It seemed like a change for the best at the time. The change involved a progressive decrease, from the 1960s onwards, in the tar yield from cigarettes. The tar yield was readily measured using smoking machines. A firm basis existed for anticipating that a reduced yield of tar from cigarettes would result in a reduced incidence of lung cancer in people smoking them. So health authorities, includ...

We have demonstrated that polyamide nucleic acids complementary to the transactivation response (TAR) element of HIV-1 LTR inhibit HIV-1 production when transfected in HIV-1 infected cells. We have further shown that anti-TAR PNA (PNA(TAR)) conjugated with cell-penetrating peptide (CPP) is rapidly taken up by cells and exhibits strong antiviral and anti-HIV-1 virucidal activities. Here, we phar...

Black liquor is a big energy source and a crucial component for the economy of the pulp and paper industry. Black liquor is conventionally burned in the Tomlinson recovery boiler. However, black liquor gasification combined cycle (BLGCC) has some advantages over the conventional technology, like superior energy efficiency, that makes this technology suitable to replace the traditional boiler. L...

Tar removal from biomass gasification gas is a crucial problem in applying syngas from biomass for its downstream applications. Catalytic biomass gasification has given promising results for tar cracking. A few research groups have investigated the use of olivine for tar cracking [2,3,4,7,8,9,10]. The presence of oxides of iron and magnesium in the mineral olivine give it the ability to crack h...

RNA is a drug target involved in diverse cellular functions and viral processes. Molecules that inhibit the HIV TAR RNA-Tat protein interaction may attenuate Tat/TAR-dependent protein expression and potentially serve as anti-HIV therapeutics. By incorporating positively charged residues with mixed side chain lengths, we designed peptides that bind TAR RNA with enhanced intracellular activity. T...

Transcriptional activation by the HIV-1 Tat protein requires specific residues in the hexanucleotide loop and trinucleotide bulge of the TAR RNA stem-loop structure found in the 5'-untranslated leader of all viral transcripts. Tat directly contacts residue U22 in the bulge and is thought to act in concert with cellular factors bound to the loop. We find that HeLa nuclear extracts contain two sp...

James R. Mahan Plant Stress and Water Conservation Laboratory, USDA-ARS, 3810 Fourth Street, Lubbock, TX 79415-3397 Pyrithiobac control of Palmer amaranth on the Texas Southern High Plains was correlated previously with temperature at the time of application. In the present study, the thermal dependence of pyrithiobac efficacy was used to define a thermal application range (TAR) for postemergen...

Human immunodeficiency viruses (HIVs) and the related bovine lentiviruses bovine immunodeficiency virus (BIV) and Jembrana disease virus (JDV) utilize the viral Tat protein to activate viral transcription. The arginine-rich RNA-binding domains of the Tat proteins bind to their cognate transactivation response element (TAR) RNA hairpins located at the 5' ends of the viral mRNAs, resulting in enh...