Bicoid (Bcd) is a maternal morphogen responsible for patterning the head and thorax of the Drosophila embryo. Correct specification of head structure, however, requires the activity of the Torso receptor tyrosine kinase cascade, which also represses expression of Bcd targets at the most anterior tip of the embryo. Here, we investigate the role of both the homeodomain (HD) and the activation dom...

Magnetocardiography (MCG) non-invasively provides functional information about the heart. New room-temperature magnetic field sensors, specifically magnetoresistive and optically pumped magnetometers, have reached sensitivities in the ultra-low range of cardiac fields while allowing for free placement around the human torso. Our aim is to optimize positions and orientations of such magnetic sen...

Identifying B-cell epitopes play an important role in vaccine design, immunodiagnostic tests, and antibody production. Therefore, computational tools for reliably predicting B-cell epitopes are highly desirable. We explore two machine learning approaches for predicting flexible length linear B-cell epitopes. The first approach utilizes four sequence kernels for determining a similarity score be...

Tracheobronchial rupture due to blunt chest trauma is a rare but life-threatening injury among children. The severity of this condition ranges from death before hospital admission to clinical stability resulting in delayed management. Diagnosis is difficult because there is sometimes no evidence of external trauma, in spite of severe chest crush injury and consecutive rupture of airways. Here, ...

Early Drosophila development requires two receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK) pathways: the Torso and the Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) pathways, which regulate terminal and dorsal-ventral patterning, respectively. Previous studies have shown that these pathways, either directly or indirectly, lead to post-transcriptional downregulation of the Capicua repressor in the early embryo and in t...

The next generation of pressure suits must enable large-scale planetary Extra-Vehicular Activities (EVA). Astronauts exploring the moon and Mars will be required to walk many kilometers, carry large loads, perform intricate experiments, and extract geological samples. Advanced pressure suit architectures must be developed to allow astronauts to perform these and other tasks simply and effective...

The insect membrane-protein, Torso, is a member of the receptor-tyrosine-kinase family, and is activated by its ligand, prothoracicotropic hormone (PTTH). Although PTTH is one of the most important regulators of insect development, the mechanism of Torso activation by the hormone has remained elusive. In this study, using heterologous expression in cultured Drosophila S2 cells, we detected liga...

22 We have previously shown that the Coriolis torques that result when an arm movement is 23 performed during torso rotation do not affect movement trajectory. Our purpose here was to 24 examine whether torso motion induced Coriolis and other interaction torques are counteracted 25 during a turn and reach (T&R) movement when the effective mass of the hand is augmented, and 26 whether the domina...

A 37−year−old man presented with severe myalgia associated with abdominal pain and offensive−smelling diarrhea. He had an erythematous rash on his face, torso, and arms. His creatine kinase was raised at 30 145 IU/l (normal range 33 ± 199 IU/ l). Electromyography suggested myositis and a muscle biopsy confirmed a diagno− sis of dermatomyositis. On abdominal computed tomography he was found to h...