Paramagnetism of human serum proteins demonstrated by two-stage electromagnetophoresis

Zusammenfassung Normale Serumproteine wurden mittels zweistufiger Elektromagnetophorese in Polyacrylamidgel, einer neuen Technik, aufgetrennt, wobei die Trennung auf Grund der paramagnetischen Eigenschaften der einzelnen Proteine erfolgt.

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Supported by William Beaumont Hospital Research Institute in Affiliation with the Research Laboratories, General Motors Corporation and Department of Pathology, School of Medicine, Wayne State University.     

Induction of developmental anomalies in mice by maternal stress

Summary The short-time restraint of pregnant mice on day 8 of gestation led to a significant increase of the anomaly rate in fetuses. This effect may be due to stress factors of endocrine origin.The technical assistance of Mrs E. Frei is gratefully acknowledged. Supported by the Swiss National Foundation for Scientific Research.     

Influence of age on the plasma hormonal iodine response to thyrotropin injection in young calves]

The influence of age upon the increase in plasma hormonal iodine level following an intravenous injection of bovine TSH (0.2 USP units/kg) was studied in young jersey calves. The response to TSH increased between birth and the 7th day, then decreased regularly until the end of the third month. Reasons for these variations are discussed according to some results obtained following TSH injections.     

Chronic split brain stem preparation: Effect on the sleep-waking cycle

Résumé La préparation du chat à tronc cérébral dédoublé peut être conservée pendant plusieurs mois en bon état. Elle se caractérise par un très haut niveau de vigilance avec réduction du sommeil lent et du sommeil rapide. Lorsque la section sagitale médiane est très étendue, alternativement chaque hemisphère peut présenter un tracé lent tandis que l'autre hemisphère présente un tracé rapide; cette asynchronie peut durer jusqu'à 25 min.

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A preliminary paper has been presented at Ass. for Psychophysiological Study of Sleep, Gainesville, Florida, March, 1966.     

Drosophila Toll is activated by Gram-positive bacteria through a circulating peptidoglycan recognition protein.

Microbial infection activates two distinct intracellular signalling cascades in the immune-responsive fat body of Drosophila. Gram-positive bacteria and fungi predominantly induce the Toll signalling pathway, whereas Gram-negative bacteria activate the Imd pathway. Loss-of-function mutants in either pathway reduce the resistance to corresponding infections. Genetic screens have identified a range of genes involved in these intracellular signalling cascades, but how they are activated by microbial infection is largely unknown. Activation of the transmembrane receptor Toll requires a proteolytically cleaved form of an extracellular cytokine-like polypeptide, Sp?tzle, suggesting that Toll does not itself function as a bona fide recognition receptor of microbial patterns. This is in apparent contrast with the mammalian Toll-like receptors and raises the question of which host molecules actually recognize microbial patterns to activate Toll through Sp?tzle. Here we present a mutation that blocks Toll activation by Gram-positive bacteria and significantly decreases resistance to this type of infection. The mutation semmelweis (seml) inactivates the gene encoding a peptidoglycan recognition protein (PGRP-SA). Interestingly, seml does not affect Toll activation by fungal infection, indicating the existence of a distinct recognition system for fungi to activate the Toll pathway.     

Why not Post-Political?

This commentary on Gert Goeminne’s paper “Postphenomenology and the politics of sustainable technology” elaborates on the subpolitics of technology as a basis for dealing with sustainability issues. It questions the “sustainable technology” phrasing of the issue and focuses on the political/post-political debate to eventually suggest that the politics of sustainable technology is a possible post-political question. Minor disagreements on some philosophy of science references are briefly expressed.     

Network Visualization in Cell Biology

Many of the processes known to take place in biological cells are analyzed in the form of different types of network.The complexity of these networks increases along with our knowledge of these processes,making their analysis more difficult.Network visualization is a powerful analysis method that will have to be developed further to deal with this complexity.This survey provides a brief overview of network visualization in general,followed by an in-depth discussion of its application to three network types specific to cell biology,namely gene regulatory,protein interaction,and metabolic networks.Finally,we discuss the difficulty of visually integrating these network types and trying to compare networks of cells that belong to different organisms.     

Application of varentropy as a measure of probabilistic uncertainty for complex networks

Varentropy is used as a general measure of probabilistic uncertainty for a complex network, inspired by the first and second laws of thermodynamics, but not limited to the equilibrium system. By exploring the relationship between the varentropy of the scale free distribution and the exponent of power laws as well as network size, we get the optimal design of a scale-free network against random failures. The behaviors of varentropy and the Shannon entropy of double Pareto law degree distribution are analyzed to compare their usefulness. Our conclusion is that varentropy is suitable and reliable.