Complex simian virus 40 DNA produced by a soluble cell-free extract derived from stage 6 oocytes of Xenopus laevis consists of fully relaxed circles (i.e., with no superhelical turns). An endonuclease and a DNA-relaxing protein, either or both of which could be responsible for the relaxation of the complex DNA, have been purified from the extract. The endonuclease(s) produces nicked circles (ha...

The analysis of the pattern of electrical activity and of individual motor unit potentials in the same muscle both identified about 90% of 41 patients as having a myopathy. The pattern of electrical activity was analysed during a force which was a fixed fraction of maximum; individual motor unit potentials were analysed during weak effort. The two methods supplement each other as some of the pa...

The use of an alphabet of line segments to compose a curve is a possible approach for curve data compression. Curves having more sophisticated topology with self-intersections can be handled by methods considering recursive decomposition of the canvas containing the curve. We propose a graph theory based algorithm for tracing the curve directly to eliminate the decomposition needs. This approac...

The Hungarian psychiatrist Laszlo Meduna was the first who induced epileptic fits to influence the course of mental illness. The following account, based on a review of Meduna's recently unearthed files and his writings, traces the beginnings of convulsive therapy.

We present a discrete model extending the floor field approach allowing heterogeneity in the walking speed of the simulated population of pedestrians. Whereas some discrete models allow pedestrians to move more than a single cell per time step, in the present work we maintain a maximum speed of one cell per step but we model lower speeds by having pedestrians yielding their movement in some tur...

A virtual agent may obviously benefit from having an up-to-date model of his environment of activity. The model may include actual users’ profiles, a dynamic environment characteristic or some assumptions being accepted by default. However, the agent doesn’t have to stick to one model only, he can possess a set of complementary beliefs, both learned and assumed. A hierarchy of beliefs for an e-...

The article introduces an extension of the well-known conformance relation ioco on labeled transition systems (LTS) with refused inputs and forbidden actions. This extension helps to apply the usual formal testing theory based on LTS models to incompletely specified systems, which are often met in practice. Another topic concerned in the article is compositional conformance. More precisely, we ...

Restrictions of interactivity in dialogue are often seen as having negative impact on the efficiency of the dialogue, as they affect the ability to give immediate feedback (Whittaker, 2003). We have conducted experiments with one such restriction common in spoken dialogue systems, namely push-totalk. While our results confirm many predictions from the literature (fewer but longer turns; reducti...

Tight turns have long been recognized as one of the three important features of proteins, together with alpha-helix and beta-sheet. Tight turns play an important role in globular proteins from both the structural and functional points of view. More than 90% tight turns are beta-turns and most of the rest are gamma-turns. Analysis and prediction of beta-turns and gamma-turns is very useful for d...