The results of a comprehensive pile load-test program and observations from field monitoring of helical piles with either a single helix or double helixes installed in oil sand are presented in this paper. Eleven full-scale pile load tests were carried out including axial compression, uplift, and lateral load tests. The results of the full-scale load tests are used to develop a theoretical desi...

Collagenases are a highly specific class of enzymes. In their native states, collagenases cleave only native triple helical collagen molecules at a single peptide bond between Gly775-Leu776 for Type I collagen and Gly775-Ile776 for Type II collagen. The linear sequence of collagen is about 1050 amino acids in length, where three linear peptide sequences are required to form a triple helical col...

Glycine receptors play a major role in mediating fast inhibitory neurotransmission in the spinal cord and brain stem, yet their high-resolution structures remain unsolved. We determined open-channel structures of the full-length transmembrane domain (TMD) of the human glycine receptor α1-subunit (hGlyR-α1) using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and electron micrographs. hGlyR-α1 TM...

The effect of a solvation on the thermodynamics and kinetics of polyalanine (Ala(12)) is explored on the basis of its energy landscapes in vacuum and in an aqueous solution. Both energy landscapes are characterized by two basins, one associated with alpha-helical structures and the other with coil and beta-structures of the peptide. In both environments, the basin that corresponds to the alpha-...

Electron microscopy (EM), combined with image processing, has become an increasingly powerful tool for structural biology. Advances in cryopreservation and imaging, along with increasingly sophisticated computational tools for image processing, allow three-dimensional (3D) structure determination of macromolecules or macromolecular assemblies trapped in native states (1, 2). Structures from non...

BACKGROUND The purpose of this study was to investigate whether trained radiologists can distinguish minor differences among computed tomography (CT) images of extended helical pitches of 1.0 to 1.5. METHODS Between September 2000 and February 2001, 72 patients were randomized into 1 of 3 equal groups: helical pitches of 1.0, 1.3, and 1.5. The imaging parameters of all patients were kept cons...