Apoptosis involves the proteolysis of specific cellular proteins by a group of cysteine proteases known as caspases. Many of these cellular targets are either functionally inactivated (e.g. poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase) or activated (e.g. other caspases, gelsolin) by such processing, thereby facilitating the cell death process. Caspase 3 is involved in the processing of many of these proteins. R...

We have created new genomics tools for chromatin research by genetically engineering the human and mouse major apoptotic nucleases that are responsible for internucleosomal DNA cleavage, DNA fragmentation factor (DFF). Normally, in its inactive form, DFF is a heterodimer composed of a 45-kDa chaperone inhibitor subunit (DFF45 or ICAD), and a 40-kDa latent endonuclease subunit (DFF40 or CAD). Up...

There is increasing pressure for reduction of user fees, but this can have adverse effects by decreasing facility-level funds. To address this, direct facility funding (DFF) was piloted in Coast Province, Kenya, with health facility committees (HFCs) responsible for managing the funds. We evaluated the implementation and perceived impact 2.5 years after DFF introduction. Quantitative data colle...

This article explains a new implementation of efficient D-Flip-Flop (DFF) using Gate-Diffusion-Input (GDI) technique, PowerPC, DSTC, and HLFF. This DFF design allows reducing power-delay product and area of the circuit, while maintaining low complexity of logic design. Performance comparison with other DFF design techniques is presented, with respect to gate area, number of devices, delay and p...

The heterodimeric DNA fragmentation factor (DFF) is responsible for DNA degradation into nucleosomal units during apoptosis. This process needs the caspase-dependent release of ICAD/DFF-45, the inhibitory subunit of DFF. Here we report that triggering apoptosis via a hyperosmotic shock in hematopoietic cells causes the appearance of mitochondrial and cytosolic alterations, activation of caspase...

Depth from Focus (DFF) and Depth from Defocus (DFD) methods are theoretically uni ed with the geometric triangulation principle. Fundamentally, the depth sensitivities of DFF and DFD are not di erent than those of stereo (or motion) based systems having the same physical dimensions. Contrary to common belief, DFD does not inherently avoid the matching (correspondence) problem. Basically, DFD an...

This paper presents a methodology called ‘Design for Fixturability’ (DFF). This methodology enables designers to perform manufacturability analysis of their product designs upfront into the design process. The DFF approach provides a mapping between parametric representation of a part design and fixturing capability of a facility and presents a methodology to evaluate the design with respect to...

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is a clinically effective cancer treatment. For human promyelocytic leukemia HL-60 cells, cleavage of pro-caspase-3 (CPP32/Yama/apopain) into its proteolytically active subunits rapidly follows the photodynamic treatment of these cells with cytotoxic levels of the photosensitizer benzoporphyrin derivative monoacid ring A and visible light. Cleavage of a recently ident...

This paper is concerned with studying the forgetting factor of the recursive least square (RLS). A new dynamic forgetting factor (DFF) for RLS algorithm is presented. The proposed DFF-RLS is compared to other methods. Better performance at convergence and tracking of noisy chirp sinusoid is achieved. The control of the forgetting factor at DFF-RLS is based on the gradient of inverse correlation...

In cutting and packing problems, Dual Feasible Functions (DFFs) represent a well established tool for deriving high quality lower bounds in very short times. A well-known DFF lower bounding approach consists of using DFFs to rapidly generate feasible values for the dual variables of a Column Generation (CG) program (i.e., of an extended formulation commonly associated to CG). This paper present...