Accurate forecasting of the undecided population in a public opinion poll

The problem of pollsters is addressed which is to forecast accurately the final answers of the undecided respondents to the primary question in a public opinion poll. The task is viewed as a pattern‐recognition problem of correlating the answers of the respondents to the peripheral questions in the survey with their primary answers. The underlying pattern is determined with a supervised artificial neural network that is trained using the peripheral answers of the decided respondents whose primary answers are also known. With peripheral answers as inputs, the trained network outputs the most probable primary response of an undecided respondent. For a poll conducted to determine the approval rating of the (former) Philippine president, J. E. Estrada in December 1999 and March 2000, the trained network predicted with a 95% success rate the direct responses of a test population that consists of 24.57% of the decided population who were excluded in the network training set. For the undecided population (22.67% of December respondents; 23.67% of March respondents), the network predicted a final response distribution that is consistent with the approval/disapproval ratio of the decided population. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The contribution of neuronal–glial–endothelial–epithelial interactions to colon carcinogenesis

Several different cell types constitute the intestinal wall and interact in different manners to maintain tissue homeostasis. Elegant reports have explored these physiological cellular interactions revealing that glial cells and neurons not only modulate peristalsis and mechanical stimulus in the intestines but also control epithelial proliferation and sub-epithelial angiogenesis. Although colon carcinoma arises from epithelial cells, different sub-epithelial cell phenotypes are known to support the manifestation and development of tumors from their early steps on. Therefore, new perspectives in cancer research have been proposed, in which neurons and glial cells not only lead to higher cancer cell proliferation at the tumor invasion front but also further enhance angiogenesis and neurogenesis in tumors. Transformation of physiological neural activity into a pro-cancer event is thus discussed for colon carcinogenesis herein.     

The sheddase activity of ADAM17/TACE is regulated by the tetraspanin CD9

ADAM17/TACE is a metalloproteinase responsible for the shedding of the proinflammatory cytokine TNF-α and many other cell surface proteins involved in development, cell adhesion, migration, differentiation, and proliferation. Despite the important biological function of ADAM17, the mechanisms of regulation of its metalloproteinase activity remain largely unknown. We report here that the tetraspanin CD9 and ADAM17 partially co-localize on the surface of endothelial and monocytic cells. In situ proximity ligation, co-immunoprecipitation, crosslinking, and pull-down experiments collectively demonstrate a direct association between these molecules. Functional studies reveal that treatment with CD9-specific antibodies or neoexpression of CD9 exert negative regulatory effects on ADAM17 sheddase activity. Conversely, CD9 silencing increased the activity of ADAM17 against its substrates TNF-α and ICAM-1. Taken together, our results show that CD9 associates with ADAM17 and, through this interaction, negatively regulates the sheddase activity of ADAM17.     

Interaction of cocaine and bunaphtide on the3H-norepinephrine uptake mechanism on isolated left atrium of guinea-pig

Summary Bunaphtide induces a blockade in the³H-norepinephrine uptake and retention in the isolated guinea-pig left atrium. However, this blockade does not seems to be related with the cardiodepressant effect of the drug.     

Sur la caractérisation de dérivés guanidiques d'origine biologique par électrophorèse et chromatographie sur papier (chromatoélectrophorèse)

Summary Paper chromatography has been used in conjonction with electrophoresis in a perpendicular direction (chromatoelectrophoresis), in order to characterize various guanidoderivatives of biological interest and also citrulline. The isolation of definite spots can be obtained with a satisfactory selectivity by this procedure, at a higher speed than by bidimensional chromatography; and the use of a few coloured reactions (ninhydrine,Sakaguchi, diacetyle--naphtol andp-dimethylaminobenzaldehyde) on the same electrochromatogram has been successfully practised in this field.     

Temporal activity patterns of Dipodomys ordii population

Temporal activity patterns for Dipodomys ordii were generally bimodal during the summer, with the highest peak occurring during early predawn hours when conditions were optimum for water conservation. Removal of dominant members in the population resulted in a substantial shift in the activity pattern to increased activity during the evening hours.