Complementary neuronal recordings and functional neuroimaging in human subjects show that the primary taste cortex in the anterior insula provides separate and combined representations of the taste, temperature and texture (including fat texture) of food in the mouth independently of hunger and thus of reward value and pleasantness. One synapse on, in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), these senso...

A globally convergent homotopy method is deened that is capable of sequentially producing large numbers of stationary points of the multi-layer perceptron mean-squared error surface. Using this algorithm large subsets of the stationary points of two test problems are found. It is shown empirically that the MLP neural network appears to have an extreme ratio of saddle points compared to local mi...

In this paper, we describe a system which is capable of utilizing a variety of knowledge sources to select the most appropriate parse for a spoken sentence. These knowledge sources include syntax, semantics, and contextual information. We discuss one way to utilize contextual information when determining a parse for a sentence. Our definition of a context is defined by which computer applicatio...

In Africa, Sutherlandia frutescens is a popular medicinal herb widely consumed by people living with human immunodeficiency virus/ AIDS. Concomitant use with antiretroviral drugs has generated concerns of herb-drug interaction (HDI). This study investigated the inhibitory effects of the crude extracts of S. frutescens on the major cytochrome P450 isozymes with the use of pooled human liver micr...

Dysregulation of miR-488 has been implicated in several human cancers. In this study, we aim to explore its expression and biological function in ovarian cancers. We found miR-488 expression was downregulated in ovarian cancer tissues. Using CCK8 and colony formation assay showed that miR-488 inhibited SKOV3 cell proliferation and colony formation, with downregulation of cyclin D1 and cyclin E ...

Several experimental parameters affecting surface enhanced Raman (SER) signals using 488, 785 and 1064 nm excitation for eight diverse analytes are reported. Citrate reduced silver colloids having average diameters ranging from 40 ± 10 to 100 ± 20 nm were synthesized. The nanoparticles were characterized by transmission electron microscopy, dynamic light scattering and absorbance spectrophotome...

Our previous studied indicated that eukaryotic translation initiation factor 3a (eIF3a) increases the sensitive of platinum-based chemotherapy in lung cancer. MiRNAs play an important role in lung carcinogenesis and drug response. In this study, we aimed to identify potential endogenous miRNAs that inhibit eIF3a expression and determine their influence of this inhibition on cisplatin resistance...

Protein-based therapeutics with cytosolic targets are capable of exhibiting their therapeutic effect once they have escaped from the endosomes or lysosomes. In this study, the reporters-horseradish peroxidase (HRP), Alexa Fluor 488 (Alexa) and ricin A-chain (RTA)-were investigated for their capacity to monitor the endo/lysosomal escape of the ribosome-inactivating protein, saporin. The conjugat...