and synthesized. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem 44: 3479–3486, 2006
The mechanism of ultrasonic improvement of weld line strength of injection molded polystyrene and polystyrene/polyethylene blend parts
Authors: Lu Chang , Yu Xiaofeng , Guo Shaoyun 
Published: April 2006

AbstractThe effect of ultrasonic oscillations and ultrasonic oscillation‐induced modes on weld line strength of polystyrene(PS) and polystyrene/polyethylene(PS/HDPE) blend was investigated. And the mechanism of ultrasonic improvement of weld line strength of PS and PS/HDPE blend was also studied. The presence of ultrasonic oscillations can enhance the weld line strength of PS and PS/HDPE blend. Compared with mode I(ultrasonic oscillations were induced into mold at the whole process of injection molding), the induced ultrasonic oscillations as mode II(ultrasonic oscillations were induced into mold after injection mold filling) is more effective to increase weld line strength of PS and PS/HDPE blend. The mechanism for ultrasonic improvement of weld line strength of PS and PS/HDPE blend is that the ultrasonic oscillations can improve the molecular diffusion across weld line of the melt at the core, and make against the fusion of melt at the skin. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part B: Polym Phys 44: 1520–1530, 2006
An infiltration method for preparing single‐wall nanotube/epoxy composites with improved thermal conductivity
Authors: Du Fangming , Guthy Csaba , Kashiwagi Takashi , Fischer John E. , Winey Karen I. 
Published: April 2006

AbstractRecent studies of SWNT/polymer nanocomposites identify the large interfacial thermal resistance at nanotube/nanotube junctions as a primary cause for the only modest increases in thermal conductivity relative to the polymer matrix. To reduce this interfacial thermal resistance, we prepared a freestanding nanotube framework by removing the polymer matrix from a 1 wt % SWNT/PMMA composite by nitrogen gasification and then infiltrated it with epoxy resin and cured. The SWNT/epoxy composite made by this infiltration method has a micron‐scale, bicontinuous morphology and much improved thermal conductivity (220% relative to epoxy) due to the more effective heat transfer within the nanotube‐rich phase. By applying a linear mixing rule to the bicontinuous composite, we conclude that even at high loadings the nanotube framework more effectively transports phonons than well‐dispersed SWNT bundles. Contrary to the widely accepted approaches, these findings suggest that better thermal and electrical conductivities can be accomplished via heterogeneous distributions of SWNT in polymer matrices. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part B: Polym Phys 44: 1513–1519, 2006
Disulfide connectivity prediction with 70% accuracy using two‐level models
Authors: Chen Bo‐Juen , Tsai Chi‐Hung , Chan Chen‐hsiung , Kao Cheng‐Yan 
Published: April 2006

AbstractDisulfide bridges stabilize protein structures covalently and play an important role in protein folding. Predicting disulfide connectivity precisely helps towards the solution of protein structure prediction. Previous methods for disulfide connectivity prediction either infer the bonding potential of cysteine pairs or rank alternative disulfide bonding patterns. As a result, these methods encode data according to cysteine pairs (pair‐wise) or disulfide bonding patterns (pattern‐wise). However, using either encoding scheme alone cannot fully utilize the local and global information of proteins, so the accuracies of previous methods are limited. In this work, we propose a novel two‐level framework to predict disulfide connectivity. With this framework, both the pair‐wise and pattern‐wise encoding schemes are considered. Our models were validated on the datasets derived from SWISS‐PROT 39 and 43, and the results demonstrate that our models can combine both local and global information. Compared to previous methods, significant improvements were obtained by our models. Our work may also provide insights to further improvements of disulfide connectivity prediction and increase its applicability in protein structure analysis and prediction. Proteins 2006. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Diagnostics for confounding in PK/PD models for oxcarbazepine
Authors: Nedelman Jerry R. , Rubin Donald B. , Sheiner Lewis B. 
Published: April 2006

AbstractOne type of pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) relationship that is used to characterize the therapeutic action of a drug is the relationship between some univariate summary of the plasma‐concentration‐versus‐time profile and the drug effect on a response outcome. Operationally, such a relationship may be observed in a large clinical trial where randomly sampled patients are randomized to different values of the concentration summary. If, under such conditions, the relationship between concentration and effect does not depend on the dose needed to attain the target concentration, such a relationship will be called a true PK/PD relationship. When the true PK/PD relationship is assessed as an object of estimation in a dose‐controlled clinical trial (i.e. when dose is randomized), observed drug concentration is an outcome variable. The estimated PK/PD relationship between observed outcome and observed concentration, which we then refer to as the conventional PK/PD relationship, may be biased for the true PK/PD relationship. Because of this bias, the conventional relationship is called confounded for the true one. We show that diagnostics for confounding can be devised under reasonable assumptions. We then apply these diagnostics to PK/PD assessments of adults and children on oxcarbazepine adjunctive therapy. It was necessary to demonstrate the similarity of the true PK/PD relationships of adults and children on adjunctive therapy in order to support the approval of oxcarbazepine monotherapy in children by a bridging argument. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
A note on parameter estimation for variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease epidemic models
Authors: Clarke Paul S. , Ghani Azra C. 
Published: April 2006

AbstractA recent series of papers has raised issues regarding estimation of the key epidemiological parameters of variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (vCJD) from fitting survival models to case data. In particular, it was stated that the scale of the epidemic cannot be estimated and must be fixed in any analysis. We show that this problem is an artefact of the approximate likelihood used in these papers to facilitate model‐fitting, and is not a concern if estimation is based on the full likelihood. We also address comments in these papers regarding the choice of incubation period distribution. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Measurement of inter‐rater agreement for transient events using Monte Carlo sampled permutations
Authors: Norman Robert G. , Scott Marc A. 
Published: April 2006

AbstractIn this paper we demonstrate the adverse effect of serially observed data sequences containing transient events on the calculation of Cohen's κ as an index of inter‐rater agreement in the detection of these events. We develop and use a Monte‐Carlo‐based permutation technique to produce an empiric distribution of κ in the presence of serial dependence. We find that the empiric confidence intervals for κ tend to be wider than parametrically derived intervals and in the case of longer event lengths, are markedly so. We evaluate the effect of number and length of events, and further, describe and evaluate three permutation methods which match specific rating situations. Finally, we apply these techniques to the measurement of inter‐rater agreement for sleep disordered breathing events, a transient event identified during nocturnal polysomnography, for which traditionally computed confidence intervals for κ are incorrect. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Knowledge management in OSS—an enterprise information system for the telecommunications industry
Authors: Qi Jiayin , Da Xu Li , Shu Huaying , Li Huaizu 
Published: April 2006

AbstractKnowledge management in Enterprise Information Systems (EIS) has become one of the hottest research topics in the last few years. Operations Support Systems (OSS) is one kind of EIS, which is becoming increasingly popular in the telecommunications industry. However, the academic research on knowledge management in OSS is sparse. In this paper, a knowledge management system for OSS is proposed in the framework of systems theory. Knowledge, knowledge management, organization and information technology are the four main interactive elements in the knowledge management system. The paper proposes that each subsystem of the OSS is to be equipped with knowledge management capacity, and the knowledge management of the OSS is to be realized through its subsystems. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Enterprise resource planning for large‐scale engineering projects from systems engineering perspectives
Authors: Yang Tianshe , Huang Huijing , Chaudhry Sohail 
Published: April 2006

AbstractERP systems for the manufacturing sector are commercially available and research on ERP systems for manufacturing enterprises is prevalent now. However, little attention has so far been paid on how to establish ERP systems for large scale engineering projects. An ERP system for a specific engineering project is usually not available commercially. In this paper, the methods and models for establishing an ERP system for a large‐scale engineering project with unique features are discussed in systems engineering perspectives. First, the necessity for establishing ERP system is analysed; second, the methods and models for developing, implementing and maintaining the ERP system are discussed; third, the successful experiences of establishing the ERP system are illustrated and finally, a conclusion is provided. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Deriving information from CRM for knowledge management—a note on a commercial bank
Authors: Chen Yarong , Li Ling 
Published: April 2006

AbstractIn today's highly competitive global economy, many companies are enhancing their enterprise information systems that include enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM) and supply chain management (SCM). In this study, we report some preliminary results of integrating customer satisfaction index into knowledge management in a commercial bank in Shanghai, China. The result of the study indicates that the most influential factors that affect corporate customers' satisfaction are customer relationship and service process. Both factors are served as inputs to knowledge management which generates some new ideas for improving customer services. CRM is a component of enterprise information systems. The study can be a reference to other commercial banks to improve their competence of CRM and knowledge management. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
A systems approach to developing and implementing an ERP financial subsystem
Authors: Zhu Zhuqiang 
Published: April 2006

AbstractIn recent years, progress has been made in applying ERP financial subsystems to business enterprises despite that certain obstacles still exist. For example, a number of internal functions have not been fully realized yet, and integration with other subsystems has not been fully realized. The main problems include the implementation goal being not well set, sufficient attention has not been paid by senior management, lack of qualified staff, and the limited scope of system integration. In this paper, the implementation of an ERP financial subsystem is studied in terms of systems research, with the emphasis on two aspects: optimizing the system and its elements, and better integration of the system with its environment. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Designing ERP systems with knowledge management capacity
Authors: Li Zongbin , Chaudhry Sohail S. , Zhao Shanshan 
Published: April 2006

AbstractGlobally, over the past decade, there has been a tremendous proliferation of the traditional enterprise resource planning systems in businesses. In addition, the economy has evolved into a knowledge‐based economy that has made knowledge a valuable asset for businesses. As knowledge‐based economy evolves and businesses implement enterprise resource planning systems, it is inevitable that there is a need to integrate enterprise resource planning systems and knowledge management. In this paper, we discuss the design issues of enterprise resource planning systems in the knowledge‐based economy environment. Enterprise resource planning systems based on knowledge management combine traditional enterprise resource planning and knowledge management effectively and are suitable in the knowledge‐based economy as the new requirement of enterprises. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.