A single EFEMP1 mutation associated with both Malattia Leventinese and Doyne honeycomb retinal dystrophy.

Malattia Leventinese (ML) and Doyne honeycomb retinal dystrophy (DHRD) refer to two autosomal dominant diseases characterized by yellow-white deposits known as drusen that accumulate beneath the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE). Both loci were mapped to chromosome 2p16-21 (refs 5,6) and this genetic interval has been subsequently narrowed. The importance of these diseases is due in large part to their close phenotypic similarity to age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a disorder with a strong genetic component that accounts for approximately 50% of registered blindness in the Western world. Just as in ML and DHRD, the early hallmark of AMD is the presence of drusen. Here we use a combination of positional and candidate gene methods to identify a single non-conservative mutation (Arg345Trp) in the gene EFEMP1 (for EGF-containing fibrillin-like extracellular matrix protein 1) in all families studied. This change was not present in 477 control individuals or in 494 patients with age-related macular degeneration. Identification of this mutation may aid in the development of an animal model for drusen, as well as in the identification of other genes involved in human macular degeneration.     

Generalized invexity-type conditions in constrained optimization

This paper defines a new class of generalized type I functions, and obtains Kuhn-Tucker necessary and sufficient conditions and duality results for constrained optimization problems in the presence of the aforesaid weaker assumptions on the objective and constraint functions involved in the problem.     

A novel self-promoted Morita-Baylis-Hillman-like dimerization

While stable in CH₂Cl₂, hexane or THF, in the presence of MeOH, self-promoted dimerization of the triarylphosphine-alkene 1, a ligand for Pd-catalyzed reactions, produced an unusual racemic bis(phosphine) 2 in high yield. The reaction of 2 with Pd(dba)₂, followed by oxidative addition of p-IC₆H₄NO₂, yielded a trans-chelated Pd(II) aryl iodide complex.     

An interval method for studying the relationship between the Australian dollar exchange rate and the gold price

This paper proposes an interval method to explore the relationship between the exchange rate of Australian dollar against US dollar and the gold price,using weekly,monthly and quarterly data.With the interval method,interval sample data are formed to present the volatility of variables. The ILS approach is extended to multi-model estimation and the computational schemes are provided. The empirical evidence suggests that the ILS estimates well characterize how the exchange rate relates to the gold price,both in the long-run and short-run.The comparison between the interval and point methods indicates that the difference between the OLS and the ILS estimates is increasing from weekly data to quarterly data,since the lowest frequency point data lost the most information of volatility.     

Machine intelligence,rough sets and rough-fuzzy granular computing:uncertainty handling in bio-informatics and Web intelligence

Machine intelligence,is out of the system by the artificial intelligence shown.It is usually achieved by the average computer intelligence.Rough sets and Information Granules in uncertainty management and soft computing and granular computing is widely used in many fields,such as in protein sequence analysis and biobasis determination,TSM and Web service classification Etc.     

A study on the effect of the bacterial inoculant on corn silage quality,digestibility and performance in dairy cattle

Effect of the bacterial inoculant Sil-All (short for ‘ SA‘ ) on corn silage quality, digestibility and performance in dairy cattle was studied. SA treated silage resulted in the higher level of retained protein and slightly higher level of residual sugars in that treatment, the better digestibility of the neutral detergent fibre (NDF) and the acid detergent fibre (ADF), the lower pH and evolution of ammonia compared to the control; The fall in pH was most rapid in the SA treated silage in the first 4 days of ensilage, when it matters most for the conservation of protein, compared with the control silage and this was linked more to both lactic and total acids. Both volatile fatty acid (VFA) and lactate content increased with ensiling time, increase degree reached up near 100%; Lactate content in treatment silage was higher than that in the control, and this difference was all maintained at the level of approximately 7% - 13% almost in all cases, at length, up 16% in the case of day 15; pH value decreased with ensiling time. Moreover, pH value in most of treatment were lower than that in the control ; The digestibility of both dry matter (DM) and crude protein (CP) was appreciably improved by the use of inoculant SA. Also, in relation to reductions, of NDF and ADF were noted. An increase in milk yield of the order of 0.9kg per head per day in favour of SA was observed. Alternatively, with an average daily feed intake of 20kg, this indicates with 1 ton of corn silage milk yield could be increased by 46.5kg.