The Holocaust under the Nazi regime is probably the most traumatic catastrophe of our century and even of history in the civilised world. Its deepest abyss consumed the lives of one-third of the world's Jewish population, who were selected and murdered in a cold-blooded industrialised machinery of death in this their †̃¿ Shoa'. The Jewish people represent the victims of the Holocaust more than...

The prototypic member of the acetylcholine receptor family, the muscle nicotinic receptor, is a heteromeric complex with five subunits but only two ligand-binding sites. However, some members of this receptor superfamily are homomeric, containing five seemingly identical binding sites. Whether activation actually requires binding of five agonist molecules in this situation is unclear. Such ques...

The Drosophila gene cacophony (cac) encodes the 1 subunit of a presynaptic voltage-gated calcium channel. This gene locus was first identified, and named, because of a role in the male courtship song. These channels, activated during an action potential, trigger neurotransmitter release at the fly neuromuscular junction. To visualize their location in live animals, Kawasaki et al. created a tra...

Calcium entry into the dendritic spines of excitatory neurons is important for many forms of synaptic plasticity. In this issue, Hoogland and Saggau continue efforts to inventory the calcium channels that function in dendritic spines. They evoked backpropagating action potentials at the soma of CA1 neurons in rat hippocampal slices and recorded calcium transients in basal dendrites and spines u...

In this paper we explore articulatory timing in the glottalised resonant series of St’át’imcets, an Interior Salish language spoken in British Columbia, Canada. We show that while these sounds form a natural class phonologically (van Eijk, 1997), they behave as two distinct classes phonetically: [-sonorant] segments /Œ ¶/ are systematically pre-glottalised. In contrast, [+sonorant] segments / ...

Results are reported of a numerical study to compare eight algorithms for obtaining rational L approximations. The algorithms investigated are Loeb's algorithm, the linear inequality algorithm, the Osborne-Watson algorithm, the differential correction algorithms I, II and III, the Remes algorithm and Maehly's algorithm. The results of the study indicate that the Remes algorithm and the differen...

Macrophages are terminally differentiated cells of the mononuclear phagocyte system that also encompasses dendritic cells, circulating blood monocytes, and committed myeloid progenitor cells in the bone marrow. Both macrophages and their monocytic precursors can change their functional state in response to microenvironmental cues exhibiting a marked heterogeneity. However, there are still uncer...

The emergence of the novel A/H1N1 virus has made pandemic preparedness a crucial issue for public health worldwide. Although the epidemiological aspects of the three 20th century influenza pandemics have been widely investigated, little is known about population behaviour in a pandemic situation. Such knowledge is however critical, notably for predicting population compliance with non pharmaceu...

We present a framework for near real-time forecast of influenza epidemics using a simulation optimization approach. The method combines an individual-based model and a simple root finding optimization method for parameter estimation and forecasting. In this study, retrospective forecasts were generated for seasonal influenza epidemics using web-based estimates of influenza activity from Google ...