PURPOSE Rod photoreceptor outer segment (OS) morphogenesis, structural integrity, and proper signal transduction rely on critical proteins found in the different OS membrane domains (e.g., plasma, disc, and disc rim membrane). Among these key elements are retinal degeneration slow (RDS, also known as peripherin-2), rhodopsin, and the beta subunit of the cyclic nucleotide gated channel (CNGB1a),...

A novel DC-free binary convolutional coding scheme is presented. The proposed scheme achieves the DC-free and error correcting capability simultaneously. The scheme has a simple cascaded structure of the RDS(running digital sum) control encoder and the conventional convolutional encoder. A given sequence becomes DC-free if and only if the absolute RDS value of the sequence is bounded by a const...

BACKGROUND One of the key assumptions in respondent-driven sampling (RDS) analysis, called "random selection assumption," is that respondents randomly recruit their peers from their personal networks. The objective of this study was to verify this assumption in the empirical data of egocentric networks. METHODS We conducted an egocentric network study among young drug users in China, in which...

Nanoporous nickel oxide (NiO x ) has been deposited with two different procedures of sintering (CS and RDS). Both samples display solid state oxidation at about 3.1 V vs Li+/Li. Upon sensitization of CS/RDS NiO x with erythrosine b (ERY), nickel oxide oxidation occurs at the same potential. Impedance spectroscopy revealed a higher charge transfer resistance for ERY-sensitized RDS NiO x with res...

PURPOSE To elucidate the role of activated microglia and nitric oxide (NO) in photoreceptor apoptosis in rds mice, and to investigate the effect of minocycline treatment on rds mice. METHODS Photoreceptor apoptosis in rds mice was detected by terminal dUTP transferase nick end labeling (TUNEL). Retinal microglial cells were identified by CD11b antibody. The mRNA expression of inducible nitric...

OBJECTIVES To assess the relation between cigarette smoking during pregnancy and neonatal respiratory distress syndrome (RDS) in very preterm birth, and to analyse the differential effect of antenatal steroids on RDS among smokers and non-smokers. DESIGN A population based cohort study (the French Epipage study). SETTING Regionally defined births in France. METHODS A total of 858 very pre...

A subset of registered dietitians (RDs) is known to practice at an advanced level, but a clear educational pathway supporting advanced medical nutrition therapy practice has not been identified. Thus, an electronic survey was designed to investigate interest of clinical RDs, employers, and educators in advanced practice competencies and professional doctorate degree programs in clinical nutriti...

The retinal degeneration slow or rds gene encodes rds/peripherin, an integral membrane glycoprotein in the outer segments of rod and cone photoreceptors. Mice homozygous for a null mutation in rds fail to develop outer segments and undergo subsequent degeneration of photoreceptors by the apoptotic pathway. Mutations in the human RDS gene are responsible for several forms of inherited blindness ...

Both random walk and respondent-driven sampling (RDS) exploit social networks and may reduce biases introduced by earlier methods for sampling from hidden populations. Although RDS has become much more widely used by social researchers than random walk (RW), there has been little discussion of the tradeoffs in choosing RDS over RW. This paper compares experiences of implementing RW and RDS to r...

Short Abstract: We explore the network coverage of a Respondent Driven Sampling (RDS) sample of female sex workers (FSW) in China as part of an effort to evaluate RDS' claim of population representation with empirical data. We take advantage of unique information on the social networks of FSW obtained from two overlapping studies of FSWs --RDS and a venuebased sampling approach (PLACE) -and use...