Sample records for tagging method reveals

  1. Sequence tagging reveals unexpected modifications in toxicoproteomics

    PubMed Central

    Dasari, Surendra; Chambers, Matthew C.; Codreanu, Simona G.; Liebler, Daniel C.; Collins, Ben C.; Pennington, Stephen R.; Gallagher, William M.; Tabb, David L.

    2010-01-01

    Toxicoproteomic samples are rich in posttranslational modifications (PTMs) of proteins. Identifying these modifications via standard database searching can incur significant performance penalties. Here we describe the latest developments in TagRecon, an algorithm that leverages inferred sequence tags to identify modified peptides in toxicoproteomic data sets. TagRecon identifies known modifications more effectively than the MyriMatch database search engine. TagRecon outperformed state of the art software in recognizing unanticipated modifications from LTQ, Orbitrap, and QTOF data sets. We developed user-friendly software for detecting persistent mass shifts from samples. We follow a three-step strategy for detecting unanticipated PTMs in samples. First, we identify the proteins present in the sample with a standard database search. Next, identified proteins are interrogated for unexpected PTMs with a sequence tag-based search. Finally, additional evidence is gathered for the detected mass shifts with a refinement search. Application of this technology on toxicoproteomic data sets revealed unintended cross-reactions between proteins and sample processing reagents. Twenty five proteins in rat liver showed signs of oxidative stress when exposed to potentially toxic drugs. These results demonstrate the value of mining toxicoproteomic data sets for modifications. PMID:21214251

  2. Tags, wireless communication systems, tag communication methods, and wireless communications methods

    DOEpatents

    Scott,; Jeff W. , Pratt; Richard, M [Richland, WA

    2006-09-12

    Tags, wireless communication systems, tag communication methods, and wireless communications methods are described. In one aspect, a tag includes a plurality of antennas configured to receive a plurality of first wireless communication signals comprising data from a reader, a plurality of rectifying circuits coupled with. respective individual ones of the antennas and configured to provide rectified signals corresponding to the first wireless communication signals, wherein the rectified signals are combined to produce a composite signal, an adaptive reference circuit configured to vary a reference signal responsive to the composite signal, a comparator coupled with the adaptive reference circuit and the rectifying circuits and configured to compare the composite signal with respect to the reference signal and to output the data responsive to the comparison, and processing circuitry configured to receive the data from the comparator and to process the data.

  3. Method for designing gas tag compositions

    DOEpatents

    Gross, Kenny C.

    1995-01-01

    For use in the manufacture of gas tags such as employed in a nuclear reactor gas tagging failure detection system, a method for designing gas tagging compositions utilizes an analytical approach wherein the final composition of a first canister of tag gas as measured by a mass spectrometer is designated as node #1. Lattice locations of tag nodes in multi-dimensional space are then used in calculating the compositions of a node #2 and each subsequent node so as to maximize the distance of each node from any combination of tag components which might be indistinguishable from another tag composition in a reactor fuel assembly. Alternatively, the measured compositions of tag gas numbers 1 and 2 may be used to fix the locations of nodes 1 and 2, with the locations of nodes 3-N then calculated for optimum tag gas composition. A single sphere defining the lattice locations of the tag nodes may be used to define approximately 20 tag nodes, while concentric spheres can extend the number of tag nodes to several hundred.

  4. Method for designing gas tag compositions

    DOEpatents

    Gross, K.C.

    1995-04-11

    For use in the manufacture of gas tags such as employed in a nuclear reactor gas tagging failure detection system, a method for designing gas tagging compositions utilizes an analytical approach wherein the final composition of a first canister of tag gas as measured by a mass spectrometer is designated as node No. 1. Lattice locations of tag nodes in multi-dimensional space are then used in calculating the compositions of a node No. 2 and each subsequent node so as to maximize the distance of each node from any combination of tag components which might be indistinguishable from another tag composition in a reactor fuel assembly. Alternatively, the measured compositions of tag gas numbers 1 and 2 may be used to fix the locations of nodes 1 and 2, with the locations of nodes 3-N then calculated for optimum tag gas composition. A single sphere defining the lattice locations of the tag nodes may be used to define approximately 20 tag nodes, while concentric spheres can extend the number of tag nodes to several hundred. 5 figures.

  5. Evaluation of Intercontinental Transport of Ozone Using Full-tagged, Tagged-N and Sensitivity Methods

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Guo, Y.; Liu, J.; Mauzerall, D. L.; Emmons, L. K.; Horowitz, L. W.; Fan, S.; Li, X.; Tao, S.

    2014-12-01

    Long-range transport of ozone is of great concern, yet the source-receptor relationships derived previously depend strongly on the source attribution techniques used. Here we describe a new tagged ozone mechanism (full-tagged), the design of which seeks to take into account the combined effects of emissions of ozone precursors, CO, NOx and VOCs, from a particular source, while keeping the current state of chemical equilibrium unchanged. We label emissions from the target source (A) and background (B). When two species from A and B sources react with each other, half of the resulting products are labeled A, and half B. Thus the impact of a given source on downwind regions is recorded through tagged chemistry. We then incorporate this mechanism into the Model for Ozone and Related chemical Tracers (MOZART-4) to examine the impact of anthropogenic emissions within North America, Europe, East Asia and South Asia on ground-level ozone downwind of source regions during 1999-2000. We compare our results with two previously used methods -- the sensitivity and tagged-N approaches. The ozone attributed to a given source by the full-tagged method is more widely distributed spatially, but has weaker seasonal variability than that estimated by the other methods. On a seasonal basis, for most source/receptor pairs, the full-tagged method estimates the largest amount of tagged ozone, followed by the sensitivity and tagged-N methods. In terms of trans-Pacific influence of ozone pollution, the full-tagged method estimates the strongest impact of East Asian (EA) emissions on the western U.S. (WUS) in MAM and JJA (~3 ppbv), which is substantially different in magnitude and seasonality from tagged-N and sensitivity studies. This difference results from the full-tagged method accounting for the maintenance of peroxy radicals (e.g., CH3O2, CH3CO3, and HO2), in addition to NOy, as effective reservoirs of EA source impact across the Pacific, allowing for a significant contribution to

  6. Linear reduction methods for tag SNP selection.

    PubMed

    He, Jingwu; Zelikovsky, Alex

    2004-01-01

    It is widely hoped that constructing a complete human haplotype map will help to associate complex diseases with certain SNP's. Unfortunately, the number of SNP's is huge and it is very costly to sequence many individuals. Therefore, it is desirable to reduce the number of SNP's that should be sequenced to considerably small number of informative representatives, so called tag SNP's. In this paper, we propose a new linear algebra based method for selecting and using tag SNP's. Our method is purely combinatorial and can be combined with linkage disequilibrium (LD) and block based methods. We measure the quality of our tag SNP selection algorithm by comparing actual SNP's with SNP's linearly predicted from linearly chosen tag SNP's. We obtain an extremely good compression and prediction rates. For example, for long haplotypes (>25000 SNP's), knowing only 0.4% of all SNP's we predict the entire unknown haplotype with 2% accuracy while the prediction method is based on a 10% sample of the population.

  7. Leveraging algal omics to reveal potential targets for augmenting TAG accumulation

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Arora, Neha; Pienkos, Philip T.; Pruthi, Vikas

    Ongoing global efforts to commercialize microalgal biofuels have expedited the use of multi-omics techniques to gain insights into lipid biosynthetic pathways. Functional genomics analyses have recently been employed to complement existing sequence-level omics studies, shedding light on the dynamics of lipid synthesis and its interplay with other cellular metabolic pathways, thus revealing possible targets for metabolic engineering. Here, we review the current status of algal omics studies to reveal potential targets to augment TAG accumulation in various microalgae. Here, this review specifically aims to examine and catalog systems level data related to stress-induced TAG accumulation in oleaginous microalgae and informmore » future metabolic engineering strategies to develop strains with enhanced bioproductivity, which could pave a path for sustainable green energy.« less

  8. Leveraging Algal Omics to Reveal Potential Targets for Augmenting TAG Accumulation

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Guarnieri, Michael T; Pienkos, Philip T; Arora, Neha

    2018-04-18

    Ongoing global efforts to commercialize microalgal biofuels have expedited the use of multi-omics techniques to gain insights into lipid biosynthetic pathways. Functional genomics analyses have recently been employed to complement existing sequence-level omics studies, shedding light on the dynamics of lipid synthesis and its interplay with other cellular metabolic pathways, thus revealing possible targets for metabolic engineering. Here, we review the current status of algal omics studies to reveal potential targets to augment TAG accumulation in various microalgae. This review specifically aims to examine and catalog systems level data related to stress-induced TAG accumulation in oleaginous microalgae and inform futuremore » metabolic engineering strategies to develop strains with enhanced bioproductivity, which could pave a path for sustainable green energy.« less

  9. Leveraging algal omics to reveal potential targets for augmenting TAG accumulation

    DOE PAGES

    Arora, Neha; Pienkos, Philip T.; Pruthi, Vikas; ...

    2018-04-18

    Ongoing global efforts to commercialize microalgal biofuels have expedited the use of multi-omics techniques to gain insights into lipid biosynthetic pathways. Functional genomics analyses have recently been employed to complement existing sequence-level omics studies, shedding light on the dynamics of lipid synthesis and its interplay with other cellular metabolic pathways, thus revealing possible targets for metabolic engineering. Here, we review the current status of algal omics studies to reveal potential targets to augment TAG accumulation in various microalgae. Here, this review specifically aims to examine and catalog systems level data related to stress-induced TAG accumulation in oleaginous microalgae and informmore » future metabolic engineering strategies to develop strains with enhanced bioproductivity, which could pave a path for sustainable green energy.« less

  10. Leveraging algal omics to reveal potential targets for augmenting TAG accumulation.

    PubMed

    Arora, Neha; Pienkos, Philip T; Pruthi, Vikas; Poluri, Krishna Mohan; Guarnieri, Michael T

    2018-04-18

    Ongoing global efforts to commercialize microalgal biofuels have expedited the use of multi-omics techniques to gain insights into lipid biosynthetic pathways. Functional genomics analyses have recently been employed to complement existing sequence-level omics studies, shedding light on the dynamics of lipid synthesis and its interplay with other cellular metabolic pathways, thus revealing possible targets for metabolic engineering. Here, we review the current status of algal omics studies to reveal potential targets to augment TAG accumulation in various microalgae. This review specifically aims to examine and catalog systems level data related to stress-induced TAG accumulation in oleaginous microalgae and inform future metabolic engineering strategies to develop strains with enhanced bioproductivity, which could pave a path for sustainable green energy. Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier Inc.

  11. Method for nonlinear optimization for gas tagging and other systems

    DOEpatents

    Chen, Ting; Gross, Kenny C.; Wegerich, Stephan

    1998-01-01

    A method and system for providing nuclear fuel rods with a configuration of isotopic gas tags. The method includes selecting a true location of a first gas tag node, selecting initial locations for the remaining n-1 nodes using target gas tag compositions, generating a set of random gene pools with L nodes, applying a Hopfield network for computing on energy, or cost, for each of the L gene pools and using selected constraints to establish minimum energy states to identify optimal gas tag nodes with each energy compared to a convergence threshold and then upon identifying the gas tag node continuing this procedure until establishing the next gas tag node until all remaining n nodes have been established.

  12. Method for nonlinear optimization for gas tagging and other systems

    DOEpatents

    Chen, T.; Gross, K.C.; Wegerich, S.

    1998-01-06

    A method and system are disclosed for providing nuclear fuel rods with a configuration of isotopic gas tags. The method includes selecting a true location of a first gas tag node, selecting initial locations for the remaining n-1 nodes using target gas tag compositions, generating a set of random gene pools with L nodes, applying a Hopfield network for computing on energy, or cost, for each of the L gene pools and using selected constraints to establish minimum energy states to identify optimal gas tag nodes with each energy compared to a convergence threshold and then upon identifying the gas tag node continuing this procedure until establishing the next gas tag node until all remaining n nodes have been established. 6 figs.

  13. Systems, Apparatuses and Methods for Beamforming RFID Tags

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Fink, Patrick W. (Inventor); Lin, Gregory Y. (Inventor); Ngo, Phong H. (Inventor); Kennedy, Timothy F. (Inventor)

    2017-01-01

    A radio frequency identification (RFID) system includes an RFID interrogator and an RFID tag having a plurality of information sources and a beamforming network. The tag receives electromagnetic radiation from the interrogator. The beamforming network directs the received electromagnetic radiation to a subset of the plurality of information sources. The RFID tag transmits a response to the received electromagnetic radiation, based on the subset of the plurality of information sources to which the received electromagnetic radiation was directed. Method and other embodiments are also disclosed.

  14. Evaluation of methods for attaching PIT tags and biotelemetry devices to freshwater mussels

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Young, S.P.; Isely, J.J.

    2008-01-01

    We evaluated methods to attach PIT tags and transmitters to freshwater mussels. Mussels received externally-mounted PIT tags using cyanoacrylate or underwater epoxy, and a sub-group of those with PIT tags attached using cyanoacrylate also received dummy transmitters. Tag retention and survival were 100% after a 30 day laboratory observation period for each method. During the subsequent 18 months of field observation, underwater epoxy and cyanoacrylate proved to be adequate adhesives for attaching PIT tags and transmitters. Epoxy performed best with 100% PIT tag retention. Cyanoacrylate also provided high retention rates of PIT tags and transmitters, >90%. Mortality was minimal at 4.7% for all relocated mussels over 18 months. All mortalities were those tagged with cyanoacrylate. Three of the mortalities occurred among mussels fitted with dummy transmitters, and seven among PIT tags only. Percent recapture of the different tag/adhesive combinations ranged from 48 - 77.5% during 6- and 18-month surveys. Results suggest both adhesives provide a reliable method for external attachment of tags during freshwater mussel research; however, epoxy may be better suited because of slightly higher tag retention and reduced emersion times during attachment. Copyright ?? 2008 Malacological Society of Australasia.

  15. Trans-dimensional MCMC methods for fully automatic motion analysis in tagged MRI.

    PubMed

    Smal, Ihor; Carranza-Herrezuelo, Noemí; Klein, Stefan; Niessen, Wiro; Meijering, Erik

    2011-01-01

    Tagged magnetic resonance imaging (tMRI) is a well-known noninvasive method allowing quantitative analysis of regional heart dynamics. Its clinical use has so far been limited, in part due to the lack of robustness and accuracy of existing tag tracking algorithms in dealing with low (and intrinsically time-varying) image quality. In this paper, we propose a novel probabilistic method for tag tracking, implemented by means of Bayesian particle filtering and a trans-dimensional Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) approach, which efficiently combines information about the imaging process and tag appearance with prior knowledge about the heart dynamics obtained by means of non-rigid image registration. Experiments using synthetic image data (with ground truth) and real data (with expert manual annotation) from preclinical (small animal) and clinical (human) studies confirm that the proposed method yields higher consistency, accuracy, and intrinsic tag reliability assessment in comparison with other frequently used tag tracking methods.

  16. Linear reduction method for predictive and informative tag SNP selection.

    PubMed

    He, Jingwu; Westbrooks, Kelly; Zelikovsky, Alexander

    2005-01-01

    Constructing a complete human haplotype map is helpful when associating complex diseases with their related SNPs. Unfortunately, the number of SNPs is very large and it is costly to sequence many individuals. Therefore, it is desirable to reduce the number of SNPs that should be sequenced to a small number of informative representatives called tag SNPs. In this paper, we propose a new linear algebra-based method for selecting and using tag SNPs. We measure the quality of our tag SNP selection algorithm by comparing actual SNPs with SNPs predicted from selected linearly independent tag SNPs. Our experiments show that for sufficiently long haplotypes, knowing only 0.4% of all SNPs the proposed linear reduction method predicts an unknown haplotype with the error rate below 2% based on 10% of the population.

  17. Method and apparatus for manufacturing gas tags

    DOEpatents

    Gross, K.C.; Laug, M.T.

    1996-12-17

    For use in the manufacture of gas tags employed in a gas tagging failure detection system for a nuclear reactor, a plurality of commercial feed gases each having a respective noble gas isotopic composition are blended under computer control to provide various tag gas mixtures having selected isotopic ratios which are optimized for specified defined conditions such as cost. Using a new approach employing a discrete variable structure rather than the known continuous-variable optimization problem, the computer controlled gas tag manufacturing process employs an analytical formalism from condensed matter physics known as stochastic relaxation, which is a special case of simulated annealing, for input feed gas selection. For a tag blending process involving M tag isotopes with N distinct feed gas mixtures commercially available from an enriched gas supplier, the manufacturing process calculates the cost difference between multiple combinations and specifies gas mixtures which approach the optimum defined conditions. The manufacturing process is then used to control tag blending apparatus incorporating tag gas canisters connected by stainless-steel tubing with computer controlled valves, with the canisters automatically filled with metered quantities of the required feed gases. 4 figs.

  18. Method and apparatus for manufacturing gas tags

    DOEpatents

    Gross, Kenny C.; Laug, Matthew T.

    1996-01-01

    For use in the manufacture of gas tags employed in a gas tagging failure detection system for a nuclear reactor, a plurality of commercial feed gases each having a respective noble gas isotopic composition are blended under computer control to provide various tag gas mixtures having selected isotopic ratios which are optimized for specified defined conditions such as cost. Using a new approach employing a discrete variable structure rather than the known continuous-variable optimization problem, the computer controlled gas tag manufacturing process employs an analytical formalism from condensed matter physics known as stochastic relaxation, which is a special case of simulated annealing, for input feed gas selection. For a tag blending process involving M tag isotopes with N distinct feed gas mixtures commercially available from an enriched gas supplier, the manufacturing process calculates the cost difference between multiple combinations and specifies gas mixtures which approach the optimum defined conditions. The manufacturing process is then used to control tag blending apparatus incorporating tag gas canisters connected by stainless-steel tubing with computer controlled valves, with the canisters automatically filled with metered quantities of the required feed gases.

  19. Tagging methods for estimating population size and mortality rates of inland striped bass populations

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Hightower, Joseph E.; Pollock, Kenneth H.

    2013-01-01

    Striped bass Morone saxatilis in inland reservoirs play an important role ecologically and in supporting recreational fishing. To manage these populations, biologists need information about abundance and mortality. Abundance estimates can be used to assess the effectiveness of stocking programs that maintain most reservoir striped bass populations. Mortality estimates can indicate the relative impact of fishing versus natural mortality and the need for harvest regulation. The purpose of this chapter is to evaluate tagging studies as a way of obtaining information about abundance and mortality. These approaches can be grouped into three broad categories: tag recapture, tag return, and telemetry. Tag-recapture methods are typically used to estimate population size and other demographic parameters but are often difficult to apply in large systems. A fishing tournament can be an effective way of generating tagging or recapture effort in large systems, compared to using research sampling only. Tag-return methods that rely on angler harvest and catch and release can be used to estimate fishing (F) and natural (M) mortality rates and are a practical approach in large reservoirs. The key to success in tag-return studies is to build in auxiliary studies to estimate short-term tagging mortality, short- and longterm tag loss, reporting rate, and mortality associated with catch and release. F and M can also be estimated using telemetry tags. Advantages of this approach are that angler nonreporting does not bias estimates and fish with transmitters provide useful ecological data. Cost can be a disadvantage of telemetry studies; thus, combining telemetry tags with conventional tag returns in an integrated analysis is often the optimal approach. In summary, tagging methods can be a powerful tool for assessing the effectiveness of inland striped bass stocking programs and the relative impact of fishing versus natural mortality

  20. A statistical method for assessing peptide identification confidence in accurate mass and time tag proteomics

    PubMed Central

    Stanley, Jeffrey R.; Adkins, Joshua N.; Slysz, Gordon W.; Monroe, Matthew E.; Purvine, Samuel O.; Karpievitch, Yuliya V.; Anderson, Gordon A.; Smith, Richard D.; Dabney, Alan R.

    2011-01-01

    Current algorithms for quantifying peptide identification confidence in the accurate mass and time (AMT) tag approach assume that the AMT tags themselves have been correctly identified. However, there is uncertainty in the identification of AMT tags, as this is based on matching LC-MS/MS fragmentation spectra to peptide sequences. In this paper, we incorporate confidence measures for the AMT tag identifications into the calculation of probabilities for correct matches to an AMT tag database, resulting in a more accurate overall measure of identification confidence for the AMT tag approach. The method is referred to as Statistical Tools for AMT tag Confidence (STAC). STAC additionally provides a Uniqueness Probability (UP) to help distinguish between multiple matches to an AMT tag and a method to calculate an overall false discovery rate (FDR). STAC is freely available for download as both a command line and a Windows graphical application. PMID:21692516

  1. Tri-Clustered Tensor Completion for Social-Aware Image Tag Refinement.

    PubMed

    Tang, Jinhui; Shu, Xiangbo; Qi, Guo-Jun; Li, Zechao; Wang, Meng; Yan, Shuicheng; Jain, Ramesh

    2017-08-01

    Social image tag refinement, which aims to improve tag quality by automatically completing the missing tags and rectifying the noise-corrupted ones, is an essential component for social image search. Conventional approaches mainly focus on exploring the visual and tag information, without considering the user information, which often reveals important hints on the (in)correct tags of social images. Towards this end, we propose a novel tri-clustered tensor completion framework to collaboratively explore these three kinds of information to improve the performance of social image tag refinement. Specifically, the inter-relations among users, images and tags are modeled by a tensor, and the intra-relations between users, images and tags are explored by three regularizations respectively. To address the challenges of the super-sparse and large-scale tensor factorization that demands expensive computing and memory cost, we propose a novel tri-clustering method to divide the tensor into a certain number of sub-tensors by simultaneously clustering users, images and tags into a bunch of tri-clusters. And then we investigate two strategies to complete these sub-tensors by considering (in)dependence between the sub-tensors. Experimental results on a real-world social image database demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method compared with the state-of-the-art methods.

  2. Methods And System Suppressing Clutter In A Gain-Block, Radar-Responsive Tag System

    DOEpatents

    Ormesher, Richard C.; Axline, Robert M.

    2006-04-18

    Methods and systems reduce clutter interference in a radar-responsive tag system. A radar transmits a series of linear-frequency-modulated pulses and receives echo pulses from nearby terrain and from radar-responsive tags that may be in the imaged scene. Tags in the vicinity of the radar are activated by the radar's pulses. The tags receive and remodulate the radar pulses. Tag processing reverses the direction, in time, of the received waveform's linear frequency modulation. The tag retransmits the remodulated pulses. The radar uses a reversed-chirp de-ramp pulse to process the tag's echo. The invention applies to radar systems compatible with coherent gain-block tags. The invention provides a marked reduction in the strength of residual clutter echoes on each and every echo pulse received by the radar. SAR receiver processing effectively whitens passive-clutter signatures across the range dimension. Clutter suppression of approximately 14 dB is achievable for a typical radar system.

  3. Electronic Tagging of Atlantic Bluefin Tuna (Thunnus thynnus, L.) Reveals Habitat Use and Behaviors in the Mediterranean Sea

    PubMed Central

    Cermeño, Pablo; Quílez-Badia, Gemma; Ospina-Alvarez, Andrés; Sainz-Trápaga, Susana; Boustany, Andre M.; Seitz, Andy C.; Tudela, Sergi; Block, Barbara A.

    2015-01-01

    We analyzed the movements of Atlantic tuna (Thunnus thynnus L.) in the Mediterranean Sea using data from 2 archival tags and 37 pop-up satellite archival tags (PAT). Bluefin tuna ranging in size from 12 to 248 kg were tagged on board recreational boats in the western Mediterranean and the Adriatic Sea between May and September during two different periods (2000 to 2001 and 2008 to 2012). Although tuna migrations between the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean have been well reported, our results indicate that part of the bluefin tuna population remains in the Mediterranean basin for much of the year, revealing a more complex population structure. In this study we demonstrate links between the western Mediterranean, the Adriatic and the Gulf of Sidra (Libya) using over 4336 recorded days of location and behavior data from tagged bluefin tuna with a maximum track length of 394 days. We described the oceanographic preferences and horizontal behaviors during the spawning season for 4 adult bluefin tuna. We also analyzed the time series data that reveals the vertical behavior of one pop-up satellite tag recovered, which was attached to a 43.9 kg tuna. This fish displayed a unique diving pattern within 16 days of the spawning season, suggesting a use of the thermocline as a thermoregulatory mechanism compatible with spawning. The results obtained hereby confirm that the Mediterranean is clearly an important habitat for this species, not only as spawning ground, but also as an overwintering foraging ground. PMID:25671316

  4. Method of remote powering and detecting multiple UWB passive tags in an RFID system

    DOEpatents

    Dowla, Farid U [Castro Valley, CA; Nekoogar, Faranak [San Ramon, CA; Benzel, David M [Livermore, CA; Dallum, Gregory E [Livermore, CA; Spiridon, Alex [Palo Alto, CA

    2012-05-29

    A new Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), tracking, powering apparatus/system and method using coded Ultra-wideband (UWB) signaling is introduced. The proposed hardware and techniques disclosed herein utilize a plurality of passive UWB transponders in a field of an RFID-radar system. The radar system itself enables multiple passive tags to be remotely powered (activated) at about the same time frame via predetermined frequency UWB pulsed formats. Once such tags are in an activated state, an UWB radar transmits specific "interrogating codes" to put predetermined tags in an awakened status. Such predetermined tags can then communicate by a unique "response code" so as to be detected by an UWB system using radar methods.

  5. A comparison of implantation methods for large PIT tags or injectable acoustic transmitters in juvenile Chinook salmon

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Cook, Katrina V.; Brown, Richard S.; Deng, Zhiqun

    The miniaturization of acoustic transmitters may allow greater flexibility in terms of the size and species of fish available to tag. New downsized injectable acoustic tags similar in shape to passive integrated transponder tags can be rapidly injected rather than surgically implanted through a sutured incision, as is current practice. Before wide-scale field use of these injectable transmitters, standard protocols to ensure the most effective and least damaging methods of implantation must be developed. Three implantation methods were tested in various sizes of juvenile Chinook salmon Oncorhynchus tschawytscha. Methods included a needle bevel-down injection, a needle bevel-up injection with amore » 90-degree rotation, and tag implantation through an unsutured incision. Tagged fish were compared to untagged control groups. Weight and wound area were measured at tagging and every week for 3 weeks; holding tanks were checked daily for mortalities and tag losses. No differences among treatments were found in growth, tag loss, or survival, but wound area was significantly reduced among incision-treated fish. The bevel-up injection had the worst results in terms of tag loss and wound area and also had high mortality. Implantation through an incision resulted in the lowest tag loss but the highest mortality. Fish from the bevel-down treatment group had the least mortality; wound areas also were smaller than the bevel-up treatment group. Cumulatively, the data suggest that the unsutured incision and bevel-down injection methods were the most effective; the drawbacks of both methods are described in detail. However, we further recommend larger and longer studies to find more robust thresholds for tagging size that include more sensitive measures.« less

  6. Augmenting matrix factorization technique with the combination of tags and genres

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Ma, Tinghuai; Suo, Xiafei; Zhou, Jinjuan; Tang, Meili; Guan, Donghai; Tian, Yuan; Al-Dhelaan, Abdullah; Al-Rodhaan, Mznah

    2016-11-01

    Recommender systems play an important role in our daily life and are becoming popular tools for users to find what they are really interested in. Matrix factorization methods, which are popular recommendation methods, have gained high attention these years. With the rapid growth of the Internet, lots of information has been created, like social network information, tags and so on. Along with these, a few matrix factorization approaches have been proposed which incorporate the personalized information of users or items. However, except for ratings, most of the matrix factorization models have utilized only one kind of information to understand users' interests. Considering the sparsity of information, in this paper, we try to investigate the combination of different information, like tags and genres, to reveal users' interests accurately. With regard to the generalization of genres, a constraint is added when genres are utilized to find users' similar ;soulmates;. In addition, item regularizer is also considered based on latent semantic indexing (LSI) method with the item tags. Our experiments are conducted on two real datasets: Movielens dataset and Douban dataset. The experimental results demonstrate that the combination of tags and genres is really helpful to reveal users' interests.

  7. Communication methods, systems, apparatus, and devices involving RF tag registration

    DOEpatents

    Burghard, Brion J [W. Richland, WA; Skorpik, James R [Kennewick, WA

    2008-04-22

    One technique of the present invention includes a number of Radio Frequency (RF) tags that each have a different identifier. Information is broadcast to the tags from an RF tag interrogator. This information corresponds to a maximum quantity of tag response time slots that are available. This maximum quantity may be less than the total number of tags. The tags each select one of the time slots as a function of the information and a random number provided by each respective tag. The different identifiers are transmitted to the interrogator from at least a subset of the RF tags.

  8. A touch probe method of operating an implantable RFID tag for orthopedic implant identification.

    PubMed

    Liu, Xiaoyu; Berger, J Lee; Ogirala, Ajay; Mickle, Marlin H

    2013-06-01

    The major problem in operating an implantable radio-frequency identification (RFID) tag embedded on an orthopedic implant is low efficiency because of metallic interference. To improve the efficiency, this paper proposes a method of operating an implantable passive RFID tag using a touch probe at 13.56 MHz. This technology relies on the electric field interaction between two pairs of electrodes, one being a part of the touch probe placed on the surface of tissue and the other being a part of the tag installed under the tissue. Compared with using a conventional RFID antenna such as a loop antenna, this method has a better performance in the near field operation range to reduce interference with the orthopedic implant. Properly matching the touch probe and the tag to the tissue and the implant reduces signal attenuation and increases the overall system efficiency. The experiments have shown that this method has a great performance in the near field transcutaneous operation and can be used for orthopedic implant identification.

  9. A Herbivore Tag-and-Trace System Reveals Contact- and Density-Dependent Repellence of a Root Toxin.

    PubMed

    Bont, Zoe; Arce, Carla; Huber, Meret; Huang, Wei; Mestrot, Adrien; Sturrock, Craig J; Erb, Matthias

    2017-03-01

    Foraging behavior of root feeding organisms strongly affects plant-environment-interactions and ecosystem processes. However, the impact of plant chemistry on root herbivore movement in the soil is poorly understood. Here, we apply a simple technique to trace the movement of soil-dwelling insects in their habitats without disturbing or restricting their interactions with host plants. We tagged the root feeding larvae of Melolontha melolontha with a copper ring and repeatedly located their position in relation to their preferred host plant, Taraxacum officinale, using a commercial metal detector. This method was validated and used to study the influence of the sesquiterpene lactone taraxinic acid β-D-glucopyranosyl ester (TA-G) on the foraging of M. melolontha. TA-G is stored in the latex of T. officinale and protects the roots from herbivory. Using behavioral arenas with TA-G deficient and control plants, we tested the impact of physical root access and plant distance on the effect of TA-G on M. melolontha. The larvae preferred TA-G deficient plants to control plants, but only when physical root contact was possible and the plants were separated by 5 cm. Melolontha melolontha showed no preference for TA-G deficient plants when the plants were grown 15 cm apart, which may indicate a trade-off between the cost of movement and the benefit of consuming less toxic food. We demonstrate that M. melolontha integrates host plant quality and distance into its foraging patterns and suggest that plant chemistry affects root herbivore behavior in a plant-density dependent manner.

  10. Improved Satellite-Monitored Radio Tags for Large Whales: Dependable ARGOS Location-Only Tags and a GPS-Linked Tag to Reveal 3-Dimensional Body-Orientation and Surface Movements

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2012-09-30

    migration routes and on sperm whales in 2010 and 2011 (funded by BP and NOAA-NRDA) to follow-up on the consequences of the Deepwater Horizon (DWH...dive behavior to especially examine sperm whale foraging behavior. The data will be downloaded from recovered tags to evaluate complex foraging...with the WC Location-only tags off Sakhalin Island, Russia to determine migration routes and tag a small number of sperm whales in the Gulf of Mexico

  11. A novel method for 3D measurement of RFID multi-tag network based on matching vision and wavelet

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Zhuang, Xiao; Yu, Xiaolei; Zhao, Zhimin; Wang, Donghua; Zhang, Wenjie; Liu, Zhenlu; Lu, Dongsheng; Dong, Dingbang

    2018-07-01

    In the field of radio frequency identification (RFID), the three-dimensional (3D) distribution of RFID multi-tag networks has a significant impact on their reading performance. At the same time, in order to realize the anti-collision of RFID multi-tag networks in practical engineering applications, the 3D distribution of RFID multi-tag networks must be measured. In this paper, a novel method for the 3D measurement of RFID multi-tag networks is proposed. A dual-CCD system (vertical and horizontal cameras) is used to obtain images of RFID multi-tag networks from different angles. Then, the wavelet threshold denoising method is used to remove noise in the obtained images. The template matching method is used to determine the two-dimensional coordinates and vertical coordinate of each tag. The 3D coordinates of each tag are obtained subsequently. Finally, a model of the nonlinear relation between the 3D coordinate distribution of the RFID multi-tag network and the corresponding reading distance is established using the wavelet neural network. The experiment results show that the average prediction relative error is 0.71% and the time cost is 2.17 s. The values of the average prediction relative error and time cost are smaller than those of the particle swarm optimization neural network and genetic algorithm–back propagation neural network. The time cost of the wavelet neural network is about 1% of that of the other two methods. The method proposed in this paper has a smaller relative error. The proposed method can improve the real-time performance of RFID multi-tag networks and the overall dynamic performance of multi-tag networks.

  12. Cyanine-based probe\\tag-peptide pair fluorescence protein imaging and fluorescence protein imaging methods

    DOEpatents

    Mayer-Cumblidge, M. Uljana; Cao, Haishi

    2013-01-15

    A molecular probe comprises two arsenic atoms and at least one cyanine based moiety. A method of producing a molecular probe includes providing a molecule having a first formula, treating the molecule with HgOAc, and subsequently transmetallizing with AsCl.sub.3. The As is liganded to ethanedithiol to produce a probe having a second formula. A method of labeling a peptide includes providing a peptide comprising a tag sequence and contacting the peptide with a biarsenical molecular probe. A complex is formed comprising the tag sequence and the molecular probe. A method of studying a peptide includes providing a mixture containing a peptide comprising a peptide tag sequence, adding a biarsenical probe to the mixture, and monitoring the fluorescence of the mixture.

  13. Ontologies and tag-statistics

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Tibély, Gergely; Pollner, Péter; Vicsek, Tamás; Palla, Gergely

    2012-05-01

    Due to the increasing popularity of collaborative tagging systems, the research on tagged networks, hypergraphs, ontologies, folksonomies and other related concepts is becoming an important interdisciplinary area with great potential and relevance for practical applications. In most collaborative tagging systems the tagging by the users is completely ‘flat’, while in some cases they are allowed to define a shallow hierarchy for their own tags. However, usually no overall hierarchical organization of the tags is given, and one of the interesting challenges of this area is to provide an algorithm generating the ontology of the tags from the available data. In contrast, there are also other types of tagged networks available for research, where the tags are already organized into a directed acyclic graph (DAG), encapsulating the ‘is a sub-category of’ type of hierarchy between each other. In this paper, we study how this DAG affects the statistical distribution of tags on the nodes marked by the tags in various real networks. The motivation for this research was the fact that understanding the tagging based on a known hierarchy can help in revealing the hidden hierarchy of tags in collaborative tagging systems. We analyse the relation between the tag-frequency and the position of the tag in the DAG in two large sub-networks of the English Wikipedia and a protein-protein interaction network. We also study the tag co-occurrence statistics by introducing a two-dimensional (2D) tag-distance distribution preserving both the difference in the levels and the absolute distance in the DAG for the co-occurring pairs of tags. Our most interesting finding is that the local relevance of tags in the DAG (i.e. their rank or significance as characterized by, e.g., the length of the branches starting from them) is much more important than their global distance from the root. Furthermore, we also introduce a simple tagging model based on random walks on the DAG, capable of

  14. Deep-water feeding and behavioral plasticity in Manta birostris revealed by archival tags and submersible observations.

    PubMed

    Stewart, Joshua D; Hoyos-Padilla, Edgar Mauricio; Kumli, Katherine R; Rubin, Robert D

    2016-10-01

    Foraging drives many fundamental aspects of ecology, and an understanding of foraging behavior aids in the conservation of threatened species by identifying critical habitats and spatial patterns relevant to management. The world's largest ray, the oceanic manta (Manta birostris) is poorly studied and threatened globally by targeted fisheries and incidental capture. Very little information is available on the natural history, ecology and behavior of the species, complicating management efforts. This study provides the first data on the diving behavior of the species based on data returned from six tagged individuals, and an opportunistic observation from a submersible of a manta foraging at depth. Pop-off archival satellite tags deployed on mantas at the Revillagigedo Archipelago, Mexico recorded seasonal shifts in diving behavior, likely related to changes in the location and availability of zooplankton prey. Across seasons, mantas spent a large proportion of their time centered around the upper limit of the thermocline, where zooplankton often aggregate. Tag data reveal a gradual activity shift from surface waters to 100-150m across the tagging period, possibly indicating a change in foraging behavior from targeting surface-associated zooplankton to vertical migrators. The depth ranges accessed by mantas in this study carry variable bycatch risks from different fishing gear types. Consequently, region-specific data on diving behavior can help inform local management strategies that reduce or mitigate bycatch of this vulnerable species. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.

  15. Spatial and temporal variability in the trans-Pacific migration of Pacific bluefin tuna (Thunnus orientalis) revealed by archival tags

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Fujioka, Ko; Fukuda, Hiromu; Tei, Yaoki; Okamoto, Suguru; Kiyofuji, Hidetada; Furukawa, Seishiro; Takagi, Junichi; Estess, Ethan; Farwell, Charles J.; Fuller, Daniel W.; Suzuki, Nobuaki; Ohshimo, Seiji; Kitagawa, Takashi

    2018-03-01

    Archival electronic tags were internally implanted in 713 age-0 Pacific bluefin tuna (PBF) caught in their nursery waters off the southern coast of Japan and in the East China Sea over an extended study period (1995-2015) to clarify the spatial and temporal variability of their trans-Pacific migration. Two hundred twenty-five of these tagged tuna were recaptured by fisheries (31.6%), and we successfully retrieved tag data from 14 of 21 individuals recovered in the Eastern pacific. Furthermore, one archival tag recovered in the Western Pacific revealed that the individual had performed a trans-Pacific migration, so in total 21 tagged PBF were shown to have migrated to the Eastern Pacific (2.9% of the total tags released). We successfully downloaded data from 15 of these 21 archival tags, which revealed that some age-1 PBF migrate rapidly (123.9 ± 82.8 km day-1) and directly from waters offshore of Japan to the eastern Pacific (160.0°E to 130.0°W), a journey that takes an average of 2.5 months (ranging from 1.2 to 5.5 months) through relatively cool waters (14.7 ± 2.0 °C). All juvenile PBF began their trans-Pacific migration shortly after exposure to cooler water temperatures (<14 °C), suggesting that sustained residence in lower water temperatures presents a physiological challenge for this age class. Three patterns were identified in the timing of the departure of juvenile PBF from the western Pacific: departing 12-14 months post-hatch (N = 7) in early summer (May-July), departing 17-19 months post-hatch (N = 7) in late autumn (October-December), and departing 21 months post-hatch (N = 1) in late winter (February). The PBF tagged along the southern coast of Japan (SCJ) arrived in the eastern Pacific earlier than those tagged in the East China Sea (ECS), most likely due to the shorter travel distance. Additionally, the PBF that began their trans-Pacific migration in the earlier period remained in an offshore foraging zone (the Kuroshio-Oyashio transition

  16. Cyanine-based probe\\tag-peptide pair for fluorescence protein imaging and fluorescence protein imaging methods

    DOEpatents

    Mayer-Cumblidge, M Uljana [Richland, WA; Cao, Haishi [Richland, WA

    2010-08-17

    A molecular probe comprises two arsenic atoms and at least one cyanine based moiety. A method of producing a molecular probe includes providing a molecule having a first formula, treating the molecule with HgOAc, and subsequently transmetallizing with AsCl.sub.3. The As is liganded to ethanedithiol to produce a probe having a second formula. A method of labeling a peptide includes providing a peptide comprising a tag sequence and contacting the peptide with a biarsenical molecular probe. A complex is formed comprising the tag sequence and the molecular probe. A method of studying a peptide includes providing a mixture containing a peptide comprising a peptide tag sequence, adding a biarsenical probe to the mixture, and monitoring the fluorescence of the mixture.

  17. Extracting tag hierarchies.

    PubMed

    Tibély, Gergely; Pollner, Péter; Vicsek, Tamás; Palla, Gergely

    2013-01-01

    Tagging items with descriptive annotations or keywords is a very natural way to compress and highlight information about the properties of the given entity. Over the years several methods have been proposed for extracting a hierarchy between the tags for systems with a "flat", egalitarian organization of the tags, which is very common when the tags correspond to free words given by numerous independent people. Here we present a complete framework for automated tag hierarchy extraction based on tag occurrence statistics. Along with proposing new algorithms, we are also introducing different quality measures enabling the detailed comparison of competing approaches from different aspects. Furthermore, we set up a synthetic, computer generated benchmark providing a versatile tool for testing, with a couple of tunable parameters capable of generating a wide range of test beds. Beside the computer generated input we also use real data in our studies, including a biological example with a pre-defined hierarchy between the tags. The encouraging similarity between the pre-defined and reconstructed hierarchy, as well as the seemingly meaningful hierarchies obtained for other real systems indicate that tag hierarchy extraction is a very promising direction for further research with a great potential for practical applications. Tags have become very prevalent nowadays in various online platforms ranging from blogs through scientific publications to protein databases. Furthermore, tagging systems dedicated for voluntary tagging of photos, films, books, etc. with free words are also becoming popular. The emerging large collections of tags associated with different objects are often referred to as folksonomies, highlighting their collaborative origin and the "flat" organization of the tags opposed to traditional hierarchical categorization. Adding a tag hierarchy corresponding to a given folksonomy can very effectively help narrowing or broadening the scope of search. Moreover

  18. Extracting Tag Hierarchies

    PubMed Central

    Tibély, Gergely; Pollner, Péter; Vicsek, Tamás; Palla, Gergely

    2013-01-01

    Tagging items with descriptive annotations or keywords is a very natural way to compress and highlight information about the properties of the given entity. Over the years several methods have been proposed for extracting a hierarchy between the tags for systems with a "flat", egalitarian organization of the tags, which is very common when the tags correspond to free words given by numerous independent people. Here we present a complete framework for automated tag hierarchy extraction based on tag occurrence statistics. Along with proposing new algorithms, we are also introducing different quality measures enabling the detailed comparison of competing approaches from different aspects. Furthermore, we set up a synthetic, computer generated benchmark providing a versatile tool for testing, with a couple of tunable parameters capable of generating a wide range of test beds. Beside the computer generated input we also use real data in our studies, including a biological example with a pre-defined hierarchy between the tags. The encouraging similarity between the pre-defined and reconstructed hierarchy, as well as the seemingly meaningful hierarchies obtained for other real systems indicate that tag hierarchy extraction is a very promising direction for further research with a great potential for practical applications. Tags have become very prevalent nowadays in various online platforms ranging from blogs through scientific publications to protein databases. Furthermore, tagging systems dedicated for voluntary tagging of photos, films, books, etc. with free words are also becoming popular. The emerging large collections of tags associated with different objects are often referred to as folksonomies, highlighting their collaborative origin and the “flat” organization of the tags opposed to traditional hierarchical categorization. Adding a tag hierarchy corresponding to a given folksonomy can very effectively help narrowing or broadening the scope of search

  19. Contrasting Life Strategies of Viruses that Infect Photo- and Heterotrophic Bacteria, as Revealed by Viral Tagging

    PubMed Central

    Deng, Li; Gregory, Ann; Yilmaz, Suzan; Poulos, Bonnie T.; Hugenholtz, Philip; Sullivan, Matthew B.

    2012-01-01

    ABSTRACT Ocean viruses are ubiquitous and abundant and play important roles in global biogeochemical cycles by means of their mortality, horizontal gene transfer, and manipulation of host metabolism. However, the obstacles involved in linking viruses to their hosts in a high-throughput manner bottlenecks our ability to understand virus-host interactions in complex communities. We have developed a method called viral tagging (VT), which combines mixtures of host cells and fluorescent viruses with flow cytometry. We investigated multiple viruses which infect each of two model marine bacteria that represent the slow-growing, photoautotrophic genus Synechococcus (Cyanobacteria) and the fast-growing, heterotrophic genus Pseudoalteromonas (Gammaproteobacteria). Overall, viral tagging results for viral infection were consistent with plaque and liquid infection assays for cyanobacterial myo-, podo- and siphoviruses and some (myo- and podoviruses) but not all (four siphoviruses) heterotrophic bacterial viruses. Virus-tagged Pseudoalteromonas organisms were proportional to the added viruses under varied infection conditions (virus-bacterium ratios), while no more than 50% of the Synechococcus organisms were virus tagged even at viral abundances that exceeded (5 to 10×) that of their hosts. Further, we found that host growth phase minimally impacts the fraction of virus-tagged Synechococcus organisms while greatly affecting phage adsorption to Pseudoalteromonas. Together these findings suggest that at least two contrasting viral life strategies exist in the oceans and that they likely reflect adaptation to their host microbes. Looking forward to the point at which the virus-tagging signature is well understood (e.g., for Synechococcus), application to natural communities should begin to provide population genomic data at the proper scale for predictively modeling two of the most abundant biological entities on Earth. PMID:23111870

  20. System and method for simultaneously collecting serial number information from numerous identity tags

    DOEpatents

    Doty, Michael A.

    1997-01-01

    A system and method for simultaneously collecting serial number information reports from numerous colliding coded-radio-frequency identity tags. Each tag has a unique multi-digit serial number that is stored in non-volatile RAM. A reader transmits an ASCII coded "D" character on a carrier of about 900 MHz and a power illumination field having a frequency of about 1.6 Ghz. A one MHz tone is modulated on the 1.6 Ghz carrier as a timing clock for a microprocessor in each of the identity tags. Over a thousand such tags may be in the vicinity and each is powered-up and clocked by the 1.6 Ghz power illumination field. Each identity tag looks for the "D" interrogator modulated on the 900 MHz carrier, and each uses a digit of its serial number to time a response. Clear responses received by the reader are repeated for verification. If no verification or a wrong number is received by any identity tag, it uses a second digital together with the first to time out a more extended period for response. Ultimately, the entire serial number will be used in the worst case collision environments; and since the serial numbers are defined as being unique, the final possibility will be successful because a clear time-slot channel will be available.

  1. System and method for simultaneously collecting serial number information from numerous identity tags

    DOEpatents

    Doty, M.A.

    1997-01-07

    A system and method are disclosed for simultaneously collecting serial number information reports from numerous colliding coded-radio-frequency identity tags. Each tag has a unique multi-digit serial number that is stored in non-volatile RAM. A reader transmits an ASCII coded ``D`` character on a carrier of about 900 MHz and a power illumination field having a frequency of about 1.6 Ghz. A one MHz tone is modulated on the 1.6 Ghz carrier as a timing clock for a microprocessor in each of the identity tags. Over a thousand such tags may be in the vicinity and each is powered-up and clocked by the 1.6 Ghz power illumination field. Each identity tag looks for the ``D`` interrogator modulated on the 900 MHz carrier, and each uses a digit of its serial number to time a response. Clear responses received by the reader are repeated for verification. If no verification or a wrong number is received by any identity tag, it uses a second digital together with the first to time out a more extended period for response. Ultimately, the entire serial number will be used in the worst case collision environments; and since the serial numbers are defined as being unique, the final possibility will be successful because a clear time-slot channel will be available. 5 figs.

  2. Top tagging: a method for identifying boosted hadronically decaying top quarks.

    PubMed

    Kaplan, David E; Rehermann, Keith; Schwartz, Matthew D; Tweedie, Brock

    2008-10-03

    A method is introduced for distinguishing top jets (boosted, hadronically decaying top quarks) from light-quark and gluon jets using jet substructure. The procedure involves parsing the jet cluster to resolve its subjets and then imposing kinematic constraints. With this method, light-quark or gluon jets with p{T} approximately 1 TeV can be rejected with an efficiency of around 99% while retaining up to 40% of top jets. This reduces the dijet background to heavy tt[over ] resonances by a factor of approximately 10 000, thereby allowing resonance searches in tt[over ] to be extended into the all-hadronic channel. In addition, top tagging can be used in tt[over ] events when one of the top quarks decays semileptonically, in events with missing energy, and in studies of b-tagging efficiency at high p{T}.

  3. Improved Satellite-Monitored Radio Tags for Large Whales: Dependable ARGOS Location-Only Tags and a GPS-Linked ARGOS Tag Reveal 3-Dimensional Body-Orientation and Surface Movements

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2013-09-30

    funded tags have been used on a variety of projects: western gray whales in Russia, Pacific Coast Feeding Group (PCFG) gray whales, and sperm whales...provide an accurate, long duration, depiction of underwater dive behavior and especially to examine sperm whale foraging behavior. The data will be...an acoustic dosimeter. Eleven GPS/TDR tags containing three axis accelerometers were deployed on sperm whales in the Gulf of Mexico in July/Aug

  4. Comparing the hierarchy of author given tags and repository given tags in a large document archive

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Tibély, Gergely; Pollner, Péter; Palla, Gergely

    2016-10-01

    Folksonomies - large databases arising from collaborative tagging of items by independent users - are becoming an increasingly important way of categorizing information. In these systems users can tag items with free words, resulting in a tripartite item-tag-user network. Although there are no prescribed relations between tags, the way users think about the different categories presumably has some built in hierarchy, in which more special concepts are descendants of some more general categories. Several applications would benefit from the knowledge of this hierarchy. Here we apply a recent method to check the differences and similarities of hierarchies resulting from tags given by independent individuals and from tags given by a centrally managed repository system. The results from our method showed substantial differences between the lower part of the hierarchies, and in contrast, a relatively high similarity at the top of the hierarchies.

  5. 9 CFR 381.211 - Method of detention; form of detention tag.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-01-01

    ... 9 Animals and Animal Products 2 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Method of detention; form of detention tag. 381.211 Section 381.211 Animals and Animal Products FOOD SAFETY AND INSPECTION SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE AGENCY ORGANIZATION AND TERMINOLOGY; MANDATORY MEAT AND POULTRY PRODUCTS INSPECTION...

  6. Efficient selection of tagging single-nucleotide polymorphisms in multiple populations.

    PubMed

    Howie, Bryan N; Carlson, Christopher S; Rieder, Mark J; Nickerson, Deborah A

    2006-08-01

    Common genetic polymorphism may explain a portion of the heritable risk for common diseases, so considerable effort has been devoted to finding and typing common single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the human genome. Many SNPs show correlated genotypes, or linkage disequilibrium (LD), suggesting that only a subset of all SNPs (known as tagging SNPs, or tagSNPs) need to be genotyped for disease association studies. Based on the genetic differences that exist among human populations, most tagSNP sets are defined in a single population and applied only in populations that are closely related. To improve the efficiency of multi-population analyses, we have developed an algorithm called MultiPop-TagSelect that finds a near-minimal union of population-specific tagSNP sets across an arbitrary number of populations. We present this approach as an extension of LD-select, a tagSNP selection method that uses a greedy algorithm to group SNPs into bins based on their pairwise association patterns, although the MultiPop-TagSelect algorithm could be used with any SNP tagging approach that allows choices between nearly equivalent SNPs. We evaluate the algorithm by considering tagSNP selection in candidate-gene resequencing data and lower density whole-chromosome data. Our analysis reveals that an exhaustive search is often intractable, while the developed algorithm can quickly and reliably find near-optimal solutions even for difficult tagSNP selection problems. Using populations of African, Asian, and European ancestry, we also show that an optimal multi-population set of tagSNPs can be substantially smaller (up to 44%) than a typical set obtained through independent or sequential selection.

  7. Myocardial motion estimation of tagged cardiac magnetic resonance images using tag motion constraints and multi-level b-splines interpolation.

    PubMed

    Liu, Hong; Yan, Meng; Song, Enmin; Wang, Jie; Wang, Qian; Jin, Renchao; Jin, Lianghai; Hung, Chih-Cheng

    2016-05-01

    Myocardial motion estimation of tagged cardiac magnetic resonance (TCMR) images is of great significance in clinical diagnosis and the treatment of heart disease. Currently, the harmonic phase analysis method (HARP) and the local sine-wave modeling method (SinMod) have been proven as two state-of-the-art motion estimation methods for TCMR images, since they can directly obtain the inter-frame motion displacement vector field (MDVF) with high accuracy and fast speed. By comparison, SinMod has better performance over HARP in terms of displacement detection, noise and artifacts reduction. However, the SinMod method has some drawbacks: 1) it is unable to estimate local displacements larger than half of the tag spacing; 2) it has observable errors in tracking of tag motion; and 3) the estimated MDVF usually has large local errors. To overcome these problems, we present a novel motion estimation method in this study. The proposed method tracks the motion of tags and then estimates the dense MDVF by using the interpolation. In this new method, a parameter estimation procedure for global motion is applied to match tag intersections between different frames, ensuring specific kinds of large displacements being correctly estimated. In addition, a strategy of tag motion constraints is applied to eliminate most of errors produced by inter-frame tracking of tags and the multi-level b-splines approximation algorithm is utilized, so as to enhance the local continuity and accuracy of the final MDVF. In the estimation of the motion displacement, our proposed method can obtain a more accurate MDVF compared with the SinMod method and our method can overcome the drawbacks of the SinMod method. However, the motion estimation accuracy of our method depends on the accuracy of tag lines detection and our method has a higher time complexity. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  8. In situ tagging technique for fishes provides insight into growth and movement of invasive lionfish

    PubMed Central

    Akins, John L; Morris, James A; Green, Stephanie J

    2014-01-01

    Information on fish movement and growth is primarily obtained through the marking and tracking of individuals with external tags, which are usually affixed to anesthetized individuals at the surface. However, the quantity and quality of data obtained by this method is often limited by small sample sizes owing to the time associated with the tagging process, high rates of tagging-related mortality, and displacement of tagged individuals from the initial capture location. To address these issues, we describe a technique for applying external streamer and dart tags in situ, which uses SCUBA divers to capture and tag individual fish on the sea floor without the use of anesthetic. We demonstrate this method for Indo-Pacific lionfish (Pterois volitans/P. miles), species which are particularly vulnerable to barotrauma when transported to and handled at the surface. To test our method, we tagged 161 individuals inhabiting 26 coral reef locations in the Bahamas over a period of 3 years. Our method resulted in no instances of barotrauma, reduced handling and recovery time, and minimal post-tagging release displacement compared with conventional ex situ tag application. Opportunistic resighting and recapture of tagged individuals reveals that lionfish exhibit highly variable site fidelity, movement patterns, and growth rates on invaded coral reef habitats. In total, 24% of lionfish were resighted between 29 and 188 days after tagging. Of these, 90% were located at the site of capture, while the remaining individuals were resighted between 200 m and 1.1 km from initial site of capture over 29 days later. In situ growth rates ranged between 0.1 and 0.6 mm/day. While individuals tagged with streamer tags posted slower growth rates with increasing size, as expected, there was no relationship between growth rate and fish size for individuals marked with dart tags, potentially because of large effects of tag presence on the activities of small bodied lionfish (i.e., <150

  9. In situ tagging technique for fishes provides insight into growth and movement of invasive lionfish.

    PubMed

    Akins, John L; Morris, James A; Green, Stephanie J

    2014-10-01

    Information on fish movement and growth is primarily obtained through the marking and tracking of individuals with external tags, which are usually affixed to anesthetized individuals at the surface. However, the quantity and quality of data obtained by this method is often limited by small sample sizes owing to the time associated with the tagging process, high rates of tagging-related mortality, and displacement of tagged individuals from the initial capture location. To address these issues, we describe a technique for applying external streamer and dart tags in situ, which uses SCUBA divers to capture and tag individual fish on the sea floor without the use of anesthetic. We demonstrate this method for Indo-Pacific lionfish (Pterois volitans/P. miles), species which are particularly vulnerable to barotrauma when transported to and handled at the surface. To test our method, we tagged 161 individuals inhabiting 26 coral reef locations in the Bahamas over a period of 3 years. Our method resulted in no instances of barotrauma, reduced handling and recovery time, and minimal post-tagging release displacement compared with conventional ex situ tag application. Opportunistic resighting and recapture of tagged individuals reveals that lionfish exhibit highly variable site fidelity, movement patterns, and growth rates on invaded coral reef habitats. In total, 24% of lionfish were resighted between 29 and 188 days after tagging. Of these, 90% were located at the site of capture, while the remaining individuals were resighted between 200 m and 1.1 km from initial site of capture over 29 days later. In situ growth rates ranged between 0.1 and 0.6 mm/day. While individuals tagged with streamer tags posted slower growth rates with increasing size, as expected, there was no relationship between growth rate and fish size for individuals marked with dart tags, potentially because of large effects of tag presence on the activities of small bodied lionfish (i.e., <150

  10. Structural characterization of acylimine-containing blue and red chromophores in mTagBFP and TagRFP fluorescent proteins.

    PubMed

    Subach, Oksana M; Malashkevich, Vladimir N; Zencheck, Wendy D; Morozova, Kateryna S; Piatkevich, Kiryl D; Almo, Steven C; Verkhusha, Vladislav V

    2010-04-23

    We determined the 2.2 A crystal structures of the red fluorescent protein TagRFP and its derivative, the blue fluorescent protein mTagBFP. The crystallographic analysis is consistent with a model in which TagRFP has the trans coplanar anionic chromophore with the conjugated pi-electron system, similar to that of DsRed-like chromophores. Refined conformation of mTagBFP suggests the presence of an N-acylimine functionality in its chromophore and single C(alpha)-C(beta) bond in the Tyr64 side chain. Mass spectrum of mTagBFP chromophore-bearing peptide indicates a loss of 20 Da upon maturation, whereas tandem mass spectrometry reveals that the C(alpha)-N bond in Leu63 is oxidized. These data indicate that mTagBFP has a new type of the chromophore, N-[(5-hydroxy-1H-imidazole-2-yl)methylidene]acetamide. We propose a chemical mechanism in which the DsRed-like chromophore is formed via the mTagBFP-like blue intermediate. (c) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  11. Re-evaluating microglia expression profiles using RiboTag and cell isolation strategies.

    PubMed

    Haimon, Zhana; Volaski, Alon; Orthgiess, Johannes; Boura-Halfon, Sigalit; Varol, Diana; Shemer, Anat; Yona, Simon; Zuckerman, Binyamin; David, Eyal; Chappell-Maor, Louise; Bechmann, Ingo; Gericke, Martin; Ulitsky, Igor; Jung, Steffen

    2018-06-01

    Transcriptome profiling is widely used to infer functional states of specific cell types, as well as their responses to stimuli, to define contributions to physiology and pathophysiology. Focusing on microglia, the brain's macrophages, we report here a side-by-side comparison of classical cell-sorting-based transcriptome sequencing and the 'RiboTag' method, which avoids cell retrieval from tissue context and yields translatome sequencing information. Conventional whole-cell microglial transcriptomes were found to be significantly tainted by artifacts introduced by tissue dissociation, cargo contamination and transcripts sequestered from ribosomes. Conversely, our data highlight the added value of RiboTag profiling for assessing the lineage accuracy of Cre recombinase expression in transgenic mice. Collectively, this study indicates method-based biases, reveals observer effects and establishes RiboTag-based translatome profiling as a valuable complement to standard sorting-based profiling strategies.

  12. Method of tagging excipients with /sup 99m/Tc

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Bardy, A.; Beydon, J.; Gobin, R.

    1977-11-08

    A method of using /sup 99m/technetium for tagging excipients in medical diagnosis by scintigraphy comprises mixing, in an aqueous solution of alkali-metal pertechnetate, an excipient and a reducing agent in the form of a complex, which complex is such that the association constant of the anion with reduced techetium is less than the association constant of the excipient with reduced technetium, thereby forming a radio-pharmaceutical substance which is a complex between the excipient and /sup 99m/technetium.

  13. Tag loss and short-term mortality associated with passive integrated transponder tagging of juvenile Lost River suckers

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Burdick, Summer M.

    2011-01-01

    Passive integrated transponder (PIT) tags are commonly used to mark small catostomids, but tag loss and the effect of tagging on mortality have not been assessed for juveniles of the endangered Lost River sucker Deltistes luxatus. I evaluated tag loss and short-term (34-d) mortality associated with the PIT tagging of juvenile Lost River suckers in the laboratory by using a completely randomized design and three treatment groups (PIT tagged, positive control, and control). An empty needle was inserted into each positive control fish, whereas control fish were handled but not tagged. Only one fish expelled its PIT tag. Mortality rate averaged 9.8 ± 3.4% (mean ± SD) for tagged fish; mortality was 0% for control and positive control fish. All tagging mortalities occurred in fish with standard lengths of 71 mm or less, and most of the mortalities occurred within 48 h of tagging. My results indicate that 12.45- × 2.02-mm PIT tags provide a viable method of marking juvenile Lost River suckers that are 72 mm or larger.

  14. SPlinted Ligation Adapter Tagging (SPLAT), a novel library preparation method for whole genome bisulphite sequencing

    PubMed Central

    Manlig, Erika; Wahlberg, Per

    2017-01-01

    Abstract Sodium bisulphite treatment of DNA combined with next generation sequencing (NGS) is a powerful combination for the interrogation of genome-wide DNA methylation profiles. Library preparation for whole genome bisulphite sequencing (WGBS) is challenging due to side effects of the bisulphite treatment, which leads to extensive DNA damage. Recently, a new generation of methods for bisulphite sequencing library preparation have been devised. They are based on initial bisulphite treatment of the DNA, followed by adaptor tagging of single stranded DNA fragments, and enable WGBS using low quantities of input DNA. In this study, we present a novel approach for quick and cost effective WGBS library preparation that is based on splinted adaptor tagging (SPLAT) of bisulphite-converted single-stranded DNA. Moreover, we validate SPLAT against three commercially available WGBS library preparation techniques, two of which are based on bisulphite treatment prior to adaptor tagging and one is a conventional WGBS method. PMID:27899585

  15. A method to analyze molecular tagging velocimetry data using the Hough transform.

    PubMed

    Sanchez-Gonzalez, R; McManamen, B; Bowersox, R D W; North, S W

    2015-10-01

    The development of a method to analyze molecular tagging velocimetry data based on the Hough transform is presented. This method, based on line fitting, parameterizes the grid lines "written" into a flowfield. Initial proof-of-principle illustration of this method was performed to obtain two-component velocity measurements in the wake of a cylinder in a Mach 4.6 flow, using a data set derived from computational fluid dynamics simulations. The Hough transform is attractive for molecular tagging velocimetry applications since it is capable of discriminating spurious features that can have a biasing effect in the fitting process. Assessment of the precision and accuracy of the method were also performed to show the dependence on analysis window size and signal-to-noise levels. The accuracy of this Hough transform-based method to quantify intersection displacements was determined to be comparable to cross-correlation methods. The employed line parameterization avoids the assumption of linearity in the vicinity of each intersection, which is important in the limit of drastic grid deformations resulting from large velocity gradients common in high-speed flow applications. This Hough transform method has the potential to enable the direct and spatially accurate measurement of local vorticity, which is important in applications involving turbulent flowfields. Finally, two-component velocity determinations using the Hough transform from experimentally obtained images are presented, demonstrating the feasibility of the proposed analysis method.

  16. Survival and tag loss in Moapa White River springfish implanted with passive integrated transponder tags

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Dixon, Christopher J.; Mesa, Matthew G.

    2011-01-01

    We monitored survival and tag loss among Moapa White River springfish Crenichthys baileyi moapae that were surgically implanted with passive integrated transponder (PIT; 9 × 2 mm) tags. The fish used in the study ranged from 40 to 67 mm in total length and from 1.0 to 6.5 g in mass; the PIT tag: body weight ratios were 1.0–6.1%. Fish were held for 41 d in live cages within a small, warm desert stream. Survival did not differ between untagged control fish (94.5%) and tagged fish (95.6%). Survival did not appear to be influenced by fish size or PIT tag: body weight ratio, but the small number of fish that died precluded a detailed analysis. Tag retention was 100% among the 86 fish that survived over the 41 d. Our results suggest that surgically implanting 9-mm PIT tags into Moapa White River springfish as small as 40 mm is an effective method for marking them because it has minimal impacts on survival and tag retention is high. More work is needed on the effects of PIT tagging on growth and other performance metrics of springfish and other small desert fishes.

  17. Measurement of tag confidence in user generated contents retrieval

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Lee, Sihyoung; Min, Hyun-Seok; Lee, Young Bok; Ro, Yong Man

    2009-01-01

    As online image sharing services are becoming popular, the importance of correctly annotated tags is being emphasized for precise search and retrieval. Tags created by user along with user-generated contents (UGC) are often ambiguous due to the fact that some tags are highly subjective and visually unrelated to the image. They cause unwanted results to users when image search engines rely on tags. In this paper, we propose a method of measuring tag confidence so that one can differentiate confidence tags from noisy tags. The proposed tag confidence is measured from visual semantics of the image. To verify the usefulness of the proposed method, experiments were performed with UGC database from social network sites. Experimental results showed that the image retrieval performance with confidence tags was increased.

  18. Antenna for passive RFID tags

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Schiopu, Paul; Manea, Adrian; Cristea, Ionica; Grosu, Neculai; Vladescu, Marian; Craciun, Anca-Ileana; Craciun, Alexandru

    2015-02-01

    Minuscule devices, called RFID tags are attached to objects and persons and emit information which positioned readers may capture wirelessly. Many methods of identification have been used, but that of most common is to use a unique serial number for identification of person or object. RFID tags can be characterized as either active or passive [1,2]. Traditional passive tags are typically in "sleep" state until awakened by the reader's emitted field. In passive tags, the reader's field acts to charge the capacitor that powers the badge and this can be a combination of antenna and barcodes obtained with SAW( Surface Acoustic Wave) devices [1,2,3] . The antenna in an RFID tag is a conductive element that permits the tag to exchange data with the reader. The paper contribution are targeted to antenna for passive RFID tags. The electromagnetic field generated by the reader is somehow oriented by the reader antenna and power is induced in the tag only if the orientation of the tag antenna is appropriate. A tag placed orthogonal to the reader yield field will not be read. This is the reason that guided manufacturers to build circular polarized antenna capable of propagating a field that is alternatively polarized on all planes passing on the diffusion axis. Passive RFID tags are operated at the UHF frequencies of 868MHz (Europe) and 915MHz (USA) and at the microwave frequencies of 2,45 GHz and 5,8 GHz . Because the tags are small dimensions, in paper, we present the possibility to use circular polarization microstrip antenna with fractal edge [2].

  19. Dual functionalized graphene oxide serves as a carrier for delivering oligohistidine- and biotin-tagged biomolecules into cells.

    PubMed

    Jana, Batakrishna; Mondal, Goutam; Biswas, Atanu; Chakraborty, Indrani; Saha, Abhijit; Kurkute, Prashant; Ghosh, Surajit

    2013-11-01

    A versatile method of dual chemical functionalization of graphene oxide (GO) with Tris-[nitrilotris(acetic acid)] (Tris-NTA) and biotin for cellular delivery of oligohistidine- and biotin-tagged biomolecules is reported. Orthogonally functionalized GO surfaces with Tris-NTA and biotin to obtain a dual-functionalized GO (DFGO) are prepared and characterized by various spectroscopic and microscopic techniques. Fluorescence microscopic images reveal that DFGO surfaces are capable of binding oligohistidine-tagged biomolecules/proteins and avidin/biotin-tagged biomolecules/proteins orthogonally. The DFGO nanoparticles are non-cytotoxic in nature and can deliver oligohistidine- and biotin-tagged biomolecules simultaneously into the cell. © 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

  20. Preparation of dart tags for use in the field

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Higham, Joseph R.

    1966-01-01

    Tagging in the field requires an efficient method of preparing the tags for dispensation under a wide range of conditions. The method described here was very efficient in an extensive tagging program on Oahe Reservoir, South Dakota.

  1. A Novel Method for Mining SaaS Software Tag via Community Detection in Software Services Network

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Qin, Li; Li, Bing; Pan, Wei-Feng; Peng, Tao

    The number of online software services based on SaaS paradigm is increasing. However, users usually find it hard to get the exact software services they need. At present, tags are widely used to annotate specific software services and also to facilitate the searching of them. Currently these tags are arbitrary and ambiguous since mostly of them are generated manually by service developers. This paper proposes a method for mining tags from the help documents of software services. By extracting terms from the help documents and calculating the similarity between the terms, we construct a software similarity network where nodes represent software services, edges denote the similarity relationship between software services, and the weights of the edges are the similarity degrees. The hierarchical clustering algorithm is used for community detection in this software similarity network. At the final stage, tags are mined for each of the communities and stored as ontology.

  2. An incremental community detection method for social tagging systems using locality-sensitive hashing.

    PubMed

    Wu, Zhenyu; Zou, Ming

    2014-10-01

    An increasing number of users interact, collaborate, and share information through social networks. Unprecedented growth in social networks is generating a significant amount of unstructured social data. From such data, distilling communities where users have common interests and tracking variations of users' interests over time are important research tracks in fields such as opinion mining, trend prediction, and personalized services. However, these tasks are extremely difficult considering the highly dynamic characteristics of the data. Existing community detection methods are time consuming, making it difficult to process data in real time. In this paper, dynamic unstructured data is modeled as a stream. Tag assignments stream clustering (TASC), an incremental scalable community detection method, is proposed based on locality-sensitive hashing. Both tags and latent interactions among users are incorporated in the method. In our experiments, the social dynamic behaviors of users are first analyzed. The proposed TASC method is then compared with state-of-the-art clustering methods such as StreamKmeans and incremental k-clique; results indicate that TASC can detect communities more efficiently and effectively. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  3. Social Tagging of Mission Data

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Norris, Jeffrey S.; Wallick, Michael N.; Joswig, Joseph C.; Powell, Mark W.; Torres, Recaredo J.; Mittman, David S.; Abramyan, Lucy; Crockett, Thomas M.; Shams, Khawaja S.; Fox, Jason M.; hide

    2010-01-01

    Mars missions will generate a large amount of data in various forms, such as daily plans, images, and scientific information. Often, there is a semantic linkage between images that cannot be captured automatically. Software is needed that will provide a method for creating arbitrary tags for this mission data so that items with a similar tag can be related to each other. The tags should be visible and searchable for all users. A new routine was written to offer a new and more flexible search option over previous applications. This software allows users of the MSLICE program to apply any number of arbitrary tags to a piece of mission data through a MSLICE search interface. The application of tags creates relationships between data that did not previously exist. These tags can be easily removed and changed, and contain enough flexibility to be specifically configured for any mission. This gives users the ability to quickly recall or draw attention to particular pieces of mission data, for example: Give a semantic and meaningful description to mission data; for example, tag all images with a rock in them with the tag "rock." Rapidly recall specific and useful pieces of data; for example, tag a plan as"driving template." Call specific data to a user s attention; for example, tag a plan as "for:User." This software is part of the MSLICE release, which was written in Java. It will run on any current Windows, Macintosh, or Linux system.

  4. Neural net controlled tag gas sampling system for nuclear reactors

    DOEpatents

    Gross, Kenneth C.; Laug, Matthew T.; Lambert, John D. B.; Herzog, James P.

    1997-01-01

    A method and system for providing a tag gas identifier to a nuclear fuel rod and analyze escaped tag gas to identify a particular failed nuclear fuel rod. The method and system include disposing a unique tag gas composition into a plenum of a nuclear fuel rod, monitoring gamma ray activity, analyzing gamma ray signals to assess whether a nuclear fuel rod has failed and is emitting tag gas, activating a tag gas sampling and analysis system upon sensing tag gas emission from a failed nuclear rod and evaluating the escaped tag gas to identify the particular failed nuclear fuel rod.

  5. The crystal structure of red fluorescent protein TagRFP-T reveals the mechanism of its superior photostability

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Liu, Rui; Liang, Qing-Nan; Du, Shu-Qi

    2016-08-19

    The red fluorescent protein variant TagRFP-T has greatly improved photostability over its parent molecule, TagRFP, but the underlying mechanism leading to this improvement is to date unknown. The 1.95 Å resolution crystallographic structure of TagRFP-T showed that its chromophore exists as a mixture of cis and trans coplanar isomers in roughly equal proportions. Interestingly, both isomers are able to fluoresce, a property that has never been observed in any other fluorescent protein. We propose a “circular restoration model” for TagRFP-T to explain its superior photostability: There are four co-existing chromophore states (cis/trans protonated/ionized state) that can be driven by light tomore » transform from one state into another. This model also explains how TagRPF-T essentially eliminates the temporary dark state (reversible photobleaching). - Highlights: • The 1.95 Å resolution crystal structure of TagRFP-T was determined. • The chromophore of TagRFP-T contains a mixture of cis and trans coplanar isomers. • A “circular restoration model” was proposed to explain the superior photostability. • The chromophore can reversibly convert between cis/trans protonated/ionized states. • The light-driven conversion reduce the dark state (reversible photobleaching).« less

  6. Satellite tagging and biopsy sampling of killer whales at subantarctic Marion Island: effectiveness, immediate reactions and long-term responses.

    PubMed

    Reisinger, Ryan R; Oosthuizen, W Chris; Péron, Guillaume; Cory Toussaint, Dawn; Andrews, Russel D; de Bruyn, P J Nico

    2014-01-01

    Remote tissue biopsy sampling and satellite tagging are becoming widely used in large marine vertebrate studies because they allow the collection of a diverse suite of otherwise difficult-to-obtain data which are critical in understanding the ecology of these species and to their conservation and management. Researchers must carefully consider their methods not only from an animal welfare perspective, but also to ensure the scientific rigour and validity of their results. We report methods for shore-based, remote biopsy sampling and satellite tagging of killer whales Orcinus orca at Subantarctic Marion Island. The performance of these methods is critically assessed using 1) the attachment duration of low-impact minimally percutaneous satellite tags; 2) the immediate behavioural reactions of animals to biopsy sampling and satellite tagging; 3) the effect of researcher experience on biopsy sampling and satellite tagging; and 4) the mid- (1 month) and long- (24 month) term behavioural consequences. To study mid- and long-term behavioural changes we used multievent capture-recapture models that accommodate imperfect detection and individual heterogeneity. We made 72 biopsy sampling attempts (resulting in 32 tissue samples) and 37 satellite tagging attempts (deploying 19 tags). Biopsy sampling success rates were low (43%), but tagging rates were high with improved tag designs (86%). The improved tags remained attached for 26±14 days (mean ± SD). Individuals most often showed no reaction when attempts missed (66%) and a slight reaction-defined as a slight flinch, slight shake, short acceleration, or immediate dive-when hit (54%). Severe immediate reactions were never observed. Hit or miss and age-sex class were important predictors of the reaction, but the method (tag or biopsy) was unimportant. Multievent trap-dependence modelling revealed considerable variation in individual sighting patterns; however, there were no significant mid- or long-term changes following

  7. Satellite Tagging and Biopsy Sampling of Killer Whales at Subantarctic Marion Island: Effectiveness, Immediate Reactions and Long-Term Responses

    PubMed Central

    Reisinger, Ryan R.; Oosthuizen, W. Chris; Péron, Guillaume; Cory Toussaint, Dawn; Andrews, Russel D.; de Bruyn, P. J. Nico

    2014-01-01

    Remote tissue biopsy sampling and satellite tagging are becoming widely used in large marine vertebrate studies because they allow the collection of a diverse suite of otherwise difficult-to-obtain data which are critical in understanding the ecology of these species and to their conservation and management. Researchers must carefully consider their methods not only from an animal welfare perspective, but also to ensure the scientific rigour and validity of their results. We report methods for shore-based, remote biopsy sampling and satellite tagging of killer whales Orcinus orca at Subantarctic Marion Island. The performance of these methods is critically assessed using 1) the attachment duration of low-impact minimally percutaneous satellite tags; 2) the immediate behavioural reactions of animals to biopsy sampling and satellite tagging; 3) the effect of researcher experience on biopsy sampling and satellite tagging; and 4) the mid- (1 month) and long- (24 month) term behavioural consequences. To study mid- and long-term behavioural changes we used multievent capture-recapture models that accommodate imperfect detection and individual heterogeneity. We made 72 biopsy sampling attempts (resulting in 32 tissue samples) and 37 satellite tagging attempts (deploying 19 tags). Biopsy sampling success rates were low (43%), but tagging rates were high with improved tag designs (86%). The improved tags remained attached for 26±14 days (mean ± SD). Individuals most often showed no reaction when attempts missed (66%) and a slight reaction–defined as a slight flinch, slight shake, short acceleration, or immediate dive–when hit (54%). Severe immediate reactions were never observed. Hit or miss and age-sex class were important predictors of the reaction, but the method (tag or biopsy) was unimportant. Multievent trap-dependence modelling revealed considerable variation in individual sighting patterns; however, there were no significant mid- or long-term changes following

  8. Neural net controlled tag gas sampling system for nuclear reactors

    DOEpatents

    Gross, K.C.; Laug, M.T.; Lambert, J.B.; Herzog, J.P.

    1997-02-11

    A method and system are disclosed for providing a tag gas identifier to a nuclear fuel rod and analyze escaped tag gas to identify a particular failed nuclear fuel rod. The method and system include disposing a unique tag gas composition into a plenum of a nuclear fuel rod, monitoring gamma ray activity, analyzing gamma ray signals to assess whether a nuclear fuel rod has failed and is emitting tag gas, activating a tag gas sampling and analysis system upon sensing tag gas emission from a failed nuclear rod and evaluating the escaped tag gas to identify the particular failed nuclear fuel rod. 12 figs.

  9. Transient ElectroMagnetic and Electric Self-Potential survey in the TAG hydrothermal field in MAR

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Tao, C.; Deng, X.; Wu, G.; Xi, Z.; Zhou, D.; Zuo, L.

    2012-12-01

    The TAG hydrothermal field is one of the most studied hydrothermal fields. This field covers an area of 5km×5km, which includes low-temperature Mn- and Fe-oxides and nontronites zone, relict massive sulfide mounds as well as active hydrothermal mound(TAG mound) [Thompson, 1985, Rona, 1993]. Drilling program was performed in the ODP (Ocean Drilling Program) Leg 158 in the TAG mound [Humphris, 1996]. In 1996, electrical resistivity survey in the TAG mound was conducted using innovative transient electric dipole-dipole instruments which was carried by DSV 'Alvin' [Cairns et al., 1996, Von Herzen et al., 1996]. In June 2012, the 2nd Leg of the Chinese 26th cruise was carried out in the TAG hydrothermal field at Mid Atlantic Ridge by R/V DAYANGYIHAO. Six TEM (Transient ElectroMagnetic) survey lines were deployed, with four of which across the ODP Leg 158 drilling area. Besides, two SP (Electric Self-Potential) survey lines were across the ODP drilling area. The survey results of TEM preliminary revealed the vertical structure of the TAG hydrothermal field. The survey results of both TEM and SP are consistent with the ODP drilling result, and also agree well with the temperature and water-column anomalies obtained in this leg. Preliminary results show that the TEM and SP methods are capable of revealing the horizontal and vertical distribution of the hydrothermal sulfide fields.

  10. Methyl-CpG island-associated genome signature tags

    DOEpatents

    Dunn, John J

    2014-05-20

    Disclosed is a method for analyzing the organismic complexity of a sample through analysis of the nucleic acid in the sample. In the disclosed method, through a series of steps, including digestion with a type II restriction enzyme, ligation of capture adapters and linkers and digestion with a type IIS restriction enzyme, genome signature tags are produced. The sequences of a statistically significant number of the signature tags are determined and the sequences are used to identify and quantify the organisms in the sample. Various embodiments of the invention described herein include methods for using single point genome signature tags to analyze the related families present in a sample, methods for analyzing sequences associated with hyper- and hypo-methylated CpG islands, methods for visualizing organismic complexity change in a sampling location over time and methods for generating the genome signature tag profile of a sample of fragmented DNA.

  11. Tag-KEM from Set Partial Domain One-Way Permutations

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Abe, Masayuki; Cui, Yang; Imai, Hideki; Kurosawa, Kaoru

    Recently a framework called Tag-KEM/DEM was introduced to construct efficient hybrid encryption schemes. Although it is known that generic encode-then-encrypt construction of chosen ciphertext secure public-key encryption also applies to secure Tag-KEM construction and some known encoding method like OAEP can be used for this purpose, it is worth pursuing more efficient encoding method dedicated for Tag-KEM construction. This paper proposes an encoding method that yields efficient Tag-KEM schemes when combined with set partial one-way permutations such as RSA and Rabin's encryption scheme. To our knowledge, this leads to the most practical hybrid encryption scheme of this type. We also present an efficient Tag-KEM which is CCA-secure under general factoring assumption rather than Blum factoring assumption.

  12. Application of a new dual localization-affinity purification tag reveals novel aspects of protein kinase biology in Aspergillus nidulans.

    PubMed

    De Souza, Colin P; Hashmi, Shahr B; Osmani, Aysha H; Osmani, Stephen A

    2014-01-01

    Filamentous fungi occupy critical environmental niches and have numerous beneficial industrial applications but devastating effects as pathogens and agents of food spoilage. As regulators of essentially all biological processes protein kinases have been intensively studied but how they regulate the often unique biology of filamentous fungi is not completely understood. Significant understanding of filamentous fungal biology has come from the study of the model organism Aspergillus nidulans using a combination of molecular genetics, biochemistry, cell biology and genomic approaches. Here we describe dual localization-affinity purification (DLAP) tags enabling endogenous N or C-terminal protein tagging for localization and biochemical studies in A. nidulans. To establish DLAP tag utility we endogenously tagged 17 protein kinases for analysis by live cell imaging and affinity purification. Proteomic analysis of purifications by mass spectrometry confirmed association of the CotA and NimXCdk1 kinases with known binding partners and verified a predicted interaction of the SldABub1/R1 spindle assembly checkpoint kinase with SldBBub3. We demonstrate that the single TOR kinase of A. nidulans locates to vacuoles and vesicles, suggesting that the function of endomembranes as major TOR cellular hubs is conserved in filamentous fungi. Comparative analysis revealed 7 kinases with mitotic specific locations including An-Cdc7 which unexpectedly located to mitotic spindle pole bodies (SPBs), the first such localization described for this family of DNA replication kinases. We show that the SepH septation kinase locates to SPBs specifically in the basal region of apical cells in a biphasic manner during mitosis and again during septation. This results in gradients of SepH between G1 SPBs which shift along hyphae as each septum forms. We propose that SepH regulates the septation initiation network (SIN) specifically at SPBs in the basal region of G1 cells and that localized gradients

  13. CLUSTAG: hierarchical clustering and graph methods for selecting tag SNPs.

    PubMed

    Ao, S I; Yip, Kevin; Ng, Michael; Cheung, David; Fong, Pui-Yee; Melhado, Ian; Sham, Pak C

    2005-04-15

    Cluster and set-cover algorithms are developed to obtain a set of tag single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that can represent all the known SNPs in a chromosomal region, subject to the constraint that all SNPs must have a squared correlation R2>C with at least one tag SNP, where C is specified by the user. http://hkumath.hku.hk/web/link/CLUSTAG/CLUSTAG.html mng@maths.hku.hk.

  14. Review on SAW RFID tags.

    PubMed

    Plessky, Victor P; Reindl, Leonhard M

    2010-03-01

    SAW tags were invented more than 30 years ago, but only today are the conditions united for mass application of this technology. The devices in the 2.4-GHz ISM band can be routinely produced with optical lithography, high-resolution radar systems can be built up using highly sophisticated, but low-cost RF-chips, and the Internet is available for global access to the tag databases. The "Internet of Things," or I-o-T, will demand trillions of cheap tags and sensors. The SAW tags can overcome semiconductor-based analogs in many aspects: they can be read at a distance of a few meters with readers radiating power levels 2 to 3 orders lower, they are cheap, and they can operate in robust environments. Passive SAW tags are easily combined with sensors. Even the "anti-collision" problem (i.e., the simultaneous reading of many nearby tags) has adequate solutions for many practical applications. In this paper, we discuss the state-of-the-art in the development of SAW tags. The design approaches will be reviewed and optimal tag designs, as well as encoding methods, will be demonstrated. We discuss ways to reduce the size and cost of these devices. A few practical examples of tags using a time-position coding with 10(6) different codes will be demonstrated. Phase-coded devices can additionally increase the number of codes at the expense of a reduction of reading distance. We also discuss new and exciting perspectives of using ultra wide band (UWB) technology for SAW-tag systems. The wide frequency band available for this standard provides a great opportunity for SAW tags to be radically reduced in size to about 1 x 1 mm(2) while keeping a practically infinite number of possible different codes. Finally, the reader technology will be discussed, as well as detailed comparison made between SAW tags and IC-based semiconductor device.

  15. Atomic force microscopy of ionotropic receptors bearing subunit-specific tags provides a method for determining receptor architecture

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Neish, Calum S.; Martin, Ian L.; Davies, Martin; Henderson, Robert M.; Edwardson, J. Michael

    2003-08-01

    We have developed an atomic force microscopy (AFM)-based method for the determination of the subunit architecture of ionotropic receptors, and tested the method using the GABAA receptor as a model system. The most common form of the GABAA receptor probably consists of 2alpha1-, 2beta2- and 1gamma2-subunits. We show here that the arrangement of subunits around the central Cl- ion channel can be deduced by AFM of receptors tagged with subunit-specific antibodies. Transfection of cells with DNA encoding alpha1-, beta2- and gamma2-subunits resulted in the production of receptors containing all three subunits, as judged by both immunoblot analysis and the binding of [3H]-Ro15-1788, a specific radioligand for the GABAA receptor. A His6-tag on the alpha1-subunit was used to purify the receptor from membrane fractions of transfected cells. After incubation with anti-His6 immunoglobulin G, some receptors became tagged with either one or two antibody molecules. AFM analysis of complexes containing two bound antibodies showed that the most common angle between the two tags was 135°, close to the value of 144° expected if the two alpha-subunits are separated by a third subunit. This method is applicable to the complete elucidation of the subunit arrangement around the GABAA receptor rosette, and can also be applied to other ionotropic receptors.

  16. RAC-tagging: Recombineering And Cas9-assisted targeting for protein tagging and conditional analyses

    PubMed Central

    Baker, Oliver; Gupta, Ashish; Obst, Mandy; Zhang, Youming; Anastassiadis, Konstantinos; Fu, Jun; Stewart, A. Francis

    2016-01-01

    A fluent method for gene targeting to establish protein tagged and ligand inducible conditional loss-of-function alleles is described. We couple new recombineering applications for one-step cloning of gRNA oligonucleotides and rapid generation of short-arm (~1 kb) targeting constructs with the power of Cas9-assisted targeting to establish protein tagged alleles in embryonic stem cells at high efficiency. RAC (Recombineering And Cas9)-tagging with Venus, BirM, APEX2 and the auxin degron is facilitated by a recombineering-ready plasmid series that permits the reuse of gene-specific reagents to insert different tags. Here we focus on protein tagging with the auxin degron because it is a ligand-regulated loss-of-function strategy that is rapid and reversible. Furthermore it includes the additional challenge of biallelic targeting. Despite high frequencies of monoallelic RAC-targeting, we found that simultaneous biallelic targeting benefits from long-arm (>4 kb) targeting constructs. Consequently an updated recombineering pipeline for fluent generation of long arm targeting constructs is also presented. PMID:27216209

  17. Associated Particle Tagging (APT) in Magnetic Spectrometers

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Jordan, David V.; Baciak, James E.; Stave, Sean C.

    2012-10-16

    incorporating the alpha-particle spectrometer concept, and outlines challenges involved in the magnetic field design. Tagged photon interrogation: • We investigated a method for discriminating fissile from benign cargo-material response to an energy-tagged photon beam. The method relies upon coincident detection of the tagged photon and a photoneutron or photofission neutron produced in the target material. The method exploits differences in the shape of the neutron production cross section as a function of incident photon energy in order to discriminate photofission yield from photoneutrons emitted by non-fissile materials. Computational tests of the interrogation method as applied to material composition assay of a simple, multi-layer target suggest that the tagged-photon information facilitates precise (order 1% thickness uncertainty) reconstruction of the constituent thicknesses of fissile (uranium) and high-Z (Pb) constituents of the test targets in a few minutes of photon-beam exposure. We assumed an 18-MeV endpoint tagged photon beam for these simulations. • The report addresses several candidate design and data analysis issues for beamline infrastructure required to produce a tagged photon beam in a notional AI-dedicated facility, including the accelerator and tagging spectrometer.« less

  18. Radio tag retention and tag-related mortality among adult sockeye salmon

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Ramstad, Kristina M.; Woody, Carol Ann

    2003-01-01

    Tag retention and tag-related mortality are concerns for any tagging study but are rarely estimated. We assessed retention and mortality rates for esophageal radio tag implants in adult sockeye salmon Oncorhynchus nerka. Migrating sockeye salmon captured at the outlet of Lake Clark, Alaska, were implanted with one of four different radio tags (14.5 × 43 mm (diameter × length), 14.5 × 49 mm, 16 × 46 mm, and 19 × 51 mm). Fish were observed for 15 to 35 d after tagging to determine retention and mortality rates. The overall tag retention rate was high (0.98; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.92-1.00; minimum, 33 d), with one loss of a 19-mm × 51- mm tag. Mortality of tagged sockeye salmon (0.02; 95% CI, 0-0.08) was similar to that of untagged controls (0.03 (0-0.15)). Sockeye salmon with body lengths (mid-eye to tail fork) of 585-649 mm retained tags as large as 19 × 51 mm and those with body lengths of 499-628 mm retained tags as small as 14.5 × 43 mm for a minimum of 33 d with no increase in mortality. The tags used in this study represent a suite of radio tags that vary in size, operational life, and cost but that are effective in tracking adult anadromous salmon with little tag loss or increase in fish mortality.

  19. Comparison of Two Multiplex Methods for Detection of Respiratory Viruses: FilmArray RP and xTAG RVP ▿†

    PubMed Central

    Rand, Kenneth H.; Rampersaud, Howard; Houck, Herbert J.

    2011-01-01

    We compared the FilmArray RP (Idaho Technology, Inc., Salt Lake City, UT) and the xTAG RVP (Luminex Corporation, Toronto, Canada) multiplex respiratory virus PCR methods for the detection of respiratory viruses in a set of 200 patient specimens frozen at −70°C after standard viral culture and antigen detection methods were done. Both systems detected between 40 to 50% more viruses than traditional methods, primarily rhinoviruses and human metapneumovirus. The FilmArray RP detected significantly more total viruses either alone or as part of mixed infections than the xTAG RVP, as well as an additional 21.6% more respiratory syncytial viruses. The xTAG RVP requires 5 to 6 h with 2.5 to 3 h of hands-on time, while the FilmArray RP takes about an hour with 3 to 5 min of hands-on time, making it much easier to perform. PMID:21508156

  20. Shark Tagging Activities.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Current: The Journal of Marine Education, 1998

    1998-01-01

    In this group activity, children learn about the purpose of tagging and how scientists tag a shark. Using a cut-out of a shark, students identify, measure, record data, read coordinates, and tag a shark. Includes introductory information about the purpose of tagging and the procedure, a data sheet showing original tagging data from Tampa Bay, and…

  1. Quantum tagging for tags containing secret classical data

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Kent, Adrian

    Various authors have considered schemes for quantum tagging, that is, authenticating the classical location of a classical tagging device by sending and receiving quantum signals from suitably located distant sites, in an environment controlled by an adversary whose quantum information processing and transmitting power is potentially unbounded. All of the schemes proposed elsewhere in the literature assume that the adversary is able to inspect the interior of the tagging device. All of these schemes have been shown to be breakable if the adversary has unbounded predistributed entanglement. We consider here the case in which the tagging device contains a finitemore » key string shared with distant sites but kept secret from the adversary, and show this allows the location of the tagging device to be authenticated securely and indefinitely. Our protocol relies on quantum key distribution between the tagging device and at least one distant site, and demonstrates a new practical application of quantum key distribution. It also illustrates that the attainable security in position-based cryptography can depend crucially on apparently subtle details in the security scenario considered.« less

  2. Social Image Tag Ranking by Two-View Learning

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Zhuang, Jinfeng; Hoi, Steven C. H.

    Tags play a central role in text-based social image retrieval and browsing. However, the tags annotated by web users could be noisy, irrelevant, and often incomplete for describing the image contents, which may severely deteriorate the performance of text-based image retrieval models. In order to solve this problem, researchers have proposed techniques to rank the annotated tags of a social image according to their relevance to the visual content of the image. In this paper, we aim to overcome the challenge of social image tag ranking for a corpus of social images with rich user-generated tags by proposing a novel two-view learning approach. It can effectively exploit both textual and visual contents of social images to discover the complicated relationship between tags and images. Unlike the conventional learning approaches that usually assumes some parametric models, our method is completely data-driven and makes no assumption about the underlying models, making the proposed solution practically more effective. We formulate our method as an optimization task and present an efficient algorithm to solve it. To evaluate the efficacy of our method, we conducted an extensive set of experiments by applying our technique to both text-based social image retrieval and automatic image annotation tasks. Our empirical results showed that the proposed method can be more effective than the conventional approaches.

  3. Genome-Wide Mutagenesis of Dengue Virus Reveals Plasticity of the NS1 Protein and Enables Generation of Infectious Tagged Reporter Viruses

    PubMed Central

    Johnson, Stephen M.; Eltahla, Auda A.; Aloi, Maria; Aloia, Amanda L.; McDevitt, Christopher A.; Bull, Rowena A.

    2017-01-01

    ABSTRACT Dengue virus (DENV) is a major global pathogen that causes significant morbidity and mortality in tropical and subtropical areas worldwide. An improved understanding of the regions within the DENV genome and its encoded proteins that are required for the virus replication cycle will expedite the development of urgently required therapeutics and vaccines. We subjected an infectious DENV genome to unbiased insertional mutagenesis and used next-generation sequencing to identify sites that tolerate 15-nucleotide insertions during the virus replication cycle in hepatic cell culture. This revealed that the regions within capsid, NS1, and the 3′ untranslated region were the most tolerant of insertions. In contrast, prM- and NS2A-encoding regions were largely intolerant of insertions. Notably, the multifunctional NS1 protein readily tolerated insertions in regions within the Wing, connector, and β-ladder domains with minimal effects on viral RNA replication and infectious virus production. Using this information, we generated infectious reporter viruses, including a variant encoding the APEX2 electron microscopy tag in NS1 that uniquely enabled high-resolution imaging of its localization to the surface and interior of viral replication vesicles. In addition, we generated a tagged virus bearing an mScarlet fluorescent protein insertion in NS1 that, despite an impact on fitness, enabled live cell imaging of NS1 localization and traffic in infected cells. Overall, this genome-wide profile of DENV genome flexibility may be further dissected and exploited in reporter virus generation and antiviral strategies. IMPORTANCE Regions of genetic flexibility in viral genomes can be exploited in the generation of reporter virus tools and should arguably be avoided in antiviral drug and vaccine design. Here, we subjected the DENV genome to high-throughput insertional mutagenesis to identify regions of genetic flexibility and enable tagged reporter virus generation. In

  4. GSyellow, a Multifaceted Tag for Functional Protein Analysis in Monocot and Dicot Plants.

    PubMed

    Besbrugge, Nienke; Van Leene, Jelle; Eeckhout, Dominique; Cannoot, Bernard; Kulkarni, Shubhada R; De Winne, Nancy; Persiau, Geert; Van De Slijke, Eveline; Bontinck, Michiel; Aesaert, Stijn; Impens, Francis; Gevaert, Kris; Van Damme, Daniel; Van Lijsebettens, Mieke; Inzé, Dirk; Vandepoele, Klaas; Nelissen, Hilde; De Jaeger, Geert

    2018-06-01

    The ability to tag proteins has boosted the emergence of generic molecular methods for protein functional analysis. Fluorescent protein tags are used to visualize protein localization, and affinity tags enable the mapping of molecular interactions by, for example, tandem affinity purification or chromatin immunoprecipitation. To apply these widely used molecular techniques on a single transgenic plant line, we developed a multifunctional tandem affinity purification tag, named GS yellow , which combines the streptavidin-binding peptide tag with citrine yellow fluorescent protein. We demonstrated the versatility of the GS yellow tag in the dicot Arabidopsis ( Arabidopsis thaliana ) using a set of benchmark proteins. For proof of concept in monocots, we assessed the localization and dynamic interaction profile of the leaf growth regulator ANGUSTIFOLIA3 (AN3), fused to the GS yellow tag, along the growth zone of the maize ( Zea mays ) leaf. To further explore the function of ZmAN3, we mapped its DNA-binding landscape in the growth zone of the maize leaf through chromatin immunoprecipitation sequencing. Comparison with AN3 target genes mapped in the developing maize tassel or in Arabidopsis cell cultures revealed strong conservation of AN3 target genes between different maize tissues and across monocots and dicots, respectively. In conclusion, the GS yellow tag offers a powerful molecular tool for distinct types of protein functional analyses in dicots and monocots. As this approach involves transforming a single construct, it is likely to accelerate both basic and translational plant research. © 2018 American Society of Plant Biologists. All rights reserved.

  5. Comparative Performance of Acoustic-tagged and PIT-tagged Juvenile Salmonids

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Hockersmith, Eric E.; Brown, Richard S.; Liedtke, Theresa L.

    2008-02-01

    Numerous research tools and technologies are currently being used to evaluate fish passage and survival to determine the impacts of the Federal Columbia River Power System (FCRPS) on endangered and threatened juvenile salmonids, including PIT tags, balloon tags, hydroacoustic evaluations, radio telemetry, and acoustic telemetry. Each has advantages and disadvantages, but options are restricted in some situations because of limited capabilities of a specific technology, lack of detection capability downstream, or availability of adequate numbers of fish. However, there remains concern about the comparative effects of the tag or the tagging procedure on fish performance. The recently developed Juvenile Salmonidmore » Acoustic Telemetry System (JSATS) acoustic transmitter is the smallest active acoustic tag currently available. The goal of this study was to determine whether fish tagged with the JSATS acoustic-telemetry tag can provide unbiased estimates of passage behavior and survival within the performance life of the tag. We conducted both field and laboratory studies to assess tag effects. For the field evaluation we released a total of 996 acoustic-tagged fish in conjunction with 21,026 PIT-tagged fish into the tailrace of Lower Granite Dam on 6 and 13 May. Travel times between release and downstream dams were not significantly different for the majority of the reaches between acoustic-tagged and PIT-tagged fish. In addition to the field evaluation, a series of laboratory experiments were conducted to determine if growth and survival of juvenile Chinook salmon surgically implanted with acoustic transmitters is different than untagged or PIT tagged juvenile Chinook salmon. Only yearling fish with integrated and non-integrated transmitters experienced mortalities, and these were low (<4.5%). Mortality among sub-yearling control and PIT-tag treatments ranged up to 7.7% while integrated and non-integrated treatments had slightly higher rates (up to 8.3% and 7

  6. efficient association study design via power-optimized tag SNP selection

    PubMed Central

    HAN, BUHM; KANG, HYUN MIN; SEO, MYEONG SEONG; ZAITLEN, NOAH; ESKIN, ELEAZAR

    2008-01-01

    Discovering statistical correlation between causal genetic variation and clinical traits through association studies is an important method for identifying the genetic basis of human diseases. Since fully resequencing a cohort is prohibitively costly, genetic association studies take advantage of local correlation structure (or linkage disequilibrium) between single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) by selecting a subset of SNPs to be genotyped (tag SNPs). While many current association studies are performed using commercially available high-throughput genotyping products that define a set of tag SNPs, choosing tag SNPs remains an important problem for both custom follow-up studies as well as designing the high-throughput genotyping products themselves. The most widely used tag SNP selection method optimizes over the correlation between SNPs (r2). However, tag SNPs chosen based on an r2 criterion do not necessarily maximize the statistical power of an association study. We propose a study design framework that chooses SNPs to maximize power and efficiently measures the power through empirical simulation. Empirical results based on the HapMap data show that our method gains considerable power over a widely used r2-based method, or equivalently reduces the number of tag SNPs required to attain the desired power of a study. Our power-optimized 100k whole genome tag set provides equivalent power to the Affymetrix 500k chip for the CEU population. For the design of custom follow-up studies, our method provides up to twice the power increase using the same number of tag SNPs as r2-based methods. Our method is publicly available via web server at http://design.cs.ucla.edu. PMID:18702637

  7. Automated Data Tagging in the HLA

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Gaffney, N. I.; Miller, W. W.

    2008-08-01

    One of the more powerful and popular forms of data organization implemented in most popular information sharing web applications is data tagging. With a rich user base from which to gather and digest tags, many interesting and often unanticipated yet very useful associations are revealed. With regard to an existing information, the astronomical community has a rich pool of existing digitally stored and searchable data than any of the currently popular web community, such as You Tube or My Space, had when they started. In initial experiments with the search engine for the Hubble Legacy Archive, we have created a simple yet powerful scheme by which the information from a footprint service, the NED and SIMBAD catalog services, and the ADS abstracts and keywords can be used to initially tag data with standard keywords. By then ingesting this into a public ally available information search engine, such as Apache Lucene, one can create a simple and powerful data tag search engine and association system. By then augmenting this with user provided keys and usage pattern analysis, one can produce a powerful modern data mining system for any astronomical data warehouse.

  8. Tagging methyl-CpG-binding domain proteins reveals different spatiotemporal expression and supports distinct functions.

    PubMed

    Wood, Kathleen H; Johnson, Brian S; Welsh, Sarah A; Lee, Jun Y; Cui, Yue; Krizman, Elizabeth; Brodkin, Edward S; Blendy, Julie A; Robinson, Michael B; Bartolomei, Marisa S; Zhou, Zhaolan

    2016-04-01

    DNA methylation is recognized by methyl-CpG-binding domain (MBD) proteins. Multiple MBDs are linked to neurodevelopmental disorders in humans and mice. However, the functions of MBD2 are poorly understood. We characterized Mbd2 knockout mice and determined spatiotemporal expression of MBDs and MBD2-NuRD (nucleosome remodeling deacetylase) interactions. We analyzed behavioral phenotypes, generated biotin-tagged MBD1 and MBD2 knockin mice, and performed biochemical studies of MBD2-NuRD. Most behavioral measures are minimally affected in Mbd2 knockout mice. In contrast to other MBDs, MBD2 shows distinct expression patterns. Unlike most MBDs, MBD2 is ubiquitously expressed in all tissues examined and appears dispensable for brain functions measured in this study. We provide novel genetic tools and reveal new directions to investigate MBD2 functions in vivo.

  9. TagDust2: a generic method to extract reads from sequencing data.

    PubMed

    Lassmann, Timo

    2015-01-28

    Arguably the most basic step in the analysis of next generation sequencing data (NGS) involves the extraction of mappable reads from the raw reads produced by sequencing instruments. The presence of barcodes, adaptors and artifacts subject to sequencing errors makes this step non-trivial. Here I present TagDust2, a generic approach utilizing a library of hidden Markov models (HMM) to accurately extract reads from a wide array of possible read architectures. TagDust2 extracts more reads of higher quality compared to other approaches. Processing of multiplexed single, paired end and libraries containing unique molecular identifiers is fully supported. Two additional post processing steps are included to exclude known contaminants and filter out low complexity sequences. Finally, TagDust2 can automatically detect the library type of sequenced data from a predefined selection. Taken together TagDust2 is a feature rich, flexible and adaptive solution to go from raw to mappable NGS reads in a single step. The ability to recognize and record the contents of raw reads will help to automate and demystify the initial, and often poorly documented, steps in NGS data analysis pipelines. TagDust2 is freely available at: http://tagdust.sourceforge.net .

  10. Application of a New Dual Localization-Affinity Purification Tag Reveals Novel Aspects of Protein Kinase Biology in Aspergillus nidulans

    PubMed Central

    De Souza, Colin P.; Hashmi, Shahr B.; Osmani, Aysha H.; Osmani, Stephen A.

    2014-01-01

    Filamentous fungi occupy critical environmental niches and have numerous beneficial industrial applications but devastating effects as pathogens and agents of food spoilage. As regulators of essentially all biological processes protein kinases have been intensively studied but how they regulate the often unique biology of filamentous fungi is not completely understood. Significant understanding of filamentous fungal biology has come from the study of the model organism Aspergillus nidulans using a combination of molecular genetics, biochemistry, cell biology and genomic approaches. Here we describe dual localization-affinity purification (DLAP) tags enabling endogenous N or C-terminal protein tagging for localization and biochemical studies in A. nidulans. To establish DLAP tag utility we endogenously tagged 17 protein kinases for analysis by live cell imaging and affinity purification. Proteomic analysis of purifications by mass spectrometry confirmed association of the CotA and NimXCdk1 kinases with known binding partners and verified a predicted interaction of the SldABub1/R1 spindle assembly checkpoint kinase with SldBBub3. We demonstrate that the single TOR kinase of A. nidulans locates to vacuoles and vesicles, suggesting that the function of endomembranes as major TOR cellular hubs is conserved in filamentous fungi. Comparative analysis revealed 7 kinases with mitotic specific locations including An-Cdc7 which unexpectedly located to mitotic spindle pole bodies (SPBs), the first such localization described for this family of DNA replication kinases. We show that the SepH septation kinase locates to SPBs specifically in the basal region of apical cells in a biphasic manner during mitosis and again during septation. This results in gradients of SepH between G1 SPBs which shift along hyphae as each septum forms. We propose that SepH regulates the septation initiation network (SIN) specifically at SPBs in the basal region of G1 cells and that localized gradients

  11. Sentiment topic mining based on comment tags

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Zhang, Daohai; Liu, Xue; Li, Juan; Fan, Mingyue

    2018-03-01

    With the development of e-commerce, various comments based on tags are generated, how to extract valuable information from these comment tags has become an important content of business management decisions. This study takes HUAWEI mobile phone tags as an example using the sentiment analysis and topic LDA mining method. The first step is data preprocessing and classification of comment tag topic mining. And then make the sentiment classification for comment tags. Finally, mine the comments again and analyze the emotional theme distribution under different sentiment classification. The results show that HUAWEI mobile phone has a good user experience in terms of fluency, cost performance, appearance, etc. Meanwhile, it should pay more attention to independent research and development, product design and development. In addition, battery and speed performance should be enhanced.

  12. Dynamic optical tags

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Griggs, Steven P.; Mark, Martin B.; Feldman, Barry J.

    2004-07-01

    The goal of the DARPA Dynamic Optical Tags (DOTs) program is to develop a small, robust, persistent, 2-way tagging, tracking and locating device that also supports communications at data rates greater than 100 kbps and can be interrogated at significant range. These tags will allow for two-way data exchange and tagging operations in friendly and denied areas. The DOTs will be passive and non-RF. To accomplish this, the DOTs program will develop small, thin, retro-reflecting modulators. The tags will operate for long periods of time (greater than two months) in real-world environmental conditions (-40° to +70° C) and allow for a wide interrogation angle (+/-60°). The tags will be passive (in the sleep mode) for most of the time and only become active when interrogated by a laser with the correct code. Once correctly interrogated, the tags will begin to modulate and retro-reflect the incoming beam. The program will also develop two tag specific transceiver systems that are eye-safe, employ automated scanning algorithms, and are capable of short search and interrogate times.

  13. Development of a Short-term Suction-cup Tagging Method for Small Delphinids to Understand the Effects of Climate, Ecosystem, and Anthropogenic Change

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Pearson, H. C.; Srinivasan, M.

    2016-02-01

    Documented changes in regional abundance and distribution of marine mammals may be driven by climate, ecosystem, and human-induced variations, operating synergistically or individually on different time scales. However, long-term but fine-scale data on animal ranging and foraging patterns are needed to fully understand the mechanism and magnitude of such changes and if/how top predators such as marine mammals are adapting. This is particularly important for dolphins, for which non-invasive, longer duration tags are needed to track their daily and weekly movement patterns in concert with changes in prey. As part of an ongoing study on dusky dolphins (Lagenorhynchus obscurus) in Kaikoura, New Zealand, we are developing a short-term, non-invasive suction-cup tagging method for collecting high resolution data on dolphin foraging and ranging behavior. This is an advancement in the field of animal telemetry as few published studies have tested non-invasive suction-cup tagging methods on small (< 2 m) delphinids, and even fewer report successful deployments. During austral summer 2013-14 and austral winter 2014, we spent 149 h over 31 d searching for and observing dusky dolphins. Of 71 tagging attempts made, 49% (n = 35) were "sticks" (i.e., the tag adhered to the dolphin). The longest tag attachment time was 357 min. Dive depths tended to increase throughout the day, reaching maximum daytime dive depths of c.a. 25 m. This is consistent with dolphin behavior off Kaikoura, as individuals feed mainly at night on mesopelagic organisms. Most (92%, n = 46) dolphins exhibited low-level responses to tagging, indicating this to be an appropriate species on which to continue tagging efforts. Successful trials will facilitate application of the system to other small delphinids. Tagging data collected can be integrated with climate and oceanographic data derived from satellite sensors and other monitoring programs to produce a comprehensive picture of dolphin behavioral ecology.

  14. A laboratory evaluation of tagging-related mortality and tag loss in juvenile humpback chub

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Ward, David L.; Persons, William R.; Young, Kirk; Stone, Dennis M.; Van Haverbeke, Randy; Knight, William R.

    2015-01-01

    We quantified tag retention, survival, and growth in juvenile, captive-reared Humpback Chub Gila cypha marked with three different tag types: (1) Biomark 12.5-mm, 134.2-kHz, full duplex PIT tags injected into the body cavity with a 12-gauge needle; (2) Biomark 8.4-mm, 134.2-kHz, full duplex PIT tags injected with a 16-gauge needle; and (3) Northwest Marine Technology visible implant elastomer (VIE) tags injected under the skin with a 29-gauge needle. Estimates of tag loss, tagging-induced mortality, and growth were evaluated for 60 d with each tag type for four different size-groups of fish: 40–49 mm, 50–59 mm, 60–69 mm, and 70–79 mm TL. Total length was a significant predictor of the probability of PIT tag retention and mortality for both 8-mm and 12-mm PIT tags, and the smallest fish had the highest rates of tag loss (12.5–30.0%) and mortality (7.5–20.0%). Humpback Chub of sizes 40–49 mm TL and tagged with VIE tags had no mortality but did have a 17.5% tag loss. Growth rates of all tagged fish were similar to controls. Our data indicate Humpback Chub can be effectively tagged using either 8-mm or 12-mm PIT tags with little tag loss or mortality at sizes as low as 65 mm TL.

  15. Steady-state free precession with myocardial tagging: CSPAMM in a single breathhold.

    PubMed

    Zwanenburg, Jaco J M; Kuijer, Joost P A; Marcus, J Tim; Heethaar, Robert M

    2003-04-01

    A method is presented that combines steady-state free precession (SSFP) cine imaging with myocardial tagging. Before the tagging preparation at each ECG-R wave, the steady-state magnetization is stored as longitudinal magnetization by an alpha/2 flip-back pulse. Imaging is continued immediately after tagging preparation, using linearly increasing startup angles (LISA) with a rampup over 10 pulses. Interleaved segmented k-space ordering is used to prevent artifacts from the increasing signal during the LISA rampup. First, this LISA-SSFP method was evaluated regarding ghost artifacts from the steady-state interruption by comparing LISA with an alpha/2 startup method. Next, LISA-SSFP was compared with spoiled gradient echo (SGRE) imaging, regarding tag contrast-to-noise ratio and tag persistence. The measurements were performed in phantoms and in six subjects applying breathhold cine imaging with tagging (temporal resolution 51 ms). The results show that ghost artifacts are negligible for the LISA method. Compared to the SGRE reference, LISA-SSFP was two times faster, with a slightly better tag contrast-to-noise. Additionally, the tags persisted 126 ms longer with LISA-SSFP than with SGRE imaging. The high efficiency of LISA-SSFP enables the acquisition of complementary tagged (CSPAMM) images in a single breathhold. Copyright 2003 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

  16. Detection of hidden shot balls in a gas-cooled turbine blade with an NRT gadolinium tagging method

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Sim, Cheul Muu; Kim, Yi Kyung; Kim, TaeJoo; Lee, Kye Hong; Kim, Jeong Uk

    2009-06-01

    This report provides a preliminary insight into the benefits and effectiveness of neutron radiography in identifying alien materials, namely shot balls hidden in a turbine blade that are otherwise undetected using other methods. The detection of 0.2-mm-diameter shot balls in gas-cooled turbine blades is possible for thermal neutron radiography. A tagging processing is more useful for a distinctive image of newer turbine blades. Areas of concern for the tagging process include the solution concentration and the possibility of a slight washing of the blades. The location of the shot balls within the turbine blades tagged with Gd((2%, 5%)+water) was shown. Shot balls were placed externally on a turbine blade (F100-700, F100-200) surface in order to check for a dead zone from a surface examination. The image is produced from neutron radiography after a 5 min exposure time. When the blade is tagged with 2% and 5% Gd with slight washing, the shot can also be effectively seen on the SR-45 film. Shot balls are more obvious on a neutron image SR-45 film than an image plate or a DR film.

  17. Perfluoro(Methylcyclohexane) Tracer Tagging Test and Demonstration

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Sigman, M.E.

    On February 14 and 15, 2000, a demonstration of current perfluorocarbon tagging technology and the future potential of these methods was held at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). The demonstration consisted of a brief technical discussion followed by a laboratory demonstration. The laboratory demonstrations included the detection of letters, parcels, briefcases and lockers containing perfluorocarbon-tagged papers. Discrimination between tagged and non-tagged items and between three perfluorocarbon tags was demonstrated along with the detection of perfluorocarbon in a background of non-fluorinated volatile organic solvent. All demonstrations involved real-time detection using a direct sampling ion trap mass spectrometer. The technical results obtainedmore » at ORNL during and in preparation for the demonstration are presented in Appendix 1 to assist Tracer Detection Technology Corp. in further evaluating their position on development and marketing of perfluorocarbon tracer technology.« less

  18. Enhancing of chemical compound and drug name recognition using representative tag scheme and fine-grained tokenization.

    PubMed

    Dai, Hong-Jie; Lai, Po-Ting; Chang, Yung-Chun; Tsai, Richard Tzong-Han

    2015-01-01

    The functions of chemical compounds and drugs that affect biological processes and their particular effect on the onset and treatment of diseases have attracted increasing interest with the advancement of research in the life sciences. To extract knowledge from the extensive literatures on such compounds and drugs, the organizers of BioCreative IV administered the CHEMical Compound and Drug Named Entity Recognition (CHEMDNER) task to establish a standard dataset for evaluating state-of-the-art chemical entity recognition methods. This study introduces the approach of our CHEMDNER system. Instead of emphasizing the development of novel feature sets for machine learning, this study investigates the effect of various tag schemes on the recognition of the names of chemicals and drugs by using conditional random fields. Experiments were conducted using combinations of different tokenization strategies and tag schemes to investigate the effects of tag set selection and tokenization method on the CHEMDNER task. This study presents the performance of CHEMDNER of three more representative tag schemes-IOBE, IOBES, and IOB12E-when applied to a widely utilized IOB tag set and combined with the coarse-/fine-grained tokenization methods. The experimental results thus reveal that the fine-grained tokenization strategy performance best in terms of precision, recall and F-scores when the IOBES tag set was utilized. The IOBES model with fine-grained tokenization yielded the best-F-scores in the six chemical entity categories other than the "Multiple" entity category. Nonetheless, no significant improvement was observed when a more representative tag schemes was used with the coarse or fine-grained tokenization rules. The best F-scores that were achieved using the developed system on the test dataset of the CHEMDNER task were 0.833 and 0.815 for the chemical documents indexing and the chemical entity mention recognition tasks, respectively. The results herein highlight the importance

  19. Tagging for Subject Access: A Glimpse into Current Practice by Vendors, Libraries, and Users

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Yang, Sharon Q.

    2012-01-01

    The study looked into the 307 Koha libraries listed in Breeding's Library Technology Guides. Since all the tag clouds in Koha are user-contributed, their adoption and usage can shed light on the extent to which libraries are supporting user tagging. The research also revealed that public library users are more actively involved in tagging than…

  20. Assessment of PIT tag retention and post-tagging survival in metamorphosing juvenile Sea Lamprey

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Simard, Lee G.; Sotola, V. Alex; Marsden, J. Ellen; Miehls, Scott M.

    2017-01-01

    Background: Passive integrated transponder (PIT) tags have been used to document and monitor the movement or behavior of numerous species of fishes. Data on short-term and long-term survival and tag retention are needed before initiating studies using PIT tags on a new species or life stage. We evaluated the survival and tag retention of 153 metamorphosing juvenile Sea Lamprey Petromyzon marinus tagged with 12 mm PIT tags on three occasions using a simple surgical procedure. Results: Tag retention was 100% and 98.6% at 24 h and 28-105 d post-tagging. Of the lamprey that retained their tags, 87.3% had incisions sufficiently healed to prevent further loss. Survival was 100% and 92.7% at 24 h and 41-118 d post-tagging with no significant difference in survival between tagged and untagged control lamprey. Of the 11 lamprey that died, four had symptoms that indicated their death was directly related to tagging. Survival was positively correlated with Sea Lamprey length. Conclusions: Given the overall high level of survival and tag retention in this study, future studies can utilize 12 mm PIT tags to monitor metamorphosing juvenile Sea Lamprey movement and migration patterns.

  1. A Novel Multilayered RFID Tagged Cargo Integrity Assurance Scheme

    PubMed Central

    Yang, Ming Hour; Luo, Jia Ning; Lu, Shao Yong

    2015-01-01

    To minimize cargo theft during transport, mobile radio frequency identification (RFID) grouping proof methods are generally employed to ensure the integrity of entire cargo loads. However, conventional grouping proofs cannot simultaneously generate grouping proofs for a specific group of RFID tags. The most serious problem of these methods is that nonexistent tags are included in the grouping proofs because of the considerable amount of time it takes to scan a high number of tags. Thus, applying grouping proof methods in the current logistics industry is difficult. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a method for generating multilayered offline grouping proofs. The proposed method provides tag anonymity; moreover, resolving disputes between recipients and transporters over the integrity of cargo deliveries can be expedited by generating grouping proofs and automatically authenticating the consistency between the receipt proof and pick proof. The proposed method can also protect against replay attacks, multi-session attacks, and concurrency attacks. Finally, experimental results verify that, compared with other methods for generating grouping proofs, the proposed method can efficiently generate offline grouping proofs involving several parties in a supply chain using mobile RFID. PMID:26512673

  2. Harvesting Intelligence in Multimedia Social Tagging Systems

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Giannakidou, Eirini; Kaklidou, Foteini; Chatzilari, Elisavet; Kompatsiaris, Ioannis; Vakali, Athena

    As more people adopt tagging practices, social tagging systems tend to form rich knowledge repositories that enable the extraction of patterns reflecting the way content semantics is perceived by the web users. This is of particular importance, especially in the case of multimedia content, since the availability of such content in the web is very high and its efficient retrieval using textual annotations or content-based automatically extracted metadata still remains a challenge. It is argued that complementing multimedia analysis techniques with knowledge drawn from web social annotations may facilitate multimedia content management. This chapter focuses on analyzing tagging patterns and combining them with content feature extraction methods, generating, thus, intelligence from multimedia social tagging systems. Emphasis is placed on using all available "tracks" of knowledge, that is tag co-occurrence together with semantic relations among tags and low-level features of the content. Towards this direction, a survey on the theoretical background and the adopted practices for analysis of multimedia social content are presented. A case study from Flickr illustrates the efficiency of the proposed approach.

  3. A Hybrid Probabilistic Model for Unified Collaborative and Content-Based Image Tagging.

    PubMed

    Zhou, Ning; Cheung, William K; Qiu, Guoping; Xue, Xiangyang

    2011-07-01

    The increasing availability of large quantities of user contributed images with labels has provided opportunities to develop automatic tools to tag images to facilitate image search and retrieval. In this paper, we present a novel hybrid probabilistic model (HPM) which integrates low-level image features and high-level user provided tags to automatically tag images. For images without any tags, HPM predicts new tags based solely on the low-level image features. For images with user provided tags, HPM jointly exploits both the image features and the tags in a unified probabilistic framework to recommend additional tags to label the images. The HPM framework makes use of the tag-image association matrix (TIAM). However, since the number of images is usually very large and user-provided tags are diverse, TIAM is very sparse, thus making it difficult to reliably estimate tag-to-tag co-occurrence probabilities. We developed a collaborative filtering method based on nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) for tackling this data sparsity issue. Also, an L1 norm kernel method is used to estimate the correlations between image features and semantic concepts. The effectiveness of the proposed approach has been evaluated using three databases containing 5,000 images with 371 tags, 31,695 images with 5,587 tags, and 269,648 images with 5,018 tags, respectively.

  4. Simple purification method for a recombinantly expressed native His-tag-free aminopeptidase A from Lactobacillus delbrueckii.

    PubMed

    Stressler, Timo; Tanzer, Coralie; Ewert, Jacob; Claaßen, Wolfgang; Fischer, Lutz

    2017-03-01

    The aminopeptidase A (PepA; EC 3.4.11.7) is an intracellular exopeptidase present in lactic acid bacteria. The PepA cleaves glutamyl/aspartyl residues from the N-terminal end of peptides and can, therefore, be applied for the production of protein hydrolysates with an increased amount of these amino acids, which results in a savory taste (umami). The first PepA from a lactobacilli strain was recombinantly expressed in Escherichia coli in a recently published study and harbored a C-terminal His 6 -tag for easier purification. Due to the fact that a His-tag might influence the properties of an enzyme, a simple purification method for the non-His-tagged PepA was required. Surprisingly, the PepA precipitated at a very low ammonium sulfate concentration of 5%. Unusual for a precipitating step, the purity of PepA was over 95% and the obtained activity yield was 110%. The high purity allows biochemical characterization and kinetic investigation. As a result, the optimum pH (6.0-6.5) and temperature (60-65 °C) were comparable to the His 6 -tag harboring PepA; the K M value was at 0.79 mM slightly lower compared to 1.21 mM, respectively. Since PepA is a homo dodecamer, it has a high molecular mass of approximately 480 kDa. Therefore, a subsequent preparative size-exclusion chromatography (SEC) step seemed promising. The PepA after SEC was purified to homogeneity. In summary, the simple two-step purification method presented can be applied to purify high amounts of PepA that will allow the performance of experiments in the future to crystalize PepA for the first time. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  5. Probing the potential of CnaB-type domains for the design of tag/catcher systems

    PubMed Central

    Pröschel, Marlene; Kraner, Max E.; Horn, Anselm H. C.; Schäfer, Lena; Sonnewald, Uwe

    2017-01-01

    Building proteins into larger, post-translational assemblies in a defined and stable way is still a challenging task. A promising approach relies on so-called tag/catcher systems that are fused to the proteins of interest and allow a durable linkage via covalent intermolecular bonds. Tags and catchers are generated by splitting protein domains that contain intramolecular isopeptide or ester bonds that form autocatalytically under physiological conditions. There are already numerous biotechnological and medical applications that demonstrate the usefulness of covalent linkages mediated by these systems. Additional covalent tag/catcher systems would allow creating more complex and ultra-stable protein architectures and networks. Two of the presently available tag/catcher systems were derived from closely related CnaB-domains of Streptococcus pyogenes and Streptococcus dysgalactiae proteins. However, it is unclear whether domain splitting is generally tolerated within the CnaB-family or only by a small subset of these domains. To address this point, we have selected a set of four CnaB domains of low sequence similarity and characterized the resulting tag/catcher systems by computational and experimental methods. Experimental testing for intermolecular isopeptide bond formation demonstrated two of the four systems to be functional. For these two systems length and sequence variations of the peptide tags were investigated revealing only a relatively small effect on the efficiency of the reaction. Our study suggests that splitting into tag and catcher moieties is tolerated by a significant portion of the naturally occurring CnaB-domains, thus providing a large reservoir for the design of novel tag/catcher systems. PMID:28654665

  6. PIT Tagging Anurans

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    McCreary, Brome

    2008-01-01

    The following video demonstrates a procedure to insert a passive integrated transponder (PIT) tag under the skin of an anuran (frog or toad) for research and monitoring purposes. Typically, a 12.5 mm tag (0.5 in.) is used to uniquely identify individual anurans as smal as 40 mm (1.6 in.) in length from snout to vent. Smaller tags are also available and allow smaller anurans to be tagged. The procedure does not differ for other sizes of tages or other sizes of anurans. Anyone using this procedure should ensure that the tag is small enough to fit easily behind the sacral hump of the anuran, as shown in this video.

  7. Development of RAP Tag, a Novel Tagging System for Protein Detection and Purification.

    PubMed

    Fujii, Yuki; Kaneko, Mika K; Ogasawara, Satoshi; Yamada, Shinji; Yanaka, Miyuki; Nakamura, Takuro; Saidoh, Noriko; Yoshida, Kanae; Honma, Ryusuke; Kato, Yukinari

    2017-04-01

    Affinity tag systems, possessing high affinity and specificity, are useful for protein detection and purification. The most suitable tag for a particular purpose should be selected from many available affinity tag systems. In this study, we developed a novel affinity tag called the "RAP tag" system, which comprises a mouse antirat podoplanin monoclonal antibody (clone PMab-2) and the RAP tag (DMVNPGLEDRIE). This system is useful not only for protein detection in Western blotting, flow cytometry, and sandwich enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, but also for protein purification.

  8. ezTag: tagging biomedical concepts via interactive learning.

    PubMed

    Kwon, Dongseop; Kim, Sun; Wei, Chih-Hsuan; Leaman, Robert; Lu, Zhiyong

    2018-05-18

    Recently, advanced text-mining techniques have been shown to speed up manual data curation by providing human annotators with automated pre-annotations generated by rules or machine learning models. Due to the limited training data available, however, current annotation systems primarily focus only on common concept types such as genes or diseases. To support annotating a wide variety of biological concepts with or without pre-existing training data, we developed ezTag, a web-based annotation tool that allows curators to perform annotation and provide training data with humans in the loop. ezTag supports both abstracts in PubMed and full-text articles in PubMed Central. It also provides lexicon-based concept tagging as well as the state-of-the-art pre-trained taggers such as TaggerOne, GNormPlus and tmVar. ezTag is freely available at http://eztag.bioqrator.org.

  9. Novel Concrete Temperature Monitoring Method Based on an Embedded Passive RFID Sensor Tag.

    PubMed

    Liu, Yongsheng; Deng, Fangming; He, Yigang; Li, Bing; Liang, Zhen; Zhou, Shuangxi

    2017-06-22

    This paper firstly introduces the importance of temperature control in concrete measurement, then a passive radio frequency identification (RFID) sensor tag embedded for concrete temperature monitoring is presented. In order to reduce the influences of concrete electromagnetic parameters during the drying process, a T-type antenna is proposed to measure the concrete temperature at the required depth. The proposed RFID sensor tag is based on the EPC generation-2 ultra-high frequency (UHF) communication protocol and operates in passive mode. The temperature sensor can convert the sensor signals to corresponding digital signals without an external reference clock due to the adoption of phase-locked loop (PLL)-based architecture. Laboratory experimentation and on-site testing demonstrate that our sensor tag embedded in concrete can provide reliable communication performance in passive mode. The maximum communicating distance between reader and tag is 7 m at the operating frequency of 915 MHz and the tested results show high consistency with the results tested by a thermocouple.

  10. Novel Concrete Temperature Monitoring Method Based on an Embedded Passive RFID Sensor Tag

    PubMed Central

    Liu, Yongsheng; Deng, Fangming; He, Yigang; Li, Bing; Liang, Zhen; Zhou, Shuangxi

    2017-01-01

    This paper firstly introduces the importance of temperature control in concrete measurement, then a passive radio frequency identification (RFID) sensor tag embedded for concrete temperature monitoring is presented. In order to reduce the influences of concrete electromagnetic parameters during the drying process, a T-type antenna is proposed to measure the concrete temperature at the required depth. The proposed RFID sensor tag is based on the EPC generation-2 ultra-high frequency (UHF) communication protocol and operates in passive mode. The temperature sensor can convert the sensor signals to corresponding digital signals without an external reference clock due to the adoption of phase-locked loop (PLL)-based architecture. Laboratory experimentation and on-site testing demonstrate that our sensor tag embedded in concrete can provide reliable communication performance in passive mode. The maximum communicating distance between reader and tag is 7 m at the operating frequency of 915 MHz and the tested results show high consistency with the results tested by a thermocouple. PMID:28640188

  11. Novel and efficient tag SNPs selection algorithms.

    PubMed

    Chen, Wen-Pei; Hung, Che-Lun; Tsai, Suh-Jen Jane; Lin, Yaw-Ling

    2014-01-01

    SNPs are the most abundant forms of genetic variations amongst species; the association studies between complex diseases and SNPs or haplotypes have received great attention. However, these studies are restricted by the cost of genotyping all SNPs; thus, it is necessary to find smaller subsets, or tag SNPs, representing the rest of the SNPs. In fact, the existing tag SNP selection algorithms are notoriously time-consuming. An efficient algorithm for tag SNP selection was presented, which was applied to analyze the HapMap YRI data. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can achieve better performance than the existing tag SNP selection algorithms; in most cases, this proposed algorithm is at least ten times faster than the existing methods. In many cases, when the redundant ratio of the block is high, the proposed algorithm can even be thousands times faster than the previously known methods. Tools and web services for haplotype block analysis integrated by hadoop MapReduce framework are also developed using the proposed algorithm as computation kernels.

  12. Cutaneous skin tag

    MedlinePlus

    Skin tag; Acrochordon; Fibroepithelial polyp ... have diabetes. They are thought to occur from skin rubbing against skin. ... The tag sticks out of the skin and may have a short, narrow stalk connecting it to the surface of the skin. Some skin tags are as long as ...

  13. System and method for inventorying multiple remote objects

    DOEpatents

    Carrender, Curtis L.; Gilbert, Ronald W.

    2007-10-23

    A system and method of inventorying multiple objects utilizing a multi-level or a chained radio frequency identification system. The system includes a master tag and a plurality of upper level tags and lower level tags associated with respective objects. The upper and lower level tags communicate with each other and the master tag so that reading of the master tag reveals the presence and absence of upper and lower level tags. In the chained RF system, the upper and lower level tags communicate locally with each other in a manner so that more remote tags that are out of range of some of the upper and lower level tags have their information relayed through adjacent tags to the master tag and thence to a controller.

  14. System and method for inventorying multiple remote objects

    DOEpatents

    Carrender, Curtis L [Morgan Hill, CA; Gilbert, Ronald W [Morgan Hill, CA

    2009-12-29

    A system and method of inventorying multiple objects utilizing a multi-level or a chained radio frequency identification system. The system includes a master tag and a plurality of upper level tags and lower level tags associated with respective objects. The upper and lower level tags communicate with each other and the master tag so that reading of the master tag reveals the presence and absence of upper and lower level tags. In the chained RF system, the upper and lower level tags communicate locally with each other in a manner so that more remote tags that are out of range of some of the upper and lower level tags have their information relayed through adjacent tags to the master tag and thence to a controller.

  15. Vertical Movements and Patterns in Diving Behavior of Whale Sharks as Revealed by Pop-Up Satellite Tags in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico.

    PubMed

    Tyminski, John P; de la Parra-Venegas, Rafael; González Cano, Jaime; Hueter, Robert E

    2015-01-01

    The whale shark (Rhincodon typus) is a wide-ranging, filter-feeding species typically observed at or near the surface. This shark's sub-surface habits and behaviors have only begun to be revealed in recent years through the use of archival and satellite tagging technology. We attached pop-up satellite archival transmitting tags to 35 whale sharks in the southeastern Gulf of Mexico off the Yucatan Peninsula from 2003-2012 and three tags to whale sharks in the northeastern Gulf off Florida in 2010, to examine these sharks' long-term movement patterns and gain insight into the underlying factors influencing their vertical habitat selection. Archived data were received from 31 tags deployed on sharks of both sexes with total lengths of 5.5-9 m. Nine of these tags were physically recovered facilitating a detailed long-term view into the sharks' vertical movements. Whale sharks feeding inshore on fish eggs off the northeast Yucatan Peninsula demonstrated reverse diel vertical migration, with extended periods of surface swimming beginning at sunrise followed by an abrupt change in the mid-afternoon to regular vertical oscillations, a pattern that continued overnight. When in oceanic waters, sharks spent about 95% of their time within epipelagic depths (<200 m) but regularly undertook very deep ("extreme") dives (>500 m) that largely occurred during daytime or twilight hours (max. depth recorded 1,928 m), had V-shaped depth-time profiles, and comprised more rapid descents (0.68 m sec-1) than ascents (0.50 m sec-1). Nearly half of these extreme dives had descent profiles with brief but conspicuous changes in vertical direction at a mean depth of 475 m. We hypothesize these stutter steps represent foraging events within the deep scattering layer, however, the extreme dives may have additional functions. Overall, our results demonstrate complex and dynamic patterns of habitat utilization for R. typus that appear to be in response to changing biotic and abiotic conditions

  16. Vertical Movements and Patterns in Diving Behavior of Whale Sharks as Revealed by Pop-Up Satellite Tags in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico

    PubMed Central

    Tyminski, John P.; de la Parra-Venegas, Rafael; González Cano, Jaime; Hueter, Robert E.

    2015-01-01

    The whale shark (Rhincodon typus) is a wide-ranging, filter-feeding species typically observed at or near the surface. This shark’s sub-surface habits and behaviors have only begun to be revealed in recent years through the use of archival and satellite tagging technology. We attached pop-up satellite archival transmitting tags to 35 whale sharks in the southeastern Gulf of Mexico off the Yucatan Peninsula from 2003–2012 and three tags to whale sharks in the northeastern Gulf off Florida in 2010, to examine these sharks’ long-term movement patterns and gain insight into the underlying factors influencing their vertical habitat selection. Archived data were received from 31 tags deployed on sharks of both sexes with total lengths of 5.5–9 m. Nine of these tags were physically recovered facilitating a detailed long-term view into the sharks’ vertical movements. Whale sharks feeding inshore on fish eggs off the northeast Yucatan Peninsula demonstrated reverse diel vertical migration, with extended periods of surface swimming beginning at sunrise followed by an abrupt change in the mid-afternoon to regular vertical oscillations, a pattern that continued overnight. When in oceanic waters, sharks spent about 95% of their time within epipelagic depths (<200 m) but regularly undertook very deep (“extreme”) dives (>500 m) that largely occurred during daytime or twilight hours (max. depth recorded 1,928 m), had V-shaped depth-time profiles, and comprised more rapid descents (0.68 m sec-1) than ascents (0.50 m sec-1). Nearly half of these extreme dives had descent profiles with brief but conspicuous changes in vertical direction at a mean depth of 475 m. We hypothesize these stutter steps represent foraging events within the deep scattering layer, however, the extreme dives may have additional functions. Overall, our results demonstrate complex and dynamic patterns of habitat utilization for R. typus that appear to be in response to changing biotic and abiotic

  17. Measuring and Predicting Tag Importance for Image Retrieval.

    PubMed

    Li, Shangwen; Purushotham, Sanjay; Chen, Chen; Ren, Yuzhuo; Kuo, C-C Jay

    2017-12-01

    Textual data such as tags, sentence descriptions are combined with visual cues to reduce the semantic gap for image retrieval applications in today's Multimodal Image Retrieval (MIR) systems. However, all tags are treated as equally important in these systems, which may result in misalignment between visual and textual modalities during MIR training. This will further lead to degenerated retrieval performance at query time. To address this issue, we investigate the problem of tag importance prediction, where the goal is to automatically predict the tag importance and use it in image retrieval. To achieve this, we first propose a method to measure the relative importance of object and scene tags from image sentence descriptions. Using this as the ground truth, we present a tag importance prediction model to jointly exploit visual, semantic and context cues. The Structural Support Vector Machine (SSVM) formulation is adopted to ensure efficient training of the prediction model. Then, the Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA) is employed to learn the relation between the image visual feature and tag importance to obtain robust retrieval performance. Experimental results on three real-world datasets show a significant performance improvement of the proposed MIR with Tag Importance Prediction (MIR/TIP) system over other MIR systems.

  18. Tagging of Endogenous BK Channels with a Fluorogen-Activating Peptide Reveals β4-Mediated Control of Channel Clustering in Cerebellum

    PubMed Central

    Pratt, Christopher P.; Kuljis, Dika A.; Homanics, Gregg E.; He, Jianjun; Kolodieznyi, Dmytro; Dudem, Srikanth; Hollywood, Mark A.; Barth, Alison L.; Bruchez, Marcel P.

    2017-01-01

    BK channels are critical regulators of neuronal activity, controlling firing, neurotransmitter release, cerebellar function, and BK channel mutations have been linked to seizure disorders. Modulation of BK channel gating is well characterized, regulated by accessory subunit interactions, intracellular signaling pathways, and membrane potential. In contrast, the role of intracellular trafficking mechanisms in controlling BK channel function, especially in live cells, has been less studied. Fluorogen-activating peptides (FAPs) are well-suited for trafficking and physiological studies due to the binding of malachite green (MG)-based dyes with sub-nanomolar affinity to the FAP, resulting in bright, photostable, far-red fluorescence. Cell-excluded MG dyes enable the selective tagging of surface protein and tracking through endocytic pathways. We used CRISPR to insert the FAP at the extracellular N-terminus of BKα in the first exon of its native locus, enabling regulation by the native promoter elements and tag incorporation into multiple splice isoforms. Motor coordination was found to be normal; however, BK channel expression seems to be reduced in some locations. Alternate start site selection or post-translational proteolytic processing resulted in incomplete FAP tagging of the BKα proteins in brain tissues. In Purkinje cell somata, FAP revealed BK channel clustering previously only observed by electron microscopy. Measurement of these clusters in β4+/- and β4-/- mice showed that puncta number and cluster fluorescence intensity on the soma are reduced in β4-/- knockout animals. This novel mouse line provides a versatile fluorescent platform for studying endogenous BK channels in living and fixed tissues. Future studies could apply this line to ex vivo neuronal cultures to study live-cell channel trafficking. PMID:29163049

  19. Lamprey Tagging

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Colotelo, Alison; Deters, Kate

    2017-05-26

    Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has developed a super-small acoustic tracking tag designed just for juvenile lamprey. In this video, PNNL researcher Alison Colotelo describes how she and her colleague Kate Deters inject young lamprey with the PNNL tag.

  20. Tag-to-Tag Interference Suppression Technique Based on Time Division for RFID.

    PubMed

    Khadka, Grishma; Hwang, Suk-Seung

    2017-01-01

    Radio-frequency identification (RFID) is a tracking technology that enables immediate automatic object identification and rapid data sharing for a wide variety of modern applications using radio waves for data transmission from a tag to a reader. RFID is already well established in technical areas, and many companies have developed corresponding standards and measurement techniques. In the construction industry, effective monitoring of materials and equipment is an important task, and RFID helps to improve monitoring and controlling capabilities, in addition to enabling automation for construction projects. However, on construction sites, there are many tagged objects and multiple RFID tags that may interfere with each other's communications. This reduces the reliability and efficiency of the RFID system. In this paper, we propose an anti-collision algorithm for communication between multiple tags and a reader. In order to suppress interference signals from multiple neighboring tags, the proposed algorithm employs the time-division (TD) technique, where tags in the interrogation zone are assigned a specific time slot so that at every instance in time, a reader communicates with tags using the specific time slot. We present representative computer simulation examples to illustrate the performance of the proposed anti-collision technique for multiple RFID tags.

  1. Photon-tagged and B-meson-tagged b-jet production at the LHC

    DOE PAGES

    Huang, Jinrui; Kang, Zhong -Bo; Vitev, Ivan; ...

    2015-09-18

    Tagged jet measurements in high energy hadronic and nuclear reactions provide constraints on the energy and parton flavor origin of the parton shower that recoils against the tagging particle. Such additional insight can be especially beneficial in illuminating the mechanisms of heavy flavor production in proton–proton collisions at the LHC and their modification in the heavy ion environment, which are not fully understood. With this motivation, we present theoretical results for isolated-photon-tagged and B-meson-tagged b-jet production at √s NN = 5.1 TeV for comparison to the upcoming lead–lead data. We find that photon-tagged b-jets exhibit smaller momentum imbalance shift inmore » nuclear matter, and correspondingly smaller energy loss, than photon-tagged light flavor jets. Our results show that B-meson tagging is most effective in ensuring that the dominant fraction of recoiling jets originate from prompt b-quarks. Furthermore, in this channel the large suppression of the cross section is not accompanied by a significant momentum imbalance shift.« less

  2. Improved Tandem Affinity Purification Tag and Methods for Isolation of Proteins and Protein Complexes from Schizosaccharomyces pombe.

    PubMed

    Zilio, Nicola; Boddy, Michael N

    2017-03-01

    The tandem affinity purification (TAP) method uses an epitope that contains two different affinity purification tags separated by a site-specific protease site to isolate a protein rapidly and easily. Proteins purified via the TAP tag are eluted under mild conditions, allowing them to be used for structural and biochemical analyses. The original TAP tag contains a calmodulin-binding peptide and the IgG-binding domain from protein A separated by a tobacco etch virus (TEV) protease cleavage site. After capturing the Protein A epitope on an IgG resin, bound proteins are released by incubation with the TEV protease and then isolated on a calmodulin matrix in the presence of calcium; elution from this resin is achieved by chelating calcium with EGTA. However, because the robustness of the calmodulin-binding step in this procedure is highly variable, we replaced the calmodulin-binding peptide with three copies of the FLAG epitope, (3× FLAG)-TEV-Protein A, which can be isolated using an anti-FLAG resin. Elution from this matrix is achieved in the presence of an excess of a 3× FLAG peptide. In addition to allowing proteins to be released under mild conditions, elution by the 3× FLAG peptide adds an extra layer of specificity to the TAP procedure, because it liberates only FLAG-tagged proteins. © 2017 Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press.

  3. Quantifying avian predation on fish populations: integrating predator-specific deposition probabilities in tag-recovery studies

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Hostetter, Nathan J.; Evans, Allen F.; Cramer, Bradley M.; Collis, Ken; Lyons, Donald E.; Roby, Daniel D.

    2015-01-01

    Accurate assessment of specific mortality factors is vital to prioritize recovery actions for threatened and endangered species. For decades, tag recovery methods have been used to estimate fish mortality due to avian predation. Predation probabilities derived from fish tag recoveries on piscivorous waterbird colonies typically reflect minimum estimates of predation due to an unknown and unaccounted-for fraction of tags that are consumed but not deposited on-colony (i.e., deposition probability). We applied an integrated tag recovery modeling approach in a Bayesian context to estimate predation probabilities that accounted for predator-specific tag detection and deposition probabilities in a multiple-predator system. Studies of PIT tag deposition were conducted across three bird species nesting at seven different colonies in the Columbia River basin, USA. Tag deposition probabilities differed significantly among predator species (Caspian ternsHydroprogne caspia: deposition probability = 0.71, 95% credible interval [CRI] = 0.51–0.89; double-crested cormorants Phalacrocorax auritus: 0.51, 95% CRI = 0.34–0.70; California gulls Larus californicus: 0.15, 95% CRI = 0.11–0.21) but showed little variation across trials within a species or across years. Data from a 6-year study (2008–2013) of PIT-tagged juvenile Snake River steelhead Oncorhynchus mykiss (listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act) indicated that colony-specific predation probabilities ranged from less than 0.01 to 0.17 and varied by predator species, colony location, and year. Integrating the predator-specific deposition probabilities increased the predation probabilities by a factor of approximately 1.4 for Caspian terns, 2.0 for double-crested cormorants, and 6.7 for California gulls compared with traditional minimum predation rate methods, which do not account for deposition probabilities. Results supported previous findings on the high predation impacts from strictly piscivorous

  4. Utility of biological sensor tags in animal conservation.

    PubMed

    Wilson, A D M; Wikelski, M; Wilson, R P; Cooke, S J

    2015-08-01

    Electronic tags (both biotelemetry and biologging platforms) have informed conservation and resource management policy and practice by providing vital information on the spatial ecology of animals and their environments. However, the extent of the contribution of biological sensors (within electronic tags) that measure an animal's state (e.g., heart rate, body temperature, and details of locomotion and energetics) is less clear. A literature review revealed that, despite a growing number of commercially available state sensor tags and enormous application potential for such devices in animal biology, there are relatively few examples of their application to conservation. Existing applications fell under 4 main themes: quantifying disturbance (e.g., ecotourism, vehicular and aircraft traffic), examining the effects of environmental change (e.g., climate change), understanding the consequences of habitat use and selection, and estimating energy expenditure. We also identified several other ways in which sensor tags could benefit conservation, such as determining the potential efficacy of management interventions. With increasing sensor diversity of commercially available platforms, less invasive attachment techniques, smaller device sizes, and more researchers embracing such technology, we suggest that biological sensor tags be considered a part of the necessary toolbox for conservation. This approach can measure (in real time) the state of free-ranging animals and thus provide managers with objective, timely, relevant, and accurate data to inform policy and decision making. © 2015 Society for Conservation Biology.

  5. Learning to rank image tags with limited training examples.

    PubMed

    Songhe Feng; Zheyun Feng; Rong Jin

    2015-04-01

    With an increasing number of images that are available in social media, image annotation has emerged as an important research topic due to its application in image matching and retrieval. Most studies cast image annotation into a multilabel classification problem. The main shortcoming of this approach is that it requires a large number of training images with clean and complete annotations in order to learn a reliable model for tag prediction. We address this limitation by developing a novel approach that combines the strength of tag ranking with the power of matrix recovery. Instead of having to make a binary decision for each tag, our approach ranks tags in the descending order of their relevance to the given image, significantly simplifying the problem. In addition, the proposed method aggregates the prediction models for different tags into a matrix, and casts tag ranking into a matrix recovery problem. It introduces the matrix trace norm to explicitly control the model complexity, so that a reliable prediction model can be learned for tag ranking even when the tag space is large and the number of training images is limited. Experiments on multiple well-known image data sets demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework for tag ranking compared with the state-of-the-art approaches for image annotation and tag ranking.

  6. New trends and affinity tag designs for recombinant protein purification.

    PubMed

    Wood, David W

    2014-06-01

    Engineered purification tags can facilitate very efficient purification of recombinant proteins, resulting in high yields and purities in a few standard steps. Over the years, many different purification tags have been developed, including short peptides, epitopes, folded protein domains, non-chromatographic tags and more recently, compound multifunctional tags with optimized capabilities. Although classic proteases are still primarily used to remove the tags from target proteins, new self-cleaving methods are gaining traction as a highly convenient alternative. In this review, we discuss some of these emerging trends, and examine their potential impacts and remaining challenges in recombinant protein research. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  7. Diazirines as Potential Molecular Imaging Tags: Probing the Requirements for Efficient and Long-Lived SABRE-Induced Hyperpolarization.

    PubMed

    Shen, Kun; Logan, Angus W J; Colell, Johannes F P; Bae, Junu; Ortiz, Gerardo X; Theis, Thomas; Warren, Warren S; Malcolmson, Steven J; Wang, Qiu

    2017-09-25

    Diazirines are an attractive class of potential molecular tags for magnetic resonance imaging owing to their biocompatibility and ease of incorporation into a large variety of molecules. As recently reported, 15 N 2 -diazirine can be hyperpolarized by the SABRE-SHEATH method, sustaining both singlet and magnetization states, thus offering a path to long-lived polarization storage. Herein, we show the generality of this approach by illustrating that the diazirine tag alone is sufficient for achieving excellent signal enhancements with long-lasting polarization. Our investigations reveal the critical role of Lewis basic additives, including water, on achieving SABRE-promoted hyperpolarization. The application of this strategy to a 15 N 2 -diazirine-containing choline derivative demonstrates the potential of 15 N 2 -diazirines as molecular imaging tags for biomedical applications. © 2017 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

  8. New ligation independent cloning vectors for expression of recombinant proteins with a self-cleaving CPD/6xHis-tag.

    PubMed

    Biancucci, Marco; Dolores, Jazel S; Wong, Jennifer; Grimshaw, Sarah; Anderson, Wayne F; Satchell, Karla J F; Kwon, Keehwan

    2017-01-05

    Recombinant protein purification is a crucial step for biochemistry and structural biology fields. Rapid robust purification methods utilize various peptide or protein tags fused to the target protein for affinity purification using corresponding matrices and to enhance solubility. However, affinity/solubility-tags often need to be removed in order to conduct functional and structural studies, adding complexities to purification protocols. In this work, the Vibrio cholerae MARTX toxin Cysteine Protease Domain (CPD) was inserted in a ligation-independent cloning (LIC) vector to create a C-terminal 6xHis-tagged inducible autoprocessing enzyme tag, called "the CPD-tag". The pCPD and alternative pCPD/ccdB cloning vectors allow for easy insertion of DNA and expression of the target protein fused to the CPD-tag, which is removed at the end of the purification step by addition of the inexpensive small molecule inositol hexakisphosphate to induce CPD autoprocessing. This process is demonstrated using a small bacterial membrane localization domain and for high yield purification of the eukaryotic small GTPase KRas. Subsequently, pCPD was tested with 40 proteins or sub-domains selected from a high throughput crystallization pipeline. pCPD vectors are easily used LIC compatible vectors for expression of recombinant proteins with a C-terminal CPD/6xHis-tag. Although intended only as a strategy for rapid tag removal, this pilot study revealed the CPD-tag may also increase expression and solubility of some recombinant proteins.

  9. Extending birthday paradox theory to estimate the number of tags in RFID systems.

    PubMed

    Shakiba, Masoud; Singh, Mandeep Jit; Sundararajan, Elankovan; Zavvari, Azam; Islam, Mohammad Tariqul

    2014-01-01

    The main objective of Radio Frequency Identification systems is to provide fast identification for tagged objects. However, there is always a chance of collision, when tags transmit their data to the reader simultaneously. Collision is a time-consuming event that reduces the performance of RFID systems. Consequently, several anti-collision algorithms have been proposed in the literature. Dynamic Framed Slotted ALOHA (DFSA) is one of the most popular of these algorithms. DFSA dynamically modifies the frame size based on the number of tags. Since the real number of tags is unknown, it needs to be estimated. Therefore, an accurate tag estimation method has an important role in increasing the efficiency and overall performance of the tag identification process. In this paper, we propose a novel estimation technique for DFSA anti-collision algorithms that applies birthday paradox theory to estimate the number of tags accurately. The analytical discussion and simulation results prove that the proposed method increases the accuracy of tag estimation and, consequently, outperforms previous schemes.

  10. Understanding why users tag: A survey of tagging motivation literature and results from an empirical study.

    PubMed

    Strohmaier, Markus; Körner, Christian; Kern, Roman

    2012-12-01

    While recent progress has been achieved in understanding the structure and dynamics of social tagging systems, we know little about the underlying user motivations for tagging, and how they influence resulting folksonomies and tags. This paper addresses three issues related to this question. (1) What distinctions of user motivations are identified by previous research, and in what ways are the motivations of users amenable to quantitative analysis? (2) To what extent does tagging motivation vary across different social tagging systems? (3) How does variability in user motivation influence resulting tags and folksonomies? In this paper, we present measures to detect whether a tagger is primarily motivated by categorizing or describing resources, and apply these measures to datasets from seven different tagging systems. Our results show that (a) users' motivation for tagging varies not only across, but also within tagging systems, and that (b) tag agreement among users who are motivated by categorizing resources is significantly lower than among users who are motivated by describing resources . Our findings are relevant for (1) the development of tag-based user interfaces, (2) the analysis of tag semantics and (3) the design of search algorithms for social tagging systems.

  11. Understanding why users tag: A survey of tagging motivation literature and results from an empirical study

    PubMed Central

    Strohmaier, Markus; Körner, Christian; Kern, Roman

    2012-01-01

    While recent progress has been achieved in understanding the structure and dynamics of social tagging systems, we know little about the underlying user motivations for tagging, and how they influence resulting folksonomies and tags. This paper addresses three issues related to this question. (1) What distinctions of user motivations are identified by previous research, and in what ways are the motivations of users amenable to quantitative analysis? (2) To what extent does tagging motivation vary across different social tagging systems? (3) How does variability in user motivation influence resulting tags and folksonomies? In this paper, we present measures to detect whether a tagger is primarily motivated by categorizing or describing resources, and apply these measures to datasets from seven different tagging systems. Our results show that (a) users’ motivation for tagging varies not only across, but also within tagging systems, and that (b) tag agreement among users who are motivated by categorizing resources is significantly lower than among users who are motivated by describing resources. Our findings are relevant for (1) the development of tag-based user interfaces, (2) the analysis of tag semantics and (3) the design of search algorithms for social tagging systems. PMID:23471473

  12. Tag retention, growth, and survival of red swamp crayfish marked with a visible implant tag

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Isely, J.J.; Stockett, P.E.

    2001-01-01

    Eighty juvenile (means: 42.4 mm total length, 1.6 g) red swamp crayfish Procambarus clarkii were implanted with sequentially numbered visible implant tags and held in the laboratory. Tags were injected transversely into the musculature just beneath the exoskeleton of the third abdominal segment from the cephalothorax; tags were visible upon inspection. An additional 20 crayfish were left untagged and served as controls. After 150 d, tag retention was 80% and all tags were readable. No tagged crayfish died during the study, and no differences in total length or weight were detected between tagged and control crayfish. All individuals molted at least three times during the 150-d study, and some individuals molted up to six times, suggesting that most tags would be permanently retained. The readability in the field without specialized equipment makes the visible implant tag ideal for studies of crayfish ecology, management, and culture.

  13. Method to produce acetyldiacylglycerols (ac-TAGs) by expression of an acetyltransferase gene isolated from Euonymus alatus (burning bush)

    DOEpatents

    Durrett, Timothy; Ohlrogge, John; Pollard, Michael

    2016-05-03

    The present invention relates to novel diacylglycerol acyltransferase genes and proteins, and methods of their use. In particular, the invention describes genes encoding proteins having diacylglycerol acetyltransferase activity, specifically for transferring an acetyl group to a diacylglycerol substrate to form acetyl-Triacylglycerols (ac-TAGS), for example, a 3-acetyl-1,2-diacyl-sn-glycerol. The present invention encompasses both native and recombinant wild-type forms of the transferase, as well as mutants and variant forms. The present invention also relates to methods of using novel diacylglycerol acyltransferase genes and proteins, including their expression in transgenic organisms at commercially viable levels, for increasing production of 3-acetyl-1,2-diacyl-sn-glycerols in plant oils and altering the composition of oils produced by microorganisms, such as yeast, by increasing ac-TAG production. Additionally, oils produced by methods of the present inventions comprising genes and proteins are contemplated for use as biodiesel fuel, in polymer production and as naturally produced food oils with reduced calories.

  14. Iodine Tagging Velocimetry in a Mach 10 Wake

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Balla, Robert Jeffrey

    2013-01-01

    A variation on molecular tagging velocimetry (MTV) [1] designated iodine tagging velocimetry (ITV) is demonstrated. Molecular iodine is tagged by two-photon absorption using an Argon Fluoride (ArF) excimer laser. A single camera measures fluid displacement using atomic iodine emission at 206 nm. Two examples ofMTVfor cold-flowmeasurements areN2OMTV [2] and Femtosecond Laser Electronic Excitation Tagging [3]. These, like most MTV methods, are designed for atmospheric pressure applications. Neither can be implemented at the low pressures (0.1- 1 Torr) in typical hypersonic wakes. Of all the single-laser/singlecamera MTV approaches, only Nitric-Oxide Planar Laser Induced Fluorescence-based MTV [4] has been successfully demonstrated in a Mach 10 wake. Oxygen quenching limits transit times to 500 ns and accuracy to typically 30%. The present note describes the photophysics of the ITV method. Off-body velocimetry along a line is demonstrated in the aerothermodynamically important and experimentally challenging region of a hypersonic low-pressure near-wake in a Mach 10 air wind tunnel. Transit times up to 10 µs are demonstrated with conservative errors of 10%.

  15. High-throughput purification of recombinant proteins using self-cleaving intein tags.

    PubMed

    Coolbaugh, M J; Shakalli Tang, M J; Wood, D W

    2017-01-01

    High throughput methods for recombinant protein production using E. coli typically involve the use of affinity tags for simple purification of the protein of interest. One drawback of these techniques is the occasional need for tag removal before study, which can be hard to predict. In this work, we demonstrate two high throughput purification methods for untagged protein targets based on simple and cost-effective self-cleaving intein tags. Two model proteins, E. coli beta-galactosidase (βGal) and superfolder green fluorescent protein (sfGFP), were purified using self-cleaving versions of the conventional chitin-binding domain (CBD) affinity tag and the nonchromatographic elastin-like-polypeptide (ELP) precipitation tag in a 96-well filter plate format. Initial tests with shake flask cultures confirmed that the intein purification scheme could be scaled down, with >90% pure product generated in a single step using both methods. The scheme was then validated in a high throughput expression platform using 24-well plate cultures followed by purification in 96-well plates. For both tags and with both target proteins, the purified product was consistently obtained in a single-step, with low well-to-well and plate-to-plate variability. This simple method thus allows the reproducible production of highly pure untagged recombinant proteins in a convenient microtiter plate format. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  16. Application of Paramagnetically Tagged Molecules for Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Biofilm Mass Transport Processes▿

    PubMed Central

    Ramanan, B.; Holmes, W. M.; Sloan, W. T.; Phoenix, V. R.

    2010-01-01

    Molecules become readily visible by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) when labeled with a paramagnetic tag. Consequently, MRI can be used to image their transport through porous media. In this study, we demonstrated that this method could be applied to image mass transport processes in biofilms. The transport of a complex of gadolinium and diethylenetriamine pentaacetic acid (Gd-DTPA), a commercially available paramagnetic molecule, was imaged both in agar (as a homogeneous test system) and in a phototrophic biofilm. The images collected were T1 weighted, where T1 is an MRI property of the biofilm and is dependent on Gd-DTPA concentration. A calibration protocol was applied to convert T1 parameter maps into concentration maps, thus revealing the spatially resolved concentrations of this tracer at different time intervals. Comparing the data obtained from the agar experiment with data from a one-dimensional diffusion model revealed that transport of Gd-DTPA in agar was purely via diffusion, with a diffusion coefficient of 7.2 × 10−10 m2 s−1. In contrast, comparison of data from the phototrophic biofilm experiment with data from a two-dimensional diffusion model revealed that transport of Gd-DTPA inside the biofilm was by both diffusion and advection, equivalent to a diffusion coefficient of 1.04 × 10−9 m2 s−1. This technology can be used to further explore mass transport processes in biofilms, either by using the wide range of commercially available paramagnetically tagged molecules and nanoparticles or by using bespoke tagged molecules. PMID:20435773

  17. Barium Tagging for nEXO

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Fudenberg, Daniel; Brunner, Thomas; Varentsov, Victor; Devoe, Ralph; Dilling, Jens; Gratta, Giorgio; nEXO Collaboration

    2015-10-01

    nEXO is a next-generation experiment designed to search for 0 νββ -decay of Xe-136 in a liquid xenon time projection chamber. Positive observation of this decay would determine the neutrino to be a Majorana particle In order to greatly reduce background contributions to this search, the collaboration is developing several ``barium tagging'' techniques to recover and identify the decay daughter, Ba-136. ``Tagging'' may be available for a 2nd phase of nEXO and will push the sensitivity beyond the inverted neutrino-mass hierarchy. Tagging methods in testing for this phase include Ba-ion capture on a probe with identification by resonance ionization laser spectroscopy, and Ba capture in solid xenon on a cold probe with identification by fluorescence. In addition, Ba tagging for a gas-phase detector, appropriate for a later stage, is being tested. Here efficient ion extraction from heavy carrier gases is key. Detailed gas-dynamic and ion transport calculations have been performed to optimize for ion extraction. An apparatus to extract Ba ions from up to 10 bar xenon gas into vacuum using an RF-only funnel has been constructed and demonstrates extraction of ions from noble gases. We will present this system's status along with results of this R&D program.

  18. Multi-Threaded DNA Tag/Anti-Tag Library Generator for Multi-Core Platforms

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2009-05-01

    base pair)  Watson ‐ Crick  strand pairs that bind perfectly within pairs, but poorly across pairs. A variety  of  DNA  strand hybridization metrics...AFRL-RI-RS-TR-2009-131 Final Technical Report May 2009 MULTI-THREADED DNA TAG/ANTI-TAG LIBRARY GENERATOR FOR MULTI-CORE PLATFORMS...TYPE Final 3. DATES COVERED (From - To) Jun 08 – Feb 09 4. TITLE AND SUBTITLE MULTI-THREADED DNA TAG/ANTI-TAG LIBRARY GENERATOR FOR MULTI-CORE

  19. Security techniques for prevention of rank manipulation in social tagging services including robotic domains.

    PubMed

    Choi, Okkyung; Jung, Hanyoung; Moon, Seungbin

    2014-01-01

    With smartphone distribution becoming common and robotic applications on the rise, social tagging services for various applications including robotic domains have advanced significantly. Though social tagging plays an important role when users are finding the exact information through web search, reliability and semantic relation between web contents and tags are not considered. Spams are making ill use of this aspect and put irrelevant tags deliberately on contents and induce users to advertise contents when they click items of search results. Therefore, this study proposes a detection method for tag-ranking manipulation to solve the problem of the existing methods which cannot guarantee the reliability of tagging. Similarity is measured for ranking the grade of registered tag on the contents, and weighted values of each tag are measured by means of synonym relevance, frequency, and semantic distances between tags. Lastly, experimental evaluation results are provided and its efficiency and accuracy are verified through them.

  20. Security Techniques for Prevention of Rank Manipulation in Social Tagging Services including Robotic Domains

    PubMed Central

    2014-01-01

    With smartphone distribution becoming common and robotic applications on the rise, social tagging services for various applications including robotic domains have advanced significantly. Though social tagging plays an important role when users are finding the exact information through web search, reliability and semantic relation between web contents and tags are not considered. Spams are making ill use of this aspect and put irrelevant tags deliberately on contents and induce users to advertise contents when they click items of search results. Therefore, this study proposes a detection method for tag-ranking manipulation to solve the problem of the existing methods which cannot guarantee the reliability of tagging. Similarity is measured for ranking the grade of registered tag on the contents, and weighted values of each tag are measured by means of synonym relevance, frequency, and semantic distances between tags. Lastly, experimental evaluation results are provided and its efficiency and accuracy are verified through them. PMID:25114975

  1. Serotype determination of Salmonella by xTAG assay.

    PubMed

    Zheng, Zhibei; Zheng, Wei; Wang, Haoqiu; Pan, Jincao; Pu, Xiaoying

    2017-10-01

    Currently, no protocols or commercial kits are available to determine the serotypes of Salmonella by using Luminex MAGPIX®. In this study, an xTAG assay for serotype determination of Salmonella suitable for Luminex MAGPIX® is described and 228 Salmonella isolates were serotype determined by this xTAG assay. The xTAG assay consists of two steps: 1) Multiplex PCR to amplify simultaneously O, H and Vi antigen genes of Salmonella, and 2) Magplex-TAG™ microsphere hybridization to identify accurately the specific PCR products of different antigens. Compared with the serotyping results of traditional serum agglutination test, the sensitivity and specificity of the xTAG assay were 95.1% and 100%, respectively. The agreement rate of these two assays was 95.2%. Compared with Luminex xMAP® Salmonella Serotyping Assay (SSA) kit, the advantages of this xTAG assay are: First, the magnetic beads make it applicable to both the Luminex®100/200™ and MAGPIX® systems. Second, only primers rather than both primers and probes are needed in the xTAG assay, and the process of coupling antigen-specific oligonucleotide probes to beads is circumvented, which make the xTAG assay convenient to be utilized by other laboratories. The xTAG assay may serve as a rapid alternative or complementary method for traditional Salmonella serotyping tests, especially for laboratories that utilize the MAGPIX® systems. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  2. Fully printed flexible and disposable wireless cyclic voltammetry tag.

    PubMed

    Jung, Younsu; Park, Hyejin; Park, Jin-Ah; Noh, Jinsoo; Choi, Yunchang; Jung, Minhoon; Jung, Kyunghwan; Pyo, Myungho; Chen, Kevin; Javey, Ali; Cho, Gyoujin

    2015-01-29

    A disposable cyclic voltammetry (CV) tag is printed on a plastic film by integrating wireless power transmitter, polarized triangle wave generator, electrochemical cell and signage through a scalable gravure printing method. By proximity of 13.56 MHz RF reader, the printed CV tag generates 320 mHz of triangular sweep wave from +500 mV to -500 mV which enable to scan a printed electrochemical cell in the CV tag. By simply dropping any specimen solution on the electrochemical cell in the CV tag, the presence of solutes in the solution can be detected and shown on the signage of the CV tag in five sec. 10 mM of N,N,N',N'-tetramethyl-p-phenylenediamine (TMPD) was used as a standard solute to prove the working concept of fully printed disposable wireless CV tag. Within five seconds, we can wirelessly diagnose the presence of TMPD in the solution using the CV tag in the proximity of the 13.56 MHz RF reader. This fully printed and wirelessly operated flexible CV tag is the first of its kind and marks the path for the utilization of inexpensive and disposable wireless electrochemical sensor systems for initial diagnose hazardous chemicals and biological molecules to improve public hygiene and health.

  3. Fully printed flexible and disposable wireless cyclic voltammetry tag

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Jung, Younsu; Park, Hyejin; Park, Jin-Ah; Noh, Jinsoo; Choi, Yunchang; Jung, Minhoon; Jung, Kyunghwan; Pyo, Myungho; Chen, Kevin; Javey, Ali; Cho, Gyoujin

    2015-01-01

    A disposable cyclic voltammetry (CV) tag is printed on a plastic film by integrating wireless power transmitter, polarized triangle wave generator, electrochemical cell and signage through a scalable gravure printing method. By proximity of 13.56 MHz RF reader, the printed CV tag generates 320 mHz of triangular sweep wave from +500 mV to -500 mV which enable to scan a printed electrochemical cell in the CV tag. By simply dropping any specimen solution on the electrochemical cell in the CV tag, the presence of solutes in the solution can be detected and shown on the signage of the CV tag in five sec. 10 mM of N,N,N',N'-tetramethyl-p-phenylenediamine (TMPD) was used as a standard solute to prove the working concept of fully printed disposable wireless CV tag. Within five seconds, we can wirelessly diagnose the presence of TMPD in the solution using the CV tag in the proximity of the 13.56 MHz RF reader. This fully printed and wirelessly operated flexible CV tag is the first of its kind and marks the path for the utilization of inexpensive and disposable wireless electrochemical sensor systems for initial diagnose hazardous chemicals and biological molecules to improve public hygiene and health.

  4. PATL: A RFID Tag Localization based on Phased Array Antenna.

    PubMed

    Qiu, Lanxin; Liang, Xiaoxuan; Huang, Zhangqin

    2017-03-15

    In RFID systems, how to detect the position precisely is an important and challenging research topic. In this paper, we propose a range-free 2D tag localization method based on phased array antenna, called PATL. This method takes advantage of the adjustable radiation angle of the phased array antenna to scan the surveillance region in turns. By using the statistics of the tags' number in different antenna beam directions, a weighting algorithm is used to calculate the position of the tag. This method can be applied to real-time location of multiple targets without usage of any reference tags or additional readers. Additionally, we present an optimized weighting method based on RSSI to increase the locating accuracy. We use a Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) UHF RFID reader which is integrated with a phased array antenna to evaluate our method. The experiment results from an indoor office environment demonstrate the average distance error of PATL is about 21 cm and the optimized approach achieves an accuracy of 13 cm. This novel 2D localization scheme is a simple, yet promising, solution that is especially applicable to the smart shelf visualized management in storage or retail area.

  5. Signature-tagged mutagenesis screening revealed a novel smooth-to-rough transition determinant of Salmonella enterica serovar Enteritidis.

    PubMed

    Jiao, Yang; Guo, Rongxian; Tang, Peipei; Kang, Xilong; Yin, Junlei; Wu, Kaiyue; Geng, Shizhong; Li, Qiuchun; Sun, Jun; Xu, Xiulong; Zhou, Xiaohui; Gan, Junji; Jiao, Xinan; Liu, Xiufan; Pan, Zhiming

    2017-03-03

    Salmonella enterica serovar Enteritidis (S. Enteritidis) has emerged as one of the most important food-borne pathogens for humans. Lipopolysaccharide (LPS), as a component of the outer membrane, is responsible for the virulence and smooth-to-rough transition in S. Enteritidis. In this study, we screened S. Enteritidis signature-tagged transposon mutant library using monoclonal antibody against somatic O 9 antigen (O 9 MAb) and O 9 factor rabbit antiserum to identify novel genes that are involved in smooth-to-rough transition. A total of 480 mutants were screened and one mutant with transposon insertion in rfbG gene had smooth-to-rough transition phenotype. In order to verify the role of rfbG gene, an rfbG insertion or deletion mutant was constructed using λ-Red recombination system. Phenotypic and biological analysis revealed that rfbG insertion or deletion mutants were similar to the wild-type strain in growth rate and biochemical properties, but the swimming motility was reduced. SE Slide Agglutination test and ELISA test showed that rfbG mutants do not stimulate animals to produce agglutinating antibody. In addition, the half-lethal dose (LD 50 ) of the rfbG deletion mutant strain was 10 6.6 -fold higher than that of the parent strain in a mouse model when injected intraperitoneally. These data indicate that the rfbG gene is involved in smooth-to-rough transition, swimming motility and virulence of S. Enteritidis. Furthermore, somatic O-antigen antibody-based approach to screen signature-tagged transposon mutants is feasible to clarify LPS biosynthesis and to find suitable markers in DIVA-vaccine research.

  6. HaloTag Technology: A Versatile Platform for Biomedical Applications

    PubMed Central

    2015-01-01

    Exploration of protein function and interaction is critical for discovering links among genomics, proteomics, and disease state; yet, the immense complexity of proteomics found in biological systems currently limits our investigational capacity. Although affinity and autofluorescent tags are widely employed for protein analysis, these methods have been met with limited success because they lack specificity and require multiple fusion tags and genetic constructs. As an alternative approach, the innovative HaloTag protein fusion platform allows protein function and interaction to be comprehensively analyzed using a single genetic construct with multiple capabilities. This is accomplished using a simplified process, in which a variable HaloTag ligand binds rapidly to the HaloTag protein (usually linked to the protein of interest) with high affinity and specificity. In this review, we examine all current applications of the HaloTag technology platform for biomedical applications, such as the study of protein isolation and purification, protein function, protein–protein and protein–DNA interactions, biological assays, in vitro cellular imaging, and in vivo molecular imaging. In addition, novel uses of the HaloTag platform are briefly discussed along with potential future applications. PMID:25974629

  7. Evolving effective behaviours to interact with tag-based populations

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Yucel, Osman; Crawford, Chad; Sen, Sandip

    2015-07-01

    Tags and other characteristics, externally perceptible features that are consistent among groups of animals or humans, can be used by others to determine appropriate response strategies in societies. This usage of tags can be extended to artificial environments, where agents can significantly reduce cognitive effort spent on appropriate strategy choice and behaviour selection by reusing strategies for interacting with new partners based on their tags. Strategy selection mechanisms developed based on this idea have successfully evolved stable cooperation in games such as the Prisoner's Dilemma game but relies upon payoff sharing and matching methods that limit the applicability of the tag framework. Our goal is to develop a general classification and behaviour selection approach based on the tag framework. We propose and evaluate alternative tag matching and adaptation schemes for a new, incoming individual to select appropriate behaviour against any population member of an existing, stable society. Our proposed approach allows agents to evolve both the optimal tag for the environment as well as appropriate strategies for existing agent groups. We show that these mechanisms will allow for robust selection of optimal strategies by agents entering a stable society and analyse the various environments where this approach is effective.

  8. Strep-Tagged Protein Purification.

    PubMed

    Maertens, Barbara; Spriestersbach, Anne; Kubicek, Jan; Schäfer, Frank

    2015-01-01

    The Strep-tag system can be used to purify recombinant proteins from any expression system. Here, protocols for lysis and affinity purification of Strep-tagged proteins from E. coli, baculovirus-infected insect cells, and transfected mammalian cells are given. Depending on the amount of Strep-tagged protein in the lysate, a protocol for batch binding and subsequent washing and eluting by gravity flow can be used. Agarose-based matrices with the coupled Strep-Tactin ligand are the resins of choice, with a binding capacity of up to 9 mg ml(-1). For purification of lower amounts of Strep-tagged proteins, the use of Strep-Tactin magnetic beads is suitable. In addition, Strep-tagged protein purification can also be automated using prepacked columns for FPLC or other liquid-handling chromatography instrumentation, but automated purification is not discussed in this protocol. The protocols described here can be regarded as an update of the Strep-Tag Protein Handbook (Qiagen, 2009). © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  9. Extending Birthday Paradox Theory to Estimate the Number of Tags in RFID Systems

    PubMed Central

    Shakiba, Masoud; Singh, Mandeep Jit; Sundararajan, Elankovan; Zavvari, Azam; Islam, Mohammad Tariqul

    2014-01-01

    The main objective of Radio Frequency Identification systems is to provide fast identification for tagged objects. However, there is always a chance of collision, when tags transmit their data to the reader simultaneously. Collision is a time-consuming event that reduces the performance of RFID systems. Consequently, several anti-collision algorithms have been proposed in the literature. Dynamic Framed Slotted ALOHA (DFSA) is one of the most popular of these algorithms. DFSA dynamically modifies the frame size based on the number of tags. Since the real number of tags is unknown, it needs to be estimated. Therefore, an accurate tag estimation method has an important role in increasing the efficiency and overall performance of the tag identification process. In this paper, we propose a novel estimation technique for DFSA anti-collision algorithms that applies birthday paradox theory to estimate the number of tags accurately. The analytical discussion and simulation results prove that the proposed method increases the accuracy of tag estimation and, consequently, outperforms previous schemes. PMID:24752285

  10. Analysis of 3-D Tongue Motion From Tagged and Cine Magnetic Resonance Images

    PubMed Central

    Woo, Jonghye; Lee, Junghoon; Murano, Emi Z.; Stone, Maureen; Prince, Jerry L.

    2016-01-01

    Purpose Measuring tongue deformation and internal muscle motion during speech has been a challenging task because the tongue deforms in 3 dimensions, contains interdigitated muscles, and is largely hidden within the vocal tract. In this article, a new method is proposed to analyze tagged and cine magnetic resonance images of the tongue during speech in order to estimate 3-dimensional tissue displacement and deformation over time. Method The method involves computing 2-dimensional motion components using a standard tag-processing method called harmonic phase, constructing superresolution tongue volumes using cine magnetic resonance images, segmenting the tongue region using a random-walker algorithm, and estimating 3-dimensional tongue motion using an incompressible deformation estimation algorithm. Results Evaluation of the method is presented with a control group and a group of people who had received a glossectomy carrying out a speech task. A 2-step principal-components analysis is then used to reveal the unique motion patterns of the subjects. Azimuth motion angles and motion on the mirrored hemi-tongues are analyzed. Conclusion Tests of the method with a various collection of subjects show its capability of capturing patient motion patterns and indicate its potential value in future speech studies. PMID:27295428

  11. WebTag: Web browsing into sensor tags over NFC.

    PubMed

    Echevarria, Juan Jose; Ruiz-de-Garibay, Jonathan; Legarda, Jon; Alvarez, Maite; Ayerbe, Ana; Vazquez, Juan Ignacio

    2012-01-01

    Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) continue to overcome many of the challenges related to wireless sensor monitoring, such as for example the design of smarter embedded processors, the improvement of the network architectures, the development of efficient communication protocols or the maximization of the life cycle autonomy. This work tries to improve the communication link of the data transmission in wireless sensor monitoring. The upstream communication link is usually based on standard IP technologies, but the downstream side is always masked with the proprietary protocols used for the wireless link (like ZigBee, Bluetooth, RFID, etc.). This work presents a novel solution (WebTag) for a direct IP based access to a sensor tag over the Near Field Communication (NFC) technology for secure applications. WebTag allows a direct web access to the sensor tag by means of a standard web browser, it reads the sensor data, configures the sampling rate and implements IP based security policies. It is, definitely, a new step towards the evolution of the Internet of Things paradigm.

  12. WebTag: Web Browsing into Sensor Tags over NFC

    PubMed Central

    Echevarria, Juan Jose; Ruiz-de-Garibay, Jonathan; Legarda, Jon; Álvarez, Maite; Ayerbe, Ana; Vazquez, Juan Ignacio

    2012-01-01

    Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) continue to overcome many of the challenges related to wireless sensor monitoring, such as for example the design of smarter embedded processors, the improvement of the network architectures, the development of efficient communication protocols or the maximization of the life cycle autonomy. This work tries to improve the communication link of the data transmission in wireless sensor monitoring. The upstream communication link is usually based on standard IP technologies, but the downstream side is always masked with the proprietary protocols used for the wireless link (like ZigBee, Bluetooth, RFID, etc.). This work presents a novel solution (WebTag) for a direct IP based access to a sensor tag over the Near Field Communication (NFC) technology for secure applications. WebTag allows a direct web access to the sensor tag by means of a standard web browser, it reads the sensor data, configures the sampling rate and implements IP based security policies. It is, definitely, a new step towards the evolution of the Internet of Things paradigm. PMID:23012511

  13. Informatics in Radiology: Dual-Energy Electronic Cleansing for Fecal-Tagging CT Colonography

    PubMed Central

    Kim, Se Hyung; Lee, June-Goo; Yoshida, Hiroyuki

    2013-01-01

    Electronic cleansing (EC) is an emerging technique for the removal of tagged fecal materials at fecal-tagging computed tomographic (CT) colonography. However, existing EC methods may generate various types of artifacts that severely impair the quality of the cleansed CT colonographic images. Dual-energy fecal-tagging CT colonography is regarded as a next-generation imaging modality. EC that makes use of dual-energy fecal-tagging CT colonographic images promises to be effective in reducing cleansing artifacts by means of applying the material decomposition capability of dual-energy CT. The dual-energy index (DEI), which is calculated from the relative change in the attenuation values of a material at two different photon energies, is a reliable and effective indicator for differentiating tagged fecal materials from various types of tissues on fecal-tagging CT colonographic images. A DEI-based dual-energy EC scheme uses the DEI to help differentiate the colonic lumen—including the luminal air, tagged fecal materials, and air-tagging mixture—from the colonic soft-tissue structures, and then segments the entire colonic lumen for cleansing of the tagged fecal materials. As a result, dual-energy EC can help identify partial-volume effects in the air-tagging mixture and inhomogeneous tagging in residual fecal materials, the major causes of EC artifacts. This technique has the potential to significantly improve the quality of EC and promises to provide images of a cleansed colon that are free of the artifacts commonly observed with conventional single-energy EC methods. © RSNA, 2013 PMID:23479680

  14. A "shotgun" method for tracing the birth locations of sheep from flock tags, applied to scrapie surveillance in Great Britain.

    PubMed

    Birch, Colin P D; Del Rio Vilas, Victor J; Chikukwa, Ambrose C

    2010-09-01

    Movement records are often used to identify animal sample provenance by retracing the movements of individuals. Here we present an alternative method, which uses the same identity tags and movement records as are used to retrace movements, but ignores individual movement paths. The first step uses a simple query to identify the most likely birth holding for every identity tag included in a database recording departures from agricultural holdings. The second step rejects a proportion of the birth holding locations to leave a list of birth holding locations that are relatively reliable. The method was used to trace the birth locations of sheep sampled for scrapie in abattoirs, or on farm as fallen stock. Over 82% of the sheep sampled in the fallen stock survey died at the holding of birth. This lack of movement may be an important constraint on scrapie transmission. These static sheep provided relatively reliable birth locations, which were used to define criteria for selecting reliable traces. The criteria rejected 16.8% of fallen stock traces and 11.9% of abattoir survey traces. Two tests provided estimates that selection reduced error in fallen stock traces from 11.3% to 3.2%, and in abattoir survey traces from 8.1% to 1.8%. This method generated 14,591 accepted traces of fallen stock from samples taken during 2002-2005 and 83,136 accepted traces from abattoir samples. The absence or ambiguity of flock tag records at the time of slaughter prevented the tracing of 16-24% of abattoir samples during 2002-2004, although flock tag records improved in 2005. The use of internal scoring to generate and evaluate results from the database query, and the confirmation of results by comparison with other database fields, are analogous to methods used in web search engines. Such methods may have wide application in tracing samples and in adding value to biological datasets. Crown Copyright 2010. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  15. Fully printed flexible and disposable wireless cyclic voltammetry tag

    PubMed Central

    Jung, Younsu; Park, Hyejin; Park, Jin-Ah; Noh, Jinsoo; Choi, Yunchang; Jung, Minhoon; Jung, Kyunghwan; Pyo, Myungho; Chen, Kevin; Javey, Ali; Cho, Gyoujin

    2015-01-01

    A disposable cyclic voltammetry (CV) tag is printed on a plastic film by integrating wireless power transmitter, polarized triangle wave generator, electrochemical cell and signage through a scalable gravure printing method. By proximity of 13.56 MHz RF reader, the printed CV tag generates 320 mHz of triangular sweep wave from +500 mV to −500 mV which enable to scan a printed electrochemical cell in the CV tag. By simply dropping any specimen solution on the electrochemical cell in the CV tag, the presence of solutes in the solution can be detected and shown on the signage of the CV tag in five sec. 10 mM of N,N,N′,N′-tetramethyl-p-phenylenediamine (TMPD) was used as a standard solute to prove the working concept of fully printed disposable wireless CV tag. Within five seconds, we can wirelessly diagnose the presence of TMPD in the solution using the CV tag in the proximity of the 13.56 MHz RF reader. This fully printed and wirelessly operated flexible CV tag is the first of its kind and marks the path for the utilization of inexpensive and disposable wireless electrochemical sensor systems for initial diagnose hazardous chemicals and biological molecules to improve public hygiene and health. PMID:25630250

  16. a Chiral Tag Study of the Absolute Configuration of Camphor

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Pratt, David; Evangelisti, Luca; Smart, Taylor; Holdren, Martin S.; Mayer, Kevin J.; West, Channing; Pate, Brooks

    2017-06-01

    The chiral tagging method for rotational spectroscopy uses an established approach in chiral analysis of creating a complex with an enantiopure tag so that enantiomers of the molecule of interest are converted to diastereomer complexes. Since the diastereomers have distinct structure, they give distinguishable rotational spectra. Camphor was chosen as an example for the chiral tag method because it has spectral properties that could pose challenges to the use of three wave mixing rotational spectroscopy to establish absolute configuration. Specifically, one of the dipole moment components of camphor is small making three wave mixing measurements challenging and placing high accuracy requirements on computational chemistry for calculating the dipole moment direction in the principal axis system. The chiral tag measurements of camphor used the hydrogen bond donor 3-butyn-2-ol. Quantum chemistry calculations using the B3LYP-D3BJ method and the def2TZVP basis set identified 7 low energy isomers of the chiral complex. The two lowest energy complexes of the homochiral and heterochiral complexes are observed in a measurement using racemic tag. Absolute configuration is confirmed by the use of an enantiopure tag sample. Spectra with ^{13}C-sensitivity were acquired so that the carbon substitution structure of the complex could be obtained to provide a structure of camphor with correct stereochemistry. The chiral tag complex spectra can also be used to estimate the enantiomeric excess of the sample and analysis of the broadband spectrum indicates that the sample enantiopurity is higher than 99.5%. The structure of the complex is analyzed to determine the extent of geometry modification that occurs upon formation of the complex. These results show that initial isomer searches with fixed geometries will be accurate. The reduction in computation time from fixed geometry assumptions will be discussed.

  17. 50 CFR 635.33 - Archival tags.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-10-01

    ... landing; furnish all requested information regarding the location and method of capture; and, as... recovery of the tag by a NMFS scientist, enforcement agent, or other person designated in writing by NMFS...

  18. Genetically encoded fluorescent tags

    PubMed Central

    Thorn, Kurt

    2017-01-01

    Genetically encoded fluorescent tags are protein sequences that can be fused to a protein of interest to render it fluorescent. These tags have revolutionized cell biology by allowing nearly any protein to be imaged by light microscopy at submicrometer spatial resolution and subsecond time resolution in a live cell or organism. They can also be used to measure protein abundance in thousands to millions of cells using flow cytometry. Here I provide an introduction to the different genetic tags available, including both intrinsically fluorescent proteins and proteins that derive their fluorescence from binding of either endogenous or exogenous fluorophores. I discuss their optical and biological properties and guidelines for choosing appropriate tags for an experiment. Tools for tagging nucleic acid sequences and reporter molecules that detect the presence of different biomolecules are also briefly discussed. PMID:28360214

  19. RAMTaB: Robust Alignment of Multi-Tag Bioimages

    PubMed Central

    Raza, Shan-e-Ahmed; Humayun, Ahmad; Abouna, Sylvie; Nattkemper, Tim W.; Epstein, David B. A.; Khan, Michael; Rajpoot, Nasir M.

    2012-01-01

    Background In recent years, new microscopic imaging techniques have evolved to allow us to visualize several different proteins (or other biomolecules) in a visual field. Analysis of protein co-localization becomes viable because molecules can interact only when they are located close to each other. We present a novel approach to align images in a multi-tag fluorescence image stack. The proposed approach is applicable to multi-tag bioimaging systems which (a) acquire fluorescence images by sequential staining and (b) simultaneously capture a phase contrast image corresponding to each of the fluorescence images. To the best of our knowledge, there is no existing method in the literature, which addresses simultaneous registration of multi-tag bioimages and selection of the reference image in order to maximize the overall overlap between the images. Methodology/Principal Findings We employ a block-based method for registration, which yields a confidence measure to indicate the accuracy of our registration results. We derive a shift metric in order to select the Reference Image with Maximal Overlap (RIMO), in turn minimizing the total amount of non-overlapping signal for a given number of tags. Experimental results show that the Robust Alignment of Multi-Tag Bioimages (RAMTaB) framework is robust to variations in contrast and illumination, yields sub-pixel accuracy, and successfully selects the reference image resulting in maximum overlap. The registration results are also shown to significantly improve any follow-up protein co-localization studies. Conclusions For the discovery of protein complexes and of functional protein networks within a cell, alignment of the tag images in a multi-tag fluorescence image stack is a key pre-processing step. The proposed framework is shown to produce accurate alignment results on both real and synthetic data. Our future work will use the aligned multi-channel fluorescence image data for normal and diseased tissue specimens to

  20. Tag retention, growth, and survival of red swamp crayfish Procambarus clarkii marked with coded wire tags

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Isely, J.J.; Eversole, A.G.

    1998-01-01

    Juvenile red swamp crayfish (or crawfish), Procambarus clarkii (20-41 mm in total length) were collected from a crayfish culture pond by dipnetting and tagged with sequentially numbered, standard length, binary-coded wire tags. Four replicates of 50 crayfish were impaled perpendicular to the long axis of the abdomen with a fixed needle. Tags were injected transversely into the ventral surface of the first or second abdominal segment and were imbedded in the musculature just beneath the abdominal sternum. Tags were visible upon inspection. Additionally, two replicates of 50 crayfish were not tagged and were used as controls. Growth, survival, and tag retention were evaluated after 7 d in individual containers, after 100 d in aquaria, and after 200 d in field cages. Tag retention during each sample period was 100%, and average mortality of tagged crayfish within 7 d of tagging was 1%. Mortality during the remainder of the study was high (75-91%) but was similar between treatment and control samples. Most of the deaths were probably due to cannibalism. Average total length increased threefold during the course of the study, and crayfish reached maturity. Because crayfish were mature by the end of the study, we concluded that the coded wire tag was retained through the life history of the crayfish.

  1. Microbial Diversity of Browning Peninsula, Eastern Antarctica Revealed Using Molecular and Cultivation Methods

    PubMed Central

    Pudasaini, Sarita; Wilson, John; Ji, Mukan; van Dorst, Josie; Snape, Ian; Palmer, Anne S.; Burns, Brendan P.; Ferrari, Belinda C.

    2017-01-01

    Browning Peninsula is an ice-free polar desert situated in the Windmill Islands, Eastern Antarctica. The entire site is described as a barren landscape, comprised of frost boils with soils dominated by microbial life. In this study, we explored the microbial diversity and edaphic drivers of community structure across this site using traditional cultivation methods, a novel approach the soil substrate membrane system (SSMS), and culture-independent 454-tag pyrosequencing. The measured soil environmental and microphysical factors of chlorine, phosphate, aspect and elevation were found to be significant drivers of the bacterial community, while none of the soil parameters analyzed were significantly correlated to the fungal community. Overall, Browning Peninsula soil harbored a distinctive microbial community in comparison to other Antarctic soils comprised of a unique bacterial diversity and extremely limited fungal diversity. Tag pyrosequencing data revealed the bacterial community to be dominated by Actinobacteria (36%), followed by Chloroflexi (18%), Cyanobacteria (14%), and Proteobacteria (10%). For fungi, Ascomycota (97%) dominated the soil microbiome, followed by Basidiomycota. As expected the diversity recovered from culture-based techniques was lower than that detected using tag sequencing. However, in the SSMS enrichments, that mimic the natural conditions for cultivating oligophilic “k-selected” bacteria, a larger proportion of rare bacterial taxa (15%), such as Blastococcus, Devosia, Herbaspirillum, Propionibacterium and Methylocella and fungal (11%) taxa, such as Nigrospora, Exophiala, Hortaea, and Penidiella were recovered at the genus level. At phylum level, a comparison of OTU's showed that the SSMS shared 21% of Acidobacteria, 11% of Actinobacteria and 10% of Proteobacteria OTU's with soil. For fungi, the shared OTUs was 4% (Basidiomycota) and <0.5% (Ascomycota). This was the first known attempt to culture microfungi using the SSMS which resulted

  2. 76 FR 328 - Proposed Information Collection; Comment Request; Billfish Tagging Report Card

    Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

    2011-01-04

    ... Administration's Southwest Fisheries Science Center operates a billfish tagging program. Tagging supplies are... game fish; waters; research; purpose. II. Method of Collection Information is submitted by mail, via a...

  3. SU-E-I-65: Estimation of Tagging Efficiency in Pseudo-Continuous Arterial Spin Labeling (pCASL) MRI

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Jen, M; Yan, F; Tseng, Y

    2015-06-15

    Purpose: pCASL was recommended as a potent approach for absolute cerebral blood flow (CBF) quantification in clinical practice. However, uncertainties of tagging efficiency in pCASL remain an issue. This study aimed to estimate tagging efficiency by using short quantitative pulsed ASL scan (FAIR-QUIPSSII) and compare resultant CBF values with those calibrated by using 2D Phase Contrast (PC) MRI. Methods: Fourteen normal volunteers participated in this study. All images, including whole brain (WB) pCASL, WB FAIR-QUIPSSII and single-slice 2D PC, were collected on a 3T clinical MRI scanner with a 8-channel head coil. DeltaM map was calculated by averaging the subtractionmore » of tag/control pairs in pCASL and FAIR-QUIPSSII images and used for CBF calculation. Tagging efficiency was then calculated by the ratio of mean gray matter CBF obtained from pCASL and FAIR-QUIPSSII. For comparison, tagging efficiency was also estimated with 2D PC, a previously established method, by contrast WB CBF in pCASL and 2D PC. Feasibility of estimation from a short FAIR-QUIPSSII scan was evaluated by number of averages required for obtaining a stable deltaM value. Setting deltaM calculated by maximum number of averaging (50 pairs) as reference, stable results were defined within ±10% variation. Results: Tagging efficiencies obtained by 2D PC MRI (0.732±0.092) were significantly lower than which obtained by FAIRQUIPPSSII (0.846±0.097) (P<0.05). Feasibility results revealed that four pairs of images in FAIR-QUIPPSSII scan were sufficient to obtain a robust calibration of less than 10% differences from using 50 pairs. Conclusion: This study found that reliable estimation of tagging efficiency could be obtained by a few pairs of FAIR-QUIPSSII images, which suggested that calibration scan in a short duration (within 30s) was feasible. Considering recent reports concerning variability of PC MRI-based calibration, this study proposed an effective alternative for CBF quantification with pCASL.« less

  4. Directional Radio-Frequency Identification Tag Reader

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Medelius, Pedro J.; Taylor, John D.; Henderson, John J.

    2004-01-01

    A directional radio-frequency identification (RFID) tag reader has been designed to facilitate finding a specific object among many objects in a crowded room. The device could be an adjunct to an electronic inventory system that tracks RFID-tagged objects as they move through reader-equipped doorways. Whereas commercial RFID-tag readers do not measure directions to tagged objects, the device is equipped with a phased-array antenna and a received signal-strength indicator (RSSI) circuit for measuring direction. At the beginning of operation, it is set to address only the RFID tag of interest. It then continuously transmits a signal to interrogate that tag while varying the radiation pattern of the antenna. It identifies the direction to the tag as the radiation pattern direction of peak strength of the signal returned by the tag. An approximate distance to the tag is calculated from the peak signal strength. The direction and distance can be displayed on a screen. A prototype containing a Yagi antenna was found to be capable of detecting a 915.5-MHz tag at a distance of approximately equal to 15 ft (approximately equal to 4.6 m).

  5. A Phos-tag-based magnetic-bead method for rapid and selective separation of phosphorylated biomolecules.

    PubMed

    Tsunehiro, Masaya; Meki, Yuma; Matsuoka, Kanako; Kinoshita-Kikuta, Emiko; Kinoshita, Eiji; Koike, Tohru

    2013-04-15

    A simple and efficient method based on magnetic-bead technology has been developed for the separation of phosphorylated and nonphosphorylated low-molecular-weight biomolecules, such as nucleotides, phosphorylated amino acids, or phosphopeptides. The phosphate-binding site on the bead is an alkoxide-bridged dinuclear zinc(II) complex with 1,3-bis(pyridin-2-ylmethylamino)propan-2-olate (Phos-tag), which is linked to a hydrophilic cross-linked agarose coating on a magnetic core particle. All steps for the phosphate-affinity separation are conducted in buffers of neutral pH with 50 μL of the magnetic beads in a 1.5-mL microtube. The entire separation protocol for phosphomonoester-type compounds, from addition to elution, requires less than 12 min per sample if the buffers and the zinc(II)-bound Phos-tag magnetic beads have been prepared in advance. The phosphate-affinity magnetic beads are reusable at least 15 times without a decrease in their phosphate-binding ability and they are stable for three months in propan-2-ol. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  6. Categorical and Specificity Differences between User-Supplied Tags and Search Query Terms for Images. An Analysis of "Flickr" Tags and Web Image Search Queries

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Chung, EunKyung; Yoon, JungWon

    2009-01-01

    Introduction: The purpose of this study is to compare characteristics and features of user supplied tags and search query terms for images on the "Flickr" Website in terms of categories of pictorial meanings and level of term specificity. Method: This study focuses on comparisons between tags and search queries using Shatford's categorization…

  7. Social Tagging in a Scholarly Digital Library Environment: Users' Perspectives

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Noorhidawati, A.; Hanum, N. Fariza; Zohoorian-Fooladi, N.

    2013-01-01

    Introduction: This paper reports an exploratory study examining how users participate in social tagging activities in a scholarly digital library environment to learn about their motivations, behaviour, and practices. Method: This study was conducted in two phases: a survey to investigate usage and attitudes of social tagging tool, and a…

  8. Novel cleavage of reductively aminated glycan-tags by N-bromosuccinimide to regenerate free, reducing glycans

    PubMed Central

    Song, Xuezheng; Johns, Brian A.; Ju, Hong; Lasanajak, Yi; Zhao, Chunmei; Smith, David F.; Cummings, Richard D.

    2014-01-01

    Glycans that are fluorescently tagged by reductive amination have been useful for functional glycomic studies. However, the existing tags can introduce unwanted properties to the glycans and complicate structural and functional studies. Here we describe a facile method using N-bromosuccinimide (NBS) to remove the tags and efficiently regenerate free reducing glycans. The regenerated free reducing glycans can be easily analyzed by routine mass spectrometry or re-tagged with different tags for further studies. This new method can be used to efficiently remove a variety of fluorescent tags installed by reductive amination, including 2-aminobenzoic acid and 2-aminopyridine. NBS treatment essentially transforms the commonly used 2-aminobenzoic linkage to a cleavable linkage. It can be used to cleave printed glycans from microarrays and cleave neoglycopeptides containing a 2-aminobenzoic linker. PMID:23992636

  9. Relating speech production to tongue muscle compressions using tagged and high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Xing, Fangxu; Ye, Chuyang; Woo, Jonghye; Stone, Maureen; Prince, Jerry

    2015-03-01

    The human tongue is composed of multiple internal muscles that work collaboratively during the production of speech. Assessment of muscle mechanics can help understand the creation of tongue motion, interpret clinical observations, and predict surgical outcomes. Although various methods have been proposed for computing the tongue's motion, associating motion with muscle activity in an interdigitated fiber framework has not been studied. In this work, we aim to develop a method that reveals different tongue muscles' activities in different time phases during speech. We use fourdimensional tagged magnetic resonance (MR) images and static high-resolution MR images to obtain tongue motion and muscle anatomy, respectively. Then we compute strain tensors and local tissue compression along the muscle fiber directions in order to reveal their shortening pattern. This process relies on the support from multiple image analysis methods, including super-resolution volume reconstruction from MR image slices, segmentation of internal muscles, tracking the incompressible motion of tissue points using tagged images, propagation of muscle fiber directions over time, and calculation of strain in the line of action, etc. We evaluated the method on a control subject and two postglossectomy patients in a controlled speech task. The normal subject's tongue muscle activity shows high correspondence with the production of speech in different time instants, while both patients' muscle activities show different patterns from the control due to their resected tongues. This method shows potential for relating overall tongue motion to particular muscle activity, which may provide novel information for future clinical and scientific studies.

  10. Rhabdomyomatous mesenchymal hamartoma presenting as a skin tag in the sternoclavicular area.

    PubMed

    Solis-Coria, Araceli; Vargas-González, Roberto; Sotelo-Avila, Cirilo

    2007-01-01

    Rhabdomyomatous mesenchymal hamartoma (RMH) is a rare congenital lesion of the dermis and subdermis. It has been described predominantly in newborns, with 30 cases reported in the English literature. Typically, it appears as a skin tag, papule, nodule or a mass involving the face or sternal notch. A 28-day-old girl presented with a 1.4 x 0.8 cm soft skin tag in the right sternoclavicular area. Physical examination revealed no congenital anomalies. A shaved biopsy showed that the core of the lesion contained striated muscle fibers mixed with hair follicles and sebaceous and eccrine glands. Thin epidermis lined the outside of the tag. We report a patient with a RMH in a site not previously reported and discuss the differential diagnosis.

  11. Buddy Tag CONOPS and Requirements.

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Brotz, Jay Kristoffer; Deland, Sharon M.

    2015-12-01

    This document defines the concept of operations (CONOPS) and the requirements for the Buddy Tag, which is conceived and designed in collaboration between Sandia National Laboratories and Princeton University under the Department of State Key VerificationAssets Fund. The CONOPS describe how the tags are used to support verification of treaty limitations and is only defined to the extent necessary to support a tag design. The requirements define the necessary functions and desired non-functional features of the Buddy Tag at a high level

  12. Food Iron Absorption Measured by an Extrinsic Tag

    PubMed Central

    Cook, J. D.; Layrisse, M.; Martinez-Torres, C.; Walker, R.; Monsen, E.; Finch, C. A.

    1972-01-01

    The paper describes the use of an extrinsic tag of inorganic radioiron to determine the total absorption of nonheme iron from a complete meal. The method was developed by measuring the iron absorbed from vegetable foods containing biosynthetically incorporated 55Fe (intrinsic tag) and from 59Fe added as a small dose of inorganic iron to the same meal (extrinsic tag). In studies with maize, black bean, and wheat, a consistent extrinsic: intrinsic radioiron absorption ratio averaging 1.10 was observed. Similar results were obtained with either ferrous or ferric iron as the extrinsic tag, and with doses of the latter ranging from 0.001 to 0.5 mg iron added to a test meal containing 2-4 mg of food iron. Adding the radioiron at different stages in preparation of the test meal also had little effect. Separate administration of the extrinsic tag was less satisfactory when small portions of a single food were employed, but with a complete meal, the separate dose was preferable. The extrinsic tag provided a valid measure of absorption despite marked differences in the iron status of the subject, and with wide changes in absorption imposed by adding desferrioxamine or ascorbic acid to the test meal. These findings indicate that there is a common pool of nonheme iron, the absorption of which is influenced by various blocking or enhancing substances present in the meal. PMID:5062612

  13. SparkClouds: visualizing trends in tag clouds.

    PubMed

    Lee, Bongshin; Riche, Nathalie Henry; Karlson, Amy K; Carpendale, Sheelash

    2010-01-01

    Tag clouds have proliferated over the web over the last decade. They provide a visual summary of a collection of texts by visually depicting the tag frequency by font size. In use, tag clouds can evolve as the associated data source changes over time. Interesting discussions around tag clouds often include a series of tag clouds and consider how they evolve over time. However, since tag clouds do not explicitly represent trends or support comparisons, the cognitive demands placed on the person for perceiving trends in multiple tag clouds are high. In this paper, we introduce SparkClouds, which integrate sparklines into a tag cloud to convey trends between multiple tag clouds. We present results from a controlled study that compares SparkClouds with two traditional trend visualizations—multiple line graphs and stacked bar charts—as well as Parallel Tag Clouds. Results show that SparkClouds ability to show trends compares favourably to the alternative visualizations.

  14. Tag-Based Social Image Search: Toward Relevant and Diverse Results

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Yang, Kuiyuan; Wang, Meng; Hua, Xian-Sheng; Zhang, Hong-Jiang

    Recent years have witnessed a great success of social media websites. Tag-based image search is an important approach to access the image content of interest on these websites. However, the existing ranking methods for tag-based image search frequently return results that are irrelevant or lack of diversity. This chapter presents a diverse relevance ranking scheme which simultaneously takes relevance and diversity into account by exploring the content of images and their associated tags. First, it estimates the relevance scores of images with respect to the query term based on both visual information of images and semantic information of associated tags. Then semantic similarities of social images are estimated based on their tags. Based on the relevance scores and the similarities, the ranking list is generated by a greedy ordering algorithm which optimizes Average Diverse Precision (ADP), a novel measure that is extended from the conventional Average Precision (AP). Comprehensive experiments and user studies demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach.

  15. Extended Range Passive Wireless Tag System and Method

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Fink, Patrick W. (Inventor); Lin, Gregory Y. (Inventor); Kennedy, Timothy F. (Inventor)

    2013-01-01

    A passive wireless tag assembly comprises a plurality of antennas and transmission lines interconnected with circuitry and constructed and arranged in a Van Atta array or configuration to reflect an interrogator signal in the direction from where it came. The circuitry may comprise at least one surface acoustic wave (SAW)-based circuit that functions as a signal reflector and is operatively connected with an information circuit. In another embodiment, at least one delay circuit and/or at least one passive modulation circuit(s) are utilized. In yet another embodiment, antennas connected to SAW-based devices are mounted to at least one of the orthogonal surfaces of a corner reflector.

  16. A wireless sensor tag platform for container security and integrity

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Amaya, Ivan A.; Cree, Johnathan V.; Mauss, Fredrick J.

    Cargo containers onboard ships are widely used in the global supply chain. The need for container security is evidenced by the Container Security Initiative launched by the U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP). One method of monitoring cargo containers is using low power wireless sensor tags. The wireless sensor tags are used to set up a network that is comprised of tags internal to the container and a central device. The sensor network reports alarms and other anomalies to a central device, which then relays the message to an outside network upon arrival at the destination port. Thismore » allows the port authorities to have knowledge of potential security or integrity issues before physically examining the container. Challenges of using wireless sensor tag networks for container security include battery life, size, environmental conditions, information security, and cost among others. PNNL developed an active wireless sensor tag platform capable of reporting data wirelessly to a central node as well as logging data to nonvolatile memory. The tags, operate at 2.4 GHz over an IEEE 802.15.4 protocol, and were designed to be distributed throughout the inside of a shipping container in the upper support frame. The tags are mounted in a housing that allows for simple and efficient installation or removal prior to, during, or after shipment. The distributed tags monitor the entire container volume. The sensor tag platform utilizes low power electronics and provides an extensible sensor interface for incorporating a wide range of sensors including chemical, biological, and environmental sensors.« less

  17. A wireless sensor tag platform for container security and integrity

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Amaya, Ivan A.; Cree, Johnathan V.; Mauss, Fredrick J.

    2011-04-01

    Cargo containers onboard ships are widely used in the global supply chain. The need for container security is evidenced by the Container Security Initiative launched by the U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP). One method of monitoring cargo containers is using low power wireless sensor tags. The wireless sensor tags are used to set up a network that is comprised of tags internal to the container and a central device. The sensor network reports alarms and other anomalies to a central device, which then relays the message to an outside network upon arrival at the destination port. This allows the port authorities to have knowledge of potential security or integrity issues before physically examining the container. Challenges of using wireless sensor tag networks for container security include battery life, size, environmental conditions, information security, and cost among others. PNNL developed an active wireless sensor tag platform capable of reporting data wirelessly to a central node as well as logging data to nonvolatile memory. The tags, operate at 2.4 GHz over an IEEE 802.15.4 protocol, and were designed to be distributed throughout the inside of a shipping container in the upper support frame. The tags are mounted in a housing that allows for simple and efficient installation or removal prior to, during, or after shipment. The distributed tags monitor the entire container volume. The sensor tag platform utilizes low power electronics and provides an extensible sensor interface for incorporating a wide range of sensors including chemical, biological, and environmental sensors.

  18. Chromatin modification contributes to the expression divergence of three TaGS2 homoeologs in hexaploid wheat

    PubMed Central

    Zhang, Wei; Fan, Xiaoli; Gao, Yingjie; Liu, Lei; Sun, Lijing; Su, Qiannan; Han, Jie; Zhang, Na; Cui, Fa; Ji, Jun; Tong, Yiping; Li, Junming

    2017-01-01

    Plastic glutamine synthetase (GS2) is responsible for ammonium assimilation. The reason that TaGS2 homoeologs in hexaploid wheat experience different selection pressures in the breeding process remains unclear. TaGS2 were minimally expressed in roots but predominantly expressed in leaves, and TaGS2-B had higher expression than TaGS2-A and TaGS2-D. ChIP assays revealed that the activation of TaGS2-B expression in leaves was correlated with increased H3K4 trimethylation. The transcriptional silencing of TaGS2 in roots was correlated with greater cytosine methylation and less H3K4 trimethylation. Micrococcal nuclease and DNase I accessibility experiments indicated that the promoter region was more resistant to digestion in roots than leaves, which indicated that the closed nucleosome conformation of the promoter region was important to the transcription initiation for the spatial-temporal expression of TaGS2. In contrast, the transcribed regions possess different nuclease accessibilities of three TaGS2 homoeologs in the same tissue, suggesting that nucleosome conformation of the transcribed region was part of the fine adjustment of TaGS2 homoeologs. This study provides evidence that histone modification, DNA methylation and nuclease accessibility coordinated the control of the transcription of TaGS2 homoeologs. Our results provided important evidence that TaGS2-B experienced the strongest selection pressures during the breeding process. PMID:28300215

  19. Phase Transitions of Thermoelectric TAGS-85.

    PubMed

    Kumar, Anil; Vermeulen, Paul A; Kooi, Bart J; Rao, Jiancun; van Eijck, Lambert; Schwarzmüller, Stefan; Oeckler, Oliver; Blake, Graeme R

    2017-12-18

    The alloys (GeTe) x (AgSbTe 2 ) 100-x , commonly known as TAGS-x, are among the best performing p-type thermoelectric materials for the composition range 80 ≤ x ≤ 90 and in the temperature range 200-500 °C. They adopt a rhombohedrally distorted rocksalt structure at room temperature and are reported to undergo a reversible phase transition to a cubic structure at ∼250 °C. However, we show that, for the optimal x = 85 composition (TAGS-85), both the structural and thermoelectric properties are highly sensitive to the initial synthesis method employed. Single-phase rhombohedral samples exhibit the best thermoelectric properties but can only be obtained after an annealing step at 600 °C during initial cooling from the melt. Under faster cooling conditions, the samples obtained are inhomogeneous, containing multiple rhombohedral phases with a range of lattice parameters and exhibiting inferior thermoelectric properties. We also find that when the room-temperature rhombohedral phase is heated, an intermediate trigonal structure containing ordered cation vacancy layers is formed at ∼200 °C, driven by the spontaneous precipitation of argyrodite-type Ag 8 GeTe 6 which alters the stoichiometry of the TAGS-85 matrix. The rhombohedral and trigonal phases of TAGS-85 coexist up to 380 °C, above which a single cubic phase is obtained and the Ag 8 GeTe 6 precipitates redissolve into the matrix. On subsequent cooling a mixture of rhombohedral, trigonal, and Ag 8 GeTe 6 phases is again obtained. Initially single-phase samples exhibit thermoelectric power factors of up to 0.0035 W m -1 K -2 at 500 °C, a value that is maintained on subsequent thermal cycling and which represents the highest power factor yet reported for undoped TAGS-85. Therefore, control over the structural homogeneity of TAGS-85 as demonstrated here is essential in order to optimize the thermoelectric performance.

  20. Survival, growth, and tag retention in age-0 Chinook Salmon implanted with 8-, 9-, and 12-mm PIT tags

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Tiffan, Kenneth F.; Perry, Russell W.; Connor, William P.; Mullins, Frank L.; Rabe, Craig; Nelson, Doug D

    2015-01-01

    The ability to represent a population of migratory juvenile fish with PIT tags becomes difficult when the minimum tagging size is larger than the average size at which fish begin to move downstream. Tags that are smaller (e.g., 8 and 9 mm) than the commonly used 12-mm PIT tags are currently available, but their effects on survival, growth, and tag retention in small salmonid juveniles have received little study. We evaluated growth, survival, and tag retention in age-0 Chinook Salmon Oncorhynchus tshawytscha of three size-groups: 40–49-mm fish were implanted with 8- and 9-mm tags, and 50– 59-mm and 60–69-mm fish were implanted with 8-, 9-, and 12-mm tags. Survival 28 d after tagging ranged from 97.8% to 100% across all trials, providing no strong evidence for a fish-size-related tagging effect or a tag size effect. No biologically significant effects of tagging on growth in FL (mm/d) or weight (g/d) were observed. Although FL growth in tagged fish was significantly reduced for the 40–49-mm and 50–59-mm groups over the first 7 d, growth rates were not different thereafter, and all fish were similar in size by the end of the trials (day 28). Tag retention across all tests ranged from 93% to 99%. We acknowledge that actual implantation of 8- or 9-mm tags into small fish in the field will pose additional challenges (e.g., capture and handling stress) beyond those observed in our laboratory. However, we conclude that experimental use of the smaller tags for small fish in the field is supported by our findings.

  1. Array processing for RFID tag localization exploiting multi-frequency signals

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Zhang, Yimin; Li, Xin; Amin, Moeness G.

    2009-05-01

    RFID is an increasingly valuable business and technology tool for electronically identifying, locating, and tracking products, assets, and personnel. As a result, precise positioning and tracking of RFID tags and readers have received considerable attention from both academic and industrial communities. Finding the position of RFID tags is considered an important task in various real-time locating systems (RTLS). As such, numerous RFID localization products have been developed for various applications. The majority of RFID positioning systems is based on the fusion of pieces of relevant information, such as the range and the direction-of-arrival (DOA). For example, trilateration can determine the tag position by using the range information of the tag estimated from three or more spatially separated reader antennas. Triangulation is another method to locate RFID tags that use the direction-of-arrival (DOA) information estimated at multiple spatially separated locations. The RFID tag positions can also be determined through hybrid techniques that combine the range and DOA information. The focus of this paper to study the design and performance of the localization of passive RFID tags using array processing techniques in a multipath environment, and exploiting multi-frequency CW signals. The latter are used to decorrelate the coherent multipath signals for effective DOA estimation and for the purpose of accurate range estimation. Accordingly, the spatial and frequency dimensionalities are fully utilized for robust and accurate positioning of RFID tags.

  2. Estimating Dense Cardiac 3D Motion Using Sparse 2D Tagged MRI Cross-sections*

    PubMed Central

    Ardekani, Siamak; Gunter, Geoffrey; Jain, Saurabh; Weiss, Robert G.; Miller, Michael I.; Younes, Laurent

    2015-01-01

    In this work, we describe a new method, an extension of the Large Deformation Diffeomorphic Metric Mapping to estimate three-dimensional deformation of tagged Magnetic Resonance Imaging Data. Our approach relies on performing non-rigid registration of tag planes that were constructed from set of initial reference short axis tag grids to a set of deformed tag curves. We validated our algorithm using in-vivo tagged images of normal mice. The mapping allows us to compute root mean square distance error between simulated tag curves in a set of long axis image planes and the acquired tag curves in the same plane. Average RMS error was 0.31±0.36(SD) mm, which is approximately 2.5 voxels, indicating good matching accuracy. PMID:25571140

  3. Measurement of the CP-Violation Parameter sin2Φ₁ with a New Tagging Method at the Υ(5S) Resonance

    DOE PAGES

    Sato, Y.; Yamamoto, H.; Aihara, H.; ...

    2012-04-23

    We report a measurement of the CP-violation parameter sin2Φ₁ at the Υ(5S) resonance using a new tagging method, called “B- π tagging.” In Υ(5S) decays containing a neutral B meson, a charged B, and a charged pion, the neutral B is reconstructed in the J/ψK 0 SCP-eigenstate decay channel. The initial flavor of the neutral B meson at the moment of the Υ(5S) decay is opposite to that of the charged B and may thus be inferred from the charge of the pion without reconstructing the charged B. From the asymmetry between B- π⁺ and B π⁻ tagged J/ψK 0more » S yields, we determine sin2Φ₁=0.57±0.58(stat)±0.06(syst). The results are based on 121 fb⁻¹ of data recorded by the Belle detector at the KEKB e⁺e⁻ collider.« less

  4. Time Series Neural Network Model for Part-of-Speech Tagging Indonesian Language

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Tanadi, Theo

    2018-03-01

    Part-of-speech tagging (POS tagging) is an important part in natural language processing. Many methods have been used to do this task, including neural network. This paper models a neural network that attempts to do POS tagging. A time series neural network is modelled to solve the problems that a basic neural network faces when attempting to do POS tagging. In order to enable the neural network to have text data input, the text data will get clustered first using Brown Clustering, resulting a binary dictionary that the neural network can use. To further the accuracy of the neural network, other features such as the POS tag, suffix, and affix of previous words would also be fed to the neural network.

  5. Folksonomical P2P File Sharing Networks Using Vectorized KANSEI Information as Search Tags

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Ohnishi, Kei; Yoshida, Kaori; Oie, Yuji

    We present the concept of folksonomical peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing networks that allow participants (peers) to freely assign structured search tags to files. These networks are similar to folksonomies in the present Web from the point of view that users assign search tags to information distributed over a network. As a concrete example, we consider an unstructured P2P network using vectorized Kansei (human sensitivity) information as structured search tags for file search. Vectorized Kansei information as search tags indicates what participants feel about their files and is assigned by the participant to each of their files. A search query also has the same form of search tags and indicates what participants want to feel about files that they will eventually obtain. A method that enables file search using vectorized Kansei information is the Kansei query-forwarding method, which probabilistically propagates a search query to peers that are likely to hold more files having search tags that are similar to the query. The similarity between the search query and the search tags is measured in terms of their dot product. The simulation experiments examine if the Kansei query-forwarding method can provide equal search performance for all peers in a network in which only the Kansei information and the tendency with respect to file collection are different among all of the peers. The simulation results show that the Kansei query forwarding method and a random-walk-based query forwarding method, for comparison, work effectively in different situations and are complementary. Furthermore, the Kansei query forwarding method is shown, through simulations, to be superior to or equal to the random-walk based one in terms of search speed.

  6. Molecular characterization of human ABHD2 as TAG lipase and ester hydrolase

    PubMed Central

    M., Naresh Kumar; V.B.S.C., Thunuguntla; G.K., Veeramachaneni; B., Chandra Sekhar; Guntupalli, Swapna; J.S., Bondili

    2016-01-01

    Alterations in lipid metabolism have been progressively documented as a characteristic property of cancer cells. Though, human ABHD2 gene was found to be highly expressed in breast and lung cancers, its biochemical functionality is yet uncharacterized. In the present study we report, human ABHD2 as triacylglycerol (TAG) lipase along with ester hydrolysing capacity. Sequence analysis of ABHD2 revealed the presence of conserved motifs G205XS207XG209 and H120XXXXD125. Phylogenetic analysis showed homology to known lipases, Drosophila melanogaster CG3488. To evaluate the biochemical role, recombinant ABHD2 was expressed in Saccharomyces cerevisiae using pYES2/CT vector and His-tag purified protein showed TAG lipase activity. Ester hydrolase activity was confirmed with pNP acetate, butyrate and palmitate substrates respectively. Further, the ABHD2 homology model was built and the modelled protein was analysed based on the RMSD and root mean square fluctuation (RMSF) of the 100 ns simulation trajectory. Docking the acetate, butyrate and palmitate ligands with the model confirmed covalent binding of ligands with the Ser207 of the GXSXG motif. The model was validated with a mutant ABHD2 developed with alanine in place of Ser207 and the docking studies revealed loss of interaction between selected ligands and the mutant protein active site. Based on the above results, human ABHD2 was identified as a novel TAG lipase and ester hydrolase. PMID:27247428

  7. Molecular characterization of human ABHD2 as TAG lipase and ester hydrolase.

    PubMed

    M, Naresh Kumar; V B S C, Thunuguntla; G K, Veeramachaneni; B, Chandra Sekhar; Guntupalli, Swapna; J S, Bondili

    2016-08-01

    Alterations in lipid metabolism have been progressively documented as a characteristic property of cancer cells. Though, human ABHD2 gene was found to be highly expressed in breast and lung cancers, its biochemical functionality is yet uncharacterized. In the present study we report, human ABHD2 as triacylglycerol (TAG) lipase along with ester hydrolysing capacity. Sequence analysis of ABHD2 revealed the presence of conserved motifs G(205)XS(207)XG(209) and H(120)XXXXD(125) Phylogenetic analysis showed homology to known lipases, Drosophila melanogaster CG3488. To evaluate the biochemical role, recombinant ABHD2 was expressed in Saccharomyces cerevisiae using pYES2/CT vector and His-tag purified protein showed TAG lipase activity. Ester hydrolase activity was confirmed with pNP acetate, butyrate and palmitate substrates respectively. Further, the ABHD2 homology model was built and the modelled protein was analysed based on the RMSD and root mean square fluctuation (RMSF) of the 100 ns simulation trajectory. Docking the acetate, butyrate and palmitate ligands with the model confirmed covalent binding of ligands with the Ser(207) of the GXSXG motif. The model was validated with a mutant ABHD2 developed with alanine in place of Ser(207) and the docking studies revealed loss of interaction between selected ligands and the mutant protein active site. Based on the above results, human ABHD2 was identified as a novel TAG lipase and ester hydrolase. © 2016 The Author(s).

  8. Multiple Interests of Users in Collaborative Tagging Systems

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Au Yeung, Ching-Man; Gibbins, Nicholas; Shadbolt, Nigel

    Performance of recommender systems depends on whether the user profiles contain accurate information about the interests of the users, and this in turn relies on whether enough information about their interests can be collected. Collaborative tagging systems allow users to use their own words to describe their favourite resources, resulting in some user-generated categorisation schemes commonly known as folksonomies. Folksonomies thus contain rich information about the interests of the users, which can be used to support various recommender systems. Our analysis of the folksonomy in Delicious reveals that the interests of a single user can be very diverse. Traditional methods for representing interests of users are usually not able to reflect such diversity. We propose a method to construct user profiles of multiple interests from folksonomies based on a network clustering technique. Our evaluation shows that the proposed method is able to generate user profiles which reflect the diversity of user interests and can be used as a basis of providing more focused recommendation to the users.

  9. Notes on SAW Tag Interrogation Techniques

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Barton, Richard J.

    2010-01-01

    We consider the problem of interrogating a single SAW RFID tag with a known ID and known range in the presence of multiple interfering tags under the following assumptions: (1) The RF propagation environment is well approximated as a simple delay channel with geometric power-decay constant alpha >/= 2. (2) The interfering tag IDs are unknown but well approximated as independent, identically distributed random samples from a probability distribution of tag ID waveforms with known second-order properties, and the tag of interest is drawn independently from the same distribution. (3) The ranges of the interfering tags are unknown but well approximated as independent, identically distributed realizations of a random variable rho with a known probability distribution f(sub rho) , and the tag ranges are independent of the tag ID waveforms. In particular, we model the tag waveforms as random impulse responses from a wide-sense-stationary, uncorrelated-scattering (WSSUS) fading channel with known bandwidth and scattering function. A brief discussion of the properties of such channels and the notation used to describe them in this document is given in the Appendix. Under these assumptions, we derive the expression for the output signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for an arbitrary combination of transmitted interrogation signal and linear receiver filter. Based on this expression, we derive the optimal interrogator configuration (i.e., transmitted signal/receiver filter combination) in the two extreme noise/interference regimes, i.e., noise-limited and interference-limited, under the additional assumption that the coherence bandwidth of the tags is much smaller than the total tag bandwidth. Finally, we evaluate the performance of both optimal interrogators over a broad range of operating scenarios using both numerical simulation based on the assumed model and Monte Carlo simulation based on a small sample of measured tag waveforms. The performance evaluation results not only

  10. Predicting floods with Flickr tags.

    PubMed

    Tkachenko, Nataliya; Jarvis, Stephen; Procter, Rob

    2017-01-01

    Increasingly, user generated content (UGC) in social media postings and their associated metadata such as time and location stamps are being used to provide useful operational information during natural hazard events such as hurricanes, storms and floods. The main advantage of these new sources of data are twofold. First, in a purely additive sense, they can provide much denser geographical coverage of the hazard as compared to traditional sensor networks. Second, they provide what physical sensors are not able to do: By documenting personal observations and experiences, they directly record the impact of a hazard on the human environment. For this reason interpretation of the content (e.g., hashtags, images, text, emojis, etc) and metadata (e.g., keywords, tags, geolocation) have been a focus of much research into social media analytics. However, as choices of semantic tags in the current methods are usually reduced to the exact name or type of the event (e.g., hashtags '#Sandy' or '#flooding'), the main limitation of such approaches remains their mere nowcasting capacity. In this study we make use of polysemous tags of images posted during several recent flood events and demonstrate how such volunteered geographic data can be used to provide early warning of an event before its outbreak.

  11. Predicting floods with Flickr tags

    PubMed Central

    Jarvis, Stephen; Procter, Rob

    2017-01-01

    Increasingly, user generated content (UGC) in social media postings and their associated metadata such as time and location stamps are being used to provide useful operational information during natural hazard events such as hurricanes, storms and floods. The main advantage of these new sources of data are twofold. First, in a purely additive sense, they can provide much denser geographical coverage of the hazard as compared to traditional sensor networks. Second, they provide what physical sensors are not able to do: By documenting personal observations and experiences, they directly record the impact of a hazard on the human environment. For this reason interpretation of the content (e.g., hashtags, images, text, emojis, etc) and metadata (e.g., keywords, tags, geolocation) have been a focus of much research into social media analytics. However, as choices of semantic tags in the current methods are usually reduced to the exact name or type of the event (e.g., hashtags ‘#Sandy’ or ‘#flooding’), the main limitation of such approaches remains their mere nowcasting capacity. In this study we make use of polysemous tags of images posted during several recent flood events and demonstrate how such volunteered geographic data can be used to provide early warning of an event before its outbreak. PMID:28235035

  12. Sensitive Carbohydrate Detection using Surface Enhanced Raman Tagging

    PubMed Central

    Vangala, Karthikeshwar; Yanney, Michael; Hsiao, Cheng-Te; Wu, Wells W.; Shen, Rong-Fong; Zou, Sige; Sygula, Andrzej; Zhang, Dongmao

    2010-01-01

    Glycomic analysis is an increasingly important field in biological and biomedical research as glycosylation is one of the most important protein post-translational modifications. We have developed a new technique to detect carbohydrates using surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) by designing and applying a Rhodamine B derivative as the SERS tag. Using a reductive amination reaction, the Rhodamine-based tag (RT) was successfully conjugated to three model carbohydrates (glucose, lactose and glucuronic acid). SERS detection limits obtained with 632 nm HeNe laser were ~1 nM in concentration for all the RT-carbohydrate conjugates and ~10 fmol in total sample consumption. The dynamic range of the SERS method is about 4 orders of magnitude, spanning from 1 nM to 5 µM. Ratiometric SERS quantification using isotope-substituted SERS internal references also allows comparative quantifications of carbohydrates labeled with RT and deuterium/hydrogen substituted RT tags, respectively. In addition to enhancing the SERS detection of the tagged carbohydrates, the Rhodamine tagging facilitates fluorescence and mass spectrometric detection of carbohydrates. Current fluorescence sensitivity of RT-carbohydrates is ~ 3 nM in concentration while the mass spectrometry (MS) sensitivity is about 1 fmol that was achieved with linear ion trap electrospray ionization (ESI)-MS instrument. Potential applications that take advantage of the high SERS, fluorescence and MS sensitivity of this SERS tagging strategy are discussed for practical glycomic analysis where carbohydrates may be quantified with a fluorescence and SERS technique, and then identified with ESI-MS techniques. PMID:21082777

  13. Thermo-mechanical actuator-based miniature tagging module for localization in capsule endoscopy

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Chandrappan, Jayakrishnan; Ruiqi, Lim; Su, Nandar; Yen Yi, Germaine Hoe; Vaidyanathan, Kripesh

    2011-04-01

    Capsule endoscopy is a frontline medical diagnostic tool for the gastro intestinal tract disorders. During diagnosis, efficient localization techniques are essential to specify a pathological area that may require further diagnosis or treatment. This paper presents the development of a miniature tagging module that relies on a novel concept to label the region of interest and has the potential to integrate with a capsule endoscope. The tagging module is a compact thermo-mechanical actuator loaded with a biocompatible micro tag. A low power microheater attached to the module serves as the thermal igniter for the mechanical actuator. At optimum temperature, the actuator releases the micro tag instantly and penetrates the mucosa layer of a GI tract, region of interest. Ex vivo animal trials are conducted to verify the feasibility of the tagging module concept. X-ray imaging is used to detect the location of the micro tag embedded in the GI tract wall. The method is successful, and radiopaque micro tags can provide valuable pre-operative position information on the infected area to facilitate further clinical procedures.

  14. Using sutures to attach miniature tracking tags to small bats for multimonth movement and behavioral studies

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Castle, Kevin T.; Weller, Theodore J.; Cryan, Paul M.; Hein, Cris D.; Schirmacher, Michael R.

    2015-01-01

    1. Determining the detailed movements of individual animals often requires them to carry tracking devices, but tracking broad-scale movement of small bats (< 30g) has been limited by transmitter technology and long-term attachment methods. This limitation inhibits our understanding of bat dispersal and migration, particularly in the context of emerging conservation issues like fatalities at wind turbines and diseases. 2. We tested a novel method of attaching lightweight global positioning system (GPS) tags and geolocating data loggers to small bats. We used monofilament, synthetic, absorbable sutures to secure GPS tags and data loggers to the skin of anesthetized big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus) in Colorado and hoary bats (Lasiurus cinereus) in California. 3. GPS tags and data loggers were sutured to 17 bats in this study. Three tagged bats were recaptured seven months after initial deployment, with tags still attached; none of these bats showed ill effects from the tag. No severe injuries were apparent upon recapture of 6 additional bats that carried tags up to 26 days after attachment, however one of the bats exhibited skin chafing. 4. Use of absorbable sutures to affix small tracking devices seems to be a safe, effective method for studying movements of bats over multiple months, although additional testing is warranted. This new attachment method has the potential to quickly advance our understanding of small bats, particularly as more-sophisticated miniature tracking devices (e.g., satellite tags) become available.

  15. Using sutures to attach miniature tracking tags to small bats for multimonth movement and behavioral studies.

    PubMed

    Castle, Kevin T; Weller, Theodore J; Cryan, Paul M; Hein, Cris D; Schirmacher, Michael R

    2015-07-01

    Determining the detailed movements of individual animals often requires them to carry tracking devices, but tracking broad-scale movement of small bats (<30 g) has been limited by transmitter technology and long-term attachment methods. This limitation inhibits our understanding of bat dispersal and migration, particularly in the context of emerging conservation issues such as fatalities at wind turbines and diseases. We tested a novel method of attaching lightweight global positioning system (GPS) tags and geolocating data loggers to small bats. We used monofilament, synthetic, absorbable sutures to secure GPS tags and data loggers to the skin of anesthetized big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus) in Colorado and hoary bats (Lasiurus cinereus) in California. GPS tags and data loggers were sutured to 17 bats in this study. Three tagged bats were recaptured 7 months after initial deployment, with tags still attached; none of these bats showed ill effects from the tag. No severe injuries were apparent upon recapture of 6 additional bats that carried tags up to 26 days after attachment; however, one of the bats exhibited skin chafing. Use of absorbable sutures to affix small tracking devices seems to be a safe, effective method for studying movements of bats over multiple months, although additional testing is warranted. This new attachment method has the potential to quickly advance our understanding of small bats, particularly as more sophisticated miniature tracking devices (e.g., satellite tags) become available.

  16. RFID tags as a direct tracer for water and sediment dynamics

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Sommerer, Erik; Plate, Simon; Güntner, Andreas

    2014-05-01

    RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) is a wireless automatic identification system to track objects with widespread application in industrial operations, but also selected applications in ecological research (animal tracking) and for hydro-sedimentological studies (sediment transport with RFID tags embedded in bedload material). In this study, for the first time, we test and apply RFID tags as a direct tracer to track water pathways, erosion patterns and sediment transport on the surface at the hillslope and headwater scale. The RFID system used here consists of tags with a size of 12 x 2 mm and a combination of mobile and stationary antennas. The transport pathways and velocities of the RFID tags can be individually assessed due to their unique identification numbers. The study area is a badland of easily erodible marls and carbonates located in the Villacarli catchment (42 km²) in the Central Spanish Pyrenees. The badlands have been identified as one of the main sediment sources for siltation of the downstream Barasona Reservoir. More than 700 tags were placed in different terrain units using three experimental setups, including lab experiments: (i) intensive feasibility tests ranging from laboratory flume experiments to tracer studies under natural channel and slope conditions to compare the transport of RFID tags relative to colored particles of the natural sediment; (ii) several transects across the badland to investigate sediment transfer characteristics on different morphological units (i.e. channel, rills, slopes); (iii) a raster of 99 RFID tags covering a slope flank with vegetated and unvegetated parts to reveal the influence of vegetation to erosion and transport processes. The detection of transported tags was carried out with a mobile antenna system to map the spatial distribution of tags after selected rainfall events and with two stationary antennas in channel cross-sections for time-continuous observation of tag passage. From the observations, we

  17. 49 CFR 234.239 - Tagging of wires and interference of wires or tags with signal apparatus.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-10-01

    ... with signal apparatus. 234.239 Section 234.239 Transportation Other Regulations Relating to... Tagging of wires and interference of wires or tags with signal apparatus. Each wire shall be tagged or... of the apparatus. This requirement applies to each wire at each terminal in all housings including...

  18. 49 CFR 234.239 - Tagging of wires and interference of wires or tags with signal apparatus.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-10-01

    ... with signal apparatus. 234.239 Section 234.239 Transportation Other Regulations Relating to... Tagging of wires and interference of wires or tags with signal apparatus. Each wire shall be tagged or... of the apparatus. This requirement applies to each wire at each terminal in all housings including...

  19. Absolute Configuration of 3-METHYLCYCLOHEXANONE by Chiral Tag Rotational Spectroscopy and Vibrational Circular Dichroism

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Evangelisti, Luca; Holdren, Martin S.; Mayer, Kevin J.; Smart, Taylor; West, Channing; Pate, Brooks

    2017-06-01

    The absolute configuration of 3-methylcyclohexanone was established by chiral tag rotational spectroscopy measurements using 3-butyn-2-ol as the tag partner. This molecule was chosen because it is a benchmark measurement for vibrational circular dichroism (VCD). A comparison of the analysis approaches of chiral tag rotational spectroscopy and VCD will be presented. One important issue in chiral analysis by both methods is the conformational flexibility of the molecule being analyzed. The analysis of conformational composition of samples will be illustrated. In this case, the high spectral resolution of molecular rotational spectroscopy and potential for spectral simplification by conformational cooling in the pulsed jet expansion are advantages for chiral tag spectroscopy. The computational chemistry requirements for the two methods will also be discussed. In this case, the need to perform conformer searches for weakly bound complexes and to perform reasonably high level quantum chemistry geometry optimizations on these complexes makes the computational time requirements less favorable for chiral tag rotational spectroscopy. Finally, the issue of reliability of the determination of the absolute configuration will be considered. In this case, rotational spectroscopy offers a "gold standard" analysis method through the determination of the ^{13}C-subsitution structure of the complex between 3-methylcyclohexanone and an enantiopure sample of the 3-butyn-2-ol tag.

  20. Soldier Data Tag Study Effort.

    DTIC Science & Technology

    1985-06-10

    interested in protecting it. The tag itself is difficult--though not impossible--to counterfeit . Also, it (’• iii 71 -, potentially improves the data...attacks during the design, manufacture, and distribution processes, counterfeiting , unauthorized access/alteration of tag data, and use of the tag to...45 3.3.2 Hijacking of SOT System Shipments, or Large- Scale Counterfeit of SOT Systems ....................... 46 3.3.3 Unauthorized Alteration

  1. Estimating survival of radio-tagged birds

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Bunck, C.M.; Pollock, K.H.; Lebreton, J.-D.; North, P.M.

    1993-01-01

    Parametric and nonparametric methods for estimating survival of radio-tagged birds are described. The general assumptions of these methods are reviewed. An estimate based on the assumption of constant survival throughout the period is emphasized in the overview of parametric methods. Two nonparametric methods, the Kaplan-Meier estimate of the survival funcrion and the log rank test, are explained in detail The link between these nonparametric methods and traditional capture-recapture models is discussed aloag with considerations in designing studies that use telemetry techniques to estimate survival.

  2. Novel cleavage of reductively aminated glycan-tags by N-bromosuccinimide to regenerate free, reducing glycans.

    PubMed

    Song, Xuezheng; Johns, Brian A; Ju, Hong; Lasanajak, Yi; Zhao, Chunmei; Smith, David F; Cummings, Richard D

    2013-11-15

    Glycans that are fluorescently tagged by reductive amination have been useful for functional glycomic studies. However, the existing tags can introduce unwanted properties to the glycans and complicate structural and functional studies. Here, we describe a facile method using N-bromosuccinimide (NBS) to remove the tags and efficiently regenerate free reducing glycans. The regenerated free reducing glycans can be easily analyzed by routine mass spectrometry or retagged with different tags for further studies. This new method can be used to efficiently remove a variety of fluorescent tags installed by reductive amination, including 2-aminobenzoic acid and 2-aminopyridine. NBS treatment essentially transforms the commonly used 2-aminobenzoic linkage to a cleavable linkage. It can be used to cleave printed glycans from microarrays and cleave neoglycopeptides containing a 2-aminobenzoic linker.

  3. Uncertainty of exploitation estimates made from tag returns

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Miranda, L.E.; Brock, R.E.; Dorr, B.S.

    2002-01-01

    Over 6,000 crappies Pomoxis spp. were tagged in five water bodies to estimate exploitation rates by anglers. Exploitation rates were computed as the percentage of tags returned after adjustment for three sources of uncertainty: postrelease mortality due to the tagging process, tag loss, and the reporting rate of tagged fish. Confidence intervals around exploitation rates were estimated by resampling from the probability distributions of tagging mortality, tag loss, and reporting rate. Estimates of exploitation rates ranged from 17% to 54% among the five study systems. Uncertainty around estimates of tagging mortality, tag loss, and reporting resulted in 90% confidence intervals around the median exploitation rate as narrow as 15 percentage points and as broad as 46 percentage points. The greatest source of estimation error was uncertainty about tag reporting. Because the large investments required by tagging and reward operations produce imprecise estimates of the exploitation rate, it may be worth considering other approaches to estimating it or simply circumventing the exploitation question altogether.

  4. Store operation with conditional push of a tag value to a queue

    DOEpatents

    Heidelberger, Philip; Steinmacher-Burow, Burkhard

    2015-07-28

    According to one embodiment, a method for a store operation with a conditional push of a tag value to a queue is provided. The method includes configuring a queue that is accessible by an application, setting a value at an address in a memory device including a memory and a controller, receiving a request for an operation using the value at the address and performing the operation. The method also includes the controller writing a result of the operation to the address, thus changing the value at the address, the controller determining if the result of the operation meets a condition and the controller pushing a tag value to the queue based on the condition being met, where the tag value in the queue indicates to the application that the condition is met.

  5. Bag3-Induced Autophagy Is Associated with Degradation of JCV Oncoprotein, T-Ag

    PubMed Central

    Sariyer, Ilker Kudret; Merabova, Nana; Patel, Prem Kumer; Knezevic, Tijana; Rosati, Alessandra; Turco, Maria C.; Khalili, Kamel

    2012-01-01

    JC virus, JCV, is a human neurotropic polyomavirus whose replication in glial cells causes the fatal demyelinating disease progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML). In addition, JCV possesses oncogenic activity and expression of its transforming protein, large T-antigen (T-Ag), in several experimental animals induces tumors of neural origin. Further, the presence of JCV DNA and T-Ag have been repeatedly observed in several human malignant tissues including primitive neuroectodermal tumors and glioblastomas. Earlier studies have demonstrated that Bag3, a member of the Bcl-2-associated athanogene (Bag) family of proteins, which is implicated in autophagy and apoptosis, is downregulated upon JCV infection of glial cells and that JCV T-Ag is responsible for suppressing the activity of the BAG3 promoter. Here, we investigated the possible impact of Bag3 on T-Ag expression in JCV-infected human primary glial cells as well as in cells derived from T-Ag-induced medulloblastoma in transgenic animals. Results from these studies revealed that overexpression of Bag3 drastically decreases the level of T-Ag expression by inducing the autophagic degradation of the viral protein. Interestingly, this event leads to the inhibition of JCV infection of glial cells, suggesting that the reduced levels of T-antigen seen upon the overexpression of Bag3 has a biological impact on the viral lytic cycle. Results from protein-protein interaction studies showed that T-Ag and Bag3 physically interact with each other through the zinc-finger of T-Ag and the proline rich domains of Bag3, and this interaction is important for the autophagic degradation of T-Ag. Our observations open a new avenue of research for better understanding of virus-host interaction by investigating the interplay between T-Ag and Bag3, and their impact on the development of JCV-associated diseases. PMID:22984599

  6. Bag3-induced autophagy is associated with degradation of JCV oncoprotein, T-Ag.

    PubMed

    Sariyer, Ilker Kudret; Merabova, Nana; Patel, Prem Kumer; Knezevic, Tijana; Rosati, Alessandra; Turco, Maria C; Khalili, Kamel

    2012-01-01

    JC virus, JCV, is a human neurotropic polyomavirus whose replication in glial cells causes the fatal demyelinating disease progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML). In addition, JCV possesses oncogenic activity and expression of its transforming protein, large T-antigen (T-Ag), in several experimental animals induces tumors of neural origin. Further, the presence of JCV DNA and T-Ag have been repeatedly observed in several human malignant tissues including primitive neuroectodermal tumors and glioblastomas. Earlier studies have demonstrated that Bag3, a member of the Bcl-2-associated athanogene (Bag) family of proteins, which is implicated in autophagy and apoptosis, is downregulated upon JCV infection of glial cells and that JCV T-Ag is responsible for suppressing the activity of the BAG3 promoter. Here, we investigated the possible impact of Bag3 on T-Ag expression in JCV-infected human primary glial cells as well as in cells derived from T-Ag-induced medulloblastoma in transgenic animals. Results from these studies revealed that overexpression of Bag3 drastically decreases the level of T-Ag expression by inducing the autophagic degradation of the viral protein. Interestingly, this event leads to the inhibition of JCV infection of glial cells, suggesting that the reduced levels of T-antigen seen upon the overexpression of Bag3 has a biological impact on the viral lytic cycle. Results from protein-protein interaction studies showed that T-Ag and Bag3 physically interact with each other through the zinc-finger of T-Ag and the proline rich domains of Bag3, and this interaction is important for the autophagic degradation of T-Ag. Our observations open a new avenue of research for better understanding of virus-host interaction by investigating the interplay between T-Ag and Bag3, and their impact on the development of JCV-associated diseases.

  7. Seasonal Movements, Aggregations and Diving Behavior of Atlantic Bluefin Tuna (Thunnus thynnus) Revealed with Archival Tags

    PubMed Central

    Walli, Andreas; Teo, Steven L. H.; Boustany, Andre; Farwell, Charles J.; Williams, Tom; Dewar, Heidi; Prince, Eric; Block, Barbara A.

    2009-01-01

    Electronic tags were used to examine the seasonal movements, aggregations and diving behaviors of Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) to better understand their migration ecology and oceanic habitat utilization. Implantable archival tags (n = 561) were deployed in bluefin tuna from 1996 to 2005 and 106 tags were recovered. Movement paths of the fish were reconstructed using light level and sea-surface-temperature-based geolocation estimates. To quantify habitat utilization we employed a weighted kernel estimation technique that removed the biases of deployment location and track length. Throughout the North Atlantic, high residence times (167±33 days) were identified in four spatially confined regions on a seasonal scale. Within each region, bluefin tuna experienced distinct temperature regimes and displayed different diving behaviors. The mean diving depths within the high-use areas were significantly shallower and the dive frequency and the variance in internal temperature significantly higher than during transit movements between the high-use areas. Residence time in the more northern latitude high-use areas was significantly correlated with levels of primary productivity. The regions of aggregation are associated with areas of abundant prey and potentially represent critical foraging habitats that have seasonally abundant prey. Throughout the North Atlantic mean diving depth was significantly correlated with the depth of the thermocline, and dive behavior changed in relation to the stratification of the water column. In this study, with numerous multi-year tracks, there appear to be repeatable patterns of clear aggregation areas that potentially are changing with environmental conditions. The high concentrations of bluefin tuna in predictable locations indicate that Atlantic bluefin tuna are vulnerable to concentrated fishing efforts in the regions of foraging aggregations. PMID:19582150

  8. Proximity-Induced Covalent Labeling of Proteins with a Reactive Fluorophore-Binding Peptide Tag.

    PubMed

    Sunbul, Murat; Nacheva, Lora; Jäschke, Andres

    2015-08-19

    Labeling of proteins with fluorescent dyes in live cells enables the investigation of their roles in biological systems by fluorescence microscopy. Because the labeling procedure should not disturb the native function of the protein of interest, it is of high importance to find the optimum labeling method for the problem to be studied. Here, we developed a rapid one-step method to covalently and site-specifically label proteins with a TexasRed fluorophore in vitro and in live bacteria. To this end, a genetically encodable TexasRed fluorophore-binding peptide (TR512) was converted into a reactive tag (ReacTR) by adjoining a cysteine residue which rapidly reacts with N-α-chloroacetamide-conjugated TexasRed fluorophore owing to the proximity effect; ReacTR tag first binds to the TexasRed fluorophore and this interaction brings the nucleophilic cysteine and the electrophilic N-α-chloroacetamide groups in close proximity. Our method has several advantages over existing methods: (i) it utilizes a peptide tag much smaller than fluorescent proteins, the SNAP, CLIP, or HaLo tags; (ii) it allows for labeling of proteins with a small, photostable, red-emitting TexasRed fluorophore; (iii) the probe used is very easy to synthesize; (iv) no enzyme is required to transfer the fluorophore to the peptide tag; and (v) labeling yields a stable covalent product in a very fast reaction.

  9. The use of tags and tag clouds to discern credible content in online health message forums.

    PubMed

    O'Grady, Laura; Wathen, C Nadine; Charnaw-Burger, Jill; Betel, Lisa; Shachak, Aviv; Luke, Robert; Hockema, Stephen; Jadad, Alejandro R

    2012-01-01

    Web sites with health-oriented content are potentially harmful if inaccurate or inappropriate medical information is used to make health-related decisions. Checklists, rating systems and guidelines have been developed to help people determine what is credible, but recent Internet technologies emphasize applications that are collaborative in nature, including tags and tag clouds, where site users 'tag' or label online content, each using their own labelling system. Concepts such as the date, reference, author, testimonial and quotations are considered predictors of credible content. An understanding of these descriptive tools, how they relate to the depiction of credibility and how this relates to overall efforts to label data in relation to the semantic web has yet to emerge. This study investigates how structured (pre-determined) and unstructured (user-generated) tags and tag clouds with a multiple word search feature are used by participants to assess credibility of messages posted in online message forums. The targeted respondents were those using web sites message forums for disease self-management. We also explored the relevancy of our findings to the labelling or indexing of data in the context of the semantic web. Diabetes was chosen as the content area in this study, since (a) this is a condition with increasing prevalence and (b) diabetics have been shown to actively use the Internet to manage their condition. From January to March 2010 participants were recruited using purposive sampling techniques. A screening instrument was used to determine eligibility. The study consisted of a demographic and computer usage survey, a series of usability tests and an interview. We tested participants (N=22) on two scenarios, each involving tasks that assessed their ability to tag content and search using a tag cloud that included six structured credibility terms (statistics, date, reference, author, testimonial and quotations). MORAE Usability software (version 3

  10. Z-path SAW RFID tag.

    PubMed

    Härmä, Sanna; Plessky, Victor P; Hartmann, Clinton S; Steichen, William

    2008-01-01

    Surface acoustic wave (SAW) radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags are soon expected to be produced in very high volumes. The size and cost of a SAW RFID tag will be key parameters for many applications. Therefore, it is of primary importance to reduce the chip size. In this work, we describe the design principles of a 2.4-GHz SAW RFID tag that is significantly smaller than earlier reported tags. We also present simulated and experimental results. The coded signal should arrive at the reader with a certain delay (typically about 1 micros), i.e., after the reception of environmental echoes. If the tag uses a bidirectional interdigital transducer (IDT), space for the initial delay is needed on both sides of the IDT. In this work, we replace the bidirectional IDT by a unidirectional one. This halves the space required by the initial delay because all the code reflectors must now be placed on the same side of the IDT. We reduce tag size even further by using a Z-path geometry in which the same space in x-direction is used for both the initial delay and the code reflectors. Chip length is thus determined only by the space required by the code reflectors.

  11. Quaternary ammonium isobaric tag for a relative and absolute quantification of peptides.

    PubMed

    Setner, Bartosz; Stefanowicz, Piotr; Szewczuk, Zbigniew

    2018-02-01

    Isobaric labeling quantification of peptides has become a method of choice for mass spectrometry-based proteomics studies. However, despite of wide variety of commercially available isobaric tags, none of the currently available methods offers significant improvement of sensitivity of detection during MS experiment. Recently, many strategies were applied to increase the ionization efficiency of peptides involving chemical modifications introducing quaternary ammonium fixed charge. Here, we present a novel quaternary ammonium-based isobaric tag for relative and absolute quantification of peptides (QAS-iTRAQ 2-plex). Upon collisional activation, the new stable benzylic-type cationic reporter ion is liberated from the tag. Deuterium atoms were used to offset the differential masses of a reporter group. We tested the applicability of QAS-iTRAQ 2-plex reagent on a series of model peptides as well as bovine serum albumin tryptic digest. Obtained results suggest usefulness of this isobaric ionization tag for relative and absolute quantification of peptides. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  12. Scalable Faceted Ranking in Tagging Systems

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Orlicki, José I.; Alvarez-Hamelin, J. Ignacio; Fierens, Pablo I.

    Nowadays, web collaborative tagging systems which allow users to upload, comment on and recommend contents, are growing. Such systems can be represented as graphs where nodes correspond to users and tagged-links to recommendations. In this paper we analyze the problem of computing a ranking of users with respect to a facet described as a set of tags. A straightforward solution is to compute a PageRank-like algorithm on a facet-related graph, but it is not feasible for online computation. We propose an alternative: (i) a ranking for each tag is computed offline on the basis of tag-related subgraphs; (ii) a faceted order is generated online by merging rankings corresponding to all the tags in the facet. Based on the graph analysis of YouTube and Flickr, we show that step (i) is scalable. We also present efficient algorithms for step (ii), which are evaluated by comparing their results with two gold standards.

  13. Association of ESR1 gene tagging SNPs with breast cancer risk

    PubMed Central

    Dunning, Alison M.; Healey, Catherine S.; Baynes, Caroline; Maia, Ana-Teresa; Scollen, Serena; Vega, Ana; Rodríguez, Raquel; Barbosa-Morais, Nuno L.; Ponder, Bruce A.J.; Low, Yen-Ling; Bingham, Sheila; Haiman, Christopher A.; Le Marchand, Loic; Broeks, Annegien; Schmidt, Marjanka K.; Hopper, John; Southey, Melissa; Beckmann, Matthias W.; Fasching, Peter A.; Peto, Julian; Johnson, Nichola; Bojesen, Stig E.; Nordestgaard, Børge; Milne, Roger L.; Benitez, Javier; Hamann, Ute; Ko, Yon; Schmutzler, Rita K.; Burwinkel, Barbara; Schürmann, Peter; Dörk, Thilo; Heikkinen, Tuomas; Nevanlinna, Heli; Lindblom, Annika; Margolin, Sara; Mannermaa, Arto; Kosma, Veli-Matti; Chen, Xiaoqing; Spurdle, Amanda; Change-Claude, Jenny; Flesch-Janys, Dieter; Couch, Fergus J.; Olson, Janet E.; Severi, Gianluca; Baglietto, Laura; Børresen-Dale, Anne-Lise; Kristensen, Vessela; Hunter, David J.; Hankinson, Susan E.; Devilee, Peter; Vreeswijk, Maaike; Lissowska, Jolanta; Brinton, Louise; Liu, Jianjun; Hall, Per; Kang, Daehee; Yoo, Keun-Young; Shen, Chen-Yang; Yu, Jyh-Cherng; Anton-Culver, Hoda; Ziogoas, Argyrios; Sigurdson, Alice; Struewing, Jeff; Easton, Douglas F.; Garcia-Closas, Montserrat; Humphreys, Manjeet K.; Morrison, Jonathan; Pharoah, Paul D.P.; Pooley, Karen A.; Chenevix-Trench, Georgia

    2009-01-01

    We have conducted a three-stage, comprehensive single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP)-tagging association study of ESR1 gene variants (SNPs) in more than 55 000 breast cancer cases and controls from studies within the Breast Cancer Association Consortium (BCAC). No large risks or highly significant associations were revealed. SNP rs3020314, tagging a region of ESR1 intron 4, is associated with an increase in breast cancer susceptibility with a dominant mode of action in European populations. Carriers of the c-allele have an odds ratio (OR) of 1.05 [95% Confidence Intervals (CI) 1.02–1.09] relative to t-allele homozygotes, P = 0.004. There is significant heterogeneity between studies, P = 0.002. The increased risk appears largely confined to oestrogen receptor-positive tumour risk. The region tagged by SNP rs3020314 contains sequence that is more highly conserved across mammalian species than the rest of intron 4, and it may subtly alter the ratio of two mRNA splice forms. PMID:19126777

  14. Mapping transcription factor interactome networks using HaloTag protein arrays.

    PubMed

    Yazaki, Junshi; Galli, Mary; Kim, Alice Y; Nito, Kazumasa; Aleman, Fernando; Chang, Katherine N; Carvunis, Anne-Ruxandra; Quan, Rosa; Nguyen, Hien; Song, Liang; Alvarez, José M; Huang, Shao-Shan Carol; Chen, Huaming; Ramachandran, Niroshan; Altmann, Stefan; Gutiérrez, Rodrigo A; Hill, David E; Schroeder, Julian I; Chory, Joanne; LaBaer, Joshua; Vidal, Marc; Braun, Pascal; Ecker, Joseph R

    2016-07-19

    Protein microarrays enable investigation of diverse biochemical properties for thousands of proteins in a single experiment, an unparalleled capacity. Using a high-density system called HaloTag nucleic acid programmable protein array (HaloTag-NAPPA), we created high-density protein arrays comprising 12,000 Arabidopsis ORFs. We used these arrays to query protein-protein interactions for a set of 38 transcription factors and transcriptional regulators (TFs) that function in diverse plant hormone regulatory pathways. The resulting transcription factor interactome network, TF-NAPPA, contains thousands of novel interactions. Validation in a benchmarked in vitro pull-down assay revealed that a random subset of TF-NAPPA validated at the same rate of 64% as a positive reference set of literature-curated interactions. Moreover, using a bimolecular fluorescence complementation (BiFC) assay, we confirmed in planta several interactions of biological interest and determined the interaction localizations for seven pairs. The application of HaloTag-NAPPA technology to plant hormone signaling pathways allowed the identification of many novel transcription factor-protein interactions and led to the development of a proteome-wide plant hormone TF interactome network.

  15. Engineering Protein Hydrogels Using SpyCatcher-SpyTag Chemistry.

    PubMed

    Gao, Xiaoye; Fang, Jie; Xue, Bin; Fu, Linglan; Li, Hongbin

    2016-09-12

    Constructing hydrogels from engineered proteins has attracted significant attention within the material sciences, owing to their myriad potential applications in biomedical engineering. Developing efficient methods to cross-link tailored protein building blocks into hydrogels with desirable mechanical, physical, and functional properties is of paramount importance. By making use of the recently developed SpyCatcher-SpyTag chemistry, we successfully engineered protein hydrogels on the basis of engineered tandem modular elastomeric proteins. Our resultant protein hydrogels are soft but stable, and show excellent biocompatibility. As the first step, we tested the use of these hydrogels as a drug carrier, as well as in encapsulating human lung fibroblast cells. Our results demonstrate the robustness of the SpyCatcher-SpyTag chemistry, even when the SpyTag (or SpyCatcher) is flanked by folded globular domains. These results demonstrate that SpyCatcher-SpyTag chemistry can be used to engineer protein hydrogels from tandem modular elastomeric proteins that can find applications in tissue engineering, in fundamental mechano-biological studies, and as a controlled drug release vehicle.

  16. PATL: A RFID Tag Localization based on Phased Array Antenna

    PubMed Central

    Qiu, Lanxin; Liang, Xiaoxuan; Huang, Zhangqin

    2017-01-01

    In RFID systems, how to detect the position precisely is an important and challenging research topic. In this paper, we propose a range-free 2D tag localization method based on phased array antenna, called PATL. This method takes advantage of the adjustable radiation angle of the phased array antenna to scan the surveillance region in turns. By using the statistics of the tags’ number in different antenna beam directions, a weighting algorithm is used to calculate the position of the tag. This method can be applied to real-time location of multiple targets without usage of any reference tags or additional readers. Additionally, we present an optimized weighting method based on RSSI to increase the locating accuracy. We use a Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) UHF RFID reader which is integrated with a phased array antenna to evaluate our method. The experiment results from an indoor office environment demonstrate the average distance error of PATL is about 21 cm and the optimized approach achieves an accuracy of 13 cm. This novel 2D localization scheme is a simple, yet promising, solution that is especially applicable to the smart shelf visualized management in storage or retail area. PMID:28295014

  17. A normalization strategy for comparing tag count data

    PubMed Central

    2012-01-01

    Background High-throughput sequencing, such as ribonucleic acid sequencing (RNA-seq) and chromatin immunoprecipitation sequencing (ChIP-seq) analyses, enables various features of organisms to be compared through tag counts. Recent studies have demonstrated that the normalization step for RNA-seq data is critical for a more accurate subsequent analysis of differential gene expression. Development of a more robust normalization method is desirable for identifying the true difference in tag count data. Results We describe a strategy for normalizing tag count data, focusing on RNA-seq. The key concept is to remove data assigned as potential differentially expressed genes (DEGs) before calculating the normalization factor. Several R packages for identifying DEGs are currently available, and each package uses its own normalization method and gene ranking algorithm. We compared a total of eight package combinations: four R packages (edgeR, DESeq, baySeq, and NBPSeq) with their default normalization settings and with our normalization strategy. Many synthetic datasets under various scenarios were evaluated on the basis of the area under the curve (AUC) as a measure for both sensitivity and specificity. We found that packages using our strategy in the data normalization step overall performed well. This result was also observed for a real experimental dataset. Conclusion Our results showed that the elimination of potential DEGs is essential for more accurate normalization of RNA-seq data. The concept of this normalization strategy can widely be applied to other types of tag count data and to microarray data. PMID:22475125

  18. Comparison of migration rate and survival between radio-tagged and PIT-tagged migrant yearling chinook salmon in the Snake and Columbia rivers

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Hockersmith, E.E.; Muir, W.D.; Smith, S.G.; Sandford, B.P.; Perry, R.W.; Adams, N.S.; Rondorf, D.W.

    2003-01-01

    A study was conducted to compare the travel times, detection probabilities, and survival of migrant hatchery-reared yearling chinook salmon Oncorhynchus tshawytscha tagged with either gastrically or surgically implanted sham radio tags (with an imbedded passive integrated transponder [PIT] tag) with those of their cohorts tagged only with PIT tags in the Snake and Columbia rivers. Juvenile chinook salmon with gastrically implanted radio tags migrated significantly faster than either surgically radio-tagged or PIT-tagged fish, while migration rates were similar among surgically radio-tagged and PIT-tagged fish. The probabilities of PIT tag detection at downstream dams varied by less than 5% and were not significantly different among the three groups. Survival was similar among treatments for median travel times of less than approximately 6 d (migration distance of 106 km). However, for both gastrically and surgically radio-tagged fish, survival was significantly less than for PIT-tagged fish, for which median travel times exceeded approximately 10 d (migration distance of 225 km). The results of this study support the use of radio tags to estimate the survival of juvenile chinook salmon having a median fork length of approximately 150 mm (range, 127-285 mm) and a median travel time of migration of less than approximately 6 d.

  19. HaloTag technology for specific and covalent labeling of fusion proteins.

    PubMed

    Benink, Hélène A; Urh, Marjeta

    2015-01-01

    Appending proteins of interest to fluorescent protein tags such as GFP has revolutionized how proteins are studied in the cellular environment. Over the last few decades many varieties of fluorescent proteins have been generated, each bringing new capability to research. However, taking full advantage of standard fluorescent proteins with advanced and differential features requires significant effort on the part of the researcher. This approach necessitates that many genetic fusions be generated and confirmed to function properly in cells with the same protein of interest. To lessen this burden, a newer category of protein fusion tags termed "self-labeling protein tags" has been developed. This approach utilizes a single protein tag, the function of which can be altered by attaching various chemical moieties (fluorescent labels, affinity handles, etc.). In this way a single genetically encoded protein fusion can easily be given functional diversity and adaptability as supplied by synthetic chemistry. Here we present protein labeling methods using HaloTag technology; comprised of HaloTag protein and the collection of small molecules designed to bind it specifically and provide it with varied functionalities. For imaging purposes these small molecules, termed HaloTag ligands, contain distinct fluorophores. Due to covalent and rapid binding between HaloTag protein and its ligands, labeling is permanent and efficient. Many of these ligands have been optimized for permeability across cellular membranes allowing for live cell labeling and imaging analysis. Nonpermeable ligands have also been developed for specific labeling of surface proteins. Overall, HaloTag is a versatile technology that empowers the end user to label a protein of interest with the choice of different fluorophores while alleviating the need for generation of multiple genetic fusions.

  20. Improving inferences from fisheries capture-recapture studies through remote detection of PIT tags

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Hewitt, David A.; Janney, Eric C.; Hayes, Brian S.; Shively, Rip S.

    2010-01-01

    Models for capture-recapture data are commonly used in analyses of the dynamics of fish and wildlife populations, especially for estimating vital parameters such as survival. Capture-recapture methods provide more reliable inferences than other methods commonly used in fisheries studies. However, for rare or elusive fish species, parameter estimation is often hampered by small probabilities of re-encountering tagged fish when encounters are obtained through traditional sampling methods. We present a case study that demonstrates how remote antennas for passive integrated transponder (PIT) tags can increase encounter probabilities and the precision of survival estimates from capture-recapture models. Between 1999 and 2007, trammel nets were used to capture and tag over 8,400 endangered adult Lost River suckers (Deltistes luxatus) during the spawning season in Upper Klamath Lake, Oregon. Despite intensive sampling at relatively discrete spawning areas, encounter probabilities from Cormack-Jolly-Seber models were consistently low (< 0.2) and the precision of apparent annual survival estimates was poor. Beginning in 2005, remote PIT tag antennas were deployed at known spawning locations to increase the probability of re-encountering tagged fish. We compare results based only on physical recaptures with results based on both physical recaptures and remote detections to demonstrate the substantial improvement in estimates of encounter probabilities (approaching 100%) and apparent annual survival provided by the remote detections. The richer encounter histories provided robust inferences about the dynamics of annual survival and have made it possible to explore more realistic models and hypotheses about factors affecting the conservation and recovery of this endangered species. Recent advances in technology related to PIT tags have paved the way for creative implementation of large-scale tagging studies in systems where they were previously considered impracticable.

  1. Exploring personalized searches using tag-based user profiles and resource profiles in folksonomy.

    PubMed

    Cai, Yi; Li, Qing; Xie, Haoran; Min, Huaqin

    2014-10-01

    With the increase in resource-sharing websites such as YouTube and Flickr, many shared resources have arisen on the Web. Personalized searches have become more important and challenging since users demand higher retrieval quality. To achieve this goal, personalized searches need to take users' personalized profiles and information needs into consideration. Collaborative tagging (also known as folksonomy) systems allow users to annotate resources with their own tags, which provides a simple but powerful way for organizing, retrieving and sharing different types of social resources. In this article, we examine the limitations of previous tag-based personalized searches. To handle these limitations, we propose a new method to model user profiles and resource profiles in collaborative tagging systems. We use a normalized term frequency to indicate the preference degree of a user on a tag. A novel search method using such profiles of users and resources is proposed to facilitate the desired personalization in resource searches. In our framework, instead of the keyword matching or similarity measurement used in previous works, the relevance measurement between a resource and a user query (termed the query relevance) is treated as a fuzzy satisfaction problem of a user's query requirements. We implement a prototype system called the Folksonomy-based Multimedia Retrieval System (FMRS). Experiments using the FMRS data set and the MovieLens data set show that our proposed method outperforms baseline methods. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  2. Tag-mediated cooperation with non-deterministic genotype-phenotype mapping

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Zhang, Hong; Chen, Shu

    2016-01-01

    Tag-mediated cooperation provides a helpful framework for resolving evolutionary social dilemmas. However, most of the previous studies have not taken into account genotype-phenotype distinction in tags, which may play an important role in the process of evolution. To take this into consideration, we introduce non-deterministic genotype-phenotype mapping into a tag-based model with spatial prisoner's dilemma. By our definition, the similarity between genotypic tags does not directly imply the similarity between phenotypic tags. We find that the non-deterministic mapping from genotypic tag to phenotypic tag has non-trivial effects on tag-mediated cooperation. Although we observe that high levels of cooperation can be established under a wide variety of conditions especially when the decisiveness is moderate, the uncertainty in the determination of phenotypic tags may have a detrimental effect on the tag mechanism by disturbing the homophilic interaction structure which can explain the promotion of cooperation in tag systems. Furthermore, the non-deterministic mapping may undermine the robustness of the tag mechanism with respect to various factors such as the structure of the tag space and the tag flexibility. This observation warns us about the danger of applying the classical tag-based models to the analysis of empirical phenomena if genotype-phenotype distinction is significant in real world. Non-deterministic genotype-phenotype mapping thus provides a new perspective to the understanding of tag-mediated cooperation.

  3. Design of a covert RFID tag network for target discovery and target information routing.

    PubMed

    Pan, Qihe; Narayanan, Ram M

    2011-01-01

    Radio frequency identification (RFID) tags are small electronic devices working in the radio frequency range. They use wireless radio communications to automatically identify objects or people without the need for line-of-sight or contact, and are widely used in inventory tracking, object location, environmental monitoring. This paper presents a design of a covert RFID tag network for target discovery and target information routing. In the design, a static or very slowly moving target in the field of RFID tags transmits a distinct pseudo-noise signal, and the RFID tags in the network collect the target information and route it to the command center. A map of each RFID tag's location is saved at command center, which can determine where a RFID tag is located based on each RFID tag's ID. We propose the target information collection method with target association and clustering, and we also propose the information routing algorithm within the RFID tag network. The design and operation of the proposed algorithms are illustrated through examples. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the design.

  4. A Secure RFID Tag Authentication Protocol with Privacy Preserving in Telecare Medicine Information System.

    PubMed

    Li, Chun-Ta; Weng, Chi-Yao; Lee, Cheng-Chi

    2015-08-01

    Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) based solutions are widely used for providing many healthcare applications include patient monitoring, object traceability, drug administration system and telecare medicine information system (TMIS) etc. In order to reduce malpractices and ensure patient privacy, in 2015, Srivastava et al. proposed a hash based RFID tag authentication protocol in TMIS. Their protocol uses lightweight hash operation and synchronized secret value shared between back-end server and tag, which is more secure and efficient than other related RFID authentication protocols. Unfortunately, in this paper, we demonstrate that Srivastava et al.'s tag authentication protocol has a serious security problem in that an adversary may use the stolen/lost reader to connect to the medical back-end server that store information associated with tagged objects and this privacy damage causing the adversary could reveal medical data obtained from stolen/lost readers in a malicious way. Therefore, we propose a secure and efficient RFID tag authentication protocol to overcome security flaws and improve the system efficiency. Compared with Srivastava et al.'s protocol, the proposed protocol not only inherits the advantages of Srivastava et al.'s authentication protocol for TMIS but also provides better security with high system efficiency.

  5. Expression of fluorescently tagged connexins: a novel approach to rescue function of oligomeric DsRed-tagged proteins.

    PubMed

    Lauf, U; Lopez, P; Falk, M M

    2001-06-01

    A novel, brilliantly red fluorescent protein, DsRed has become available recently opening up a wide variety of experimental opportunities for double labeling and fluorescence resonance electron transfer experiments in combination with green fluorescent protein (GFP). Unlike in the case of GFP, proteins tagged with DsRed were often found to aggregate within the cell. Here we report a simple method that allows rescuing the function of an oligomeric protein tagged with DsRed. We demonstrate the feasibility of this approach on the subunit proteins of an oligomeric membrane channel, gap junction connexins. Additionally, DsRed fluorescence was easily detected 12-16 h post transfection, much earlier than previously reported, and could readily be differentiated from co-expressed GFP. Thus, this approach can eliminate the major drawbacks of this highly attractive autofluorescent protein.

  6. Method of tagging sand with ruthenium-103 and the resultant product

    DOEpatents

    Case, Forrest N.; McFarland, Clyde E.

    1976-01-01

    A procedure for tagging sand with a radioisotope for use in the study of sediment transport involves the precipitation of a metal radioisotope in the form of an iodide directly on the sand, followed by heating the sand to a temperature sufficient to effect a phase transformation of the sand and a decomposition of the metal iodide, leaving the metal firmly attached to the sand.

  7. Direct Measurement of Lung Motion Using Hyperpolarized Helium-3 MR Tagging

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Cai Jing; Miller, G. Wilson; Altes, Talissa A.

    2007-07-01

    Purpose: To measure lung motion between end-inhalation and end-exhalation using a hyperpolarized helium-3 (HP {sup 3}He) magnetic resonance (MR) tagging technique. Methods and Materials: Three healthy volunteers underwent MR tagging studies after inhalation of 1 L HP {sup 3}He gas diluted with nitrogen. Multiple-slice two-dimensional and volumetric three-dimensional MR tagged images of the lungs were obtained at end-inhalation and end-exhalation, and displacement vector maps were computed. Results: The grids of tag lines in the HP {sup 3}He MR images were well defined at end-inhalation and remained evident at end-exhalation. Displacement vector maps clearly demonstrated the regional lung motion and deformationmore » that occurred during exhalation. Discontinuity and differences in motion pattern between two adjacent lung lobes were readily resolved. Conclusions: Hyperpolarized helium-3 MR tagging technique can be used for direct in vivo measurement of respiratory lung motion on a regional basis. This technique may lend new insights into the regional pulmonary biomechanics and thus provide valuable information for the deformable registration of lung.« less

  8. Accounting for tagging-to-harvest mortality in a Brownie tag-recovery model by incorporating radio-telemetry data.

    PubMed

    Buderman, Frances E; Diefenbach, Duane R; Casalena, Mary Jo; Rosenberry, Christopher S; Wallingford, Bret D

    2014-04-01

    The Brownie tag-recovery model is useful for estimating harvest rates but assumes all tagged individuals survive to the first hunting season; otherwise, mortality between time of tagging and the hunting season will cause the Brownie estimator to be negatively biased. Alternatively, fitting animals with radio transmitters can be used to accurately estimate harvest rate but may be more costly. We developed a joint model to estimate harvest and annual survival rates that combines known-fate data from animals fitted with transmitters to estimate the probability of surviving the period from capture to the first hunting season, and data from reward-tagged animals in a Brownie tag-recovery model. We evaluated bias and precision of the joint estimator, and how to optimally allocate effort between animals fitted with radio transmitters and inexpensive ear tags or leg bands. Tagging-to-harvest survival rates from >20 individuals with radio transmitters combined with 50-100 reward tags resulted in an unbiased and precise estimator of harvest rates. In addition, the joint model can test whether transmitters affect an individual's probability of being harvested. We illustrate application of the model using data from wild turkey, Meleagris gallapavo, to estimate harvest rates, and data from white-tailed deer, Odocoileus virginianus, to evaluate whether the presence of a visible radio transmitter is related to the probability of a deer being harvested. The joint known-fate tag-recovery model eliminates the requirement to capture and mark animals immediately prior to the hunting season to obtain accurate and precise estimates of harvest rate. In addition, the joint model can assess whether marking animals with radio transmitters affects the individual's probability of being harvested, caused by hunter selectivity or changes in a marked animal's behavior.

  9. Accounting for tagging-to-harvest mortality in a Brownie tag-recovery model by incorporating radio-telemetry data

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Buderman, Frances E.; Diefenbach, Duane R.; Casalena, Mary Jo; Rosenberry, Christopher S.; Wallingford, Bret D.

    2014-01-01

    The Brownie tag-recovery model is useful for estimating harvest rates but assumes all tagged individuals survive to the first hunting season; otherwise, mortality between time of tagging and the hunting season will cause the Brownie estimator to be negatively biased. Alternatively, fitting animals with radio transmitters can be used to accurately estimate harvest rate but may be more costly. We developed a joint model to estimate harvest and annual survival rates that combines known-fate data from animals fitted with transmitters to estimate the probability of surviving the period from capture to the first hunting season, and data from reward-tagged animals in a Brownie tag-recovery model. We evaluated bias and precision of the joint estimator, and how to optimally allocate effort between animals fitted with radio transmitters and inexpensive ear tags or leg bands. Tagging-to-harvest survival rates from >20 individuals with radio transmitters combined with 50–100 reward tags resulted in an unbiased and precise estimator of harvest rates. In addition, the joint model can test whether transmitters affect an individual's probability of being harvested. We illustrate application of the model using data from wild turkey, Meleagris gallapavo,to estimate harvest rates, and data from white-tailed deer, Odocoileus virginianus, to evaluate whether the presence of a visible radio transmitter is related to the probability of a deer being harvested. The joint known-fate tag-recovery model eliminates the requirement to capture and mark animals immediately prior to the hunting season to obtain accurate and precise estimates of harvest rate. In addition, the joint model can assess whether marking animals with radio transmitters affects the individual's probability of being harvested, caused by hunter selectivity or changes in a marked animal's behavior.

  10. Live single-cell laser tag.

    PubMed

    Binan, Loïc; Mazzaferri, Javier; Choquet, Karine; Lorenzo, Louis-Etienne; Wang, Yu Chang; Affar, El Bachir; De Koninck, Yves; Ragoussis, Jiannis; Kleinman, Claudia L; Costantino, Santiago

    2016-05-20

    The ability to conduct image-based, non-invasive cell tagging, independent of genetic engineering, is key to cell biology applications. Here we introduce cell labelling via photobleaching (CLaP), a method that enables instant, specific tagging of individual cells based on a wide array of criteria such as shape, behaviour or positional information. CLaP uses laser illumination to crosslink biotin onto the plasma membrane, coupled with streptavidin conjugates to label individual cells for genomic, cell-tracking, flow cytometry or ultra-microscopy applications. We show that the incorporated mark is stable, non-toxic, retained for several days, and transferred by cell division but not to adjacent cells in culture. To demonstrate the potential of CLaP for genomic applications, we combine CLaP with microfluidics-based single-cell capture followed by transcriptome-wide next-generation sequencing. Finally, we show that CLaP can also be exploited for inducing transient cell adhesion to substrates for microengineering cultures with spatially patterned cell types.

  11. Geographical Topics Learning of Geo-Tagged Social Images.

    PubMed

    Zhang, Xiaoming; Ji, Shufan; Wang, Senzhang; Li, Zhoujun; Lv, Xueqiang

    2016-03-01

    With the availability of cheap location sensors, geotagging of images in online social media is very popular. With a large amount of geo-tagged social images, it is interesting to study how these images are shared across geographical regions and how the geographical language characteristics and vision patterns are distributed across different regions. Unlike textual document, geo-tagged social image contains multiple types of content, i.e., textual description, visual content, and geographical information. Existing approaches usually mine geographical characteristics using a subset of multiple types of image contents or combining those contents linearly, which ignore correlations between different types of contents, and their geographical distributions. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a novel method to discover geographical characteristics of geo-tagged social images using a geographical topic model called geographical topic model of social images (GTMSIs). GTMSI integrates multiple types of social image contents as well as the geographical distributions, in which image topics are modeled based on both vocabulary and visual features. In GTMSI, each region of the image would have its own topic distribution, and hence have its own language model and vision pattern. Experimental results show that our GTMSI could identify interesting topics and vision patterns, as well as provide location prediction and image tagging.

  12. Using accelerometers to determine the calling behavior of tagged baleen whales.

    PubMed

    Goldbogen, J A; Stimpert, A K; DeRuiter, S L; Calambokidis, J; Friedlaender, A S; Schorr, G S; Moretti, D J; Tyack, P L; Southall, B L

    2014-07-15

    Low-frequency acoustic signals generated by baleen whales can propagate over vast distances, making the assignment of calls to specific individuals problematic. Here, we report the novel use of acoustic recording tags equipped with high-resolution accelerometers to detect vibrations from the surface of two tagged fin whales that directly match the timing of recorded acoustic signals. A tag deployed on a buoy in the vicinity of calling fin whales and a recording from a tag that had just fallen off a whale were able to detect calls acoustically but did not record corresponding accelerometer signals that were measured on calling individuals. Across the hundreds of calls measured on two tagged fin whales, the accelerometer response was generally anisotropic across all three axes, appeared to depend on tag placement and increased with the level of received sound. These data demonstrate that high-sample rate accelerometry can provide important insights into the acoustic behavior of baleen whales that communicate at low frequencies. This method helps identify vocalizing whales, which in turn enables the quantification of call rates, a fundamental component of models used to estimate baleen whale abundance and distribution from passive acoustic monitoring. © 2014. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd.

  13. A suite of standard post-tagging evaluation metrics can help assess tag retention for field-based fish telemetry research

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Gerber, Kayla M.; Mather, Martha E.; Smith, Joseph M.

    2017-01-01

    Telemetry can inform many scientific and research questions if a context exists for integrating individual studies into the larger body of literature. Creating cumulative distributions of post-tagging evaluation metrics would allow individual researchers to relate their telemetry data to other studies. Widespread reporting of standard metrics is a precursor to the calculation of benchmarks for these distributions (e.g., mean, SD, 95% CI). Here we illustrate five types of standard post-tagging evaluation metrics using acoustically tagged Blue Catfish (Ictalurus furcatus) released into a Kansas reservoir. These metrics included: (1) percent of tagged fish detected overall, (2) percent of tagged fish detected daily using abacus plot data, (3) average number of (and percent of available) receiver sites visited, (4) date of last movement between receiver sites (and percent of tagged fish moving during that time period), and (5) number (and percent) of fish that egressed through exit gates. These metrics were calculated for one to three time periods: early (<10 d), during (weekly), and at the end of the study (5 months). Over three-quarters of our tagged fish were detected early (85%) and at the end (85%) of the study. Using abacus plot data, all tagged fish (100%) were detected at least one day and 96% were detected for > 5 days early in the study. On average, tagged Blue Catfish visited 9 (50%) and 13 (72%) of 18 within-reservoir receivers early and at the end of the study, respectively. At the end of the study, 73% of all tagged fish were detected moving between receivers. Creating statistical benchmarks for individual metrics can provide useful reference points. In addition, combining multiple metrics can inform ecology and research design. Consequently, individual researchers and the field of telemetry research can benefit from widespread, detailed, and standard reporting of post-tagging detection metrics.

  14. Tagging as a Social Literacy Practice

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    MacGillivray, Laurie; Curwen, Margaret Sauceda

    2007-01-01

    Tagging is not simply an act of vandalism or violence; it is a social practice with its own rules and codes--a literacy practice imbued with intent and meaning. Three aspects of tagging reflect its nature as a literate practice: (1) The purpose of tagging to achieve particular social goals and group affiliations; (2) The role of talent to be…

  15. Imaging mass spectrometer with mass tags

    DOEpatents

    Felton, James S.; Wu, Kuang Jen; Knize, Mark G.; Kulp, Kristen S.; Gray, Joe W.

    2010-06-01

    A method of analyzing biological material by exposing the biological material to a recognition element, that is coupled to a mass tag element, directing an ion beam of a mass spectrometer to the biological material, interrogating at least one region of interest area from the biological material and producing data, and distributing the data in plots.

  16. Fabrication of Magnetic Barcoded Microcarriers for Biomolecular Labeling: SU-8 Encapsulated Magnetic Tags

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Palfreyman, Justin J.; Beldon, Patrick; Hong, Bingyan; Vyas, Kunal N.; Cooper, Joshaniel F. K.; Mitrelias, Thanos; Barnes, Crispin H. W.

    2010-12-01

    Rows of rectangular magnetic elements with different aspect ratio are encapsulated in polymer microcarriers to form a novel magnetic label, or tag, for multiplexed biological and chemical assays. We demonstrate that each tag can be encoded using an external magnetic field applied to the whole tag, which will allow for in-flow writing, thanks to shape-anisotropy controlled coercivity of the individual bits. This paper focuses on the fabrication of our 2nd generation tags, which facilitate optical trapping, do not require a sacrificial release layer, and the alignment procedure has been simplified to a single step. A new procedure is described for recovering a functional surface from fully cross-linked SU-8 via a cerium (IV) ammonium nitrate based chemical etch, and a novel method for releasing patterned photoresist from a bare Si wafer is discussed. In addition, a series of homobifunctional amine spacer compounds are compared as a method of increasing the binding efficiency of surface probe molecules.

  17. Efficient radial tagging CMR exam: A coherent k-space reading and image reconstruction approach.

    PubMed

    Golshani, Shokoufeh; Nasiraei-Moghaddam, Abbas

    2017-04-01

    Cardiac MR tagging techniques, which facilitate the strain evaluation, have not yet been widely adopted in clinics due to inefficiencies in acquisition and postprocessing. This problem may be alleviated by exploiting the coherency in the three steps of tagging: preparation, acquisition, and reconstruction. Herein, we propose a fully polar-based tagging approach that may lead to real-time strain mapping. Radial readout trajectories were used to acquire radial tagging images and a Hankel-based algorithm, referred to as Polar Fourier Transform (PFT), has been adapted for reconstruction of the acquired raw data. In both phantom and human subjects, the overall performance of the method was investigated against radial undersampling and compared with the conventional reconstruction methods. Radially tagged images were reconstructed by the proposed PFT method from as few as 24 spokes with normalized root-mean-square-error of less than 3%. The reconstructed images showed a central focusing behavior, where the undersampling effects were pushed to the peripheral areas out of the central region of interest. Comparing the results with the re-gridding reconstruction technique, superior image quality and high robustness of the method were further established. In addition, a relative increase of 68 ± 2.5% in tagline sharpness was achieved for the PFT images and also higher tagging contrast (72 ± 5.6%), resulted from the well-tolerated undersampling artifacts, was observed in all reconstructions. The proposed approach led to the acceleration of the acquisition process, which was evaluated for up to eight-fold retrospectively from the fully sampled data. This is promising toward real-time imaging, and in contrast to iterative techniques, the method is consistent with online reconstruction. Magn Reson Med 77:1459-1472, 2017. © 2016 International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine. © 2016 International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine.

  18. Label-free measurement of the yeast short chain TAG lipase activity by ESI-MS after one-step esterification.

    PubMed

    Ham, Hye Jin; Seo, Jongcheol; Yoon, Hye-Joo; Shin, Seung Koo

    2017-03-01

    Triacylglycerol (TAG) lipases hydrolyze ester bonds in TAG and release diacylglycerol (DAG), monoacylglycerol (MAG), and FA. We present a one-step chemical derivatization method for label-free quantification of a mixture of TAG, DAG, and MAG following lipase assay by ESI-MS. Because the ionization efficiencies of TAG, DAG, and MAG are not identical, lipase reaction products, DAG and MAG, are derivatized to TAG species by esterifying their hydroxyl groups using acyl chloride, whose acyl chain contains one less (or one more) -CH 2 group than that of substrate TAG. This resulted in three TAG species that were separated by 14 Da from one another and exhibited similar ion responses representing their molar amounts in the mass spectra. A good linear correlation was observed between peak intensity ratios and molar ratios in calibration curve. This method enables simultaneous quantification of TAG, DAG, and MAG in lipase assay and, in turn, allows stoichiometric determination of the concentrations of FAs released from TAG and DAG separately. By applying this strategy to measure both TAG and DAG lipolytic activities of the yeast Tgl2 lipase, we demonstrated its usefulness in studying enzymatic catalysis, as lipase enzymes often show dissimilar activities toward these lipids. Copyright © 2017 by the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Inc.

  19. Surface Acoustic Wave Tag-Based Coherence Multiplexing

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Youngquist, Robert C. (Inventor); Malocha, Donald (Inventor); Saldanha, Nancy (Inventor)

    2016-01-01

    A surface acoustic wave (SAW)-based coherence multiplexing system includes SAW tags each including a SAW transducer, a first SAW reflector positioned a first distance from the SAW transducer and a second SAW reflector positioned a second distance from the SAW transducer. A transceiver including a wireless transmitter has a signal source providing a source signal and circuitry for transmitting interrogation pulses including a first and a second interrogation pulse toward the SAW tags, and a wireless receiver for receiving and processing response signals from the SAW tags. The receiver receives scrambled signals including a convolution of the wideband interrogation pulses with response signals from the SAW tags and includes a computing device which implements an algorithm that correlates the interrogation pulses or the source signal before transmitting against the scrambled signals to generate tag responses for each of the SAW tags.

  20. 48 CFR 908.7101-7 - Government license tags.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

    2012-10-01

    ... 48 Federal Acquisition Regulations System 5 2012-10-01 2012-10-01 false Government license tags... Government license tags. (a) Government license tags shall be procured and assignments recorded by DOE... the District of Columbia, official Government tags shall be obtained from the Department of...

  1. Leveraging tagging and rating for recommendation: RMF meets weighted diffusion on tripartite graphs

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Li, Jianguo; Tang, Yong; Chen, Jiemin

    2017-10-01

    Recommender systems (RSs) have been a widely exploited approach to solving the information overload problem. However, the performance is still limited due to the extreme sparsity of the rating data. With the popularity of Web 2.0, the social tagging system provides more external information to improve recommendation accuracy. Although some existing approaches combine the matrix factorization models with the tag co-occurrence and context of tags, they neglect the issue of tag sparsity that would also result in inaccurate recommendations. Consequently, in this paper, we propose a novel hybrid collaborative filtering model named WUDiff_RMF, which improves regularized matrix factorization (RMF) model by integrating Weighted User-Diffusion-based CF algorithm(WUDiff) that obtains the information of similar users from the weighted tripartite user-item-tag graph. This model aims to capture the degree correlation of the user-item-tag tripartite network to enhance the performance of recommendation. Experiments conducted on four real-world datasets demonstrate that our approach significantly performs better than already widely used methods in the accuracy of recommendation. Moreover, results show that WUDiff_RMF can alleviate the data sparsity, especially in the circumstance that users have made few ratings and few tags.

  2. Polycomb purification by in vivo biotinylation tagging reveals cohesin and Trithorax group proteins as interaction partners

    PubMed Central

    Strübbe, Gero; Popp, Christian; Schmidt, Alexander; Pauli, Andrea; Ringrose, Leonie; Beisel, Christian; Paro, Renato

    2011-01-01

    The maintenance of specific gene expression patterns during cellular proliferation is crucial for the identity of every cell type and the development of tissues in multicellular organisms. Such a cellular memory function is conveyed by the complex interplay of the Polycomb and Trithorax groups of proteins (PcG/TrxG). These proteins exert their function at the level of chromatin by establishing and maintaining repressed (PcG) and active (TrxG) chromatin domains. Past studies indicated that a core PcG protein complex is potentially associated with cell type or even cell stage-specific sets of accessory proteins. In order to better understand the dynamic aspects underlying PcG composition and function we have established an inducible version of the biotinylation tagging approach to purify Polycomb and associated factors from Drosophila embryos. This system enabled fast and efficient isolation of Polycomb containing complexes under near physiological conditions, thereby preserving substoichiometric interactions. Novel interacting proteins were identified by highly sensitive mass spectrometric analysis. We found many TrxG related proteins, suggesting a previously unrecognized extent of molecular interaction of the two counteracting chromatin regulatory protein groups. Furthermore, our analysis revealed an association of PcG protein complexes with the cohesin complex and showed that Polycomb-dependent silencing of a transgenic reporter depends on cohesin function. PMID:21415365

  3. 48 CFR 908.7101-7 - Government license tags.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

    2014-10-01

    ... 48 Federal Acquisition Regulations System 5 2014-10-01 2014-10-01 false Government license tags... Government license tags. (a) Government license tags shall be procured and assignments recorded by DOE... local laws, regulations, and procedures. (d) In the District of Columbia, official Government tags shall...

  4. Behavioral tagging of extinction learning.

    PubMed

    de Carvalho Myskiw, Jociane; Benetti, Fernando; Izquierdo, Iván

    2013-01-15

    Extinction of contextual fear in rats is enhanced by exposure to a novel environment at 1-2 h before or 1 h after extinction training. This effect is antagonized by administration of protein synthesis inhibitors anisomycin and rapamycin into the hippocampus, but not into the amygdala, immediately after either novelty or extinction training, as well as by the gene expression blocker 5,6-dichloro-1-beta-D-ribofuranosylbenzimidazole administered after novelty training, but not after extinction training. Thus, this effect can be attributed to a mechanism similar to synaptic tagging, through which long-term potentiation can be enhanced by other long-term potentiations or by exposure to a novel environment in a protein synthesis-dependent fashion. Extinction learning produces a tag at the appropriate synapses, whereas novelty learning causes the synthesis of plasticity-related proteins that are captured by the tag, strengthening the synapses that generated this tag.

  5. Differentiation of tumor from viable myocardium using cardiac tagging with MR imaging.

    PubMed

    Bouton, S; Yang, A; McCrindle, B W; Kidd, L; McVeigh, E R; Zerhouni, E A

    1991-01-01

    We report the application of myocardial tagging by MR to define tissue planes and differentiate contractile from noncontractile tissue in a neonate with congenital cardiac rhabdomyoma. Using custom-written pulse programming software, six 2 mm thick radiofrequency (RF) slice-selective presaturation pulses (tags) were used to label the chest wall and myocardium in a star pattern in diastole, approximately 60 ms before the R-wave gating trigger. This method successfully delineated the myocardium from noncontractile tumor, providing information that influenced clinical management. This RF tagging technique allowed us to confirm the exact intramyocardial location of a congenital cardiac tumor.

  6. Dispersal Routes and Habitat Utilization of Juvenile Atlantic Bluefin Tuna, Thunnus thynnus, Tracked with Mini PSAT and Archival Tags

    PubMed Central

    Galuardi, Benjamin; Lutcavage, Molly

    2012-01-01

    Between 2005 and 2009, we deployed 58 miniature pop-up satellite archival tags (PSAT) and 132 implanted archival tags on juvenile Atlantic bluefin tuna (age 2–5) in the northwest Atlantic Ocean. Data returned from these efforts (n = 26 PSATs, 1 archival tag) revealed their dispersal routes, horizontal and vertical movements and habitat utilization. All of the tagged bluefin tuna remained in the northwest Atlantic for the duration observed, and in summer months exhibited core-use of coastal seas extending from Maryland to Cape Cod, MA, (USA) out to the shelf break. Their winter distributions were more spatially disaggregated, ranging south to the South Atlantic Bight, northern Bahamas and Gulf Stream. Vertical habitat patterns showed that juvenile bluefin tuna mainly occupied shallow depths (mean  = 5–12 m, sd  = 15–23.7 m) and relatively warm water masses in summer (mean  = 17.9–20.9°C, sd  = 4.2–2.6°C) and had deeper and more variable depth patterns in winter (mean  = 41–58 m, sd  = 48.9–62.2 m). Our tagging results reveal annual dispersal patterns, behavior and oceanographic associations of juvenile Atlantic bluefin tuna that were only surmised in earlier studies. Fishery independent profiling from electronic tagging also provide spatially and temporally explicit information for evaluating dispersals rates, population structure and fisheries catch patterns. PMID:22629461

  7. A scalable strategy for high-throughput GFP tagging of endogenous human proteins.

    PubMed

    Leonetti, Manuel D; Sekine, Sayaka; Kamiyama, Daichi; Weissman, Jonathan S; Huang, Bo

    2016-06-21

    A central challenge of the postgenomic era is to comprehensively characterize the cellular role of the ∼20,000 proteins encoded in the human genome. To systematically study protein function in a native cellular background, libraries of human cell lines expressing proteins tagged with a functional sequence at their endogenous loci would be very valuable. Here, using electroporation of Cas9 nuclease/single-guide RNA ribonucleoproteins and taking advantage of a split-GFP system, we describe a scalable method for the robust, scarless, and specific tagging of endogenous human genes with GFP. Our approach requires no molecular cloning and allows a large number of cell lines to be processed in parallel. We demonstrate the scalability of our method by targeting 48 human genes and show that the resulting GFP fluorescence correlates with protein expression levels. We next present how our protocols can be easily adapted for the tagging of a given target with GFP repeats, critically enabling the study of low-abundance proteins. Finally, we show that our GFP tagging approach allows the biochemical isolation of native protein complexes for proteomic studies. Taken together, our results pave the way for the large-scale generation of endogenously tagged human cell lines for the proteome-wide analysis of protein localization and interaction networks in a native cellular context.

  8. A sensitive and quantitative element-tagged immunoassay with ICPMS detection.

    PubMed

    Baranov, Vladimir I; Quinn, Zoë; Bandura, Dmitry R; Tanner, Scott D

    2002-04-01

    We report a set of novel immunoassays in which proteins of interest can be detected using specific element-tagged antibodies. These immunoassays are directly coupled with an inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer (ICPMS) to quantify the elemental (in this work, metal) component of the reacted tagged antibodies. It is demonstrated that these methods can detect levels of target proteins as low as 0.1-0.5 ng/mL and yield a linear response to protein concentration over 3 orders of magnitude.

  9. Infrared tag and track technique

    DOEpatents

    Partin, Judy K.; Stone, Mark L.; Slater, John; Davidson, James R.

    2007-12-04

    A method of covertly tagging an object for later tracking includes providing a material capable of at least one of being applied to the object and being included in the object, which material includes deuterium; and performing at least one of applying the material to the object and including the material in the object in a manner in which in the appearance of the object is not changed, to the naked eye.

  10. Luciferase-tagged wild-type and tropism-deficient mouse cytomegaloviruses reveal early dynamics of host colonization following peripheral challenge.

    PubMed

    Farrell, Helen; Oliveira, Martha; Macdonald, Kate; Yunis, Joseph; Mach, Michael; Bruce, Kimberley; Stevenson, Philip; Cardin, Rhonda; Davis-Poynter, Nicholas

    2016-12-01

    Cytomegaloviruses (CMVs) establish persistent, systemic infections and cause disease by maternal-foetal transfer, suggesting that their dissemination is a key target for antiviral intervention. Late clinical presentation has meant that human CMV (HCMV) dissemination is not well understood. Murine CMV (MCMV) provides a tractable model. Whole mouse imaging of virus-expressed luciferase has proved a useful way to track systemic infections. MCMV, in which the abundant lytic gene M78 was luciferase-tagged via a self-cleaving peptide (M78-LUC), allowed serial, unbiased imaging of systemic and peripheral infection without significant virus attenuation. Ex vivo luciferase imaging showed greater sensitivity than plaque assay, and revealed both well-known infection sites (the lungs, lymph nodes, salivary glands, liver, spleen and pancreas) and less explored sites (the bone marrow and upper respiratory tract). We applied luciferase imaging to tracking MCMV lacking M33, a chemokine receptor conserved in HCMV and a proposed anti-viral drug target. M33-deficient M78-LUC colonized normally in peripheral sites and local draining lymph nodes but spread poorly to the salivary gland, suggesting a defect in vascular transport consistent with properties of a chemokine receptor.

  11. N2O molecular tagging velocimetry

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    ElBaz, A. M.; Pitz, R. W.

    2012-03-01

    A new seeded velocity measurement technique, N2O molecular tagging velocimetry (MTV), is developed to measure velocity in wind tunnels by photochemically creating an NO tag line. Nitrous oxide "laughing gas" is seeded into the air flow. A 193 nm ArF excimer laser dissociates the N2O to O(1D) that subsequently reacts with N2O to form NO. O2 fluorescence induced by the ArF laser "writes" the original position of the NO line. After a time delay, the shifted NO line is "read" by a 226-nm laser sheet and the velocity is determined by time-of-flight. At standard atmospheric conditions with 4% N2O in air, ˜1000 ppm of NO is photochemically created in an air jet based on experiment and simulation. Chemical kinetic simulations predict 800-1200 ppm of NO for 190-750 K at 1 atm and 850-1000 ppm of NO for 0.25-1 atm at 190 K. Decreasing the gas pressure (or increasing the temperature) increases the NO ppm level. The presence of humid air has no significant effect on NO formation. The very short NO formation time (<10 ns) makes the N2O MTV method amenable to low- and high-speed air flow measurements. The N2O MTV technique is demonstrated in air jet to measure its velocity profile. The N2O MTV method should work in other gas flows as well (e.g., helium) since the NO tag line is created by chemical reaction of N2O with O(1D) from N2O photodissociation and thus does not depend on the bulk gas composition.

  12. Overview of Fusion Tags for Recombinant Proteins.

    PubMed

    Kosobokova, E N; Skrypnik, K A; Kosorukov, V S

    2016-03-01

    Virtually all recombinant proteins are now prepared using fusion domains also known as "tags". The use of tags helps to solve some serious problems: to simplify procedures of protein isolation, to increase expression and solubility of the desired protein, to simplify protein refolding and increase its efficiency, and to prevent proteolysis. In this review, advantages and disadvantages of such fusion tags are analyzed and data on both well-known and new tags are generalized. The authors own data are also presented.

  13. TaGS5-3A, a grain size gene selected during wheat improvement for larger kernel and yield.

    PubMed

    Ma, Lin; Li, Tian; Hao, Chenyang; Wang, Yuquan; Chen, Xinhong; Zhang, Xueyong

    2016-05-01

    Grain size is a dominant component of grain weight in cereals. Earlier studies have shown that OsGS5 plays a major role in regulating both grain size and weight in rice via promotion of cell division. In this study, we isolated TaGS5 homoeologues in wheat and mapped them on chromosomes 3A, 3B and 3D. Temporal and spatial expression analysis showed that TaGS5 homoeologues were preferentially expressed in young spikes and developing grains. Two alleles of TaGS5-3A, TaGS5-3A-T and TaGS5-3A-G were identified in wheat accessions, and a functional marker was developed to discriminate them. Association analysis revealed that TaGS5-3A-T was significantly correlated with larger grain size and higher thousand kernel weight. Biochemical assays showed that TaGS5-3A-T possesses a higher enzymatic activity than TaGS5-3A-G. Transgenic rice lines overexpressing TaGS5-3A-T also exhibited larger grain size and higher thousand kernel weight than TaGS5-3A-G lines, and the transcript levels of cell cycle-related genes in TaGS5-3A-T lines were higher than those in TaGS5-3A-G lines. Furthermore, systematic evolution analysis in diploid, tetraploid and hexaploid wheat showed that TaGS5-3A underwent strong artificial selection during wheat polyploidization events and the frequency changes of two alleles demonstrated that TaGS5-3A-T was favoured in global modern wheat cultivars. These results suggest that TaGS5-3A is a positive regulator of grain size and its favoured allele TaGS5-3A-T exhibits a larger potential application in wheat high-yield breeding. © 2015 Society for Experimental Biology, Association of Applied Biologists and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  14. Ear tag

    MedlinePlus

    ... an ear tag or pit are: An inherited tendency to have this facial feature A genetic syndrome ... Elsevier Churchill Livingstone; 2016:chap 19. Review Date 4/24/2017 Updated by: Liora C Adler, MD, ...

  15. Effects of geolocation archival tags on reproduction and adult body mass of sooty shearwaters (Puffinus griseus)

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Adams, J.; Scott, D.; McKechnie, S.; Blackwell, G.; Shaffer, S.A.; Moller, H.

    2009-01-01

    We attached 11 g (1.4% body-mass equivalent) global location sensing (GLS) archival tag packages to tarsi of 25 breeding sooty shearwaters (Puffinus griseus, titi) on Whenua Hou (Codfish Island), New Zealand during the chick-rearing period in 2005. Compared with chicks reared by non-handled adults that did not carry tags, deployment of tags on one or both adult parents ultimately resulted in 35% reduction in chick body mass and significantly reduced chick skeletal size preceding fledging (19 April). However, body mass between chick groups was not significantly different after controlling for skeletal size. Effects on chicks were more pronounced in six pairs where both parents carried tags. Chick mass was negatively related to the duration that adults carried tags. In this study, none of the chicks reared by pairs where both parents were tagged, 54% of chicks reared by pairs where one parent was tagged, and 83% of chicks reared by non-handled and non-tagged parents achieved a previously determined pre-fledging mass threshold (564 g; Sagar & Horning 1998). Body mass of adults carrying tags and returning from transequatorial migration the following year were 4% lighter on average than non-tagged birds, but this difference was not statistically significant. Reduced mass among chicks reared by adults carrying tags during the chick-provisioning period indicated that adults altered "normal" provisioning behaviours to maintain their own body condition at the expense of their chicks. Population-level information derived from telemetry studies can reveal important habitat-linked behaviours, unique aspects of seabird foraging behaviours, and migration ecology. Information for some species (e.g., overlap with fisheries) can aid conservation and marine ecosystem management. We advise caution, however, when interpreting certain data related to adult provisioning behaviours (e.g., time spent foraging, provisioning rates, etc.). If effects on individuals are of concern, we suggest

  16. Evaluation of Tag Attachments on Small Cetaceans

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2013-09-30

    silicon-based antifouling coating, “Propspeed,” as a means to further reduce drag and improve tag performance. Examples of the experimental tags are...the TDR tags, prepared by Wildlife Computers (Figure 1). Half of these were treated with Propspeed antifouling coating, and the other half were left

  17. PIT tags increase effectiveness of freshwater mussel recaptures

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Kurth, J.; Loftin, C.; Zydlewski, Joseph D.; Rhymer, Judith

    2007-01-01

    Translocations are used increasingly to conserve populations of rare freshwater mussels. Recovery of translocated mussels is essential to accurate assessment of translocation success. We designed an experiment to evaluate the use of passive integrated transponder (PIT) tags to mark and track individual freshwater mussels. We used eastern lampmussels (Lampsilis radiata radiata) as a surrogate for 2 rare mussel species. We assessed internal and external PIT-tag retention in the laboratory and field. Internal tag retention was high (75-100%), and tag rejection occurred primarily during the first 3 wk after tagging. A thin layer of nacre coated internal tags 3 to 4 mo after insertion, suggesting that long-term retention is likely. We released mussels with external PIT tags at 3 field study sites and recaptured them with a PIT pack (mobile interrogation unit) 8 to 10 mo and 21 to 23 mo after release. Numbers of recaptured mussels differed among study sites; however, we found more tagged mussels with the PIT-pack searches with visual confirmation (72-80%) than with visual searches alone (30-47%) at all sites. PIT tags offer improved recapture of translocated mussels and increased accuracy of posttranslocation monitoring. ?? 2007 by The North American Benthological Society.

  18. Studying precipitation recycling over the Tibetan Plateau using evaporation-tagging and back-trajectory analysis

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Gao, Y.

    2017-12-01

    Regional precipitation recycling (i.e., the contribution of local evaporation to local precipitation) is an important component of water cycle over the Tibetan Plateau (TP). Two methods were used to investigate regional precipitation recycling: 1) tracking of tagged atmospheric water parcels originating from evaporation in a source region (i.e., E-tagging), and 2) back-trajectory approach to track the evaporative sources contributed to precipitation in a specific region. These two methods were applied to Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) regional climate simulations to quantify the precipitation recycling ratio in the TP for three selected years: climatologically normal, dry and wet year. The simulation region is characterized by high average elevation above 4000 m and complex terrain. The back-trajectory approach is also calculated over three sub-regions over the TP: namely western, northeastern and southeastern TP, and the E-tagging approach could provide recycling-ratio distributions over the whole TP. Three aspects are investigated to characterize the precipitation recycling: annual mean, seasonal variations and spatial distributions. Averaged over the TP, the precipitation recycling ratio estimated by the E-tagging approach is higher than that from the back-trajectory method. The back-trajectory approach uses a precipitation threshold as total precipitation in five days divided by a random number, and this number was set to 500 as a tread off between equilibrium and computational efficiency. Lower recycling ratio derived from the back-trajectory approach is related to the precipitation threshold used. The E-tagging, however, tracks every air parcel of evaporation regardless of the precipitation amount. There is no obvious seasonal variation in the recycling ratio using both methods. The E-tagging approach shows high recycling ratios in the center TP, indicating stronger land-atmospheric interactions than elsewhere.

  19. Systematic gene tagging using CRISPR/Cas9 in human stem cells to illuminate cell organization

    PubMed Central

    Roberts, Brock; Haupt, Amanda; Tucker, Andrew; Grancharova, Tanya; Arakaki, Joy; Fuqua, Margaret A.; Nelson, Angelique; Hookway, Caroline; Ludmann, Susan A.; Mueller, Irina A.; Yang, Ruian; Horwitz, Rick; Rafelski, Susanne M.; Gunawardane, Ruwanthi N.

    2017-01-01

    We present a CRISPR/Cas9 genome-editing strategy to systematically tag endogenous proteins with fluorescent tags in human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSC). To date, we have generated multiple hiPSC lines with monoallelic green fluorescent protein tags labeling 10 proteins representing major cellular structures. The tagged proteins include alpha tubulin, beta actin, desmoplakin, fibrillarin, nuclear lamin B1, nonmuscle myosin heavy chain IIB, paxillin, Sec61 beta, tight junction protein ZO1, and Tom20. Our genome-editing methodology using Cas9/crRNA ribonuclear protein and donor plasmid coelectroporation, followed by fluorescence-based enrichment of edited cells, typically resulted in <0.1–4% homology-directed repair (HDR). Twenty-five percent of clones generated from each edited population were precisely edited. Furthermore, 92% (36/39) of expanded clonal lines displayed robust morphology, genomic stability, expression and localization of the tagged protein to the appropriate subcellular structure, pluripotency-marker expression, and multilineage differentiation. It is our conclusion that, if cell lines are confirmed to harbor an appropriate gene edit, pluripotency, differentiation potential, and genomic stability are typically maintained during the clonal line–generation process. The data described here reveal general trends that emerged from this systematic gene-tagging approach. Final clonal lines corresponding to each of the 10 cellular structures are now available to the research community. PMID:28814507

  20. Single tag for total carbohydrate analysis.

    PubMed

    Anumula, Kalyan Rao

    2014-07-15

    Anthranilic acid (2-aminobenzoic acid, 2-AA) has the remarkable property of reacting rapidly with every type of reducing carbohydrate. Reactivity of 2-AA with carbohydrates in aqueous solutions surpasses all other tags reported to date. This unique capability is attributed to the strategically located -COOH which accelerates Schiff base formation. Monosaccharides, oligosaccharides (N-, O-, and lipid linked and glycans in secretory fluids), glycosaminoglycans, and polysaccharides can be easily labeled with 2-AA. With 2-AA, labeling is simple in aqueous solutions containing proteins, peptides, buffer salts, and other ingredients (e.g., PNGase F, glycosidase, and transferase reaction mixtures). In contrast, other tags require relatively pure glycans for labeling in anhydrous dimethyl sulfoxide-acetic acid medium. Acidic conditions are known to cause desialylation, thus requiring a great deal of attention to sample preparation. Simpler labeling is achieved with 2-AA within 30-60 min in mild acetate-borate buffered solution. 2-AA provides the highest sensitivity and resolution in chromatographic methods for carbohydrate analysis in a simple manner. Additionally, 2-AA is uniquely qualified for quantitative analysis by mass spectrometry in the negative mode. Analyses of 2-AA-labeled carbohydrates by electrophoresis and other techniques have been reported. Examples cited here demonstrate that 2-AA is the universal tag for total carbohydrate analysis. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  1. Purification of FLAG-tagged Secreted Proteins from Mammalian Cells

    PubMed Central

    Itakura, Eisuke; Chen, Changchun; de Bono, Mario

    2017-01-01

    This protocol describes a method for purifying glycosylated FLAG-tagged secreted proteins with disulfide bonds from mammalian cells. The purified products can be used for various applications, such as ligand binding assays. PMID:29075655

  2. Wearable Tracking Tags Test Privacy Boundaries at the U. of Washington

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Dotinga, Randy

    2008-01-01

    Tags such as the radio-frequency identifications or RFIDs are devices that make it possible for individuals to be tracked and their location reported back to a database. The devices--chips with radio antennas--emit signals, and tracking them reveals the movement of people or things. Many stores use the technology to catch shoplifters at exits. To…

  3. Using RFID and PIT tags to Quantify Bedload Transport in the Oregon Coast Range

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Sanfilippo, J.; Lancaster, S. T.

    2017-12-01

    Introducing the methods, issues, and data collection techniques and interpretation over one water year using RFID (radio frequency identification) and PIT (passive integrated transponder) tags in Oak Creek, near Corvallis Oregon. We constructed an RFID four-antenna array that runs off of a single radiofrequency reader via a multiplexer board. Using 4 grain sizes we tagged 990 individual rocks, roughly 250 in of each four size ranges (8-16mm, 16-32mm, 32-64mm, 64-128mm). Using 12 mm and 23 mm PIT tags during 1 water year the antennas logged 477 tracer passage events. To calculate bedload transport for each size range, at each antenna, interarrival times yield count rates when combined with grain size fractions of the bed and tracer concentrations, yield bedload transport for each size class. We calculated transport rates for five events of varying magnitude and found that PIT tag RFID method under predicts transport between 1 and 3 orders of magnitude.

  4. 9 CFR 2.53 - Use of tags.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-01-01

    ... 9 Animals and Animal Products 1 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Use of tags. 2.53 Section 2.53 Animals and Animal Products ANIMAL AND PLANT HEALTH INSPECTION SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE ANIMAL WELFARE REGULATIONS Identification of Animals § 2.53 Use of tags. Official tags obtained by a dealer...

  5. 9 CFR 2.53 - Use of tags.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

    2013-01-01

    ... 9 Animals and Animal Products 1 2013-01-01 2013-01-01 false Use of tags. 2.53 Section 2.53 Animals and Animal Products ANIMAL AND PLANT HEALTH INSPECTION SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE ANIMAL WELFARE REGULATIONS Identification of Animals § 2.53 Use of tags. Official tags obtained by a dealer...

  6. 9 CFR 2.53 - Use of tags.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

    2012-01-01

    ... 9 Animals and Animal Products 1 2012-01-01 2012-01-01 false Use of tags. 2.53 Section 2.53 Animals and Animal Products ANIMAL AND PLANT HEALTH INSPECTION SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE ANIMAL WELFARE REGULATIONS Identification of Animals § 2.53 Use of tags. Official tags obtained by a dealer...

  7. 9 CFR 2.53 - Use of tags.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

    2014-01-01

    ... 9 Animals and Animal Products 1 2014-01-01 2014-01-01 false Use of tags. 2.53 Section 2.53 Animals and Animal Products ANIMAL AND PLANT HEALTH INSPECTION SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE ANIMAL WELFARE REGULATIONS Identification of Animals § 2.53 Use of tags. Official tags obtained by a dealer...

  8. 9 CFR 2.53 - Use of tags.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-01-01

    ... 9 Animals and Animal Products 1 2011-01-01 2011-01-01 false Use of tags. 2.53 Section 2.53 Animals and Animal Products ANIMAL AND PLANT HEALTH INSPECTION SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE ANIMAL WELFARE REGULATIONS Identification of Animals § 2.53 Use of tags. Official tags obtained by a dealer...

  9. Inter-study reproducibility of cardiovascular magnetic resonance tagging

    PubMed Central

    2013-01-01

    Background The aim of this study is to determine the test-retest reliability of the measurement of regional myocardial function by cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) tagging using spatial modulation of magnetization. Methods Twenty-five participants underwent CMR tagging twice over 12 ± 7 days. To assess the role of slice orientation on strain measurement, two healthy volunteers had a first exam, followed by image acquisition repeated with slices rotated ±15 degrees out of true short axis, followed by a second exam in the true short axis plane. To assess the role of slice location, two healthy volunteers had whole heart tagging. The harmonic phase (HARP) method was used to analyze the tagged images. Peak midwall circumferential strain (Ecc), radial strain (Err), Lambda 1, Lambda 2, and Angle α were determined in basal, mid and apical slices. LV torsion, systolic and early diastolic circumferential strain and torsion rates were also determined. Results LV Ecc and torsion had excellent intra-, interobserver, and inter-study intra-class correlation coefficients (ICC range, 0.7 to 0.9). Err, Lambda 1, Lambda 2 and angle had excellent intra- and interobserver ICC than inter-study ICC. Angle had least inter-study reproducibility. Torsion rates had superior intra-, interobserver, and inter-study reproducibility to strain rates. The measurements of LV Ecc were comparable in all three slices with different short axis orientations (standard deviation of mean Ecc was 0.09, 0.18 and 0.16 at basal, mid and apical slices, respectively). The mean difference in LV Ecc between slices was more pronounced in most of the basal slices compared to the rest of the heart. Conclusions Intraobserver and interobserver reproducibility of all strain and torsion parameters was excellent. Inter-study reproducibility of CMR tagging by SPAMM varied between different parameters as described in the results above and was superior for Ecc and LV torsion. The variation in LV Ecc

  10. A new pH-responsive peptide tag for protein purification.

    PubMed

    Nonaka, Takahiro; Tsurui, Noriko; Mannen, Teruhisa; Kikuchi, Yoshimi; Shiraki, Kentaro

    2018-06-01

    This paper describes a new pH-responsive peptide tag that adds a protein reversible precipitation and redissolution character. This peptide tag is a part of a cell surface protein B (CspB) derived from Corynebacterium glutamicum. Proinsulin that genetically fused with a peptide of N-terminal 6, 17, 50, or 250 amino acid residues of CspB showed that the reversible precipitation and redissolution depended on the pH. The transition occurred within a physiological and narrow pH range. A CspB50 tag comprising 50 amino acid residues of N-terminal CspB was further evaluated as a representative using other pharmaceutical proteins. Below pH 6.8, almost all CspB50-Teriparatide fusion formed an aggregated state. Subsequent addition of alkali turned the cloudy protein solution transparent above pH 7.3, in which almost all the CspB50-Teriparatide fusion redissolved. The CspB50-Bivalirudin fusion showed a similar behavior with slightly different pH range. This tag is offering a new protein purification method based on liquid-solid separation which does not require an affinity ligand. This sharp response around neutral pH is useful as a pH-responsive tag for the purification of unstable proteins at a non-physiological pH. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  11. Betrayal: radio-tagged Burmese pythons reveal locations of conspecifics in Everglades National Park

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Smith, Brian J.; Cherkiss, Michael S.; Hart, Kristen M.; Rochford, Michael R.; Selby, Thomas H.; Snow, Ray W; Mazzotti, Frank J.

    2016-01-01

    The “Judas” technique is based on the idea that a radio-tagged individual can be used to “betray” conspecifics during the course of its routine social behavior. The Burmese python (Python bivittatus) is an invasive constrictor in southern Florida, and few methods are available for its control. Pythons are normally solitary, but from December–April in southern Florida, they form breeding aggregations containing up to 8 individuals, providing an opportunity to apply the technique. We radio-tracked 25 individual adult pythons of both sexes during the breeding season from 2007–2012. Our goals were to (1) characterize python movements and determine habitat selection for betrayal events, (2) quantify betrayal rates of Judas pythons, and (3) compare the efficacy of this tool with current tools for capturing pythons, both in terms of cost per python removed (CPP) and catch per unit effort (CPUE). In a total of 33 python-seasons, we had 8 betrayal events (24 %) in which a Judas python led us to new pythons. Betrayal events occurred more frequently in lowland forest (including tree islands) than would be expected by chance alone. These 8 events resulted in the capture of 14 new individuals (1–4 new pythons per event). Our effort comparison shows that while the Judas technique is more costly than road cruising surveys per python removed, the Judas technique yields more large, reproductive females and is effective at a time of year that road cruising is not, making it a potential complement to the status quo removal effort.

  12. Monitoring autophagic flux by an improved tandem fluorescent-tagged LC3 (mTagRFP-mWasabi-LC3) reveals that high-dose rapamycin impairs autophagic flux in cancer cells.

    PubMed

    Zhou, Cuihong; Zhong, Wu; Zhou, Jun; Sheng, Fugeng; Fang, Ziyuan; Wei, Yue; Chen, Yingyu; Deng, Xiaoyan; Xia, Bin; Lin, Jian

    2012-08-01

    Monitoring autophagic flux is important for the analysis of autophagy. Tandem fluorescent-tagged LC3 (mRFP-EGFP-LC3) is a convenient assay for monitoring autophagic flux based on different pH stability of EGFP and mRFP fluorescent proteins. However, it has been reported that there is still weak fluorescence of EGFP in acidic environments (pH between 4 and 5) or acidic lysosomes. So it is possible that autolysosomes are labeled with yellow signals (GFP(+)RFP(+) puncta), which results in misinterpreting autophagic flux results. Therefore, it is desirable to choose a monomeric green fluorescent protein that is more acid sensitive than EGFP in the assay of autophagic flux. Here, we report on an mTagRFP-mWasabi-LC3 reporter, in which mWasabi is more acid sensitive than EGFP and has no fluorescence in acidic lysosomes. Meanwhile, mTagRFP-mWasabi-LC3ΔG was constructed as the negative control for this assay. Compared with mRFP-EGFP-LC3, our results showed that this reporter is more sensitive and accurate in detecting the accumulation of autophagosomes and autolysosomes. Using this reporter, we find that high-dose rapamycin (30 μM) will impair autophagic flux, inducing many more autophagosomes than autolysosomes in HeLa cells, while low-dose rapamycin (500 nM) has an opposite effect. In addition, other chemical autophagy inducers (cisplatin, staurosporine and Z18) also elicit much more autophagosomes at high doses than those at low doses. Our results suggest that the dosage of chemical autophagy inducers would obviously influence autophagic flux in cells.

  13. Using DEDICOM for completely unsupervised part-of-speech tagging.

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Chew, Peter A.; Bader, Brett William; Rozovskaya, Alla

    A standard and widespread approach to part-of-speech tagging is based on Hidden Markov Models (HMMs). An alternative approach, pioneered by Schuetze (1993), induces parts of speech from scratch using singular value decomposition (SVD). We introduce DEDICOM as an alternative to SVD for part-of-speech induction. DEDICOM retains the advantages of SVD in that it is completely unsupervised: no prior knowledge is required to induce either the tagset or the associations of terms with tags. However, unlike SVD, it is also fully compatible with the HMM framework, in that it can be used to estimate emission- and transition-probability matrices which can thenmore » be used as the input for an HMM. We apply the DEDICOM method to the CONLL corpus (CONLL 2000) and compare the output of DEDICOM to the part-of-speech tags given in the corpus, and find that the correlation (almost 0.5) is quite high. Using DEDICOM, we also estimate part-of-speech ambiguity for each term, and find that these estimates correlate highly with part-of-speech ambiguity as measured in the original corpus (around 0.88). Finally, we show how the output of DEDICOM can be evaluated and compared against the more familiar output of supervised HMM-based tagging.« less

  14. A new approach to tag design in dolphin telemetry: Computer simulations to minimise deleterious effects

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Pavlov, V. V.; Wilson, R. P.; Lucke, K.

    2007-02-01

    Remote-sensors and transmitters are powerful devices for studying cetaceans at sea. However, despite substantial progress in microelectronics and miniaturisation of systems, dolphin tags are imperfectly designed; additional drag from tags increases swim costs, compromises swimming capacity and manoeuvrability, and leads to extra loads on the animal's tissue. We propose a new approach to tag design, elaborating basic principles and incorporating design stages to minimise device effects by using computer-aided design. Initially, the operational conditions of the device are defined by quantifying the shape, hydrodynamics and range of the natural deformation of the dolphin body at the tag attachment site (such as close to the dorsal fin). Then, parametric models of both of the dorsal fin and a tag are created using the derived data. The link between parameters of the fin and a tag model allows redesign of tag models according to expected changes of fin geometry (difference in fin shape related with species, sex, and age peculiarities, simulation of the bend of the fin during manoeuvres). A final virtual modelling stage uses iterative improvement of a tag model in a computer fluid dynamics (CFD) environment to enhance tag performance. This new method is considered as a suitable tool of tag design before creation of the physical model of a tag and testing with conventional wind/water tunnel technique. Ultimately, tag materials are selected to conform to the conditions identified by the modelling process and thus help create a physical model of a tag, which should minimise its impact on the animal carrier and thus increase the reliability and quality of the data obtained.

  15. Using frequency tagging to quantify attentional deployment in a visual divided attention task.

    PubMed

    Toffanin, Paolo; de Jong, Ritske; Johnson, Addie; Martens, Sander

    2009-06-01

    Frequency tagging is an EEG method based on the quantification of the steady state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) elicited from stimuli which flicker with a distinctive frequency. Because the amplitude of the SSVEP is modulated by attention such that attended stimuli elicit higher SSVEP amplitudes than do ignored stimuli, the method has been used to investigate the neural mechanisms of spatial attention. However, up to now it has not been shown whether the amplitude of the SSVEP is sensitive to gradations of attention and there has been debate about whether attention effects on the SSVEP are dependent on the tagging frequency used. We thus compared attention effects on SSVEP across three attention conditions-focused, divided, and ignored-with six different tagging frequencies. Participants performed a visual detection task (respond to the digit 5 embedded in a stream of characters). Two stimulus streams, one to the left and one to the right of fixation, were displayed simultaneously, each with a background grey square whose hue was sine-modulated with one of the six tagging frequencies. At the beginning of each trial a cue indicated whether targets on the left, right, or both sides should be responded to. Accuracy was higher in the focused- than in the divided-attention condition. SSVEP amplitudes were greatest in the focused-attention condition, intermediate in the divided-attention condition, and smallest in the ignored-attention condition. The effect of attention on SSVEP amplitude did not depend on the tagging frequency used. Frequency tagging appears to be a flexible technique for studying attention.

  16. Triacylglycerol regioisomers in human milk resolved with an algorithmic novel electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry method.

    PubMed

    Kallio, Heikki; Nylund, Matts; Boström, Pontus; Yang, Baoru

    2017-10-15

    A highly sensitive mass spectrometric (MS) method was developed and validated to analyze ratios of regioisomeric triacylglycerols (TAGs) in fats and oils. UPLC resolution of lithiated TAGs followed by daughter scan MS/MS of positive ions revealed several indicative ions for quantitative analysis. Reference TAGs containing C14-C20 fatty acids (FAs) showed good linear response. Analysis of Finnish and Chinese pooled human milk samples revealed hundreds of regioisomeric TAGs. At least 64mol% of the TAGs were quantified with relative standard deviation <17%. When present in the same TAG molecule together with C18 FAs, palmitic acid was typically in the sn-2 position. When together with FAs 10:0, 12:0, 14:0, 20:1 and 20:2, the sn-2 preference of 16:0 was less clear. Oleic acid occupied typically the sn-1/sn-3 positions but when together with FAs 20:1, 20:2, 18:2, 14:1, 12:0 or 10:0 the positioning of 18:1 did not follow these rules. Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

  17. Fluorous tagging strategy for solution-phase synthesis of small molecules, peptides and oligosaccharides

    PubMed Central

    Zhang, Wei

    2005-01-01

    The purification of reaction mixtures is a slow process in organic synthesis, especially during the production of large numbers of analogs and compound libraries. Phase-tag methods such as solid-phase synthesis and fluorous synthesis, provide efficient ways of addressing the separation issue. Fluorous synthesis employs functionalized perfluoroalkyl groups attached to substrates or reagents. The separation of the resulting fluorous molecules can be achieved using strong and selective fluorous liquid-liquid extraction, fluorous silica gel-based solid-phase extraction or high-performance liquid chromatography. Fluorous technology is a novel solution-phase method, which has the advantages of fast reaction times in homogeneous environments, being readily adaptable to literature conditions, having easy intermediate analysis, and having flexibility in reaction scale and scope. In principle, any synthetic methods that use a solid-support could be conducted in solution-phase by replacing the polymer linker with a corresponding fluorous tag. This review summarizes the progress of fluorous tags in solution-phase synthesis of small molecules, peptides and oligosaccharides. PMID:15595439

  18. 49 CFR 236.76 - Tagging of wires and interference of wires or tags with signal apparatus.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-10-01

    ... with signal apparatus. 236.76 Section 236.76 Transportation Other Regulations Relating to... wires and interference of wires or tags with signal apparatus. Each wire shall be tagged or otherwise so... apparatus. [49 FR 3384, Jan. 26, 1984] Inspections and Tests; All Systems ...

  19. 49 CFR 236.76 - Tagging of wires and interference of wires or tags with signal apparatus.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-10-01

    ... with signal apparatus. 236.76 Section 236.76 Transportation Other Regulations Relating to... wires and interference of wires or tags with signal apparatus. Each wire shall be tagged or otherwise so... apparatus. [49 FR 3384, Jan. 26, 1984] Inspections and Tests; All Systems ...

  20. Enhanced UHF RFID tags for drug tracing.

    PubMed

    Catarinucci, Luca; Colella, Riccardo; De Blasi, Mario; Patrono, Luigi; Tarricone, Luciano

    2012-12-01

    Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology is playing a crucial role for item-level tracing systems in healthcare scenarios. The pharmaceutical supply chain is a fascinating application context, where RFID can guarantee transparency in the drug flow, supporting both suppliers and consumers against the growing counterfeiting problem. In such a context, the choice of the most adequate RFID tag, in terms of shape, frequency, size and reading range, is crucial. The potential presence of items containing materials hostile to the electromagnetic propagation exasperates the problem. In addition, the peculiarities of the different RFID-based checkpoints make even more stringent the requirements for the tag. In this work, the performance of several commercial UHF RFID tags in each step of the pharmaceutical supply chain has been evaluated, confirming the expected criticality. On such basis, a guideline for the electromagnetic design of new high-performance tags capable to overcome such criticalities has been defined. Finally, driven by such guidelines, a new enhanced tag has been designed, realized and tested. Due to patent pending issues, the antenna shape is not shown. Nevertheless, the optimal obtained results do not lose their validity. Indeed, on the one hand they demonstrate that high performance item level tracing systems can actually be implemented also in critical operating conditions. On the other hand, they encourage the tag designer to follow the identified guidelines so to realize enhanced UHF tags.

  1. Harmonic radar tagging for tracking movement of Nezara viridula (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae).

    PubMed

    Pilkay, Grant L; Reay-Jones, Francis P F; Greene, Jeremy K

    2013-10-01

    Harmonic radar tagging was investigated as a method for monitoring the movement of the southern green stink bug, Nezara viridula (L.) (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae). Because adhesive toxicity and tag weight limit the use of this technology, initial efforts focused on selection of the optimal adhesive and design of harmonic radar tags to reduce impact on the movement of stink bugs. A design consisting of a 6-cm-long 0.10-mm-thick silver-plated copper monopole on the anode terminal of a three-contact Schottky barrier diode attached with Gorilla super glue provided a compromise between unimpaired movement and tracking range, adding an additional 8% to the weight of the stink bug while not significantly (P > 0.05) reducing walking or flying mobility in the laboratory. Recovery of tagged stink bugs in cotton, Gossypium hirsutum (L.), and fallow fields ranged from 10 to 75% after 24 h, whereas marked stink bugs were recovered at rates of 0-35% by using sweep net or drop cloth sampling. The distance dispersed in the field was not impacted (P > 0.05) by crop, tagged status, or gender of the insect. Future research should examine possible improvements to the harmonic radar transceiver and the wire antenna to decrease encumbrance.

  2. Design of a Covert RFID Tag Network for Target Discovery and Target Information Routing

    PubMed Central

    Pan, Qihe; Narayanan, Ram M.

    2011-01-01

    Radio frequency identification (RFID) tags are small electronic devices working in the radio frequency range. They use wireless radio communications to automatically identify objects or people without the need for line-of-sight or contact, and are widely used in inventory tracking, object location, environmental monitoring. This paper presents a design of a covert RFID tag network for target discovery and target information routing. In the design, a static or very slowly moving target in the field of RFID tags transmits a distinct pseudo-noise signal, and the RFID tags in the network collect the target information and route it to the command center. A map of each RFID tag’s location is saved at command center, which can determine where a RFID tag is located based on each RFID tag’s ID. We propose the target information collection method with target association and clustering, and we also propose the information routing algorithm within the RFID tag network. The design and operation of the proposed algorithms are illustrated through examples. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the design. PMID:22163693

  3. Fluorescence from Multiple Chromophore Hydrogen-Bonding States in the Far-Red Protein TagRFP675.

    PubMed

    Konold, Patrick E; Yoon, Eunjin; Lee, Junghwa; Allen, Samantha L; Chapagain, Prem P; Gerstman, Bernard S; Regmi, Chola K; Piatkevich, Kiryl D; Verkhusha, Vladislav V; Joo, Taiha; Jimenez, Ralph

    2016-08-04

    Far-red fluorescent proteins are critical for in vivo imaging applications, but the relative importance of structure versus dynamics in generating large Stokes-shifted emission is unclear. The unusually red-shifted emission of TagRFP675, a derivative of mKate, has been attributed to the multiple hydrogen bonds with the chromophore N-acylimine carbonyl. We characterized TagRFP675 and point mutants designed to perturb these hydrogen bonds with spectrally resolved transient grating and time-resolved fluorescence (TRF) spectroscopies supported by molecular dynamics simulations. TRF results for TagRFP675 and the mKate/M41Q variant show picosecond time scale red-shifts followed by nanosecond time blue-shifts. Global analysis of the TRF spectra reveals spectrally distinct emitting states that do not interconvert during the S1 lifetime. These dynamics originate from photoexcitation of a mixed ground-state population of acylimine hydrogen bond conformers. Strategically tuning the chromophore environment in TagRFP675 might stabilize the most red-shifted conformation and result in a variant with a larger Stokes shift.

  4. Glioblastoma cells labeled by robust Raman tags for enhancing imaging contrast.

    PubMed

    Huang, Li-Ching; Chang, Yung-Ching; Wu, Yi-Syuan; Sun, Wei-Lun; Liu, Chan-Chuan; Sze, Chun-I; Chen, Shiuan-Yeh

    2018-05-01

    Complete removal of a glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), a highly malignant brain tumor, is challenging due to its infiltrative characteristics. Therefore, utilizing imaging agents such as fluorophores to increase the contrast between GBM and normal cells can help neurosurgeons to locate residual cancer cells during image guided surgery. In this work, Raman tag based labeling and imaging for GBM cells in vitro is described and evaluated. The cell membrane of a GBM adsorbs a substantial amount of functionalized Raman tags through overexpression of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and "broadcasts" stronger pre-defined Raman signals than normal cells. The average ratio between Raman signals from a GBM cell and autofluorescence from a normal cell can be up to 15. In addition, the intensity of these images is stable under laser illuminations without suffering from the severe photo-bleaching that usually occurs in fluorescent imaging. Our results show that labeling and imaging GBM cells via robust Raman tags is a viable alternative method to distinguish them from normal cells. This Raman tag based method can be used solely or integrated into an existing fluorescence system to improve the identification of infiltrative glial tumor cells around the boundary, which will further reduce GBM recurrence. In addition, it can also be applied/extended to other types of cancer to improve the effectiveness of image guided surgery.

  5. Glioblastoma cells labeled by robust Raman tags for enhancing imaging contrast

    PubMed Central

    Huang, Li-Ching; Chang, Yung-Ching; Wu, Yi-Syuan; Sun, Wei-Lun; Liu, Chan-Chuan; Sze, Chun-I; Chen, Shiuan-Yeh

    2018-01-01

    Complete removal of a glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), a highly malignant brain tumor, is challenging due to its infiltrative characteristics. Therefore, utilizing imaging agents such as fluorophores to increase the contrast between GBM and normal cells can help neurosurgeons to locate residual cancer cells during image guided surgery. In this work, Raman tag based labeling and imaging for GBM cells in vitro is described and evaluated. The cell membrane of a GBM adsorbs a substantial amount of functionalized Raman tags through overexpression of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and “broadcasts” stronger pre-defined Raman signals than normal cells. The average ratio between Raman signals from a GBM cell and autofluorescence from a normal cell can be up to 15. In addition, the intensity of these images is stable under laser illuminations without suffering from the severe photo-bleaching that usually occurs in fluorescent imaging. Our results show that labeling and imaging GBM cells via robust Raman tags is a viable alternative method to distinguish them from normal cells. This Raman tag based method can be used solely or integrated into an existing fluorescence system to improve the identification of infiltrative glial tumor cells around the boundary, which will further reduce GBM recurrence. In addition, it can also be applied/extended to other types of cancer to improve the effectiveness of image guided surgery. PMID:29760976

  6. Job optimization in ATLAS TAG-based distributed analysis

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Mambelli, M.; Cranshaw, J.; Gardner, R.; Maeno, T.; Malon, D.; Novak, M.

    2010-04-01

    The ATLAS experiment is projected to collect over one billion events/year during the first few years of operation. The efficient selection of events for various physics analyses across all appropriate samples presents a significant technical challenge. ATLAS computing infrastructure leverages the Grid to tackle the analysis across large samples by organizing data into a hierarchical structure and exploiting distributed computing to churn through the computations. This includes events at different stages of processing: RAW, ESD (Event Summary Data), AOD (Analysis Object Data), DPD (Derived Physics Data). Event Level Metadata Tags (TAGs) contain information about each event stored using multiple technologies accessible by POOL and various web services. This allows users to apply selection cuts on quantities of interest across the entire sample to compile a subset of events that are appropriate for their analysis. This paper describes new methods for organizing jobs using the TAGs criteria to analyze ATLAS data. It further compares different access patterns to the event data and explores ways to partition the workload for event selection and analysis. Here analysis is defined as a broader set of event processing tasks including event selection and reduction operations ("skimming", "slimming" and "thinning") as well as DPD making. Specifically it compares analysis with direct access to the events (AOD and ESD data) to access mediated by different TAG-based event selections. We then compare different ways of splitting the processing to maximize performance.

  7. Reversible chemoselective tagging and functionalization of methionine containing peptides.

    PubMed

    Kramer, Jessica R; Deming, Timothy J

    2013-06-07

    Reagents were developed to allow chemoselective tagging of methionine residues in peptides and polypeptides, subsequent bioorthogonal functionalization of the tags, and cleavage of the tags when desired. This methodology can be used for triggered release of therapeutic peptides, or release of tagged protein digests from affinity columns.

  8. A technique for rapid source apportionment applied to ambient organic aerosol measurements from a thermal desorption aerosol gas chromatograph (TAG)

    DOE PAGES

    Zhang, Yaping; Williams, Brent J.; Goldstein, Allen H.; ...

    2016-11-25

    Here, we present a rapid method for apportioning the sources of atmospheric organic aerosol composition measured by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry methods. Here, we specifically apply this new analysis method to data acquired on a thermal desorption aerosol gas chromatograph (TAG) system. Gas chromatograms are divided by retention time into evenly spaced bins, within which the mass spectra are summed. A previous chromatogram binning method was introduced for the purpose of chromatogram structure deconvolution (e.g., major compound classes) (Zhang et al., 2014). Here we extend the method development for the specific purpose of determining aerosol samples' sources. Chromatogram bins are arrangedmore » into an input data matrix for positive matrix factorization (PMF), where the sample number is the row dimension and the mass-spectra-resolved eluting time intervals (bins) are the column dimension. Then two-dimensional PMF can effectively do three-dimensional factorization on the three-dimensional TAG mass spectra data. The retention time shift of the chromatogram is corrected by applying the median values of the different peaks' shifts. Bin width affects chemical resolution but does not affect PMF retrieval of the sources' time variations for low-factor solutions. A bin width smaller than the maximum retention shift among all samples requires retention time shift correction. A six-factor PMF comparison among aerosol mass spectrometry (AMS), TAG binning, and conventional TAG compound integration methods shows that the TAG binning method performs similarly to the integration method. However, the new binning method incorporates the entirety of the data set and requires significantly less pre-processing of the data than conventional single compound identification and integration. In addition, while a fraction of the most oxygenated aerosol does not elute through an underivatized TAG analysis, the TAG binning method does have the ability to achieve molecular level

  9. A technique for rapid source apportionment applied to ambient organic aerosol measurements from a thermal desorption aerosol gas chromatograph (TAG)

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Zhang, Yaping; Williams, Brent J.; Goldstein, Allen H.; Docherty, Kenneth S.; Jimenez, Jose L.

    2016-11-01

    We present a rapid method for apportioning the sources of atmospheric organic aerosol composition measured by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry methods. Here, we specifically apply this new analysis method to data acquired on a thermal desorption aerosol gas chromatograph (TAG) system. Gas chromatograms are divided by retention time into evenly spaced bins, within which the mass spectra are summed. A previous chromatogram binning method was introduced for the purpose of chromatogram structure deconvolution (e.g., major compound classes) (Zhang et al., 2014). Here we extend the method development for the specific purpose of determining aerosol samples' sources. Chromatogram bins are arranged into an input data matrix for positive matrix factorization (PMF), where the sample number is the row dimension and the mass-spectra-resolved eluting time intervals (bins) are the column dimension. Then two-dimensional PMF can effectively do three-dimensional factorization on the three-dimensional TAG mass spectra data. The retention time shift of the chromatogram is corrected by applying the median values of the different peaks' shifts. Bin width affects chemical resolution but does not affect PMF retrieval of the sources' time variations for low-factor solutions. A bin width smaller than the maximum retention shift among all samples requires retention time shift correction. A six-factor PMF comparison among aerosol mass spectrometry (AMS), TAG binning, and conventional TAG compound integration methods shows that the TAG binning method performs similarly to the integration method. However, the new binning method incorporates the entirety of the data set and requires significantly less pre-processing of the data than conventional single compound identification and integration. In addition, while a fraction of the most oxygenated aerosol does not elute through an underivatized TAG analysis, the TAG binning method does have the ability to achieve molecular level resolution on

  10. A capture-recapture survival analysis model for radio-tagged animals

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Pollock, K.H.; Bunck, C.M.; Winterstein, S.R.; Chen, C.-L.; North, P.M.; Nichols, J.D.

    1995-01-01

    In recent years, survival analysis of radio-tagged animals has developed using methods based on the Kaplan-Meier method used in medical and engineering applications (Pollock et al., 1989a,b). An important assumption of this approach is that all tagged animals with a functioning radio can be relocated at each sampling time with probability 1. This assumption may not always be reasonable in practice. In this paper, we show how a general capture-recapture model can be derived which allows for some probability (less than one) for animals to be relocated. This model is not simply a Jolly-Seber model because it is possible to relocate both dead and live animals, unlike when traditional tagging is used. The model can also be viewed as a generalization of the Kaplan-Meier procedure, thus linking the Jolly-Seber and Kaplan-Meier approaches to survival estimation. We present maximum likelihood estimators and discuss testing between submodels. We also discuss model assumptions and their validity in practice. An example is presented based on canvasback data collected by G. M. Haramis of Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, Laurel, Maryland, USA.

  11. Magnetic vector field tag and seal

    DOEpatents

    Johnston, Roger G.; Garcia, Anthony R.

    2004-08-31

    One or more magnets are placed in a container (preferably on objects inside the container) and the magnetic field strength and vector direction are measured with a magnetometer from at least one location near the container to provide the container with a magnetic vector field tag and seal. The location(s) of the magnetometer relative to the container are also noted. If the position of any magnet inside the container changes, then the measured vector fields at the these locations also change, indicating that the tag has been removed, the seal has broken, and therefore that the container and objects inside may have been tampered with. A hollow wheel with magnets inside may also provide a similar magnetic vector field tag and seal. As the wheel turns, the magnets tumble randomly inside, removing the tag and breaking the seal.

  12. Synthesis and Physicochemical Characterization of D-Tagatose-1-phosphate: The Substrate of the Tagatose-1-Phosphate Kinase TagK in the PTS-mediated D-Tagatose Catabolic Pathway of Bacillus licheniformis

    PubMed Central

    Van der Heiden, Edwige; Delmarcelle, Michaël; Simon, Patricia; Counson, Melody; Galleni, Moreno; Freedberg, Darón I.; Thompson, John; Joris, Bernard; Battistel, Marcos D.

    2015-01-01

    We report the first enzymatic synthesis of D-tagatose-1-phosphate (Tag-1P) by the multi-component PEP-dependent:tag-PTS present in tagatose-grown cells of Klebsiella pneumoniae. Physicochemical characterization by 31P and 1H NMR spectroscopy reveals that, in solution, this derivative is primarily in the pyranose form. Tag-1P was used to characterize the putative tagatose-1-phosphate kinase (TagK) of the Bacillus licheniformis PTS-mediated D-Tagatose catabolic Pathway (Bli-TagP). For this purpose, a soluble protein fusion was obtained with the 6 His-tagged trigger factor (TFHis6) of Escherichia coli. The active fusion enzyme was named TagK-TFHis6. Tag-1P and D-fructose-1-phosphate (Fru-1P) are substrates for the TagK-TFHis6 enzyme, whereas the isomeric derivatives D-tagatose-6-phosphate (Tag-6P) and D-fructose-6-phosphate (Fru-6P) are inhibitors. Studies of catalytic efficiency (kcat/Km) reveal that the enzyme specificity is markedly in favor of Tag-1P as substrate. Importantly, we show in vivo that the transfer of the phosphate moiety from PEP to the B. licheniformis tagatose-specific enzyme II (EIITag) in E.coli is inefficient. The capability of the PTS general cytoplasmic components of B. subtilis, HPr and EI, to restore the phosphate transfer is demonstrated. PMID:26159072

  13. Clone tag detection in distributed RFID systems

    PubMed Central

    Kamaludin, Hazalila; Mahdin, Hairulnizam

    2018-01-01

    Although Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is poised to displace barcodes, security vulnerabilities pose serious challenges for global adoption of the RFID technology. Specifically, RFID tags are prone to basic cloning and counterfeiting security attacks. A successful cloning of the RFID tags in many commercial applications can lead to many serious problems such as financial losses, brand damage, safety and health of the public. With many industries such as pharmaceutical and businesses deploying RFID technology with a variety of products, it is important to tackle RFID tag cloning problem and improve the resistance of the RFID systems. To this end, we propose an approach for detecting cloned RFID tags in RFID systems with high detection accuracy and minimal overhead thus overcoming practical challenges in existing approaches. The proposed approach is based on consistency of dual hash collisions and modified count-min sketch vector. We evaluated the proposed approach through extensive experiments and compared it with existing baseline approaches in terms of execution time and detection accuracy under varying RFID tag cloning ratio. The results of the experiments show that the proposed approach outperforms the baseline approaches in cloned RFID tag detection accuracy. PMID:29565982

  14. Clone tag detection in distributed RFID systems.

    PubMed

    Kamaludin, Hazalila; Mahdin, Hairulnizam; Abawajy, Jemal H

    2018-01-01

    Although Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is poised to displace barcodes, security vulnerabilities pose serious challenges for global adoption of the RFID technology. Specifically, RFID tags are prone to basic cloning and counterfeiting security attacks. A successful cloning of the RFID tags in many commercial applications can lead to many serious problems such as financial losses, brand damage, safety and health of the public. With many industries such as pharmaceutical and businesses deploying RFID technology with a variety of products, it is important to tackle RFID tag cloning problem and improve the resistance of the RFID systems. To this end, we propose an approach for detecting cloned RFID tags in RFID systems with high detection accuracy and minimal overhead thus overcoming practical challenges in existing approaches. The proposed approach is based on consistency of dual hash collisions and modified count-min sketch vector. We evaluated the proposed approach through extensive experiments and compared it with existing baseline approaches in terms of execution time and detection accuracy under varying RFID tag cloning ratio. The results of the experiments show that the proposed approach outperforms the baseline approaches in cloned RFID tag detection accuracy.

  15. Development of Decision Making Algorithm for Control of Sea Cargo Containers by ``TAGGED'' Neutron Method

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Anan'ev, A. A.; Belichenko, S. G.; Bogolyubov, E. P.; Bochkarev, O. V.; Petrov, E. V.; Polishchuk, A. M.; Udaltsov, A. Yu.

    2009-12-01

    Nowadays in Russia and abroad there are several groups of scientists, engaged in development of systems based on "tagged" neutron method (API method) and intended for detection of dangerous materials, including high explosives (HE). Particular attention is paid to possibility of detection of dangerous objects inside a sea cargo container. Energy gamma-spectrum, registered from object under inspection is used for determination of oxygen/carbon and nitrogen/carbon chemical ratios, according to which dangerous object is distinguished from not dangerous one. Material of filled container, however, gives rise to additional effects of rescattering and moderation of 14 MeV primary neutrons of generator, attenuation of secondary gamma-radiation from reactions of inelastic neutron scattering on objects under inspection. These effects lead to distortion of energy gamma-response from examined object and therefore prevent correct recognition of chemical ratios. These difficulties are taken into account in analytical method, presented in the paper. Method has been validated against experimental data, obtained by the system for HE detection in sea cargo, based on API method and developed in VNIIA. Influence of shielding materials on results of HE detection and identification is considered. Wood and iron were used as shielding materials. Results of method application for analysis of experimental data on HE simulator measurement (tetryl, trotyl, hexogen) are presented.

  16. Separation efficiency of free-solution conjugated electrophoresis with drag-tags incorporating a synthetic amino acid.

    PubMed

    Seo, Kyung-Ho; Chu, Hun-Su; Yoo, Tae Hyeon; Lee, Sun-Gu; Won, Jong-In

    2016-03-01

    DNA sequencing or separation by conventional capillary electrophoresis with a polymer matrix has some inherent drawbacks, such as the expense of polymer matrix and limitations in sequencing read length. As DNA fragments have a linear charge-to-friction ratio in free solution, DNA fragments cannot be separated by size. However, size-based separation of DNA is possible in free-solution conjugate electrophoresis (FSCE) if a "drag-tag" is attached to DNA fragments because the tag breaks the linear charge-to-friction scaling. Although several previous studies have demonstrated the feasibility of DNA separation by free-solution conjugated electrophoresis, generation of a monodisperse drag-tag and identification of a strong, site-specific conjugation method between a DNA fragment and a drag-tag are challenges that still remain. In this study, we demonstrate an efficient FSCE method by conjugating a biologically synthesized elastin-like polypeptide (ELP) and green fluorescent protein (GFP) to DNA fragments. In addition, to produce strong and site-specific conjugation, a methionine residue in drag-tags is replaced with homopropargylglycine (Hpg), which can be conjugated specifically to a DNA fragment with an azide site. © 2016 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

  17. A Radio Tag for Big Whales

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Watkins, William A.

    1978-01-01

    Radio tags to track wildlife have been used for years. However, such tagging of whales has been more complicated and less successful. This article explores the latest technology that is designed to give information over a long period of time. (MA)

  18. POS-Tagging for informal language (study in Indonesian tweets)

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Suryawati, Endang; Munandar, Devi; Riswantini, Dianadewi; Fatchuttamam Abka, Achmad; Arisal, Andria

    2018-03-01

    This paper evaluates Part-of-Speech Tagging for the formal Indonesian language can be used for the tagging process of Indonesian tweets. In this study, we add five additional tags which reflect to social media attributes to the existing original tagset. Automatic POS tagging process is done by stratified training process with 1000, 1600, and 1800 of annotated tweets. It shows that the process can achieve up to 66.36% accuracy. The experiment with original tagset gives slightly better accuracy (67.39%) than the experiment with five additional tags, but will lose important informations which given by the five additional tagset.POS-Tagging for Informal Language (Study in Indonesian Tweets).

  19. A two-step strategy to visually identify molecularly imprinted polymers for tagged proteins.

    PubMed

    Brandis, Alexander; Partouche, Eran; Yechezkel, Tamar; Salitra, Yoseph; Shkoulev, Vladimir; Scherz, Avigdor; Grynszpan, Flavio

    2017-08-01

    A practical and relatively simple method to identify molecularly imprinted polymers capable of binding proteins via the molecular tagging (epitope-like) approach has been developed. In our two-step method, we first challenge a previously obtained anti-tag molecularly imprinted polymer with a small molecule including the said tag of choice (a biotin derivative as shown here or other) connected to a linker bound to a second biotin moiety. An avidin molecule partially decorated with fluorescent labels is then allowed to bind the available biotin derivative associated with the polymer matrix. At the end of this simple process, and after washing off all the low-affinity binding molecules from the polymer matrix, only suitable molecularly imprinted polymers binding avidin through its previously acquired small molecule tag (or epitope-like probe, in a general case) will remain fluorescent. For confirmation, we tested the selective performance of the anti-biotin molecularly imprinted polymer binding it to biotinylated alkaline phosphatase. Residual chemical activity of the enzyme on the molecularly imprinted polymer solid support was observed. In all cases, the corresponding nonimprinted polymer controls were inactive. © 2017 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

  20. The Cation−π Interaction Enables a Halo-Tag Fluorogenic Probe for Fast No-Wash Live Cell Imaging and Gel-Free Protein Quantification

    PubMed Central

    2017-01-01

    The design of fluorogenic probes for a Halo tag is highly desirable but challenging. Previous work achieved this goal by controlling the chemical switch of spirolactones upon the covalent conjugation between the Halo tag and probes or by incorporating a “channel dye” into the substrate binding tunnel of the Halo tag. In this work, we have developed a novel class of Halo-tag fluorogenic probes that are derived from solvatochromic fluorophores. The optimal probe, harboring a benzothiadiazole scaffold, exhibits a 1000-fold fluorescence enhancement upon reaction with the Halo tag. Structural, computational, and biochemical studies reveal that the benzene ring of a tryptophan residue engages in a cation−π interaction with the dimethylamino electron-donating group of the benzothiadiazole fluorophore in its excited state. We further demonstrate using noncanonical fluorinated tryptophan that the cation−π interaction directly contributes to the fluorogenicity of the benzothiadiazole fluorophore. Mechanistically, this interaction could contribute to the fluorogenicity by promoting the excited-state charge separation and inhibiting the twisting motion of the dimethylamino group, both leading to an enhanced fluorogenicity. Finally, we demonstrate the utility of the probe in no-wash direct imaging of Halo-tagged proteins in live cells. In addition, the fluorogenic nature of the probe enables a gel-free quantification of fusion proteins expressed in mammalian cells, an application that was not possible with previously nonfluorogenic Halo-tag probes. The unique mechanism revealed by this work suggests that incorporation of an excited-state cation−π interaction could be a feasible strategy for enhancing the optical performance of fluorophores and fluorogenic sensors. PMID:28221782

  1. The Cation-π Interaction Enables a Halo-Tag Fluorogenic Probe for Fast No-Wash Live Cell Imaging and Gel-Free Protein Quantification.

    PubMed

    Liu, Yu; Miao, Kun; Dunham, Noah P; Liu, Hongbin; Fares, Matthew; Boal, Amie K; Li, Xiaosong; Zhang, Xin

    2017-03-21

    The design of fluorogenic probes for a Halo tag is highly desirable but challenging. Previous work achieved this goal by controlling the chemical switch of spirolactones upon the covalent conjugation between the Halo tag and probes or by incorporating a "channel dye" into the substrate binding tunnel of the Halo tag. In this work, we have developed a novel class of Halo-tag fluorogenic probes that are derived from solvatochromic fluorophores. The optimal probe, harboring a benzothiadiazole scaffold, exhibits a 1000-fold fluorescence enhancement upon reaction with the Halo tag. Structural, computational, and biochemical studies reveal that the benzene ring of a tryptophan residue engages in a cation-π interaction with the dimethylamino electron-donating group of the benzothiadiazole fluorophore in its excited state. We further demonstrate using noncanonical fluorinated tryptophan that the cation-π interaction directly contributes to the fluorogenicity of the benzothiadiazole fluorophore. Mechanistically, this interaction could contribute to the fluorogenicity by promoting the excited-state charge separation and inhibiting the twisting motion of the dimethylamino group, both leading to an enhanced fluorogenicity. Finally, we demonstrate the utility of the probe in no-wash direct imaging of Halo-tagged proteins in live cells. In addition, the fluorogenic nature of the probe enables a gel-free quantification of fusion proteins expressed in mammalian cells, an application that was not possible with previously nonfluorogenic Halo-tag probes. The unique mechanism revealed by this work suggests that incorporation of an excited-state cation-π interaction could be a feasible strategy for enhancing the optical performance of fluorophores and fluorogenic sensors.

  2. Facile and high-efficient immobilization of histidine-tagged multimeric protein G on magnetic nanoparticles

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Lee, Jiho; Chang, Jeong Ho

    2014-12-01

    This work reports the high-efficient and one-step immobilization of multimeric protein G on magnetic nanoparticles. The histidine-tagged (His-tag) recombinant multimeric protein G was overexpressed in Escherichia coli BL21 by the repeated linking of protein G monomers with a flexible linker. High-efficient immobilization on magnetic nanoparticles was demonstrated by two different preparation methods through the amino-silane and chloro-silane functionalization on silica-coated magnetic nanoparticles. Three kinds of multimeric protein G such as His-tag monomer, dimer, and trimer were tested for immobilization efficiency. For these tests, bicinchoninic acid (BCA) assay was employed to determine the amount of immobilized His-tag multimeric protein G. The result showed that the immobilization efficiency of the His-tag multimeric protein G of the monomer, dimer, and trimer was increased with the use of chloro-silane-functionalized magnetic nanoparticles in the range of 98% to 99%, rather than the use of amino-silane-functionalized magnetic nanoparticles in the range of 55% to 77%, respectively.

  3. 48 CFR 908.7101-7 - Government license tags.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-10-01

    ... 48 Federal Acquisition Regulations System 5 2011-10-01 2011-10-01 false Government license tags... ACQUISITION PLANNING REQUIRED SOURCES OF SUPPLIES AND SERVICES Acquisition of Special Items 908.7101-7 Government license tags. (a) Government license tags shall be procured and assignments recorded by DOE...

  4. An Overview of Enzymatic Reagents for the Removal of Affinity Tags

    PubMed Central

    Waugh, David S.

    2011-01-01

    Although they are often exploited to facilitate the expression and purification of recombinant proteins, every affinity tag, whether large or small, has the potential to interfere with the structure and function of its fusion partner. For this reason, reliable methods for removing affinity tags are needed. Only enzymes have the requisite specificity to be generally useful reagents for this purpose. In this review, the advantages and disadvantages of some commonly used endo- and exoproteases are discussed in light of the latest information. PMID:21871965

  5. Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) imaging of alkyne-tagged small molecule drug in live cells with endocytosed gold nanoparticles

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Ando, Jun; Sekiya, Takumasa; Ka, Den; Yamakoshi, Hiroyuki; Dodo, Kosuke; Sodeoka, Mikiko; Kawata, Satoshi; Fujita, Katsumasa

    2017-02-01

    We propose the combination of alkyne-tag and surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) spectroscopy to perform highly-sensitive and selective drug imaging in live cells. Gold nanoparticles are introduced in lysosomes through endocytosis as SERS agents, and the alkyne-tagged drugs are subsequently administered in cells. Raman microscopic observation reveals the arrival of drug in lysosome through enhanced Raman signal of alkyne. Since the peak of alkyne appears in Raman-silent region of biomolecules, selective detection of drugs is possible without background signal of endogenous molecules. From endocytosed gold nanoparticles in living HeLa cells, we observed distinct Raman signal from alkyne-tagged inhibitor of lysosomal enzyme.

  6. Evaluating gold standard corpora against gene/protein tagging solutions and lexical resources

    PubMed Central

    2013-01-01

    Motivation The identification of protein and gene names (PGNs) from the scientific literature requires semantic resources: Terminological and lexical resources deliver the term candidates into PGN tagging solutions and the gold standard corpora (GSC) train them to identify term parameters and contextual features. Ideally all three resources, i.e. corpora, lexica and taggers, cover the same domain knowledge, and thus support identification of the same types of PGNs and cover all of them. Unfortunately, none of the three serves as a predominant standard and for this reason it is worth exploring, how these three resources comply with each other. We systematically compare different PGN taggers against publicly available corpora and analyze the impact of the included lexical resource in their performance. In particular, we determine the performance gains through false positive filtering, which contributes to the disambiguation of identified PGNs. Results In general, machine learning approaches (ML-Tag) for PGN tagging show higher F1-measure performance against the BioCreative-II and Jnlpba GSCs (exact matching), whereas the lexicon based approaches (LexTag) in combination with disambiguation methods show better results on FsuPrge and PennBio. The ML-Tag solutions balance precision and recall, whereas the LexTag solutions have different precision and recall profiles at the same F1-measure across all corpora. Higher recall is achieved with larger lexical resources, which also introduce more noise (false positive results). The ML-Tag solutions certainly perform best, if the test corpus is from the same GSC as the training corpus. As expected, the false negative errors characterize the test corpora and – on the other hand – the profiles of the false positive mistakes characterize the tagging solutions. Lex-Tag solutions that are based on a large terminological resource in combination with false positive filtering produce better results, which, in addition, provide

  7. Individually Identifiable Surface Acoustic Wave Sensors, Tags and Systems

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Hines, Jacqueline H. (Inventor); Solie, Leland P. (Inventor); Tucker, Dana Y. G. (Inventor); Hines, Andrew T. (Inventor)

    2017-01-01

    A surface-launched acoustic wave sensor tag system for remotely sensing and/or providing identification information using sets of surface acoustic wave (SAW) sensor tag devices is characterized by acoustic wave device embodiments that include coding and other diversity techniques to produce groups of sensors that interact minimally, reducing or alleviating code collision problems typical of prior art coded SAW sensors and tags, and specific device embodiments of said coded SAW sensor tags and systems. These sensor/tag devices operate in a system which consists of one or more uniquely identifiable sensor/tag devices and a wireless interrogator. The sensor device incorporates an antenna for receiving incident RF energy and re-radiating the tag identification information and the sensor measured parameter(s). Since there is no power source in or connected to the sensor, it is a passive sensor. The device is wirelessly interrogated by the interrogator.

  8. Testing archival tag technology in coho salmon

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Nielsen, Jennifer L.; Richards, Philip; Tingey, Thor; Wilson, Derek; Zimmerman, Chris

    2004-01-01

    Archive tags with temperature and light-geolocation sensors will be monitored for post-smolt coho salmon in Cook Inlet. Light/location relationships specific to the Gulf of Alaska developed under Project 00478 will be applied in this study of movement and migration paths for coho salmon during maturation in ocean environments in Cook Inlet. Salmon for this study will be reared in captivity (at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game hatchery at Fort Richardson) to 1+ year of age (200-250mm) and released in Cook Inlet as part of the department's Ship Creek sport-fishing hatchery release. FY 01 includes pilot studies of tag retention, behavior, and growth for coho in captivity. Ship Creek coho will be tagged mid-May. A spring release experiment in the first year will be contingent on the successful implementation and retention of these tags. Surveys for early jack recoveries will be done at the Ship Creek weir and among sport fishers. Monitoring for adult tag recoveries will be done in the coho commercial fishery in Cook Inlet and the derby sport fishery on Ship Creek. Archive tagged fish will be used to document coho salmon use of marine habitats, migration routes, contribution to the sport fishery, and hatchery/wild interactions for salmon in Cook Inlet.

  9. 29 CFR 1915.89 - Control of hazardous energy (lockout/tags-plus).

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

    2012-07-01

    ... employee: (A) Sign a group tag (or a group tag equivalent), attach a personal identification device to a... group tag (or the group tag equivalent), remove the personal identification device, or perform a... safe exposure status of each authorized employee, and (b) signs a group tag (or a group tag equivalent...

  10. 29 CFR 1915.89 - Control of hazardous energy (lockout/tags-plus).

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

    2013-07-01

    ... employee: (A) Sign a group tag (or a group tag equivalent), attach a personal identification device to a... group tag (or the group tag equivalent), remove the personal identification device, or perform a... safe exposure status of each authorized employee, and (b) signs a group tag (or a group tag equivalent...

  11. 29 CFR 1915.89 - Control of hazardous energy (lockout/tags-plus).

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

    2014-07-01

    ... employee: (A) Sign a group tag (or a group tag equivalent), attach a personal identification device to a... group tag (or the group tag equivalent), remove the personal identification device, or perform a... safe exposure status of each authorized employee, and (b) signs a group tag (or a group tag equivalent...

  12. Expression and purification of the non-tagged LipL32 of pathogenic Leptospira.

    PubMed

    Hauk, P; Carvalho, E; Ho, P L

    2011-04-01

    Leptospirosis is a reemerging infectious disease and the most disseminated zoonosis worldwide. A leptospiral surface protein, LipL32, only occurs in pathogenic Leptospira, and is the most abundant protein on the bacterial surface, being described as an important factor in host immunogenic response and also in bacterial infection. We describe here an alternative and simple purification protocol for non-tagged recombinant LipL32. The recombinant LipL32(21-272) was expressed in Escherichia coli without His-tag or any other tag used to facilitate recombinant protein purification. The recombinant protein was expressed in the soluble form, and the purification was based on ion exchange (anionic and cationic) and hydrophobic interactions. The final purification yielded 3 mg soluble LipL32(21-272) per liter of the induced culture. Antiserum produced against the recombinant protein was effective to detect native LipL32 from cell extracts of several Leptospira serovars. The purified recombinant LipL32(21-272) produced by this protocol can be used for structural, biochemical and functional studies and avoids the risk of possible interactions and interferences of the tags commonly used as well as the time consuming and almost always inefficient methods to cleave these tags when a tag-free LipL32 is needed. Non-tagged LipL32 may represent an alternative antigen for biochemical studies, for serodiagnosis and for the development of a vaccine against leptospirosis.

  13. Incompressible Deformation Estimation Algorithm (IDEA) from Tagged MR Images

    PubMed Central

    Liu, Xiaofeng; Abd-Elmoniem, Khaled Z.; Stone, Maureen; Murano, Emi Z.; Zhuo, Jiachen; Gullapalli, Rao P.; Prince, Jerry L.

    2013-01-01

    Measuring the three-dimensional motion of muscular tissues, e.g., the heart or the tongue, using magnetic resonance (MR) tagging is typically carried out by interpolating the two-dimensional motion information measured on orthogonal stacks of images. The incompressibility of muscle tissue is an important constraint on the reconstructed motion field and can significantly help to counter the sparsity and incompleteness of the available motion information. Previous methods utilizing this fact produced incompressible motions with limited accuracy. In this paper, we present an incompressible deformation estimation algorithm (IDEA) that reconstructs a dense representation of the three-dimensional displacement field from tagged MR images and the estimated motion field is incompressible to high precision. At each imaged time frame, the tagged images are first processed to determine components of the displacement vector at each pixel relative to the reference time. IDEA then applies a smoothing, divergence-free, vector spline to interpolate velocity fields at intermediate discrete times such that the collection of velocity fields integrate over time to match the observed displacement components. Through this process, IDEA yields a dense estimate of a three-dimensional displacement field that matches our observations and also corresponds to an incompressible motion. The method was validated with both numerical simulation and in vivo human experiments on the heart and the tongue. PMID:21937342

  14. Comparison of Luminex NxTAG Respiratory Pathogen Panel and xTAG Respiratory Viral Panel FAST Version 2 for the Detection of Respiratory Viruses

    PubMed Central

    Lee, Chun Kiat; Lee, Hong Kai; Ng, Christopher Wei Siong; Chiu, Lily; Tang, Julian Wei-Tze; Loh, Tze Ping

    2017-01-01

    Owing to advancements in molecular diagnostics, recent years have seen an increasing number of laboratories adopting respiratory viral panels to detect respiratory pathogens. In December 2015, the NxTAG respiratory pathogen panel (NxTAG RPP) was approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration. We compared the clinical performance of this new assay with that of the xTAG respiratory viral panel (xTAG RVP) FAST v2 using 142 clinical samples and 12 external quality assessment samples. Discordant results were resolved by using a laboratory-developed respiratory viral panel. The NxTAG RPP achieved 100% concordant negative results and 86.6% concordant positive results. It detected one coronavirus 229E and eight influenza A/H3N2 viruses that were missed by the xTAG RVP FAST v2. On the other hand, the NxTAG RPP missed one enterovirus/rhinovirus and one metapneumovirus that were detected by FAST v2. Both panels correctly identified all the pathogens in the 12 external quality assessment samples. Overall, the NxTAG RPP demonstrated good diagnostic performance. Of note, it was better able to subtype the influenza A/H3N2 viruses compared with the xTAG RVP FAST v2. PMID:28224774

  15. 50 CFR 635.33 - Archival tags.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

    2013-10-01

    ... 50 Wildlife and Fisheries 12 2013-10-01 2013-10-01 false Archival tags. 635.33 Section 635.33 Wildlife and Fisheries FISHERY CONSERVATION AND MANAGEMENT, NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE ATLANTIC HIGHLY MIGRATORY SPECIES Management Measures § 635.33 Archival tags. (a...

  16. 50 CFR 20.81 - Tagging requirement.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-10-01

    ... PLANTS (CONTINUED) MIGRATORY BIRD HUNTING Migratory Bird Preservation Facilities § 20.81 Tagging requirement. No migratory bird preservation facility shall receive or have in custody any migratory game birds unless such birds are tagged as required by § 20.36. [41 FR 31537, July 29, 1976] ...

  17. 50 CFR 20.81 - Tagging requirement.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-10-01

    ... PLANTS (CONTINUED) MIGRATORY BIRD HUNTING Migratory Bird Preservation Facilities § 20.81 Tagging requirement. No migratory bird preservation facility shall receive or have in custody any migratory game birds unless such birds are tagged as required by § 20.36. [41 FR 31537, July 29, 1976] ...

  18. Effects of coded-wire-tagging on stream-dwelling Sea Lamprey larvae

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Johnson, Nicholas; Swink, William D.; Dawson, Heather A.; Jones, Michael L.

    2016-01-01

    The effects of coded wire tagging Sea Lamprey Petromyzon marinus larvae from a known-aged stream-dwelling population were assessed. Tagged larvae were significantly shorter on average than untagged larvae from 3 to 18 months after tagging. However, 30 months after tagging, the length distribution of tagged and untagged larvae did not differ and tagged Sea Lampreys were in better condition (i.e., higher condition factor) and more likely to have undergone metamorphosis than the untagged population. The reason why tagged larvae were more likely to metamorphose is not clear, but the increased likelihood of metamorphosis could have been a compensatory response to the period of slower growth after tagging. Slower growth after tagging was consistent across larval size-classes, so handling and displacement from quality habitat during the early part of the growing season was likely the cause rather than the tag burden. The tag effects observed in this study, if caused by displacement and handling, may be minimized in future studies if tagging is conducted during autumn after growth has concluded for the year.

  19. 9 CFR 2.51 - Form of official tag.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-01-01

    ... 9 Animals and Animal Products 1 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Form of official tag. 2.51 Section 2.51 Animals and Animal Products ANIMAL AND PLANT HEALTH INSPECTION SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE ANIMAL WELFARE REGULATIONS Identification of Animals § 2.51 Form of official tag. (a) The official tag...

  20. The Effects of Target Audience on Social Tagging

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Alsarhan, Hesham

    2013-01-01

    Online social bookmarking systems allow users to assign tags (i.e., keywords) to represent the content of resources. Research on the effects of target audience on social tagging suggests that taggers select different tags for themselves, their community (e.g., family, friends, colleagues), and the general public (Panke & Gaiser, 2009; Pu &…

  1. 9 CFR 2.51 - Form of official tag.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

    2013-01-01

    ... 9 Animals and Animal Products 1 2013-01-01 2013-01-01 false Form of official tag. 2.51 Section 2.51 Animals and Animal Products ANIMAL AND PLANT HEALTH INSPECTION SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE ANIMAL WELFARE REGULATIONS Identification of Animals § 2.51 Form of official tag. (a) The official tag...

  2. 9 CFR 2.51 - Form of official tag.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

    2012-01-01

    ... 9 Animals and Animal Products 1 2012-01-01 2012-01-01 false Form of official tag. 2.51 Section 2.51 Animals and Animal Products ANIMAL AND PLANT HEALTH INSPECTION SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE ANIMAL WELFARE REGULATIONS Identification of Animals § 2.51 Form of official tag. (a) The official tag...

  3. 9 CFR 2.51 - Form of official tag.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

    2014-01-01

    ... 9 Animals and Animal Products 1 2014-01-01 2014-01-01 false Form of official tag. 2.51 Section 2.51 Animals and Animal Products ANIMAL AND PLANT HEALTH INSPECTION SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE ANIMAL WELFARE REGULATIONS Identification of Animals § 2.51 Form of official tag. (a) The official tag...

  4. 9 CFR 2.51 - Form of official tag.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-01-01

    ... 9 Animals and Animal Products 1 2011-01-01 2011-01-01 false Form of official tag. 2.51 Section 2.51 Animals and Animal Products ANIMAL AND PLANT HEALTH INSPECTION SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE ANIMAL WELFARE REGULATIONS Identification of Animals § 2.51 Form of official tag. (a) The official tag...

  5. Movement patterns of juvenile whale sharks tagged at an aggregation site in the Red Sea.

    PubMed

    Berumen, Michael L; Braun, Camrin D; Cochran, Jesse E M; Skomal, Gregory B; Thorrold, Simon R

    2014-01-01

    Conservation efforts aimed at the whale shark, Rhincodon typus, remain limited by a lack of basic information on most aspects of its ecology, including global population structure, population sizes and movement patterns. Here we report on the movements of 47 Red Sea whale sharks fitted with three types of satellite transmitting tags from 2009-2011. Most of these sharks were tagged at a single aggregation site near Al-Lith, on the central coast of the Saudi Arabian Red Sea. Individuals encountered at this site were all juveniles based on size estimates ranging from 2.5-7 m total length with a sex ratio of approximately 1∶1. All other known aggregation sites for juvenile whale sharks are dominated by males. Results from tagging efforts showed that most individuals remained in the southern Red Sea and that some sharks returned to the same location in subsequent years. Diving data were recorded by 37 tags, revealing frequent deep dives to at least 500 m and as deep as 1360 m. The unique temperature-depth profiles of the Red Sea confirmed that several whale sharks moved out of the Red Sea while tagged. The wide-ranging horizontal movements of these individuals highlight the need for multinational, cooperative efforts to conserve R. typus populations in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean.

  6. Movement Patterns of Juvenile Whale Sharks Tagged at an Aggregation Site in the Red Sea

    PubMed Central

    Berumen, Michael L.; Braun, Camrin D.; Cochran, Jesse E. M.; Skomal, Gregory B.; Thorrold, Simon R.

    2014-01-01

    Conservation efforts aimed at the whale shark, Rhincodon typus, remain limited by a lack of basic information on most aspects of its ecology, including global population structure, population sizes and movement patterns. Here we report on the movements of 47 Red Sea whale sharks fitted with three types of satellite transmitting tags from 2009–2011. Most of these sharks were tagged at a single aggregation site near Al-Lith, on the central coast of the Saudi Arabian Red Sea. Individuals encountered at this site were all juveniles based on size estimates ranging from 2.5–7 m total length with a sex ratio of approximately 1∶1. All other known aggregation sites for juvenile whale sharks are dominated by males. Results from tagging efforts showed that most individuals remained in the southern Red Sea and that some sharks returned to the same location in subsequent years. Diving data were recorded by 37 tags, revealing frequent deep dives to at least 500 m and as deep as 1360 m. The unique temperature-depth profiles of the Red Sea confirmed that several whale sharks moved out of the Red Sea while tagged. The wide-ranging horizontal movements of these individuals highlight the need for multinational, cooperative efforts to conserve R. typus populations in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. PMID:25076407

  7. Anti-collision radio-frequency identification system using passive SAW tags

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Sorokin, A. V.; Shepeta, A. P.

    2017-06-01

    Modern multi sensor systems should have high operating speed and resistance to climate impacts. Radiofrequency systems use passive SAW tags for identification items and vehicles. These tags find application in industry, traffic remote control systems, and railway remote traffic control systems for identification and speed measuring. However, collision of the passive SAW RFID tags hinders development passive RFID SAW technology in Industry. The collision problem for passive SAW tags leads for incorrect identification and encoding each tag. In our researching, we suggest approach for identification of several passive SAW tags in collision case.

  8. Current test results for the Athena radar responsive tag

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Ormesher, Richard C.; Martinez, Ana; Plummer, Kenneth W.; Erlandson, David; Delaware, Sheri; Clark, David R.

    2006-05-01

    Sandia National Laboratories has teamed with General Atomics and Sierra Monolithics to develop the Athena tag for the Army's Radar Tag Engagement (RaTE) program. The radar-responsive Athena tag can be used for Blue Force tracking and Combat Identification (CID) as well as data collection, identification, and geolocation applications. The Athena tag is small (~4.5" x 2.4" x 4.2"), battery-powered, and has an integral antenna. Once remotely activated by a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) or Moving Target Indicator (MTI) radar, the tag transponds modulated pulses to the radar at a low transmit power. The Athena tag can operate Ku-band and X-band airborne SAR and MTI radars. This paper presents results from current tag development testing activities. Topics covered include recent field tests results from the AN/APY-8 Lynx, F16/APG-66, and F15E/APG-63 V(1) radars and other Fire Control radars. Results show that the Athena tag successfully works with multiple radar platforms, in multiple radar modes, and for multiple applications. Radar-responsive tags such as Athena have numerous applications in military and government arenas. Military applications include battlefield situational awareness, combat identification, targeting, personnel recovery, and unattended ground sensors. Government applications exist in nonproliferation, counter-drug, search-and-rescue, and land-mapping activities.

  9. Retention of internal anchor tags by juvenile striped bass

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Van Den Avyle, M.J.; Wallin, J.E.

    2001-01-01

    We marked hatchery-reared striped bass Morone saxatilis (145-265 mm total length) with internal anchor tags and monitored retention for 28 months after stocking in the Savannah River, Georgia and South Carolina. Anchor tags (with an 18-mm, T-shaped anchor and 42-mm streamer) were surgically implanted ventrally, and coded wire tags (1 mm long and 0.25 mm in diameter) were placed into the cheek muscle to help identify subsequent recaptures. The estimated probability of retention (SD) of anchor tags was 0.94 (0.05) at 4 months, 0.64 (0.13) at 16 months, and 0.33 (0.19) at 28 months. Of 10 fish recaptured with only coded wire tags, 5 showed an externally visible wound or scar near the point of anchor tag insertion. The incidence of wounds or scars, which we interpreted as evidence of tag shedding, increased to 50% in recaptures taken at 28 months (three of six fish). Our estimates for retention of anchor tags were generally lower than those in other studies of striped bass, possibly because of differences in the style of anchor or sizes of fish used. Because of its low rate of retention, the type of anchor tag we used may not be suitable for long-term assessments of stock enhancement programs that use striped bass of the sizes we evaluated.

  10. Application of volcanic ash particles for protein affinity purification with a minimized silica-binding tag.

    PubMed

    Abdelhamid, Mohamed A A; Ikeda, Takeshi; Motomura, Kei; Tanaka, Tatsuya; Ishida, Takenori; Hirota, Ryuichi; Kuroda, Akio

    2016-11-01

    We recently reported that the spore coat protein, CotB1 (171 amino acids), from Bacillus cereus mediates silica biomineralization and that the polycationic C-terminal sequence of CotB1 (14 amino acids), designated CotB1p, serves as a silica-binding tag when fused to other proteins. Here, we reduced the length of this silica-binding tag to only seven amino acids (SB7 tag: RQSSRGR) while retaining its affinity for silica. Alanine scanning mutagenesis indicated that the three arginine residues in the SB7 tag play important roles in binding to a silica surface. Monomeric l-arginine, at concentrations of 0.3-0.5 M, was found to serve as a competitive eluent to release bound SB7-tagged proteins from silica surfaces. To develop a low-cost, silica-based affinity purification procedure, we used natural volcanic ash particles with a silica content of ∼70%, rather than pure synthetic silica particles, as an adsorbent for SB7-tagged proteins. Using green fluorescent protein, mCherry, and mKate2 as model proteins, our purification method achieved 75-90% recovery with ∼90% purity. These values are comparable to or even higher than that of the commonly used His-tag affinity purification. In addition to low cost, another advantage of our method is the use of l-arginine as the eluent because its protein-stabilizing effect would help minimize alteration of the intrinsic properties of the purified proteins. Our approach paves the way for the use of naturally occurring materials as adsorbents for simple, low-cost affinity purification. Copyright © 2016 The Society for Biotechnology, Japan. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  11. Survival and growth of juvenile Pacific lampreys tagged with passive integrated transponders (PIT) in freshwater and seawater

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Mesa, Matthew G.; Copeland, Elizabeth S.; Christiansen, Helena E.; Gregg, Jacob L.; Roon, Sean R.; Hershberger, Paul K.

    2012-01-01

    Tagging methods are needed for both adult and juvenile life stages of Pacific lampreys Lampetra tridentata to better understand their biology and factors contributing to their decline. We developed a safe and efficient technique for tagging juvenile Pacific lampreys with passive integrated transponder (PIT) tags. We tested the short-term survival of PIT-tagged juvenile lampreys in freshwater at four temperatures (9, 12, 15, and 18°C) and their long-term growth and survival in seawater. For both experiments there was little to no tag loss, and juvenile lampreys in freshwater showed high survival at all temperatures at 7 d (95–100%) and 14 d (88–100%) posttagging. Prolonged holding (40 d) resulted in significantly lower survival (28–79%) at warmer temperatures (12–18°C). For juvenile lampreys tagged in freshwater and then transitioned to seawater, survival was 97% for tagged fish until day 94, and at the end of 6 months, survival was about 58% for both tagged and control fish. About half of the tagged and control fish that survived in seawater grew, but there was no difference in growth between the two groups. In freshwater, but not in seawater, most fish that died had an aquatic fungal infection. In both experiments, survival increased with increasing fish length at tagging. Our results indicate that tags similar in size to a 9-mm PIT tag are a feasible option for tagging metamorphosed juvenile lampreys migrating downstream and that when fungal infections are mitigated—as in seawater—long-term (at least 6 months) survival of tagged juvenile lampreys is high.

  12. Reliability of an ordinal rating system for assessing the amount of mud and feces (tag) on cattle hides at slaughter.

    PubMed

    Jordan, D; McEwen, S A; Wilson, J B; McNab, W B; Lammerding, A M

    1999-05-01

    A study was conducted to provide a quantitative description of the amount of tag (mud, soil, and bedding) adhered to the hides of feedlot beef cattle and to appraise the statistical reliability of a subjective rating system for assessing this trait. Initially, a single rater obtained baseline data by assessing 2,417 cattle for 1 month at an Ontario beef processing plant. Analysis revealed that there was a strong tendency for animals within sale-lots to have a similar total tag score (intralot correlation = 0.42). Baseline data were summarized by fitting a linear model describing an individual's total tag score as the sum of their lot mean tag score (LMTS) plus an amount representing normal variation within the lot. LMTSs predicted by the linear model were adequately described by a beta distribution with parameters nu = 3.12 and omega = 5.82 scaled to fit on the 0-to-9 interval. Five raters, trained in use of the tag scoring system, made 1,334 tag score observations in a commercial abattoir, allowing reliability to be assessed at the individual level and at the lot level. High values for reliability were obtained for individual total tag score (0.84) and lot total tag score (0.83); these values suggest that the tag scoring system could be used in the marketing and slaughter of Ontario beef cattle to improve the cleanliness of animals presented for slaughter in an effort to control the entry of microbial contamination into abattoirs. Implications for the use of the tag scoring system in research are discussed.

  13. Construction of stabilized and tagged foot-and-mouth disease virus.

    PubMed

    Park, Jeong-Nam; Ko, Mi-Kyeong; Kim, Rae-Hyung; Park, Min-Eun; Lee, Seo-Yong; Yoon, Ji-Eun; Choi, Joo-Hyung; You, Su-Hwa; Park, Jung-Won; Lee, Kwang-Nyeong; Chun, Ji-Eun; Kim, Su-Mi; Tark, Dongseob; Lee, Hyang-Sim; Ko, Young-Joon; Kim, Byounghan; Lee, Myoung-Heon; Park, Jong-Hyeon

    2016-11-01

    Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is a highly contagious and economically devastating disease that affects cloven-hoofed animals worldwide. Construction and purification of stable antigen for vaccine are necessary but technically difficult and laborious. Here, we have tried to investigate an alternative method by inserting a hexa-histidine tag (6xHIS) in the VP1 C-terminal for easy purification and replacing two amino acids of VP1/VP2 to enhance the stability of the capsid of the FMD virus (FMDV) Asia1/MOG/05. In addition, infectious 6xHIS-tagged stable (S/T) FMDVs were maintained under acidic conditions (pH 6.0) and were readily purified from small-scale cultures using a commercial metal-affinity column. The groups vaccinated with the S/T FMDV antigen showed complete protection comparing to low survival rate in the group vaccinated with non-S/T FMDV against lethal challenge with Asia1 Shamir in mice. Therefore, the present findings indicate that the stabilized and tagged antigen offers an alternative to using the current methods for antigen purification and enhancement of stability and has potential for the development of a new FMD vaccine. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  14. Advancing the surgical implantation of electronic tags in fish: a gap analysis and research agenda based on a review of trends in intracoelomic tagging effects studies

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Cooke, Steven J.; Woodley, Christa M.; Eppard, M. B.

    2011-03-08

    Early approaches to surgical implantation of electronic tags in fish were often through trial and error, however, in recent years there has been an interest in using scientific research to identify techniques and procedures that improve the outcome of surgical procedures and determine the effects of tagging on individuals. Here we summarize the trends in 108 peer-reviewed electronic tagging effect studies focused on intracoleomic implantation to determine opportunities for future research. To date, almost all of the studies have been conducted in freshwater, typically in laboratory environments, and have focused on biotelemetry devices. The majority of studies have focused onmore » salmonids, cyprinids, ictalurids and centrarchids, with a regional bias towards North America, Europe and Australia. Most studies have focused on determining whether there is a negative effect of tagging relative to control fish, with proportionally fewer that have contrasted different aspects of the surgical procedure (e.g., methods of sterilization, incision location, wound closure material) that could advance the discipline. Many of these studies included routine endpoints such as mortality, growth, healing and tag retention, with fewer addressing sublethal measures such as swimming ability, predator avoidance, physiological costs, or fitness. Continued research is needed to further elevate the practice of electronic tag implantation in fish in order to ensure that the data generated are relevant to untagged conspecifics (i.e., no long-term behavioural or physiological consequences) and the surgical procedure does not impair the health and welfare status of the tagged fish. To that end, we advocate for i) rigorous controlled manipulations based on statistical designs that have adequate power, account for inter-individual variation, and include controls and shams, ii) studies that transcend the laboratory and the field with more studies in marine waters, iii) incorporation of

  15. Tagging Water Sources in Atmospheric Models

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Bosilovich, M.

    2003-01-01

    Tagging of water sources in atmospheric models allows for quantitative diagnostics of how water is transported from its source region to its sink region. In this presentation, we review how this methodology is applied to global atmospheric models. We will present several applications of the methodology. In one example, the regional sources of water for the North American Monsoon system are evaluated by tagging the surface evaporation. In another example, the tagged water is used to quantify the global water cycling rate and residence time. We will also discuss the need for more research and the importance of these diagnostics in water cycle studies.

  16. Reducing fungal infections and testing tag loss in juvenile Pacific lampreys implanted with passive integrated transponders.

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Christiansen, H.E.; Gee, L.P.; Mesa, M.G.

    2012-01-01

    Pacific lamprey Entosphenus tridentatus are facing severe population declines, yet little is known about juvenile lamprey passage, life history, or adult return rates because until now, these small fish could not be tagged for unique identification of live individuals. Previously, we developed a simple and effective method for tagging juvenile lampreys with passive integrated transponder (PIT) tags and showed that tagging per se did not affect survival. Mortality in tagged and untagged control fish, however, was frequently associated with fungal infection. In this study, we addressed two outstanding issues related to handling and tagging juvenile lampreys. First, we tried to mitigate freshwater fungal infections by reducing irritation and stress from anesthesia and by treating tagged fish briefly with a prophylactic immediately after tagging. We tested four anesthetics at three concentrations each and determined that 100 mg/L MS-222 and 60 mg/L BENZOAK® (benzocaine) were the most effective for anesthetizing juvenile lampreys to handleable while minimizing irritation. We also showed that fish anesthetized with BENZOAK® may have lower rates of fungal infection than those anesthetized with MS-222 or AQUI-S® 20E (eugenol). When fish anesthetized with MS-222 or BENZOAK® were given a 30 min prophylactic treatment with Stress Coat®, hydrogen peroxide, or salt immediately after tagging, few fish presented with fungal infections. However, untreated, tagged control fish also showed few fungal infections, making it difficult to determine if the prophylactic treatments were successful. The second question we addressed was whether activity would increase tag loss in PIT-tagged lampreys. We found that active swimming did not cause tag loss if fish were first held for 20–24 h after tagging. Therefore, we recommend anesthesia with MS-222 or BENZOAK® and then tagging with a 20–24 h recovery period followed by immediate release. If field studies show that lampreys are not

  17. Improving Efficiency of Passive RFID Tag Anti-Collision Protocol Using Dynamic Frame Adjustment and Optimal Splitting.

    PubMed

    Memon, Muhammad Qasim; He, Jingsha; Yasir, Mirza Ammar; Memon, Aasma

    2018-04-12

    Radio frequency identification is a wireless communication technology, which enables data gathering and identifies recognition from any tagged object. The number of collisions produced during wireless communication would lead to a variety of problems including unwanted number of iterations and reader-induced idle slots, computational complexity in terms of estimation as well as recognition of the number of tags. In this work, dynamic frame adjustment and optimal splitting are employed together in the proposed algorithm. In the dynamic frame adjustment method, the length of frames is based on the quantity of tags to yield optimal efficiency. The optimal splitting method is conceived with smaller duration of idle slots using an optimal value for splitting level M o p t , where (M > 2), to vary slot sizes to get the minimal identification time for the idle slots. The application of the proposed algorithm offers the advantages of not going for the cumbersome estimation of the quantity of tags incurred and the size (number) of tags has no effect on its performance efficiency. Our experiment results show that using the proposed algorithm, the efficiency curve remains constant as the number of tags varies from 50 to 450, resulting in an overall theoretical gain in the efficiency of 0.032 compared to system efficiency of 0.441 and thus outperforming both dynamic binary tree slotted ALOHA (DBTSA) and binary splitting protocols.

  18. 9 CFR 2.54 - Lost tags.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-01-01

    ... 9 Animals and Animal Products 1 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Lost tags. 2.54 Section 2.54 Animals and Animal Products ANIMAL AND PLANT HEALTH INSPECTION SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE ANIMAL WELFARE REGULATIONS Identification of Animals § 2.54 Lost tags. Each dealer or exhibitor shall be held...

  19. 9 CFR 2.54 - Lost tags.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

    2013-01-01

    ... 9 Animals and Animal Products 1 2013-01-01 2013-01-01 false Lost tags. 2.54 Section 2.54 Animals and Animal Products ANIMAL AND PLANT HEALTH INSPECTION SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE ANIMAL WELFARE REGULATIONS Identification of Animals § 2.54 Lost tags. Each dealer or exhibitor shall be held...

  20. 9 CFR 2.54 - Lost tags.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

    2014-01-01

    ... 9 Animals and Animal Products 1 2014-01-01 2014-01-01 false Lost tags. 2.54 Section 2.54 Animals and Animal Products ANIMAL AND PLANT HEALTH INSPECTION SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE ANIMAL WELFARE REGULATIONS Identification of Animals § 2.54 Lost tags. Each dealer or exhibitor shall be held...

  1. 9 CFR 2.54 - Lost tags.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

    2012-01-01

    ... 9 Animals and Animal Products 1 2012-01-01 2012-01-01 false Lost tags. 2.54 Section 2.54 Animals and Animal Products ANIMAL AND PLANT HEALTH INSPECTION SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE ANIMAL WELFARE REGULATIONS Identification of Animals § 2.54 Lost tags. Each dealer or exhibitor shall be held...

  2. 9 CFR 2.54 - Lost tags.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-01-01

    ... 9 Animals and Animal Products 1 2011-01-01 2011-01-01 false Lost tags. 2.54 Section 2.54 Animals and Animal Products ANIMAL AND PLANT HEALTH INSPECTION SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE ANIMAL WELFARE REGULATIONS Identification of Animals § 2.54 Lost tags. Each dealer or exhibitor shall be held...

  3. DEVELOPMENT OF DECISION MAKING ALGORITHM FOR CONTROL OF SEA CARGO CONTAINERS BY 'TAGGED' NEUTRON METHOD

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Anan'ev, A. A.; Belichenko, S. G.; Bogolyubov, E. P.

    Nowadays in Russia and abroad there are several groups of scientists, engaged in development of systems based on 'tagged' neutron method (API method) and intended for detection of dangerous materials, including high explosives (HE). Particular attention is paid to possibility of detection of dangerous objects inside a sea cargo container. Energy gamma-spectrum, registered from object under inspection is used for determination of oxygen/carbon and nitrogen/carbon chemical ratios, according to which dangerous object is distinguished from not dangerous one. Material of filled container, however, gives rise to additional effects of rescattering and moderation of 14 MeV primary neutrons of generator, attenuationmore » of secondary gamma-radiation from reactions of inelastic neutron scattering on objects under inspection. These effects lead to distortion of energy gamma-response from examined object and therefore prevent correct recognition of chemical ratios. These difficulties are taken into account in analytical method, presented in the paper. Method has been validated against experimental data, obtained by the system for HE detection in sea cargo, based on API method and developed in VNIIA. Influence of shielding materials on results of HE detection and identification is considered. Wood and iron were used as shielding materials. Results of method application for analysis of experimental data on HE simulator measurement (tetryl, trotyl, hexogen) are presented.« less

  4. Electronic tagging and integrated product intelligence

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Swerdlow, Martin; Weeks, Brian

    1996-03-01

    The advent of 'intelligent,' electronic data bearing tags is set to revolutionize the way industrial and retail products are identified and tracked throughout their life cycles. The dominant system for unique identification today is the bar code, which is based on printed symbology and regulated by the International Article Numbering Association. Bar codes provide users with significant operational advantages and generate considerable added value to packaging companies, product manufacturers, distributors and retailers, across supply chains in many different sectors, from retailing, to baggage handling and industrial components, e.g., for vehicles or aircraft. Electronic tags offer the potential to: (1) record and store more complex data about the product or any modifications which occur during its life cycle; (2) access (and up-date) stored data in real time in a way which does not involve contact with the product or article; (3) overcome the limitations imposed by systems which rely on line-of-sight access to stored data. Companies are now beginning to consider how electronic data tags can be used, not only to improve the efficiency of their supply chain processes, but also to revolutionize the way they do business. This paper reviews the applications and business opportunities for electronic tags and outlines CEST's strategy for achieving an 'open' standard which will ensure that tags from different vendors can co-exist on an international basis.

  5. Enhanced tagging of light utilizing acoustic radiation force with speckle pattern analysis

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Vakili, Ali; Hollmann, Joseph L.; Holt, R. Glynn; DiMarzio, Charles A.

    2017-10-01

    In optical imaging, the depth and resolution are limited due to scattering. Unlike light, scattering of ultrasound (US) waves in tissue is negligible. Hybrid imaging methods such as US-modulated optical tomography (UOT) use the advantages of both modalities. UOT tags light by inducing phase change caused by modulating the local index of refraction of the medium. The challenge in UOT is detecting the small signal. The displacement induced by the acoustic radiation force (ARF) is another US effect that can be utilized to tag the light. It induces greater phase change, resulting in a stronger signal. Moreover, the absorbed acoustic energy generates heat, resulting in change in the index of refraction and a strong phase change. The speckle pattern is governed by the phase of the interfering scattered waves; hence, speckle pattern analysis can obtain information about displacement and temperature changes. We have presented a model to simulate the insonation processes. Simulation results based on fixed-particle Monte Carlo and experimental results show that the signal acquired by utilizing ARF is stronger compared to UOT. The introduced mean irradiance change (MIC) signal reveals both thermal and mechanical effects of the focused US beam in different timescales. Simulation results suggest that variation in the MIC signal can be used to generate a displacement image of the medium.

  6. Passive UHF RFID Tag with Multiple Sensing Capabilities

    PubMed Central

    Fernández-Salmerón, José; Rivadeneyra, Almudena; Martínez-Martí, Fernando; Capitán-Vallvey, Luis Fermín; Palma, Alberto J.; Carvajal, Miguel A.

    2015-01-01

    This work presents the design, fabrication, and characterization of a printed radio frequency identification tag in the ultra-high frequency band with multiple sensing capabilities. This passive tag is directly screen printed on a cardboard box with the aim of monitoring the packaging conditions during the different stages of the supply chain. This tag includes a commercial force sensor and a printed opening detector. Hence, the force applied to the package can be measured as well as the opening of the box can be detected. The architecture presented is a passive single-chip RFID tag. An electronic switch has been implemented to be able to measure both sensor magnitudes in the same access without including a microcontroller or battery. Moreover, the chip used here integrates a temperature sensor and, therefore, this tag provides three different parameters in every reading. PMID:26506353

  7. Perception without self-matching in conditional tag based cooperation.

    PubMed

    McAvity, David M; Bristow, Tristen; Bunker, Eric; Dreyer, Alex

    2013-09-21

    We consider a model for the evolution of cooperation in a population where individuals may have one of a number of different heritable and distinguishable markers or tags. Individuals interact with each of their neighbors on a square lattice by either cooperating by donating some benefit at a cost to themselves or defecting by doing nothing. The decision to cooperate or defect is contingent on each individual's perception of its interacting partner's tag. Unlike in other tag-based models individuals do not compare their own tag to that of their interaction partner. That is, there is no self-matching. When perception is perfect the cooperation rate is substantially higher than in the usual spatial prisoner's dilemma game when the cost of cooperation is high. The enhancement in cooperation is positively correlated with the number of different tags. The more diverse a population is the more cooperative it becomes. When individuals start with an inability to perceive tags the population evolves to a state where individuals gain at least partial perception. With some reproduction mechanisms perfect perception evolves, but with others the ability to perceive tags is imperfect. We find that perception of tags evolves to lower levels when the cost of cooperation is higher. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  8. 77 FR 51761 - Proposed Information Collection; Comment Request; Groundfish Tagging Program

    Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

    2012-08-27

    ... required by the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995. DATES: Written comments must be submitted on or before... are two general categories of tags. Simple plastic tags (spaghetti tags) are external tags... fish. Archival tags are microchips with sensors encased in plastic cylinders that record the depth...

  9. Management of surgical instruments with radio frequency identification tags.

    PubMed

    Kusuda, Kaori; Yamashita, Kazuhiko; Ohnishi, Akiko; Tanaka, Kiyohito; Komino, Masaru; Honda, Hiroshi; Tanaka, Shinichi; Okubo, Takashi; Tripette, Julien; Ohta, Yuji

    2016-01-01

    To prevent malpractices, medical staff has adopted inventory time-outs and/or checklists. Accurate inventory and maintenance of surgical instruments decreases the risk of operating room miscounting and malfunction. In our previous study, an individual management of surgical instruments was accomplished using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate a new management method of RFID-tagged instruments. The management system of RFID-tagged surgical instruments was used for 27 months in clinical areas. In total, 13 study participants assembled surgical trays in the central sterile supply department. While using the management system, trays were assembled 94 times. During this period, no assembly errors occurred. An instrument malfunction had occurred after the 19th, 56th, and 73 th uses, no malfunction caused by the RFID tags, and usage history had been recorded. Additionally, the time it took to assemble surgical trays was recorded, and the long-term usability of the management system was evaluated. The system could record the number of uses and the defective history of each surgical instrument. In addition, the history of the frequency of instruments being transferred from one tray to another was recorded. The results suggest that our system can be used to manage instruments safely. Additionally, the management system was acquired of the learning effect and the usability on daily maintenance. This finding suggests that the management system examined here ensures surgical instrument and tray assembly quality.

  10. Optimized Graph Learning Using Partial Tags and Multiple Features for Image and Video Annotation.

    PubMed

    Song, Jingkuan; Gao, Lianli; Nie, Feiping; Shen, Heng Tao; Yan, Yan; Sebe, Nicu

    2016-11-01

    In multimedia annotation, due to the time constraints and the tediousness of manual tagging, it is quite common to utilize both tagged and untagged data to improve the performance of supervised learning when only limited tagged training data are available. This is often done by adding a geometry-based regularization term in the objective function of a supervised learning model. In this case, a similarity graph is indispensable to exploit the geometrical relationships among the training data points, and the graph construction scheme essentially determines the performance of these graph-based learning algorithms. However, most of the existing works construct the graph empirically and are usually based on a single feature without using the label information. In this paper, we propose a semi-supervised annotation approach by learning an optimized graph (OGL) from multi-cues (i.e., partial tags and multiple features), which can more accurately embed the relationships among the data points. Since OGL is a transductive method and cannot deal with novel data points, we further extend our model to address the out-of-sample issue. Extensive experiments on image and video annotation show the consistent superiority of OGL over the state-of-the-art methods.

  11. Tagging Efficiency for Nuclear Physics Measurements at MAX-lab

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Miller, Nevin; Elofson, David; Lewis, Codie; O'Brien, Erin; Buggelli, Kelsey; O'Connor, Kyle; O'Rielly, Grant; Maxtagg Team

    2014-09-01

    A careful study of the tagging efficiency during measurements of near threshold pion photoproduction and high energy Compton scattering has been performed. These experiments are being done at the MAX-lab tagged photon Facility during the June 2014 run period. The determination of the final results from these experiments depends on knowledge of the incident photon flux. The tagging efficiency is a critical part of the photon flux calculation. In addition to daily measurements of the tagging efficiency, a beam monitor was used during the production data runs to monitor the relative tagging efficiency. Two trigger types were used in the daily measurements; one was a logical OR from the tagger array and the other was from the Pb-glass photon detector. Investigations were made to explore the effect of the different trigger conditions and the differences between single and multi hit TDCs on the tagging efficiency. In addition the time evolution and overall uncertainty in the tagging efficiency for each tagger channel was determined. The results will be discussed.

  12. Modeling misidentification errors that result from use of genetic tags in capture-recapture studies

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Yoshizaki, J.; Brownie, C.; Pollock, K.H.; Link, W.A.

    2011-01-01

    Misidentification of animals is potentially important when naturally existing features (natural tags) such as DNA fingerprints (genetic tags) are used to identify individual animals. For example, when misidentification leads to multiple identities being assigned to an animal, traditional estimators tend to overestimate population size. Accounting for misidentification in capture-recapture models requires detailed understanding of the mechanism. Using genetic tags as an example, we outline a framework for modeling the effect of misidentification in closed population studies when individual identification is based on natural tags that are consistent over time (non-evolving natural tags). We first assume a single sample is obtained per animal for each capture event, and then generalize to the case where multiple samples (such as hair or scat samples) are collected per animal per capture occasion. We introduce methods for estimating population size and, using a simulation study, we show that our new estimators perform well for cases with moderately high capture probabilities or high misidentification rates. In contrast, conventional estimators can seriously overestimate population size when errors due to misidentification are ignored. ?? 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.

  13. Improving Attachments of Remotely-Deployed Dorsal Fin-Mounted Tags: Tissue Structure, Hydrodynamics, in situ Performance, and Tagged-Animal Follow-up

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2014-09-30

    TERM GOALS We recently developed small satellite-linked telemetry tags that are anchored with small attachment darts to the dorsal fins of small ...monitor the movements of numerous species not previously accessible because they were too large or difficult to capture safely, but too small for tags...cetaceans that provides the data needed to answer critical conservation and management questions without an adverse effect on the tagged animal. Therefore

  14. High Level Expression and Purification of Recombinant Proteins from Escherichia coli with AK-TAG

    PubMed Central

    Luo, Dan; Wen, Caixia; Zhao, Rongchuan; Liu, Xinyu; Liu, Xinxin; Cui, Jingjing; Liang, Joshua G.; Liang, Peng

    2016-01-01

    Adenylate kinase (AK) from Escherichia coli was used as both solubility and affinity tag for recombinant protein production. When fused to the N-terminus of a target protein, an AK fusion protein could be expressed in soluble form and purified to near homogeneity in a single step from Blue-Sepherose via affinity elution with micromolar concentration of P1, P5- di (adenosine—5’) pentaphosphate (Ap5A), a transition-state substrate analog of AK. Unlike any other affinity tags, the level of a recombinant protein expression in soluble form and its yield of recovery during each purification step could be readily assessed by AK enzyme activity in near real time. Coupled to a His-Tag installed at the N-terminus and a thrombin cleavage site at the C terminus of AK, the streamlined method, here we dubbed AK-TAG, could also allow convenient expression and retrieval of a cleaved recombinant protein in high yield and purity via dual affinity purification steps. Thus AK-TAG is a new addition to the arsenal of existing affinity tags for recombinant protein expression and purification, and is particularly useful where soluble expression and high degree of purification are at stake. PMID:27214237

  15. A dual tag system for facilitated detection of surface expressed proteins in Escherichia coli

    PubMed Central

    2012-01-01

    Background The discovery of the autotransporter family has provided a mechanism for surface expression of proteins in laboratory strains of Escherichia coli. We have previously reported the use of the AIDA-I autotransport system to express the Salmonella enterica serovar Enteritidis proteins SefA and H:gm. The SefA protein was successfully exposed to the medium, but the orientation of H:gm in the outer membrane could not be determined due to proteolytic cleavage of the N-terminal detection-tag. The goal of the present work was therefore to construct a vector containing elements that facilitates analysis of surface expression, especially for proteins that are sensitive to proteolysis or otherwise difficult to express. Results The surface expression system pAIDA1 was created with two detection tags flanking the passenger protein. Successful expression of SefA and H:gm on the surface of E. coli was confirmed with fluorescently labeled antibodies specific for the N-terminal His6-tag and the C-terminal Myc-tag. While both tags were detected during SefA expression, only the Myc-tag could be detected for H:gm. The negative signal indicates a proteolytic cleavage of this protein that removes the His6-tag facing the medium. Conclusions Expression levels from pAIDA1 were comparable to or higher than those achieved with the formerly used vector. The presence of the Myc- but not of the His6-tag on the cell surface during H:gm expression allowed us to confirm the hypothesis that this fusion protein was present on the surface and oriented towards the cell exterior. Western blot analysis revealed degradation products of the same molecular weight for SefA and H:gm. The size of these fragments suggests that both fusion proteins have been cleaved at a specific site close to the C-terminal end of the passenger. This proteolysis was concluded to take place either in the outer membrane or in the periplasm. Since H:gm was cleaved to a much greater extent then the three times smaller Sef

  16. Quenched substrates for live-cell labeling of SNAP-tagged fusion proteins with improved fluorescent background.

    PubMed

    Stöhr, Katharina; Siegberg, Daniel; Ehrhard, Tanja; Lymperopoulos, Konstantinos; Öz, Simin; Schulmeister, Sonja; Pfeifer, Andrea C; Bachmann, Julie; Klingmüller, Ursula; Sourjik, Victor; Herten, Dirk-Peter

    2010-10-01

    Recent developments in fluorescence microscopy raise the demands for bright and photostable fluorescent tags for specific and background free labeling in living cells. Aside from fluorescent proteins and other tagging methods, labeling of SNAP-tagged proteins has become available thereby increasing the pool of potentially applicable fluorescent dyes for specific labeling of proteins. Here, we report on novel conjugates of benzylguanine (BG) which are quenched in their fluorescence and become highly fluorescent upon labeling of the SNAP-tag, the commercial variant of the human O(6)-alkylguanosyltransferase (hAGT). We identified four conjugates showing a strong increase, i.e., >10-fold, in fluorescence intensity upon labeling of SNAP-tag in vitro. Moreover, we screened a subset of nine BG-dye conjugates in living Escherichia coli and found them all suited for labeling of the SNAP-tag. Here, quenched BG-dye conjugates yield a higher specificity due to reduced contribution from excess conjugate to the fluorescence signal. We further extended the application of these conjugates by labeling a SNAP-tag fusion of the Tar chemoreceptor in live E. coli cells and the eukaryotic transcription factor STAT5b in NIH 3T3 mouse fibroblast cells. Aside from the labeling efficiency and specificity in living cells, we discuss possible mechanisms that might be responsible for the changes in fluorescence emission upon labeling of the SNAP-tag, as well as problems we encountered with nonspecific labeling with certain conjugates in eukaryotic cells.

  17. Heparin-binding peptide as a novel affinity tag for purification of recombinant proteins.

    PubMed

    Morris, Jacqueline; Jayanthi, Srinivas; Langston, Rebekah; Daily, Anna; Kight, Alicia; McNabb, David S; Henry, Ralph; Kumar, Thallapuranam Krishnaswamy Suresh

    2016-10-01

    Purification of recombinant proteins constitutes a significant part of the downstream processing in biopharmaceutical industries. Major costs involved in the production of bio-therapeutics mainly depend on the number of purification steps used during the downstream process. Affinity chromatography is a widely used method for the purification of recombinant proteins expressed in different expression host platforms. Recombinant protein purification is achieved by fusing appropriate affinity tags to either N- or C- terminus of the target recombinant proteins. Currently available protein/peptide affinity tags have proved quite useful in the purification of recombinant proteins. However, these affinity tags suffer from specific limitations in their use under different conditions of purification. In this study, we have designed a novel 34-amino acid heparin-binding affinity tag (HB-tag) for the purification of recombinant proteins expressed in Escherichia coli (E. coli) cells. HB-tag fused recombinant proteins were overexpressed in E. coli in high yields. A one-step heparin-Sepharose-based affinity chromatography protocol was developed to purify HB-fused recombinant proteins to homogeneity using a simple sodium chloride step gradient elution. The HB-tag has also been shown to facilitate the purification of target recombinant proteins from their 8 M urea denatured state(s). The HB-tag has been demonstrated to be successfully released from the fusion protein by an appropriate protease treatment to obtain the recombinant target protein(s) in high yields. Results of the two-dimensional NMR spectroscopy experiments indicate that the purified recombinant target protein(s) exist in the native conformation. Polyclonal antibodies raised against the HB-peptide sequence, exhibited high binding specificity and sensitivity to the HB-fused recombinant proteins (∼10 ng) in different crude cell extracts obtained from diverse expression hosts. In our opinion, the HB-tag provides a

  18. Extended Stokes shift in fluorescent proteins: chromophore-protein interactions in a near-infrared TagRFP675 variant.

    PubMed

    Piatkevich, Kiryl D; Malashkevich, Vladimir N; Morozova, Kateryna S; Nemkovich, Nicolai A; Almo, Steven C; Verkhusha, Vladislav V

    2013-01-01

    Most GFP-like fluorescent proteins exhibit small Stokes shifts (10-45 nm) due to rigidity of the chromophore environment that excludes non-fluorescent relaxation to a ground state. An unusual near-infrared derivative of the red fluorescent protein mKate, named TagRFP675, exhibits the Stokes shift, which is 30 nm extended comparing to that of the parental protein. In physiological conditions, TagRFP675 absorbs at 598 nm and emits at 675 nm that makes it the most red-shifted protein of the GFP-like protein family. In addition, its emission maximum strongly depends on the excitation wavelength. Structures of TagRFP675 revealed the common DsRed-like chromophore, which, however, interacts with the protein matrix via an extensive network of hydrogen bonds capable of large flexibility. Based on the spectroscopic, biochemical, and structural analysis we suggest that the rearrangement of the hydrogen bond interactions between the chromophore and the protein matrix is responsible for the TagRFP675 spectral properties.

  19. A dual-mode secure UHF RFID tag with a crypto engine in 0.13-μm CMOS

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Tao, Yang; Linghao, Zhu; Xi, Tan; Junyu, Wang; Lirong, Zheng; Hao, Min

    2016-07-01

    An ultra-high-frequency (UHF) radio frequency identification (RFID) secure tag chip with a non-crypto mode and a crypto mode is presented. During the supply chain management, the tag works in the non-crypto mode in which the on-chip crypto engine is not enabled and the tag chip has a sensitivity of -12.8 dBm for long range communication. At the point of sales (POS), the tag will be switched to the crypto mode in order to protect the privacy of customers. In the crypto mode, an advanced encryption standard (AES) crypto engine is enabled and the sensitivity of the tag chip is switched to +2 dBm for short range communication, which is a method of physical protection. The tag chip is implemented and verified in a standard 0.13-μm CMOS process. Project supported by the National Science & Technology Pillar Program of China (No. 2015BAK36B01).

  20. Systematic gene tagging using CRISPR/Cas9 in human stem cells to illuminate cell organization.

    PubMed

    Roberts, Brock; Haupt, Amanda; Tucker, Andrew; Grancharova, Tanya; Arakaki, Joy; Fuqua, Margaret A; Nelson, Angelique; Hookway, Caroline; Ludmann, Susan A; Mueller, Irina A; Yang, Ruian; Horwitz, Rick; Rafelski, Susanne M; Gunawardane, Ruwanthi N

    2017-10-15

    We present a CRISPR/Cas9 genome-editing strategy to systematically tag endogenous proteins with fluorescent tags in human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSC). To date, we have generated multiple hiPSC lines with monoallelic green fluorescent protein tags labeling 10 proteins representing major cellular structures. The tagged proteins include alpha tubulin, beta actin, desmoplakin, fibrillarin, nuclear lamin B1, nonmuscle myosin heavy chain IIB, paxillin, Sec61 beta, tight junction protein ZO1, and Tom20. Our genome-editing methodology using Cas9/crRNA ribonuclear protein and donor plasmid coelectroporation, followed by fluorescence-based enrichment of edited cells, typically resulted in <0.1-4% homology-directed repair (HDR). Twenty-five percent of clones generated from each edited population were precisely edited. Furthermore, 92% (36/39) of expanded clonal lines displayed robust morphology, genomic stability, expression and localization of the tagged protein to the appropriate subcellular structure, pluripotency-marker expression, and multilineage differentiation. It is our conclusion that, if cell lines are confirmed to harbor an appropriate gene edit, pluripotency, differentiation potential, and genomic stability are typically maintained during the clonal line-generation process. The data described here reveal general trends that emerged from this systematic gene-tagging approach. Final clonal lines corresponding to each of the 10 cellular structures are now available to the research community. © 2017 Roberts, Haupt, et al. This article is distributed by The American Society for Cell Biology under license from the author(s). Two months after publication it is available to the public under an Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike 3.0 Unported Creative Commons License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0).

  1. Molecular tagging techniques and their applications to the study of complex thermal flow phenomena

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Chen, Fang; Li, Haixing; Hu, Hui

    2015-08-01

    This review article reports the recent progress in the development of a new group of molecule-based flow diagnostic techniques, which include molecular tagging velocimetry (MTV) and molecular tagging thermometry (MTT), for both qualitative flow visualization of thermally induced flow structures and quantitative whole-field measurements of flow velocity and temperature distributions. The MTV and MTT techniques can also be easily combined to result in a so-called molecular tagging velocimetry and thermometry (MTV&T) technique, which is capble of achieving simultaneous measurements of flow velocity and temperature distribution in fluid flows. Instead of using tiny particles, the molecular tagging techniques (MTV, MTT, and MTV&T) use phosphorescent molecules, which can be turned into long-lasting glowing marks upon excitation by photons of appropriate wavelength, as the tracers for the flow velocity and temperature measurements. The unique attraction and implementation of the molecular tagging techniques are demonstrated by three application examples, which include: (1) to quantify the unsteady heat transfer process from a heated cylinder to the surrounding fluid flow in order to examine the thermal effects on the wake instabilities behind the heated cylinder operating in mixed and forced heat convection regimes, (2) to reveal the time evolution of unsteady heat transfer and phase changing process inside micro-sized, icing water droplets in order to elucidate the underlying physics pertinent to aircraft icing phenomena, and (3) to achieve simultaneous droplet size, velocity and temperature measurements of "in-flight" droplets to characterize the dynamic and thermodynamic behaviors of flying droplets in spray flows.

  2. Low-dose dual-energy electronic cleansing for fecal-tagging CT Colonography

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Cai, Wenli; Zhang, Da; Lee, June-Goo; Yoshida, Hiroyuki

    2013-03-01

    Dual-energy electronic cleansing (DE-EC) provides a promising means for cleansing the tagged fecal materials in fecaltagging CT colonography (CTC). However, the increased radiation dose due to the double exposures in dual-energy CTC (DE-CTC) scanning is a major limitation for the use of DE-EC in clinical practice. The purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate a low-dose DE-EC scheme in fecal-tagging DE-CTC. In this study, a custom-made anthropomorphic colon phantom, which was filled with simulated tagged materials by non-ionic iodinated contrast agent (Omnipaque iohexol, GE Healthcare), was scanned by a dual-source CT scanner (SOMATON Definition Flash, Siemens Healthcare) at two photon energies: 80 kVp and 140 kVp with nine different tube current settings ranging from 12 to 74 mAs for 140 kVp, and then reconstructed by soft-tissue reconstruction kernel (B30f). The DE-CTC images were subjected to a low-dose DE-EC scheme. First, our image-space DE-CTC denoising filter was applied for reduction of image noise. Then, the noise-reduced images were processed by a virtual lumen tagging method for reduction of partial volume effect and tagging inhomogeneity. The results were compared with the registered CTC images of native phantom without fillings. Preliminary results showed that our low-dose DE-EC scheme achieved the cleansing ratios, defined by the proportion of the cleansed voxels in the tagging mask, between 93.18% (12 mAs) and 96.62% (74 mAs). Also, the soft-tissue preservation ratios, defined by the proportion of the persevered voxels in the soft-tissue mask, were maintained in the range between 94.67% and 96.41%.

  3. OSIRIS-REx Touch-And-Go (TAG) Navigation Performance

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Berry, Kevin; Antreasian, Peter; Moreau, Michael C.; May, Alex; Sutter, Brian

    2015-01-01

    The Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource identification Security Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission is a NASA New Frontiers mission launching in 2016 to rendezvous with the near-Earth asteroid (101955) Bennu in late 2018. Following an extensive campaign of proximity operations activities to characterize the properties of Bennu and select a suitable sample site, OSIRIES-REx will fly a Touch-And-Go (TAG) trajectory to the asteroid's surface to obtain a regolith sample. The paper summarizes the mission design of the TAG sequence, the propulsive required to achieve the trajectory, and the sequence of events leading up to the TAG event. The paper will summarize the Monte-Carlo simulation of the TAG sequence and present analysis results that demonstrate the ability to conduct the TAG within 25 meters of the selected sample site and +-2 cms of the targeted contact velocity. The paper will describe some of the challenges associated with conducting precision navigation operations and ultimately contacting a very small asteroid.

  4. OSIRI-REx Touch and Go (TAG) Navigation Performance

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Berry, Kevin; Antreasian, Peter; Moreau, Michael C.; May, Alex; Sutter, Brian

    2015-01-01

    The Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission is a NASA New Frontiers mission launching in 2016 to rendezvous with the near-Earth asteroid (101955) Bennu in late 2018. Following an extensive campaign of proximity operations activities to characterize the properties of Bennu and select a suitable sample site, OSIRIS-REx will fly a Touch-And-Go (TAG) trajectory to the asteroid's surface to obtain a regolith sample. The paper summarizes the mission design of the TAG sequence, the propulsive maneuvers required to achieve the trajectory, and the sequence of events leading up to the TAG event. The paper also summarizes the Monte-Carlo simulation of the TAG sequence and presents analysis results that demonstrate the ability to conduct the TAG within 25 meters of the selected sample site and 2 cm/s of the targeted contact velocity. The paper describes some of the challenges associated with conducting precision navigation operations and ultimately contacting a very small asteroid.

  5. Integrated Management and Visualization of Electronic Tag Data with Tagbase

    PubMed Central

    Lam, Chi Hin; Tsontos, Vardis M.

    2011-01-01

    Electronic tags have been used widely for more than a decade in studies of diverse marine species. However, despite significant investment in tagging programs and hardware, data management aspects have received insufficient attention, leaving researchers without a comprehensive toolset to manage their data easily. The growing volume of these data holdings, the large diversity of tag types and data formats, and the general lack of data management resources are not only complicating integration and synthesis of electronic tagging data in support of resource management applications but potentially threatening the integrity and longer-term access to these valuable datasets. To address this critical gap, Tagbase has been developed as a well-rounded, yet accessible data management solution for electronic tagging applications. It is based on a unified relational model that accommodates a suite of manufacturer tag data formats in addition to deployment metadata and reprocessed geopositions. Tagbase includes an integrated set of tools for importing tag datasets into the system effortlessly, and provides reporting utilities to interactively view standard outputs in graphical and tabular form. Data from the system can also be easily exported or dynamically coupled to GIS and other analysis packages. Tagbase is scalable and has been ported to a range of database management systems to support the needs of the tagging community, from individual investigators to large scale tagging programs. Tagbase represents a mature initiative with users at several institutions involved in marine electronic tagging research. PMID:21750734

  6. Confirmation Bias in Web-Based Search: A Randomized Online Study on the Effects of Expert Information and Social Tags on Information Search and Evaluation

    PubMed Central

    Oeberst, Aileen; Cress, Ulrike

    2014-01-01

    Background The public typically believes psychotherapy to be more effective than pharmacotherapy for depression treatments. This is not consistent with current scientific evidence, which shows that both types of treatment are about equally effective. Objective The study investigates whether this bias towards psychotherapy guides online information search and whether the bias can be reduced by explicitly providing expert information (in a blog entry) and by providing tag clouds that implicitly reveal experts’ evaluations. Methods A total of 174 participants completed a fully automated Web-based study after we invited them via mailing lists. First, participants read two blog posts by experts that either challenged or supported the bias towards psychotherapy. Subsequently, participants searched for information about depression treatment in an online environment that provided more experts’ blog posts about the effectiveness of treatments based on alleged research findings. These blogs were organized in a tag cloud; both psychotherapy tags and pharmacotherapy tags were popular. We measured tag and blog post selection, efficacy ratings of the presented treatments, and participants’ treatment recommendation after information search. Results Participants demonstrated a clear bias towards psychotherapy (mean 4.53, SD 1.99) compared to pharmacotherapy (mean 2.73, SD 2.41; t 173=7.67, P<.001, d=0.81) when rating treatment efficacy prior to the experiment. Accordingly, participants exhibited biased information search and evaluation. This bias was significantly reduced, however, when participants were exposed to tag clouds with challenging popular tags. Participants facing popular tags challenging their bias (n=61) showed significantly less biased tag selection (F 2,168=10.61, P<.001, partial eta squared=0.112), blog post selection (F 2,168=6.55, P=.002, partial eta squared=0.072), and treatment efficacy ratings (F 2,168=8.48, P<.001, partial eta squared=0.092), compared

  7. A tag-based approach for high-throughput analysis of CCWGG methylation.

    PubMed

    Denisova, Oksana V; Chernov, Andrei V; Koledachkina, Tatyana Y; Matvienko, Nicholas I

    2007-10-15

    Non-CpG methylation occurring in the context of CNG sequences is found in plants at a large number of genomic loci. However, there is still little information available about non-CpG methylation in mammals. Efficient methods that would allow detection of scarcely localized methylated sites in small quantities of DNA are required to elucidate the biological role of non-CpG methylation in both plants and animals. In this study, we tested a new whole genome approach to identify sites of CCWGG methylation (W is A or T), a particular case of CNG methylation, in genomic DNA. This technique is based on digestion of DNAs with methylation-sensitive restriction endonucleases EcoRII-C and AjnI. Short DNAs flanking methylated CCWGG sites (tags) are selectively purified and assembled in tandem arrays of up to nine tags. This allows high-throughput sequencing of tags, identification of flanking regions, and their exact positions in the genome. In this study, we tested specificity and efficiency of the approach.

  8. Some Fundamental Limits on SAW RFID Tag Information Capacity and Collision Resolution

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Barton, Richard J.

    2013-01-01

    In this paper, we apply results from multi-user information theory to study the limits of information capacity and collision resolution for SAW RFID tags. In particular, we derive bounds on the achievable data rate per tag as a function of fundamental parameters such as tag time-bandwidth product, tag signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and number of tags in the environment. We also discuss the implications of these bounds for tag waveform design and tag interrogation efficiency

  9. Effective detection of human leukocyte antigen risk alleles in celiac disease using tag single nucleotide polymorphisms.

    PubMed

    Monsuur, Alienke J; de Bakker, Paul I W; Zhernakova, Alexandra; Pinto, Dalila; Verduijn, Willem; Romanos, Jihane; Auricchio, Renata; Lopez, Ana; van Heel, David A; Crusius, J Bart A; Wijmenga, Cisca

    2008-05-28

    The HLA genes, located in the MHC region on chromosome 6p21.3, play an important role in many autoimmune disorders, such as celiac disease (CD), type 1 diabetes (T1D), rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, psoriasis and others. Known HLA variants that confer risk to CD, for example, include DQA1*05/DQB1*02 (DQ2.5) and DQA1*03/DQB1*0302 (DQ8). To diagnose the majority of CD patients and to study disease susceptibility and progression, typing these strongly associated HLA risk factors is of utmost importance. However, current genotyping methods for HLA risk factors involve many reactions, and are complicated and expensive. We sought a simple experimental approach using tagging SNPs that predict the CD-associated HLA risk factors. Our tagging approach exploits linkage disequilibrium between single nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs) and the CD-associated HLA risk factors DQ2.5 and DQ8 that indicate direct risk, and DQA1*0201/DQB1*0202 (DQ2.2) and DQA1*0505/DQB1*0301 (DQ7) that attribute to the risk of DQ2.5 to CD. To evaluate the predictive power of this approach, we performed an empirical comparison of the predicted DQ types, based on these six tag SNPs, with those executed with current validated laboratory typing methods of the HLA-DQA1 and -DQB1 genes in three large cohorts. The results were validated in three European celiac populations. Using this method, only six SNPs were needed to predict the risk types carried by >95% of CD patients. We determined that for this tagging approach the sensitivity was >0.991, specificity >0.996 and the predictive value >0.948. Our results show that this tag SNP method is very accurate and provides an excellent basis for population screening for CD. This method is broadly applicable in European populations.

  10. The use of tags in monitoring limits on mobile missiles

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Fetter, S.

    1987-03-01

    Three tagging systems were considered in this paper: as a supplement to on-site inspection (OSI), as a supplement to national technical means (NTM), and as a supplement to site surveillance systems. Each system would require a different type of tag, perhaps ranging from microchip tags with infrared transponders to navigation receivers. Use of tags as a supplement to OSIs may be the simplest system to implement because it places the least demands on technology. Tags may make OSI more acceptable by replacing humans with remote sensors, thereby decreasing the perceived potential for espionage. Using tags as a supplement to NTMmore » decreases the necessity for human OSI even further, but places higher demands on technology and may affect the normal operation of deployment areas. Site surveillance systems using tags have the potential for excellent missile verification, but they may be excessively intrusive and expensive, and could have a large effect on the normal operation of declared facilities.« less

  11. Stable isotope, site-specific mass tagging for protein identification

    DOEpatents

    Chen, Xian

    2006-10-24

    Proteolytic peptide mass mapping as measured by mass spectrometry provides an important method for the identification of proteins, which are usually identified by matching the measured and calculated m/z values of the proteolytic peptides. A unique identification is, however, heavily dependent upon the mass accuracy and sequence coverage of the fragment ions generated by peptide ionization. The present invention describes a method for increasing the specificity, accuracy and efficiency of the assignments of particular proteolytic peptides and consequent protein identification, by the incorporation of selected amino acid residue(s) enriched with stable isotope(s) into the protein sequence without the need for ultrahigh instrumental accuracy. Selected amino acid(s) are labeled with .sup.13C/.sup.15N/.sup.2H and incorporated into proteins in a sequence-specific manner during cell culturing. Each of these labeled amino acids carries a defined mass change encoded in its monoisotopic distribution pattern. Through their characteristic patterns, the peptides with mass tag(s) can then be readily distinguished from other peptides in mass spectra. The present method of identifying unique proteins can also be extended to protein complexes and will significantly increase data search specificity, efficiency and accuracy for protein identifications.

  12. Tag gas capsule with magnetic piercing device

    DOEpatents

    Nelson, Ira V.

    1976-06-22

    An apparatus for introducing a tag (i.e., identifying) gas into a tubular nuclear fuel element. A sealed capsule containing the tag gas is placed in the plenum in the fuel tube between the fuel and the end cap. A ferromagnetic punch having a penetrating point is slidably mounted in the plenum. By external electro-magnets, the punch may be caused to penetrate a thin rupturable end wall of the capsule and release the tag gas into the fuel element. Preferably the punch is slidably mounted within the capsule, which is in turn loaded as a sealed unit into the fuel element.

  13. Improved gas tagging and cover gas combination for nuclear reactor

    DOEpatents

    Gross, K.C.; Laug, M.T.

    1983-09-26

    The invention discloses the use of stable isotopes of neon and argon, sealed as tags in different cladding nuclear fuel elements to be used in a liquid metal fast breeder reactor. Cladding failure allows fission gases and these tag isotopes to escape and to combine with the cover gas. The isotopes are Ne/sup 20/, Ne/sup 21/ and Ne/sup 22/ and Ar/sup 36/, Ar/sup 38/ and Ar/sup 40/, and the cover gas is He. Serially connected cryogenically operated charcoal beds are used to clean the cover gas and to separate out the tags. The first or cover gas cleanup bed is held between 0 and -25/sup 0/C to remove the fission gases from the cover gas and tags, and the second or tag recovery system bed between -170 and -185/sup 0/C to isolate the tags from the cover gas. Spectrometric analysis is used to identify the specific tags that are recovered, and thus the specific leaking fuel element. By cataloging the fuel element tags to the location of the fuel elements in the reactor, the location of the leaking fuel element can then be determined.

  14. Effects of tag loss on direct estimates of population growth rate

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Rotella, J.J.; Hines, J.E.

    2005-01-01

    The temporal symmetry approach of R. Pradel can be used with capture-recapture data to produce retrospective estimates of a population's growth rate, lambda(i), and the relative contributions to lambda(i) from different components of the population. Direct estimation of lambda(i) provides an alternative to using population projection matrices to estimate asymptotic lambda and is seeing increased use. However, the robustness of direct estimates of lambda(1) to violations of several key assumptions has not yet been investigated. Here, we consider tag loss as a possible source of bias for scenarios in which the rate of tag loss is (1) the same for all marked animals in the population and (2) a function of tag age. We computed analytic approximations of the expected values for each of the parameter estimators involved in direct estimation and used those values to calculate bias and precision for each parameter estimator. Estimates of lambda(i) were robust to homogeneous rates of tag loss. When tag loss rates varied by tag age, bias occurred for some of the sampling situations evaluated, especially those with low capture probability, a high rate of tag loss, or both. For situations with low rates of tag loss and high capture probability, bias was low and often negligible. Estimates of contributions of demographic components to lambda(i) were not robust to tag loss. Tag loss reduced the precision of all estimates because tag loss results in fewer marked animals remaining available for estimation. Clearly tag loss should be prevented if possible, and should be considered in analyses of lambda(i), but tag loss does not necessarily preclude unbiased estimation of lambda(i).

  15. 48 CFR 52.208-7 - Tagging of Leased Vehicles.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

    2014-10-01

    ... 48 Federal Acquisition Regulations System 2 2014-10-01 2014-10-01 false Tagging of Leased Vehicles....208-7 Tagging of Leased Vehicles. As prescribed in 8.1104(d), insert a clause substantially as follows: Tagging of Leased Vehicles (MAY 1986) While it is the intent that vehicles leased under this contract will...

  16. Affinity Purification of Proteins in Tag-Free Form: Split Intein-Mediated Ultrarapid Purification (SIRP).

    PubMed

    Guan, Dongli; Chen, Zhilei

    2017-01-01

    Proteins purified using affinity-based chromatography often exploit a recombinant affinity tag. Existing methods for the removal of the extraneous tag, needed for many applications, suffer from poor efficiency and/or high cost. Here we describe a simple, efficient, and potentially low-cost approach-split intein-mediated ultrarapid purification (SIRP)-for both the purification of the desired tagged protein from Escherichia coli lysate and removal of the tag in less than 1 h. The N- and C-fragment of a self-cleaving variant of a naturally split DnaE intein from Nostoc punctiforme are genetically fused to the N-terminus of an affinity tag and a protein of interest (POI), respectively. The N-intein/affinity tag is used to functionalize an affinity resin. The high affinity between the N- and C-fragment of DnaE intein enables the POI to be purified from the lysate via affinity to the resin, and the intein-mediated C-terminal cleavage reaction causes tagless POI to be released into the flow-through. The intein cleavage reaction is strongly inhibited by divalent ions (e.g., Zn 2+ ) under non-reducing conditions and is significantly enhanced by reducing conditions. The POI is cleaved efficiently regardless of the identity of the N-terminal amino acid except in the cases of threonine and proline, and the N-intein-functionalized affinity resin can be regenerated for multiple cycles of use.

  17. Precision Electrophile Tagging in Caenorhabditis elegans.

    PubMed

    Long, Marcus J C; Urul, Daniel A; Chawla, Shivansh; Lin, Hong-Yu; Zhao, Yi; Haegele, Joseph A; Wang, Yiran; Aye, Yimon

    2018-01-16

    Adduction of an electrophile to privileged sensor proteins and the resulting phenotypically dominant responses are increasingly appreciated as being essential for metazoan health. Functional similarities between the biological electrophiles and electrophilic pharmacophores commonly found in covalent drugs further fortify the translational relevance of these small-molecule signals. Genetically encodable or small-molecule-based fluorescent reporters and redox proteomics have revolutionized the observation and profiling of cellular redox states and electrophile-sensor proteins, respectively. However, precision mapping between specific redox-modified targets and specific responses has only recently begun to be addressed, and systems tractable to both genetic manipulation and on-target redox signaling in vivo remain largely limited. Here we engineer transgenic Caenorhabditis elegans expressing functional HaloTagged fusion proteins and use this system to develop a generalizable light-controlled approach to tagging a prototypical electrophile-sensor protein with native electrophiles in vivo. The method circumvents issues associated with low uptake/distribution and toxicity/promiscuity. Given the validated success of C. elegans in aging studies, this optimized platform offers a new lens with which to scrutinize how on-target electrophile signaling influences redox-dependent life span regulation.

  18. Precision Electrophile Tagging in Caenorhabditis elegans

    PubMed Central

    2017-01-01

    Adduction of an electrophile to privileged sensor proteins and the resulting phenotypically dominant responses are increasingly appreciated as being essential for metazoan health. Functional similarities between the biological electrophiles and electrophilic pharmacophores commonly found in covalent drugs further fortify the translational relevance of these small-molecule signals. Genetically encodable or small-molecule-based fluorescent reporters and redox proteomics have revolutionized the observation and profiling of cellular redox states and electrophile–sensor proteins, respectively. However, precision mapping between specific redox-modified targets and specific responses has only recently begun to be addressed, and systems tractable to both genetic manipulation and on-target redox signaling in vivo remain largely limited. Here we engineer transgenic Caenorhabditis elegans expressing functional HaloTagged fusion proteins and use this system to develop a generalizable light-controlled approach to tagging a prototypical electrophile–sensor protein with native electrophiles in vivo. The method circumvents issues associated with low uptake/distribution and toxicity/promiscuity. Given the validated success of C. elegans in aging studies, this optimized platform offers a new lens with which to scrutinize how on-target electrophile signaling influences redox-dependent life span regulation. PMID:28857552

  19. A Study on Pubmed Search Tag Usage Pattern: Association Rule Mining of a Full-day Pubmed Query Log

    PubMed Central

    2013-01-01

    Background The practice of evidence-based medicine requires efficient biomedical literature search such as PubMed/MEDLINE. Retrieval performance relies highly on the efficient use of search field tags. The purpose of this study was to analyze PubMed log data in order to understand the usage pattern of search tags by the end user in PubMed/MEDLINE search. Methods A PubMed query log file was obtained from the National Library of Medicine containing anonymous user identification, timestamp, and query text. Inconsistent records were removed from the dataset and the search tags were extracted from the query texts. A total of 2,917,159 queries were selected for this study issued by a total of 613,061 users. The analysis of frequent co-occurrences and usage patterns of the search tags was conducted using an association mining algorithm. Results The percentage of search tag usage was low (11.38% of the total queries) and only 2.95% of queries contained two or more tags. Three out of four users used no search tag and about two-third of them issued less than four queries. Among the queries containing at least one tagged search term, the average number of search tags was almost half of the number of total search terms. Navigational search tags are more frequently used than informational search tags. While no strong association was observed between informational and navigational tags, six (out of 19) informational tags and six (out of 29) navigational tags showed strong associations in PubMed searches. Conclusions The low percentage of search tag usage implies that PubMed/MEDLINE users do not utilize the features of PubMed/MEDLINE widely or they are not aware of such features or solely depend on the high recall focused query translation by the PubMed’s Automatic Term Mapping. The users need further education and interactive search application for effective use of the search tags in order to fulfill their biomedical information needs from PubMed/MEDLINE. PMID:23302604

  20. The Searching Effectiveness of Social Tagging in Museum Websites

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Cho, Chung-Wen; Yeh, Ting-Kuang; Cheng, Shu-Wen; Chang, Chun-Yen

    2012-01-01

    This paper explores the search effectiveness of social tagging which allows the public to freely tag resources, denoted as keywords, with any words as well as to share personal opinions on those resources. Social tagging potentially helps users to organize, manage, and retrieve resources. Efficient retrieval can help users put more of their focus…

  1. Global combined precursor isotopic labeling and isobaric tagging (cPILOT) approach with selective MS(3) acquisition.

    PubMed

    Evans, Adam R; Robinson, Renã A S

    2013-11-01

    Recently, we reported a novel proteomics quantitation scheme termed "combined precursor isotopic labeling and isobaric tagging (cPILOT)" that allows for the identification and quantitation of nitrated peptides in as many as 12-16 samples in a single experiment. cPILOT offers enhanced multiplexing and posttranslational modification specificity, however excludes global quantitation for all peptides present in a mixture and underestimates reporter ion ratios similar to other isobaric tagging methods due to precursor co-isolation. Here, we present a novel chemical workflow for cPILOT that can be used for global tagging of all peptides in a mixture. Specifically, through low pH precursor dimethylation of tryptic or LysC peptides followed by high pH tandem mass tags, the same reporter ion can be used twice in a single experiment. Also, to improve triple-stage mass spectrometry (MS(3) ) data acquisition, a selective MS(3) method that focuses on product selection of the y1 fragment of lysine-terminated peptides is incorporated into the workflow. This novel cPILOT workflow has potential for global peptide quantitation that could lead to enhanced sample multiplexing and increase the number of quantifiable spectra obtained from MS(3) acquisition methods. © 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

  2. TCC: an R package for comparing tag count data with robust normalization strategies

    PubMed Central

    2013-01-01

    Background Differential expression analysis based on “next-generation” sequencing technologies is a fundamental means of studying RNA expression. We recently developed a multi-step normalization method (called TbT) for two-group RNA-seq data with replicates and demonstrated that the statistical methods available in four R packages (edgeR, DESeq, baySeq, and NBPSeq) together with TbT can produce a well-ranked gene list in which true differentially expressed genes (DEGs) are top-ranked and non-DEGs are bottom ranked. However, the advantages of the current TbT method come at the cost of a huge computation time. Moreover, the R packages did not have normalization methods based on such a multi-step strategy. Results TCC (an acronym for Tag Count Comparison) is an R package that provides a series of functions for differential expression analysis of tag count data. The package incorporates multi-step normalization methods, whose strategy is to remove potential DEGs before performing the data normalization. The normalization function based on this DEG elimination strategy (DEGES) includes (i) the original TbT method based on DEGES for two-group data with or without replicates, (ii) much faster methods for two-group data with or without replicates, and (iii) methods for multi-group comparison. TCC provides a simple unified interface to perform such analyses with combinations of functions provided by edgeR, DESeq, and baySeq. Additionally, a function for generating simulation data under various conditions and alternative DEGES procedures consisting of functions in the existing packages are provided. Bioinformatics scientists can use TCC to evaluate their methods, and biologists familiar with other R packages can easily learn what is done in TCC. Conclusion DEGES in TCC is essential for accurate normalization of tag count data, especially when up- and down-regulated DEGs in one of the samples are extremely biased in their number. TCC is useful for analyzing tag count data

  3. Multi-Level and Multi-Scale Feature Aggregation Using Pretrained Convolutional Neural Networks for Music Auto-Tagging

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Lee, Jongpil; Nam, Juhan

    2017-08-01

    Music auto-tagging is often handled in a similar manner to image classification by regarding the 2D audio spectrogram as image data. However, music auto-tagging is distinguished from image classification in that the tags are highly diverse and have different levels of abstractions. Considering this issue, we propose a convolutional neural networks (CNN)-based architecture that embraces multi-level and multi-scaled features. The architecture is trained in three steps. First, we conduct supervised feature learning to capture local audio features using a set of CNNs with different input sizes. Second, we extract audio features from each layer of the pre-trained convolutional networks separately and aggregate them altogether given a long audio clip. Finally, we put them into fully-connected networks and make final predictions of the tags. Our experiments show that using the combination of multi-level and multi-scale features is highly effective in music auto-tagging and the proposed method outperforms previous state-of-the-arts on the MagnaTagATune dataset and the Million Song Dataset. We further show that the proposed architecture is useful in transfer learning.

  4. Generic tags for Mn(ii) and Gd(iii) spin labels for distance measurements in proteins.

    PubMed

    Yang, Yin; Gong, Yan-Jun; Litvinov, Aleksei; Liu, Hong-Kai; Yang, Feng; Su, Xun-Cheng; Goldfarb, Daniella

    2017-10-11

    High-affinity chelating tags for Gd(iii) and Mn(ii) ions that provide valuable high-resolution distance restraints for biomolecules were used as spin labels for double electron-electron resonance (DEER) measurements. The availability of a generic tag that can bind both metal ions and provide a narrow and predictable distance distribution for both ions is attractive owing to their different EPR-related characteristics. Herein we introduced two paramagnetic tags, 4PSPyMTA and 4PSPyNPDA, which are conjugated to cysteine residues through a stable thioether bond, forming a short and, depending on the metal ion coordination mode, a rigid tether with the protein. These tags exhibit high affinity for both Mn(ii) and Gd(iii) ions. The DEER performance of the 4PSPyMTA and 4PSPyNPDA tags, in complex with Gd(iii) or Mn(ii), was evaluated for three double cysteine mutants of ubiquitin, and the Gd(iii)-Gd(iii) and Mn(ii)-Mn(ii) distance distributions they generated were compared. All three Gd(iii) complexes of the ubiquitin-PyMTA and ubiquitin-PyNPDA conjugates produced similar and expected distance distributions. In contrast, significant variations in the maxima and widths of the distance distributions were observed for the Mn(ii) analogs. Furthermore, whereas PyNPDA-Gd(iii) and PyNPDA-Mn(ii) delivered similar distance distributions, appreciable differences were observed for two mutants with PyMTA, with the Mn(ii) analog exhibiting a broader distance distribution and shorter distances. ELDOR (electron-electron double resonance)-detected NMR measurements revealed some distribution in the Mn(ii) coordination environment for the protein conjugates of both tags but not for the free tags. The broader distance distributions generated by 4PSPyMTA-Mn(ii), as compared with Gd(iii), were attributed to the distributed location of the Mn(ii) ion within the PyMTA chelate owing to its smaller size and lower coordination number that leave the pyridine nitrogen uncoordinated. Accordingly, in

  5. CT colonography with rectal iodine tagging: Feasibility and comparison with oral tagging in a colorectal cancer screening population.

    PubMed

    Neri, Emanuele; Mantarro, Annalisa; Faggioni, Lorenzo; Scalise, Paola; Bemi, Pietro; Pancrazi, Francesca; D'Ippolito, Giuseppe; Bartolozzi, Carlo

    2015-09-01

    To evaluate feasibility, diagnostic performance, patient acceptance, and overall examination time of CT colonography (CTC) performed through rectal administration of iodinated contrast material. Six-hundred asymptomatic subjects (male:female=270:330; mean 63 years) undergoing CTC for colorectal cancer screening on an individual basis were consecutively enrolled in the study. Out of them, 503 patients (group 1) underwent CTC with rectal tagging, of which 55 had a total of 77 colonic lesions. The remaining 97 patients (group 2) were randomly selected to receive CTC with oral tagging of which 15 had a total of 20 colonic lesions. CTC findings were compared with optical colonoscopy, and per-segment image quality was visually assessed using a semi-quantitative score (1=poor, 2=adequate, 3=excellent). In 70/600 patients (11.7%), CTC was performed twice with both types of tagging over a 5-year follow-up cancer screening program. In this subgroup, patient acceptance was rated via phone interview two weeks after CTC using a semi-quantitative scale (1=poor, 2=fair, 3=average, 4=good, 5=excellent). Mean per-polyp sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values of CTC with rectal vs oral tagging were 96.1% (CI95% 85.4÷99.3%) vs 89.4% (CI95% 65.4÷98.1%), 95.3% (CI95% 90.7÷97.8%) vs 95.8% (CI95% 87.6÷98.9%), 86.0% (CI95% 73.6÷93.3) vs 85.0% (CI95% 61.1÷96.0%), and 98.8% (CI95% 95.3÷99.8%) vs 97.2% (CI95% 89.4÷99.5%), respectively (p>0.05). Polyp detection rates were not statistically different between groups 1 and 2 (p>0.05). Overall examination time was significantly shorter with rectal than with oral tagging (18.3±3.5 vs 215.6±10.3 minutes, respectively; p<0.0001). Rectal iodine tagging can be an effective alternative to oral tagging for CTC with the advantages of greater patient acceptance and lower overall examination time. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

  6. A Tool for Conditions Tag Management in ATLAS

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Sharmazanashvili, A.; Batiashvili, G.; Gvaberidze, G.; Shekriladze, L.; Formica, A.; Atlas Collaboration

    2014-06-01

    ATLAS Conditions data include about 2 TB in a relational database and 400 GB of files referenced from the database. Conditions data is entered and retrieved using COOL, the API for accessing data in the LCG Conditions Database infrastructure. It is managed using an ATLAS-customized python based tool set. Conditions data are required for every reconstruction and simulation job, so access to them is crucial for all aspects of ATLAS data taking and analysis, as well as by preceding tasks to derive optimal corrections to reconstruction. Optimized sets of conditions for processing are accomplished using strict version control on those conditions: a process which assigns COOL Tags to sets of conditions, and then unifies those conditions over data-taking intervals into a COOL Global Tag. This Global Tag identifies the set of conditions used to process data so that the underlying conditions can be uniquely identified with 100% reproducibility should the processing be executed again. Understanding shifts in the underlying conditions from one tag to another and ensuring interval completeness for all detectors for a set of runs to be processed is a complex task, requiring tools beyond the above mentioned python utilities. Therefore, a JavaScript /PHP based utility called the Conditions Tag Browser (CTB) has been developed. CTB gives detector and conditions experts the possibility to navigate through the different databases and COOL folders; explore the content of given tags and the differences between them, as well as their extent in time; visualize the content of channels associated with leaf tags. This report describes the structure and PHP/ JavaScript classes of functions of the CTB.

  7. Novel Use of PIT Tags in Sea Cucumbers: Promising Results with the Commercial Species Cucumaria frondosa

    PubMed Central

    Gianasi, Bruno L.; Verkaik, Katie; Hamel, Jean-François; Mercier, Annie

    2015-01-01

    The lack of a reliable and innocuous mark-recapture method has limited studies that would provide essential information for the management of commercial sea cucumbers. Tagging sea cucumbers is notoriously difficult because of their plastic nature and autolysis capacities. The markers that have so far been tested, mainly on or through the body wall, were either lost rapidly or had major drawbacks (e.g. suitable only for batch identification, requiring complex analysis, causing infections, necrosis, behavioural changes and mortality). The present study explored the efficacy of passive integrated transponder (PIT) tags for individually marking sea cucumbers by assessing retention rates and long-term side effects of tags inserted in previously unstudied tissues/organs. Individuals of the species Cucumaria frondosa were tagged in the body wall, aquapharyngeal bulb and at the base of the oral tentacles. They were monitored closely for evidence of stress, infection, change in feeding and spawning behaviour and tag retention rate. Implanting the tag in an oral tentacle to reach the hydrovascular system of the aquapharyngeal bulb achieved the best retention rates in full-size individuals: from a maximum of 92% after 30 days to 68% at the end of the experimental period (300 days). Efficacy was lower in smaller individuals (84% after 30 d and 42% after 300 d). Following a slight increase in cloacal movements for 15 h post tagging, no side effect was noted in sea cucumbers tagged in the aquapharyngeal bulb via the tentacles. Feeding and spawning behaviours were not affected and no signs of infections or abnormal cell development in the vicinity of the tags were observed. This study indicates that marking sea cucumbers with 8.2 mm long PIT tags implanted via the oral tentacle is an effective technique, yielding relatively high retention rates over long periods without any detectable physiological or behavioural effects. PMID:26011165

  8. Implementing traceability using particle randomness-based textile printed tags

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Agrawal, T. K.; Koehl, L.; Campagne, C.

    2017-10-01

    This article introduces a random particle-based traceability tag for textiles. The proposed tag not only act as a unique signature for the corresponding textile product but also possess the features such as easy to manufacture and hard to copy. It seeks applications in brand authentication and traceability in textile and clothing (T&C) supply chain. A prototype has been developed by screen printing process, in which micron-scale particles were mixed with the printing paste and printed on cotton fabrics to attain required randomness. To encode the randomness, the image of the developed tag was taken and analyzed using image processing. The randomness of the particles acts as a product key or unique signature which is required to decode the tag. Finally, washing and abrasion resistance tests were conducted to check the durability of the printed tag.

  9. Anglers' beliefs about tag-and-release programs

    Treesearch

    Maureen P. Donnelly; Jerry J. Vaske

    1992-01-01

    Scientific research and the popular literature have emphasized the biological value of tag-and-release fishing. Relatively few publications, however, have examined the anglers' beliefs about the importance of this activity. This paper summarizes sport fishermen's behavior and attitudes related to tag-and-release programs. The data were collected from three...

  10. Fish tag recovery from Anaho Island nesting colony, Pyramid Lake, Nevada

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Scoppettone, G. Gary; Fabes, Mark C.; Rissler, Peter H.; Withers, Donna

    2016-01-06

    In 2001, tags applied to the federally endangered species cui-ui (Chasmistes cujus) to study their population dynamics were discovered strewn throughout the American White Pelican (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos) nesting colony on Anaho Island, Pyramid Lake, Nevada. Cui-ui are endemic to Pyramid Lake, and Anaho Island harbors one of North America’s largest nesting colonies of American White Pelican. Cui-ui are consumed by pelicans during the fish’s spring migration into the Truckee River to reproduce. The predatory success of pelican has been validated by determining the odds of finding a tag from a predated cui-ui within the Anaho Island nesting colony. It is unknown how many cui-ui tags are eliminated by birds before arrival to the colony versus how many are brought to the colony but never recovered. The focus of this study was to improve the estimate of the chances of collecting a tag from a predated adult cui-ui in the pelican nesting colony by feeding dead tagged Lahontan cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarkii henshawi) and common carp (Cyprinus carpio) to pelican and subsequently searching for these tags within the colony. We also randomly deployed 1,000 dispersal tags throughout the nesting colony, searching for these after one and two breeding seasons. After adding 1,027 fed fish to 547 previously fed fish, we estimated 5.3 percent of the tagged cui-ui taken by pelican were recovered during tag searches. A study of dispersal tags randomly deployed within the pelican nesting colony showed that 51.5 percent would be expected to be recovered after at least one breeding season after being deployed. Results of our studies indicate that more than 90 percent of tags from adult cui-ui are eliminated by birds outside the pelican nesting colony. Tags recovered from other species and the site at which they were tagged are also reported. Most notable were recovered Lahontan cutthroat trout tags, which were the highest in number, but their proximity to double

  11. Exploring geo-tagged photos for land cover validation with deep learning

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Xing, Hanfa; Meng, Yuan; Wang, Zixuan; Fan, Kaixuan; Hou, Dongyang

    2018-07-01

    Land cover validation plays an important role in the process of generating and distributing land cover thematic maps, which is usually implemented by high cost of sample interpretation with remotely sensed images or field survey. With an increasing availability of geo-tagged landscape photos, the automatic photo recognition methodologies, e.g., deep learning, can be effectively utilised for land cover applications. However, they have hardly been utilised in validation processes, as challenges remain in sample selection and classification for highly heterogeneous photos. This study proposed an approach to employ geo-tagged photos for land cover validation by using the deep learning technology. The approach first identified photos automatically based on the VGG-16 network. Then, samples for validation were selected and further classified by considering photos distribution and classification probabilities. The implementations were conducted for the validation of the GlobeLand30 land cover product in a heterogeneous area, western California. Experimental results represented promises in land cover validation, given that GlobeLand30 showed an overall accuracy of 83.80% with classified samples, which was close to the validation result of 80.45% based on visual interpretation. Additionally, the performances of deep learning based on ResNet-50 and AlexNet were also quantified, revealing no substantial differences in final validation results. The proposed approach ensures geo-tagged photo quality, and supports the sample classification strategy by considering photo distribution, with accuracy improvement from 72.07% to 79.33% compared with solely considering the single nearest photo. Consequently, the presented approach proves the feasibility of deep learning technology on land cover information identification of geo-tagged photos, and has a great potential to support and improve the efficiency of land cover validation.

  12. Cetacean Tag Design Workshop Held in Arlington, Virginia on 16-17 March 2009

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2009-03-01

    tagging to assess tag performance and animal health . • Examine performance of current tag attachment designs by assessing holding power and anchoring...tag attachment performance, and potentially adversely affect animal health . The second recommended step was to test and collect baseline data on...the tag attachment site to assess animal health and tag performance. Best to test tags on populations that are not listed as threatened or

  13. Mass-tag enhanced immuno-laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry for sensitive detection of intact protein antigens.

    PubMed

    Lorey, Martina; Adler, Belinda; Yan, Hong; Soliymani, Rabah; Ekström, Simon; Yli-Kauhaluoma, Jari; Laurell, Thomas; Baumann, Marc

    2015-05-19

    A new read-out method for antibody arrays using laser desorption/ionization-mass spectrometry (LDI-MS) is presented. Small, photocleavable reporter molecules with a defined mass called "mass-tags" are used for detection of immunocaptured proteins from human plasma. Using prostate specific antigen (PSA), a biomarker for prostate cancer, as a model antigen, a high sensitivity generic detection methodology based immunocapture with a primary antibody and with a biotin labeled secondary antibody coupled to mass-tagged avidin is demonstrated. As each secondary antibody can bind several avidin molecules, each having a large number of mass-tags, signal amplification can be achieved. The developed PSA sandwich mass-tag analysis method provided a limit of detection below 200 pg/mL (6 pM) for a 10 μL plasma sample, well below the clinically relevant cutoff value of 3-4 ng/mL. This brings the limit of detection (LOD) for detection of intact antigens with matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization-mass spectrometry (MALDI-MS) down to levels comparable to capture by anti-peptide antibodies selected reaction monitoring (SISCAPA SRM) and enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), as 6 pM corresponds to a maximal amount of 60 amol PSA captured on-spot. We propose the potential use of LDI (laser desorption/ionization) with mass-tag read-out implemented in a sandwich assay format for low abundant and/or early disease biomarker detection.

  14. Phase modulation in RF tag

    DOEpatents

    Carrender, Curtis Lee; Gilbert, Ronald W.

    2007-02-20

    A radio frequency (RF) communication system employs phase-modulated backscatter signals for RF communication from an RF tag to an interrogator. The interrogator transmits a continuous wave interrogation signal to the RF tag, which based on an information code stored in a memory, phase-modulates the interrogation signal to produce a backscatter response signal that is transmitted back to the interrogator. A phase modulator structure in the RF tag may include a switch coupled between an antenna and a quarter-wavelength stub; and a driver coupled between the memory and a control terminal of the switch. The driver is structured to produce a modulating signal corresponding to the information code, the modulating signal alternately opening and closing the switch to respectively decrease and increase the transmission path taken by the interrogation signal and thereby modulate the phase of the response signal. Alternatively, the phase modulator may include a diode coupled between the antenna and driver. The modulating signal from the driver modulates the capacitance of the diode, which modulates the phase of the response signal reflected by the diode and antenna.

  15. Tags to Track Illicit Uranium and Plutonium

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Haire, M. Jonathan; Forsberg, Charles W.

    2007-07-01

    With the expansion of nuclear power, it is essential to avoid nuclear materials from falling into the hands of rogue nations, terrorists, and other opportunists. This paper examines the idea of detection and attribution tags for nuclear materials. For a detection tag, it is proposed to add small amounts [about one part per billion (ppb)] of {sup 232}U to enriched uranium to brighten its radioactive signature. Enriched uranium would then be as detectable as plutonium and thus increase the likelihood of intercepting illicit enriched uranium. The use of rare earth oxide elements is proposed as a new type of 'attribution'more » tag for uranium and thorium from mills, uranium and plutonium fuels, and other nuclear materials. Rare earth oxides are chosen because they are chemically compatible with the fuel cycle, can survive high-temperature processing operations in fuel fabrication, and can be chosen to have minimal neutronic impact within the nuclear reactor core. The mixture of rare earths and/or rare earth isotopes provides a unique 'bar code' for each tag. If illicit nuclear materials are recovered, the attribution tag can identify the source and lot of nuclear material, and thus help police reduce the possible number of suspects in the diversion of nuclear materials based on who had access. (authors)« less

  16. Fluorescent labeling of SNAP-tagged proteins in cells.

    PubMed

    Lukinavičius, Gražvydas; Reymond, Luc; Johnsson, Kai

    2015-01-01

    One of the most prominent self-labeling tags is SNAP-tag. It is an in vitro evolution product of the human DNA repair protein O (6)-alkylguanine-DNA alkyltransferase (hAGT) that reacts specifically with benzylguanine (BG) and benzylchloropyrimidine (CP) derivatives, leading to covalent labeling of SNAP-tag with a synthetic probe (Gronemeyer et al., Protein Eng Des Sel 19:309-316, 2006; Curr Opin Biotechnol 16:453-458, 2005; Keppler et al., Nat Biotechnol 21:86-89, 2003; Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 101:9955-9959, 2004). SNAP-tag is well suited for the analysis and quantification of fused target protein using fluorescence microscopy techniques. It provides a simple, robust, and versatile approach to the imaging of fusion proteins under a wide range of experimental conditions.

  17. Comparison of three nonlinear models to describe long-term tag shedding by lake trout

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Fabrizio, Mary C.; Swanson, Bruce L.; Schram, Stephen T.; Hoff, Michael H.

    1996-01-01

    We estimated long-term tag-shedding rates for lake trout Salvelinus namaycush using two existing models and a model we developed to account for the observed permanence of some tags. Because tag design changed over the course of the study, we examined tag-shedding rates for three types of numbered anchor tags (Floy tags FD-67, FD-67C, and FD-68BC) and an unprinted anchor tag (FD-67F). Lake trout from the Gull Island Shoal region, Lake Superior, were double-tagged, and subsequent recaptures were monitored in annual surveys conducted from 1974 to 1992. We modeled tag-shedding rates, using time at liberty and probabilities of tag shedding estimated from fish released in 1974 and 1978–1983 and later recaptured. Long-term shedding of numbered anchor tags in lake trout was best described by a nonlinear model with two parameters: an instantaneous tag-shedding rate and a constant representing the proportion of tags that were never shed. Although our estimates of annual shedding rates varied with tag type (0.300 for FD-67, 0.441 for FD-67C, and 0.656 for FD-68BC), differences were not significant. About 36% of tags remained permanently affixed to the fish. Of the numbered tags that were shed (about 64%), two mechanisms contributed to tag loss: disintegration and dislodgment. Tags from about 11% of recaptured fish had disintegrated, but most tags were dislodged. Unprinted tags were shed at a significant but low rate immediately after release, but the long-term, annual shedding rate of these tags was only 0.013. Compared with unprinted tags, numbered tags dislodged at higher annual rates; we hypothesized that this was due to the greater frictional drag associated with the larger cross-sectional area of numbered tags.

  18. Crosstalk between Diverse Synthetic Protein Degradation Tags in Escherichia coli.

    PubMed

    Butzin, Nicholas C; Mather, William H

    2018-01-19

    Recently, a synthetic circuit in E. coli demonstrated that two proteins engineered with LAA tags targeted to the native protease ClpXP are susceptible to crosstalk due to competition for degradation between proteins. To understand proteolytic crosstalk beyond the single protease regime, we investigated in E. coli a set of synthetic circuits designed to probe the dynamics of existing and novel degradation tags fused to fluorescent proteins. These circuits were tested using both microplate reader and single-cell assays. We first quantified the degradation rates of each tag in isolation. We then tested if there was crosstalk between two distinguishable fluorescent proteins engineered with identical or different degradation tags. We demonstrated that proteolytic crosstalk was indeed not limited to the LAA degradation tag, but was also apparent between other diverse tags, supporting the complexity of the E. coli protein degradation system.

  19. δ-Conotoxins synthesized using an acid-cleavable solubility tag approach reveal key structural determinants for NaV subtype selectivity.

    PubMed

    Peigneur, Steve; Paolini-Bertrand, Marianne; Gaertner, Hubert; Biass, Daniel; Violette, Aude; Stöcklin, Reto; Favreau, Philippe; Tytgat, Jan; Hartley, Oliver

    2014-12-19

    Conotoxins are venom peptides from cone snails with multiple disulfide bridges that provide a rigid structural scaffold. Typically acting on ion channels implicated in neurotransmission, conotoxins are of interest both as tools for pharmacological studies and as potential new medicines. δ-Conotoxins act by inhibiting inactivation of voltage-gated sodium channels (Nav). Their pharmacology has not been extensively studied because their highly hydrophobic character makes them difficult targets for chemical synthesis. Here we adopted an acid-cleavable solubility tag strategy that facilitated synthesis, purification, and directed disulfide bridge formation. Using this approach we readily produced three native δ-conotoxins from Conus consors plus two rationally designed hybrid peptides. We observed striking differences in Nav subtype selectivity across this group of compounds, which differ in primary structure at only three positions: 12, 23, and 25. Our results provide new insights into the structure-activity relationships underlying the Nav subtype selectivity of δ-conotoxins. Use of the acid-cleavable solubility tag strategy should facilitate synthesis of other hydrophobic peptides with complex disulfide bridge patterns. © 2014 by The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Inc.

  20. Controlling Protein Surface Orientation by Strategic Placement of Oligo-Histidine Tags

    PubMed Central

    2017-01-01

    We report oriented immobilization of proteins using the standard hexahistidine (His6)-Ni2+:NTA (nitrilotriacetic acid) methodology, which we systematically tuned to give control of surface coverage. Fluorescence microscopy and surface plasmon resonance measurements of self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) of red fluorescent proteins (TagRFP) showed that binding strength increased by 1 order of magnitude for each additional His6-tag on the TagRFP proteins. All TagRFP variants with His6-tags located on only one side of the barrel-shaped protein yielded a 1.5 times higher surface coverage compared to variants with His6-tags on opposite sides of the so-called β-barrel. Time-resolved fluorescence anisotropy measurements supported by polarized infrared spectroscopy verified that the orientation (and thus coverage and functionality) of proteins on surfaces can be controlled by strategic placement of a His6-tag on the protein. Molecular dynamics simulations show how the differently tagged proteins reside at the surface in “end-on” and “side-on” orientations with each His6-tag contributing to binding. Also, not every dihistidine subunit in a given His6-tag forms a full coordination bond with the Ni2+:NTA SAMs, which varied with the position of the His6-tag on the protein. At equal valency but different tag positions on the protein, differences in binding were caused by probing for Ni2+:NTA moieties and by additional electrostatic interactions between different fractions of the β-barrel structure and charged NTA moieties. Potential of mean force calculations indicate there is no specific single-protein interaction mode that provides a clear preferential surface orientation, suggesting that the experimentally measured preference for the end-on orientation is a supra-protein, not a single-protein, effect. PMID:28850777

  1. Improving Large Cetacean Implantable Satellite Tag Designs to Maximize Tag Robustness and Minimize Health Effects to Individual Animals

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2013-09-30

    Designs to Maximize Tag Robustness and Minimize Health Effects to Individual Animals Alexandre N. Zerbini Cascadia Research Collective 218 ½ 4th...the blubber-muscle interface and minimize physical and physiological effects of body penetrating tags to individual animals . OBJECTIVES (1...integrity of designs created in Objective (1) during laboratory experiments and in cetacean carcasses ; (3) Examine structural tissue damage in the

  2. Achievable Performance and Effective Interrogator Design for SAW RFID Sensor Tags

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Barton Richard J.

    2012-01-01

    For many NASA missions, remote sensing is a critical application that supports activities such as environmental monitoring, planetary science, structural shape and health monitoring, non-destructive evaluation, etc. The utility of the remote sensing devices themselves is greatly increased if they are passive V that is, they do not require any on-board power supply such as batteries V and if they can be identified uniquely during the sensor interrogation process. Additional passive sensor characteristics that enable greater utilization in space applications are small size and weight, long read ranges with low interrogator power, ruggedness, and operability in extreme environments (vacuum, extreme high/low temperature, high radiation, etc.) In this paper, we consider one very promising passive sensor technology, called surface acoustic wave (SAW) radio-frequency identification (RFID), that satisfies all of these criteria. In general, RFID is a method of identifying items using radio waves to interrogate tags encoded with a unique identifier that are affixed to the items of interest. In the case of passive tags, only the interrogator, which transmits power to the tags in the form of radio-frequency electromagnetic radiation, requires access to a power supply. Passive RFID technologies are used today in many applications, including asset tracking and management, security and access control, and remote sensing. To date, most of the development and application in RFID technology has focused on either asset/inventory tracking and control or security and access control because these are the largest commercial application areas. Recently however, there has been growing interest in using passive RFID technology for remote sensing applications, and SAW devices are at the forefront of RFID sensing technology development. Although SAW RFID tags have great potential for use in numerous space-based remote sensing applications, the limited collision resolution capability of

  3. a Chiral Tagging Strategy for Determining Absolute Configuration and Enantiomeric Excess by Molecular Rotational Spectroscopy

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Evangelisti, Luca; Caminati, Walther; Patterson, David; Thomas, Javix; Xu, Yunjie; West, Channing; Pate, Brooks

    2017-06-01

    The introduction of three wave mixing rotational spectroscopy by Patterson, Schnell, and Doyle [1,2] has expanded applications of molecular rotational spectroscopy into the field of chiral analysis. Chiral analysis of a molecule is the quantitative measurement of the relative abundances of all stereoisomers of the molecule and these include both diastereomers (with distinct molecular rotational spectra) and enantiomers (with equivalent molecular rotational spectra). This work adapts a common strategy in chiral analysis of enantiomers to molecular rotational spectroscopy. A "chiral tag" is attached to the molecule of interest by making a weakly bound complex in a pulsed jet expansion. When this tag molecule is enantiopure, it will create diastereomeric complexes with the two enantiomers of the molecule being analyzed and these can be differentiated by molecule rotational spectroscopy. Identifying the structure of this complex, with knowledge of the absolute configuration of the tag, establishes the absolute configuration of the molecule of interest. Furthermore, the diastereomer complex spectra can be used to determine the enantiomeric excess of the sample. The ability to perform chiral analysis will be illustrated by a study of solketal using propylene oxide as the tag. The possibility of using current methods of quantum chemistry to assign a specific structure to the chiral tag complex will be discussed. Finally, chiral tag rotational spectroscopy offers a "gold standard" method for determining the absolute configuration of the molecule through determination of the substitution structure of the complex. When this measurement is possible, rotational spectroscopy can deliver a quantitative three dimensional structure of the molecule with correct stereochemistry as the analysis output. [1] David Patterson, Melanie Schnell, John M. Doyle, Nature 497, 475 (2013). [2] David Patterson, John M. Doyle, Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 023008 (2013).

  4. Synaptic Tagging During Memory Allocation

    PubMed Central

    Rogerson, Thomas; Cai, Denise; Frank, Adam; Sano, Yoshitake; Shobe, Justin; Aranda, Manuel L.; Silva, Alcino J.

    2014-01-01

    There is now compelling evidence that the allocation of memory to specific neurons (neuronal allocation) and synapses (synaptic allocation) in a neurocircuit is not random and that instead specific mechanisms, such as increases in neuronal excitability and synaptic tagging and capture, determine the exact sites where memories are stored. We propose an integrated view of these processes, such that neuronal allocation, synaptic tagging and capture, spine clustering and metaplasticity reflect related aspects of memory allocation mechanisms. Importantly, the properties of these mechanisms suggest a set of rules that profoundly affect how memories are stored and recalled. PMID:24496410

  5. A universal TagModule collection for parallel genetic analysis of microorganisms

    PubMed Central

    Oh, Julia; Fung, Eula; Price, Morgan N.; Dehal, Paramvir S.; Davis, Ronald W.; Giaever, Guri; Nislow, Corey; Arkin, Adam P.; Deutschbauer, Adam

    2010-01-01

    Systems-level analyses of non-model microorganisms are limited by the existence of numerous uncharacterized genes and a corresponding over-reliance on automated computational annotations. One solution to this challenge is to disrupt gene function using DNA tag technology, which has been highly successful in parallelizing reverse genetics in Saccharomyces cerevisiae and has led to discoveries in gene function, genetic interactions and drug mechanism of action. To extend the yeast DNA tag methodology to a wide variety of microorganisms and applications, we have created a universal, sequence-verified TagModule collection. A hallmark of the 4280 TagModules is that they are cloned into a Gateway entry vector, thus facilitating rapid transfer to any compatible genetic system. Here, we describe the application of the TagModules to rapidly generate tagged mutants by transposon mutagenesis in the metal-reducing bacterium Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 and the pathogenic yeast Candida albicans. Our results demonstrate the optimal hybridization properties of the TagModule collection, the flexibility in applying the strategy to diverse microorganisms and the biological insights that can be gained from fitness profiling tagged mutant collections. The publicly available TagModule collection is a platform-independent resource for the functional genomics of a wide range of microbial systems in the post-genome era. PMID:20494978

  6. Development of a Dehalogenase-Based Protein Fusion Tag Capable of Rapid, Selective and Covalent Attachment to Customizable Ligands

    PubMed Central

    Encell, Lance P; Friedman Ohana, Rachel; Zimmerman, Kris; Otto, Paul; Vidugiris, Gediminas; Wood, Monika G; Los, Georgyi V; McDougall, Mark G; Zimprich, Chad; Karassina, Natasha; Learish, Randall D; Hurst, Robin; Hartnett, James; Wheeler, Sarah; Stecha, Pete; English, Jami; Zhao, Kate; Mendez, Jacqui; Benink, Hélène A; Murphy, Nancy; Daniels, Danette L; Slater, Michael R; Urh, Marjeta; Darzins, Aldis; Klaubert, Dieter H; Bulleit, Robert F; Wood, Keith V

    2012-01-01

    Our fundamental understanding of proteins and their biological significance has been enhanced by genetic fusion tags, as they provide a convenient method for introducing unique properties to proteins so that they can be examinedin isolation. Commonly used tags satisfy many of the requirements for applications relating to the detection and isolation of proteins from complex samples. However, their utility at low concentration becomes compromised if the binding affinity for a detection or capture reagent is not adequate to produce a stable interaction. Here, we describe HaloTag® (HT7), a genetic fusion tag based on a modified haloalkane dehalogenase designed and engineered to overcome the limitation of affinity tags by forming a high affinity, covalent attachment to a binding ligand. HT7 and its ligand have additional desirable features. The tag is relatively small, monomeric, and structurally compatible with fusion partners, while the ligand is specific, chemically simple, and amenable to modular synthetic design. Taken together, the design features and molecular evolution of HT7 have resulted in a superior alternative to common tags for the overexpression, detection, and isolation of target proteins. PMID:23248739

  7. A robust and accurate center-frequency estimation (RACE) algorithm for improving motion estimation performance of SinMod on tagged cardiac MR images without known tagging parameters.

    PubMed

    Liu, Hong; Wang, Jie; Xu, Xiangyang; Song, Enmin; Wang, Qian; Jin, Renchao; Hung, Chih-Cheng; Fei, Baowei

    2014-11-01

    A robust and accurate center-frequency (CF) estimation (RACE) algorithm for improving the performance of the local sine-wave modeling (SinMod) method, which is a good motion estimation method for tagged cardiac magnetic resonance (MR) images, is proposed in this study. The RACE algorithm can automatically, effectively and efficiently produce a very appropriate CF estimate for the SinMod method, under the circumstance that the specified tagging parameters are unknown, on account of the following two key techniques: (1) the well-known mean-shift algorithm, which can provide accurate and rapid CF estimation; and (2) an original two-direction-combination strategy, which can further enhance the accuracy and robustness of CF estimation. Some other available CF estimation algorithms are brought out for comparison. Several validation approaches that can work on the real data without ground truths are specially designed. Experimental results on human body in vivo cardiac data demonstrate the significance of accurate CF estimation for SinMod, and validate the effectiveness of RACE in facilitating the motion estimation performance of SinMod. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  8. Habitat use and movement patterns of bull sharks Carcharhinus leucas determined using pop-up satellite archival tags.

    PubMed

    Carlson, J K; Ribera, M M; Conrath, C L; Heupel, M R; Burgess, G H

    2010-08-01

    Habitat use, movement and residency of bull sharks Carcharhinus leucas were determined using satellite pop-up archival transmitting (PAT) tags throughout coastal areas in the U.S., Gulf of Mexico and waters off the south-east U.S. From 2005 to 2007, 18 fish (mean size = 164 cm fork length, L(F)) were tagged over all seasons. Fish retained tags for up to 85 days (median = 30 days). Based on geolocation data from initial tagging location to pop-off location, C. leucas generally travelled c. 5-6 km day(-1) and travelled an average of 143.6 km. Overall, mean proportions of time at depth revealed C. leucas spent the majority of their time in waters <20 m. They exhibited significant differences among depths but were not found at a particular depth regardless of diurnal period. Most fish occupied temperatures c. 32 degrees C with individuals found mostly between 26 and 33 degrees C. Geolocation data for C. leucas were generally poor and varied considerably but tracks for two individuals revealed long distance movements. One fish travelled from the south-east coast of the U.S. to coastal Texas near Galveston while another moved up the east coast of the U.S. to South Carolina. Data on C. leucas movements indicated that they are found primarily in shallower waters and tend to remain in the same location over long periods. While some individuals made large-scale movements over open ocean areas, the results emphasize the importance of the coastal zone for this species as potential essential habitat, particularly in areas of high freshwater inflow.

  9. Imaging the fate of histone Cse4 reveals de novo replacement in S phase and subsequent stable residence at centromeres

    PubMed Central

    Wisniewski, Jan; Hajj, Bassam; Chen, Jiji; Mizuguchi, Gaku; Xiao, Hua; Wei, Debbie; Dahan, Maxime; Wu, Carl

    2014-01-01

    The budding yeast centromere contains Cse4, a specialized histone H3 variant. Fluorescence pulse-chase analysis of an internally tagged Cse4 reveals that it is replaced with newly synthesized molecules in S phase, remaining stably associated with centromeres thereafter. In contrast, C-terminally-tagged Cse4 is functionally impaired, showing slow cell growth, cell lethality at elevated temperatures, and extra-centromeric nuclear accumulation. Recent studies using such strains gave conflicting findings regarding the centromeric abundance and cell cycle dynamics of Cse4. Our findings indicate that internally tagged Cse4 is a better reporter of the biology of this histone variant. Furthermore, the size of centromeric Cse4 clusters was precisely mapped with a new 3D-PALM method, revealing substantial compaction during anaphase. Cse4-specific chaperone Scm3 displays steady-state, stoichiometric co-localization with Cse4 at centromeres throughout the cell cycle, while undergoing exchange with a nuclear pool. These findings suggest that a stable Cse4 nucleosome is maintained by dynamic chaperone-in-residence Scm3. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.02203.001 PMID:24844245

  10. Monitoring Arthrobacter protophormiae RKJ100 in a 'tag and chase' method during p-nitrophenol bio-remediation in soil microcosms.

    PubMed

    Pandey, Gunjan; Pandey, Janmejay; Jain, Rakesh K

    2006-05-01

    Monitoring of micro-organisms released deliberately into the environment is essential to assess their movement during the bio-remediation process. During the last few years, DNA-based genetic methods have emerged as the preferred method for such monitoring; however, their use is restricted in cases where organisms used for bio-remediation are not well characterized or where the public domain databases do not provide sufficient information regarding their sequence. For monitoring of such micro-organisms, alternate approaches have to be undertaken. In this study, we have specifically monitored a p-nitrophenol (PNP)-degrading organism, Arthrobacter protophormiae RKJ100, using molecular methods during PNP degradation in soil microcosm. Cells were tagged with a transposon-based foreign DNA sequence prior to their introduction into PNP-contaminated microcosms. Later, this artificially introduced DNA sequence was PCR-amplified to distinguish the bio-augmented organism from the indigenous microflora during PNP bio-remediation.

  11. Improving Attachments of Remotely-Deployed Dorsal Fin-Mounted Tags: Tissue Structure, Hydrodynamics, in Situ Performance, and Tagged-Animal Follow-Up

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2010-09-30

    and let them see a whale tagging operation first hand in Puget Sound ; we polished up our objectives and refined our methods, and have come up with...examination based on differences such as size/shape of the dorsal fin (e.g., melon-headed versus killer whale ), taxonomic grouping (i.e., odontocetes...navy sonar - beaked whales ; ship strikes - fin whales ; ecological role – killer whales ). 3. In situ behavior of retention system elements (Key

  12. Parasites as biological tags of fish stocks: a meta-analysis of their discriminatory power.

    PubMed

    Poulin, Robert; Kamiya, Tsukushi

    2015-01-01

    The use of parasites as biological tags to discriminate among marine fish stocks has become a widely accepted method in fisheries management. Here, we first link this approach to its unstated ecological foundation, the decay in the similarity of the species composition of assemblages as a function of increasing distance between them, a phenomenon almost universal in nature. We explain how distance decay of similarity can influence the use of parasites as biological tags. Then, we perform a meta-analysis of 61 uses of parasites as tags of marine fish populations in multivariate discriminant analyses, obtained from 29 articles. Our main finding is that across all studies, the observed overall probability of correct classification of fish based on parasite data was about 71%. This corresponds to a two-fold improvement over the rate of correct classification expected by chance alone, and the average effect size (Zr = 0·463) computed from the original values was also indicative of a medium-to-large effect. However, none of the moderator variables included in the meta-analysis had a significant effect on the proportion of correct classification; these moderators included the total number of fish sampled, the number of parasite species used in the discriminant analysis, the number of localities from which fish were sampled, the minimum and maximum distance between any pair of sampling localities, etc. Therefore, there are no clear-cut situations in which the use of parasites as tags is more useful than others. Finally, we provide recommendations for the future usage of parasites as tags for stock discrimination, to ensure that future applications of the method achieve statistical rigour and a high discriminatory power.

  13. On energy harvesting for augmented tags

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Allane, Dahmane; Duroc, Yvan; Andia Vera, Gianfranco; Touhami, Rachida; Tedjini, Smail

    2017-02-01

    In this paper, the harmonic signals generated by UHF RFID chips, usually considered as spurious effects and unused, are exploited. Indeed, the harmonic signals are harvested to feed a supplementary circuitry associated with a passive RFID tag. Two approaches are presented and compared. In the first one, the third-harmonic signal is combined with an external 2.45-GHz Wi-Fi signal. The integration is done in such a way that the composite signal boosts the conversion efficiency of the energy harvester. In the second approach, the third-harmonic signal is used as the only source of a harvester that energizes a commercial temperature sensor associated with the tag. The design procedures of the two "augmented-tag" approaches are presented. The performance of each system is simulated with ADS software, and using Harmonic Balance tool (HB), the results obtained in simulation and measurements are compared also. xml:lang="fr"

  14. Lightweight GPS-tags, one giant leap for wildlife tracking? An assessment approach.

    PubMed

    Recio, Mariano R; Mathieu, Renaud; Denys, Paul; Sirguey, Pascal; Seddon, Philip J

    2011-01-01

    Recent technological improvements have made possible the development of lightweight GPS-tagging devices suitable to track medium-to-small sized animals. However, current inferences concerning GPS performance are based on heavier designs, suitable only for large mammals. Lightweight GPS-units are deployed close to the ground, on species selecting micro-topographical features and with different behavioural patterns in comparison to larger mammal species. We assessed the effects of vegetation, topography, motion, and behaviour on the fix success rate for lightweight GPS-collar across a range of natural environments, and at the scale of perception of feral cats (Felis catus). Units deployed at 20 cm above the ground in sites of varied vegetation and topography showed that trees (native forest) and shrub cover had the largest influence on fix success rate (89% on average); whereas tree cover, sky availability, number of satellites and horizontal dilution of position (HDOP) were the main variables affecting location error (±39.5 m and ±27.6 m before and after filtering outlier fixes). Tests on HDOP or number of satellites-based screening methods to remove inaccurate locations achieved only a small reduction of error and discarded many accurate locations. Mobility tests were used to simulate cats' motion, revealing a slightly lower performance as compared to the fixed sites. GPS-collars deployed on 43 cats showed no difference in fix success rate by sex or season. Overall, fix success rate and location error values were within the range of previous tests carried out with collars designed for larger species. Lightweight GPS-tags are a suitable method to track medium to small size species, hence increasing the range of opportunities for spatial ecology research. However, the effects of vegetation, topography and behaviour on location error and fix success rate need to be evaluated prior to deployment, for the particular study species and their habitats.

  15. A method adapting microarray technology for signature tagged mutagenesis of Dusulfovibrio dusulfuricans G20 and Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 in anaerobic sediment survival experiments

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Groh, Jennifer L.; Luo, Qingwei; Ballard , Jimmy D.; Krumholz, Lee R.

    2005-01-01

    Signature-tagged mutagenesis (STM) is a powerful technique that can be used to identify genes expressed by bacteria during exposure to conditions in their natural environments. To date, there have been no reports of studies in which this approach was used to study organisms of environmental, rather than pathogenic, significance. We used a mini-Tn10 transposon-bearing plasmid, pBSL180, that efficiently and randomly mutagenized Desulfovibrio desulfuricans G20 in addition to Shewanella oneidensis MR-1. Using these organisms as model sediment-dwelling anaerobic bacteria, we developed a new screening system, modified from former STM procedures, to identify genes that are critical for sediment survival. The screening system uses microarray technology to visualize tags from input and output pools, allowing us to identify those lost during sediment incubations. While the majority of data on survival genes identified will be presented in future papers, we report here on chemotaxis-related genes identified by our STM method in both bacteria in order to validate our method. This system may be applicable to the study of numerous environmental bacteria, allowing us to identify functions and roles of survival genes in various habitats.

  16. InkTag: Secure Applications on an Untrusted Operating System.

    PubMed

    Hofmann, Owen S; Kim, Sangman; Dunn, Alan M; Lee, Michael Z; Witchel, Emmett

    2013-01-01

    InkTag is a virtualization-based architecture that gives strong safety guarantees to high-assurance processes even in the presence of a malicious operating system. InkTag advances the state of the art in untrusted operating systems in both the design of its hypervisor and in the ability to run useful applications without trusting the operating system. We introduce paraverification , a technique that simplifies the InkTag hypervisor by forcing the untrusted operating system to participate in its own verification. Attribute-based access control allows trusted applications to create decentralized access control policies. InkTag is also the first system of its kind to ensure consistency between secure data and metadata, ensuring recoverability in the face of system crashes.

  17. Connectivity clues from short-term variability in settlement and geochemical tags of mytilid mussels

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Fodrie, F. Joel; Becker, Bonnie J.; Levin, Lisa A.; Gruenthal, Kristen; McMillan, Pat A.

    2011-01-01

    The use of geochemical tags in calcified structures of fish and invertebrates is an exciting tool for investigating larval population connectivity. Tag evaluation over relatively short intervals (weeks) may detect environmental and ecological variability at a temporal scale highly relevant to larval transport and settlement. We collected newly settled mussels ( Mytilus californianus and M. galloprovincialis) weekly during winter/spring of 2002 along the coast of San Diego, CA, USA, at sites on the exposed coast (SIO) and in a protected coastal bay (HI), to investigate temporal patterns of geochemical tags in mussel shells. Analyses of post-settlement shell via LA-ICP-MS revealed statistically significant temporal variability for all elements we examined (Mg, Mn, Cu, Sr, Cd, Ba, Pb and U). Despite this, our ability to distinguish multielemental signatures between sites was largely conserved. Throughout our 13-week study, SIO and HI mussels could be chemically distinguished from one another in 78-87% of all cases. Settlement varied between 2 and 27 settlers gram-byssus -1 week -1 at SIO and HI, and both sites were characterized by 2-3 weeks with "high" settlement. Geochemical tags recorded in early larval shell of newly settled mussels differed between "high" and "low" settlement weeks at both sites (MANOVA), driven by Mg and Sr at SIO (p = 0.013) and Sr, Cd, Ba and Pb at HI (p < 0.001). These data imply that shifts in larval sources or transport corridors were responsible for observed settlement variation, rather than increased larval production. In particular, increased settlement at HI was observed concurrent with the appearance of geochemical tags (e.g., elevated Cd), suggesting that those larvae were retained in upwelled water near the mouth of the bay. Such shifts may reflect short-term changes in connectivity among sites due to altered transport corridors, and influence the demography of local populations.

  18. Profiling cellular protein complexes by proximity ligation with dual tag microarray readout.

    PubMed

    Hammond, Maria; Nong, Rachel Yuan; Ericsson, Olle; Pardali, Katerina; Landegren, Ulf

    2012-01-01

    Patterns of protein interactions provide important insights in basic biology, and their analysis plays an increasing role in drug development and diagnostics of disease. We have established a scalable technique to compare two biological samples for the levels of all pairwise interactions among a set of targeted protein molecules. The technique is a combination of the proximity ligation assay with readout via dual tag microarrays. In the proximity ligation assay protein identities are encoded as DNA sequences by attaching DNA oligonucleotides to antibodies directed against the proteins of interest. Upon binding by pairs of antibodies to proteins present in the same molecular complexes, ligation reactions give rise to reporter DNA molecules that contain the combined sequence information from the two DNA strands. The ligation reactions also serve to incorporate a sample barcode in the reporter molecules to allow for direct comparison between pairs of samples. The samples are evaluated using a dual tag microarray where information is decoded, revealing which pairs of tags that have become joined. As a proof-of-concept we demonstrate that this approach can be used to detect a set of five proteins and their pairwise interactions both in cellular lysates and in fixed tissue culture cells. This paper provides a general strategy to analyze the extent of any pairwise interactions in large sets of molecules by decoding reporter DNA strands that identify the interacting molecules.

  19. Synaptic Tagging, Evaluation of Memories, and the Distal Reward Problem

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Papper, Marc; Kempter, Richard; Leibold, Christian

    2011-01-01

    Long-term synaptic plasticity exhibits distinct phases. The synaptic tagging hypothesis suggests an early phase in which synapses are prepared, or "tagged," for protein capture, and a late phase in which those proteins are integrated into the synapses to achieve memory consolidation. The synapse specificity of the tags is consistent with…

  20. deGradFP: A System to Knockdown GFP-Tagged Proteins.

    PubMed

    Caussinus, Emmanuel; Affolter, Markus

    2016-01-01

    Protein depletion by genetic means, in a very general sense including the use of RNA interference [1, 2] or CRISPR/Cas9-based methods, represents a central paradigm of modern biology to study protein functions in vivo. However, acting upstream the proteic level is a limiting factor if the turnover of the target protein is slow or the existing pool of the target protein is important (for instance, in insect embryos, as a consequence of a strong maternal contribution). In order to circumvent these problems, we developed deGradFP [3, 4]. deGradFP harnesses the ubiquitin-proteasome pathway to achieve direct depletion of GFP-tagged proteins. deGradFP is in essence a universal method because it relies on an evolutionarily conserved machinery for protein catabolism in eukaryotic cells; see refs. 5, 6 for review. deGradFP is particularly convenient in Drosophila melanogaster where it is implemented by a genetically encoded effector expressed under the control of the Gal4 system. deGradFP is a ready-to-use solution to perform knockdowns at the protein level if a fly line carrying a functional GFP-tagged version of the gene of interest is available. Many such lines have already been generated by the Drosophila community through different technologies allowing to make genomic rescue constructs or direct GFP knockins: protein-trap stock collections [7, 8] ( http://cooley.medicine.yale.edu/flytrap/ , http://www.flyprot.org/ ), P[acman] system [9], MiMIC lines [10, 11], and CRISPR/Cas9-driven homologous recombination.Two essential controls of a protein knockdown experiment are easily achieved using deGradFP. First, the removal of the target protein can be assessed by monitoring the disappearance of the GFP tag by fluorescence microscopy in parallel to the documentation of the phenotype of the protein knockdown (see Note 1 ). Second, the potential nonspecific effects of deGradFP can be assessed in control fly lacking a GFP-tagged target protein. So far, no nonspecific effects of

  1. Postprandial phase time influences the uptake of TAG from postprandial TAG-rich lipoproteins by THP-1 macrophages.

    PubMed

    Cabello-Moruno, Rosana; Sinausia, Laura; Botham, Kathleen M; Montero, Emilio; Avella, Michael; Perona, Javier S

    2014-11-14

    Postprandial TAG-rich lipoproteins (TRL) can be taken up by macrophages, leading to the formation of foam cells, probably via receptor-mediated pathways. The present study was conducted to investigate whether the postprandial time point at which TRL are collected modulates this process. A meal containing refined olive oil was given to nine healthy young men and TRL were isolated from their serum at 2, 4 and 6 h postprandially. The lipid class and apoB compositions of TRL were determined by HPLC and SDS-PAGE, respectively. The accumulation of lipids in macrophages was determined after the incubation of THP-1 macrophages with TRL. The gene expression of candidate receptors was measured by real-time PCR. The highest concentrations of TAG, apoB48 and apoB100 in TRL were observed at 2 h after the consumption of the test meal. However, excessive intracellular TAG accumulation in THP-1 macrophages was observed in response to incubation with TRL isolated at 4 h, when their particle size (estimated as the TAG:apoB ratio) was intermediate. The abundance of mRNA transcripts in macrophages in response to incubation with TRL was down-regulated for LDL receptor (LDLR), slightly up-regulated for VLDL receptor and remained unaltered for LDLR-related protein, but no effect of the postprandial time point was observed. In contrast, the mRNA expression of scavenger receptors SRB1, SRA2 and CD36 was higher when cells were incubated with TRL isolated at 4 h after the consumption of the test meal. In conclusion, TRL led to excessive intracellular TAG accumulation in THP-1 macrophages, which was greater when cells were incubated with intermediate-sized postprandial TRL isolated at 4 h and was associated with a significant increase in the mRNA expression of scavenger receptors.

  2. Quantitative Non-canonical Amino Acid Tagging (QuaNCAT) Proteomics Identifies Distinct Patterns of Protein Synthesis Rapidly Induced by Hypertrophic Agents in Cardiomyocytes, Revealing New Aspects of Metabolic Remodeling*

    PubMed Central

    Liu, Rui; Kenney, Justin W.; Manousopoulou, Antigoni; Johnston, Harvey E.; Kamei, Makoto; Woelk, Christopher H.; Xie, Jianling; Schwarzer, Michael; Proud, Christopher G.

    2016-01-01

    Cardiomyocytes undergo growth and remodeling in response to specific pathological or physiological conditions. In the former, myocardial growth is a risk factor for cardiac failure and faster protein synthesis is a major factor driving cardiomyocyte growth. Our goal was to quantify the rapid effects of different pro-hypertrophic stimuli on the synthesis of specific proteins in ARVC and to determine whether such effects are caused by alterations on mRNA abundance or the translation of specific mRNAs. Cardiomyocytes have very low rates of protein synthesis, posing a challenging problem in terms of studying changes in the synthesis of specific proteins, which also applies to other nondividing primary cells. To study the rates of accumulation of specific proteins in these cells, we developed an optimized version of the Quantitative Noncanonical Amino acid Tagging LC/MS proteomic method to label and selectively enrich newly synthesized proteins in these primary cells while eliminating the suppressive effects of pre-existing and highly abundant nonisotope-tagged polypeptides. Our data revealed that a classical pathologic (phenylephrine; PE) and the recently identified insulin stimulus that also contributes to the development of pathological cardiac hypertrophy (insulin), both increased the synthesis of proteins involved in, e.g. glycolysis, the Krebs cycle and beta-oxidation, and sarcomeric components. However, insulin increased synthesis of many metabolic enzymes to a greater extent than PE. Using a novel validation method, we confirmed that synthesis of selected candidates is indeed up-regulated by PE and insulin. Synthesis of all proteins studied was up-regulated by signaling through mammalian target of rapamycin complex 1 without changes in their mRNA levels, showing the key importance of translational control in the rapid effects of hypertrophic stimuli. Expression of PKM2 was up-regulated in rat hearts following TAC. This isoform possesses specific regulatory

  3. Extended-Range Passive RFID and Sensor Tags

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Fink, Patrick W.; Kennedy, Timothy F.; Lin, Gregory Y.; Barton, Richard

    2012-01-01

    Extended-range passive radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags and related sensor tags are undergoing development. A tag of this type incorporates a retroreflective antenna array, so that it reflects significantly more signal power back toward an interrogating radio transceiver than does a comparable passive RFID tag of prior design, which does not incorporate a retroreflective antenna array. Therefore, for a given amount of power radiated by the transmitter in the interrogating transceiver, a tag of this type can be interrogated at a distance greater than that of the comparable passive RFID or sensor tag of prior design. The retroreflective antenna array is, more specifically, a Van Atta array, named after its inventor and first published in a patent issued in 1959. In its simplest form, a Van Atta array comprises two antenna elements connected by a transmission line so that the signal received by each antenna element is reradiated by the other antenna element (see Figure 1). The phase relationships among the received and reradiated signals are such as to produce constructive interference of the reradiated signals; that is, to concentrate the reradiated signal power in a direction back toward the source. Hence, an RFID tag equipped with a Van Atta antenna array automatically tracks the interrogating transceiver. The effective gain of a Van Atta array is the same as that of a traditional phased antenna array having the same number of antenna elements. Additional pairs of antenna elements connected by equal-length transmission lines can be incorporated into a Van Atta array to increase its directionality. Like some RFID tags here-to-fore commercially available, an RFID or sensor tag of the present developmental type includes one-port surface-acoustic-wave (SAW) devices. In simplified terms, the mode of operation of a basic one-port SAW device as used heretofore in an RFID device is the following: An interrogating radio signal is converted, at an input end, from

  4. Investigating bacterial populations in styrene-degrading biofilters by 16S rDNA tag pyrosequencing.

    PubMed

    Portune, Kevin J; Pérez, M Carmen; Álvarez-Hornos, F Javier; Gabaldón, Carmen

    2015-01-01

    Microbial biofilms are essential components in the elimination of pollutants within biofilters, yet still little is known regarding the complex relationships between microbial community structure and biodegradation function within these engineered ecosystems. To further explore this relationship, 16S rDNA tag pyrosequencing was applied to samples taken at four time points from a styrene-degrading biofilter undergoing variable operating conditions. Changes in microbial structure were observed between different stages of biofilter operation, and the level of styrene concentration was revealed to be a critical factor affecting these changes. Bacterial genera Azoarcus and Pseudomonas were among the dominant classified genera in the biofilter. Canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) and correlation analysis revealed that the genera Brevundimonas, Hydrogenophaga, and Achromobacter may play important roles in styrene degradation under increasing styrene concentrations. No significant correlations (P > 0.05) could be detected between biofilter operational/functional parameters and biodiversity measurements, although biological heterogeneity within biofilms and/or technical variability within pyrosequencing may have considerably affected these results. Percentages of selected bacterial taxonomic groups detected by fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) were compared to results from pyrosequencing in order to assess the effectiveness and limitations of each method for identifying each microbial taxon. Comparison of results revealed discrepancies between the two methods in the detected percentages of numerous taxonomic groups. Biases and technical limitations of both FISH and pyrosequencing, such as the binding of FISH probes to non-target microbial groups and lack of classification of sequences for defined taxonomic groups from pyrosequencing, may partially explain some differences between the two methods.

  5. Movements of striped mullet, Mugil cephalus, tagged in Everglades National Park, Florida

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Funicelli, N.A.; Meineke, D.A.; Bryant, H.E.; Dewey, M.R.; Ludwig, G.M.; Mengel, L.S.

    1989-01-01

    The movements of striped mullet, Mugil cephalus, were studied from fish tagged in Everglades National Park. Florida. A total of 16,604 fish were tagged from March 1984 to September 1985. During the period December 1984 through February 1985 recaptured tagged fish moved significantly further and more northerly out of the Park's waters than they did the rest of the year. Tags were returned from 2.8% of the fish tagged along the west coast and from 0.3% of the fish tagged in Florida Bay and west coast mullet form a series of spatially overlapping stocks.

  6. Passive UHF RFID Tag for Multispectral Assessment

    PubMed Central

    Escobedo, Pablo; Carvajal, Miguel A.; Capitán-Vallvey, Luis F.; Fernández-Salmerón, José; Martínez-Olmos, Antonio; Palma, Alberto J.

    2016-01-01

    This work presents the design, fabrication, and characterization of a passive printed radiofrequency identification tag in the ultra-high-frequency band with multiple optical sensing capabilities. This tag includes five photodiodes to cover a wide spectral range from near-infrared to visible and ultraviolet spectral regions. The tag antenna and circuit connections have been screen-printed on a flexible polymeric substrate. An ultra-low-power microcontroller-based switch has been included to measure the five magnitudes issuing from the optical sensors, providing a spectral fingerprint of the incident electromagnetic radiation from ultraviolet to infrared, without requiring energy from a battery. The normalization procedure has been designed applying illuminants, and the entire system was tested by measuring cards from a colour chart and sensing fruit ripening. PMID:27428973

  7. Passive UHF RFID Tag for Multispectral Assessment.

    PubMed

    Escobedo, Pablo; Carvajal, Miguel A; Capitán-Vallvey, Luis F; Fernández-Salmerón, José; Martínez-Olmos, Antonio; Palma, Alberto J

    2016-07-14

    This work presents the design, fabrication, and characterization of a passive printed radiofrequency identification tag in the ultra-high-frequency band with multiple optical sensing capabilities. This tag includes five photodiodes to cover a wide spectral range from near-infrared to visible and ultraviolet spectral regions. The tag antenna and circuit connections have been screen-printed on a flexible polymeric substrate. An ultra-low-power microcontroller-based switch has been included to measure the five magnitudes issuing from the optical sensors, providing a spectral fingerprint of the incident electromagnetic radiation from ultraviolet to infrared, without requiring energy from a battery. The normalization procedure has been designed applying illuminants, and the entire system was tested by measuring cards from a colour chart and sensing fruit ripening.

  8. p53 elevation in human cells halt SV40 infection by inhibiting T-ag expression

    PubMed Central

    Drayman, Nir; Ben-nun-Shaul, Orly; Butin-Israeli, Veronika; Srivastava, Rohit; Rubinstein, Ariel M.; Mock, Caroline S.; Elyada, Ela; Ben-Neriah, Yinon; Lahav, Galit; Oppenheim, Ariella

    2016-01-01

    SV40 large T-antigen (T-ag) has been known for decades to inactivate the tumor suppressor p53 by sequestration and additional mechanisms. Our present study revealed that the struggle between p53 and T-ag begins very early in the infection cycle. We found that p53 is activated early after SV40 infection and defends the host against the infection. Using live cell imaging and single cell analyses we found that p53 dynamics are variable among individual cells, with only a subset of cells activating p53 immediately after SV40 infection. This cell-to-cell variabilty had clear consequences on the outcome of the infection. None of the cells with elevated p53 at the beginning of the infection proceeded to express T-ag, suggesting a p53-dependent decision between abortive and productive infection. In addition, we show that artificial elevation of p53 levels prior to the infection reduces infection efficiency, supporting a role for p53 in defending against SV40. We further found that the p53-mediated host defense mechanism against SV40 is not facilitated by apoptosis nor via interferon-stimulated genes. Instead p53 binds to the viral DNA at the T-ag promoter region, prevents its transcriptional activation by Sp1, and halts the progress of the infection. These findings shed new light on the long studied struggle between SV40 T-ag and p53, as developed during virus-host coevolution. Our studies indicate that the fate of SV40 infection is determined as soon as the viral DNA enters the nucleus, before the onset of viral gene expression. PMID:27462916

  9. Design considerations and tradeoffs for passive RFID tags

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Hussien, Faisal A.; Turker, Didem Z.; Srinivasan, Rangakrishnan; Mobarak, Mohamed S.; Cortes, Fernando P.; Sanchez-Sinencio, Edgar

    2005-06-01

    Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems are widely used in a variety of tracking, security and tagging applications. Their operation in non line-of-sight environments makes them superior over similar devices such as barcode and infrared tags. RFID systems span a wide range of applications: medical history storage, dental prosthesis tracking, oil drilling pipe and concrete stress monitoring, toll ways services, animal tracking applications, etc. Passive RFID tags generate their power from the incoming signal; therefore, they do not require a power source. Accordingly, minimizing the power consumption and the implementation area are usually the main design considerations. This paper presents a complete analysis on designing a passive RFID tag. A system design methodology is introduced including the main issues and tradeoffs between different design parameters. The uplink modulation techniques used (ASK, PSK, FSK, and PWM) are illustrated showing how to choose the appropriate signaling scheme for a specific data rate, a certain distance of operation and a limited power consumption budget. An antenna system (transmitter and receiver) is proposed providing the maximum distance of operation with the transmitted power stated by FCC regulations. The backscatter modulation scheme used in the downlink is shown whether to be ASK-BM or PSK-BM and the differences between them are discussed. The key building blocks such as the charge pump, voltage reference, and the regulator used to generate the DC supply voltage from the incoming RF signal are discussed along with their design tradeoffs. A complete architecture for a passive RFID tag is provided as an example to illustrate the proposed RFID tag design methodology.

  10. Performance of low-power RFID tags based on modulated backscattering

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Mhanna, Zeinab; Sibille, Alain; Contreras, Richard

    2017-02-01

    Ultra Wideband (UWB) modulated backscattering (MBS) passive Radio-Frequency IDentification (RFID) systems provide a promising solution to overcome many limitations of current narrowband RFID devices. This work addresses the performance of such systems from the point of view of the radio channel between the readers and the tags. Such systems will likely combine several readers, in order to provide both the detection and localization of tags operating in MBS. Two successive measurements campaigns have been carried out in an indoor reference scenario environment. The first is intended to verify the methods and serves as a way to validate the RFID backscattering measurement setup. The second represents a real use case for RFID application and allows one to quantitatively analyze the path loss of the backscattering propagation channel. xml:lang="fr"

  11. Analysis and Functional Annotation of an Expressed Sequence Tag Collection for Tropical Crop Sugarcane

    PubMed Central

    Vettore, André L.; da Silva, Felipe R.; Kemper, Edson L.; Souza, Glaucia M.; da Silva, Aline M.; Ferro, Maria Inês T.; Henrique-Silva, Flavio; Giglioti, Éder A.; Lemos, Manoel V.F.; Coutinho, Luiz L.; Nobrega, Marina P.; Carrer, Helaine; França, Suzelei C.; Bacci, Maurício; Goldman, Maria Helena S.; Gomes, Suely L.; Nunes, Luiz R.; Camargo, Luis E.A.; Siqueira, Walter J.; Van Sluys, Marie-Anne; Thiemann, Otavio H.; Kuramae, Eiko E.; Santelli, Roberto V.; Marino, Celso L.; Targon, Maria L.P.N.; Ferro, Jesus A.; Silveira, Henrique C.S.; Marini, Danyelle C.; Lemos, Eliana G.M.; Monteiro-Vitorello, Claudia B.; Tambor, José H.M.; Carraro, Dirce M.; Roberto, Patrícia G.; Martins, Vanderlei G.; Goldman, Gustavo H.; de Oliveira, Regina C.; Truffi, Daniela; Colombo, Carlos A.; Rossi, Magdalena; de Araujo, Paula G.; Sculaccio, Susana A.; Angella, Aline; Lima, Marleide M.A.; de Rosa, Vicente E.; Siviero, Fábio; Coscrato, Virginia E.; Machado, Marcos A.; Grivet, Laurent; Di Mauro, Sonia M.Z.; Nobrega, Francisco G.; Menck, Carlos F.M.; Braga, Marilia D.V.; Telles, Guilherme P.; Cara, Frank A.A.; Pedrosa, Guilherme; Meidanis, João; Arruda, Paulo

    2003-01-01

    To contribute to our understanding of the genome complexity of sugarcane, we undertook a large-scale expressed sequence tag (EST) program. More than 260,000 cDNA clones were partially sequenced from 26 standard cDNA libraries generated from different sugarcane tissues. After the processing of the sequences, 237,954 high-quality ESTs were identified. These ESTs were assembled into 43,141 putative transcripts. Of the assembled sequences, 35.6% presented no matches with existing sequences in public databases. A global analysis of the whole SUCEST data set indicated that 14,409 assembled sequences (33% of the total) contained at least one cDNA clone with a full-length insert. Annotation of the 43,141 assembled sequences associated almost 50% of the putative identified sugarcane genes with protein metabolism, cellular communication/signal transduction, bioenergetics, and stress responses. Inspection of the translated assembled sequences for conserved protein domains revealed 40,821 amino acid sequences with 1415 Pfam domains. Reassembling the consensus sequences of the 43,141 transcripts revealed a 22% redundancy in the first assembling. This indicated that possibly 33,620 unique genes had been identified and indicated that >90% of the sugarcane expressed genes were tagged. PMID:14613979

  12. 40 CFR 35.4165 - When does EPA award a TAG?

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

    2012-07-01

    ... 40 Protection of Environment 1 2012-07-01 2012-07-01 false When does EPA award a TAG? 35.4165... does EPA award a TAG? (a) EPA may award TAGs throughout the Superfund process, including during... the site is proposed for listing on the NPL. (b) Based on the availability of funds, EPA may delay...

  13. Wireless SAW passive tag temperature measurement in the collision case

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Sorokin, A.; Shepeta, A.; Wattimena, M.

    2018-04-01

    This paper describes temperature measurement in the multisensor systems based on the radio-frequency identification SAW passive tags which are currently applied in the electric power systems and the switchgears. Different approaches of temperature measurement in the collision case are shown here. The study is based on the tag model with specific topology, which allows us to determine temperature through the response signal with time-frequency information. This research considers the collision case for several passive tags as the temperature sensors which are placed in the switchgear. This research proposal is to analyze the possibility of using several SAW passive sensors in the collision case. We consider the using of the different typical elements for passive surface acoustic wave tag which applies as an anticollision passive sensor. These wireless sensors based on the surface acoustic waves tags contain specifically coded structures. This topology makes possible the reliability of increasing tag identification and the temperature measurement in the collision case. As the results for this case we illustrate simultaneous measurement of at least six sensors.

  14. Adaptive semantic tag mining from heterogeneous clinical research texts.

    PubMed

    Hao, T; Weng, C

    2015-01-01

    To develop an adaptive approach to mine frequent semantic tags (FSTs) from heterogeneous clinical research texts. We develop a "plug-n-play" framework that integrates replaceable unsupervised kernel algorithms with formatting, functional, and utility wrappers for FST mining. Temporal information identification and semantic equivalence detection were two example functional wrappers. We first compared this approach's recall and efficiency for mining FSTs from ClinicalTrials.gov to that of a recently published tag-mining algorithm. Then we assessed this approach's adaptability to two other types of clinical research texts: clinical data requests and clinical trial protocols, by comparing the prevalence trends of FSTs across three texts. Our approach increased the average recall and speed by 12.8% and 47.02% respectively upon the baseline when mining FSTs from ClinicalTrials.gov, and maintained an overlap in relevant FSTs with the base- line ranging between 76.9% and 100% for varying FST frequency thresholds. The FSTs saturated when the data size reached 200 documents. Consistent trends in the prevalence of FST were observed across the three texts as the data size or frequency threshold changed. This paper contributes an adaptive tag-mining framework that is scalable and adaptable without sacrificing its recall. This component-based architectural design can be potentially generalizable to improve the adaptability of other clinical text mining methods.

  15. InkTag: Secure Applications on an Untrusted Operating System

    PubMed Central

    Hofmann, Owen S.; Kim, Sangman; Dunn, Alan M.; Lee, Michael Z.; Witchel, Emmett

    2014-01-01

    InkTag is a virtualization-based architecture that gives strong safety guarantees to high-assurance processes even in the presence of a malicious operating system. InkTag advances the state of the art in untrusted operating systems in both the design of its hypervisor and in the ability to run useful applications without trusting the operating system. We introduce paraverification, a technique that simplifies the InkTag hypervisor by forcing the untrusted operating system to participate in its own verification. Attribute-based access control allows trusted applications to create decentralized access control policies. InkTag is also the first system of its kind to ensure consistency between secure data and metadata, ensuring recoverability in the face of system crashes. PMID:24429939

  16. Feasibility of Surgically Implanting Acoustic Tags into Pacific Herring

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Hershberger, Paul K.; Gregg, Jacob L.; Seitz, A.C.; Norcross, Brenda L.; Payne, J.C.; Kagley, A.N.; Meloy, B

    2010-01-01

    Internally implanted acoustic tags represent a potentially valuable approach to assessing the seasonal migration and distribution patterns of Pacific herring Clupea palasii. We examined the feasibility of implanting two sizes of dummy acoustic tags (9 mm in diameter × 21 mm long, 1.6 g; and 7 mm in diameter × 18 mm long, 0.7 g) in Pacific herring that had been held in captivity for nearly a year and that ranged from 165 to 215 mm in fork length (FL) and from 41.6 to 142.6 g. Relatively low mortality (4%) and tag shedding (4%), as well as growth similar to that observed in control fish after 135 d, indicate that, with proper handling, Pacific herring are amenable to surgical implantation of acoustic tags.

  17. Solid tags for identifying failed reactor components

    DOEpatents

    Bunch, Wilbur L.; Schenter, Robert E.

    1987-01-01

    A solid tag material which generates stable detectable, identifiable, and measurable isotopic gases on exposure to a neutron flux to be placed in a nuclear reactor component, particularly a fuel element, in order to identify the reactor component in event of its failure. Several tag materials consisting of salts which generate a multiplicity of gaseous isotopes in predetermined ratios are used to identify different reactor components.

  18. MO-G-18C-03: Evaluation of Deformable Image Registration for Lung Motion Estimation Using Hyperpolarized Gas Tagging MRI

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Huang, Q; Zhang, Y; Liu, Y

    2014-06-15

    Purpose: Hyperpolarized gas (HP) tagging MRI is a novel imaging technique for direct measurement of lung motion during breathing. This study aims to quantitatively evaluate the accuracy of deformable image registration (DIR) in lung motion estimation using HP tagging MRI as references. Methods: Three healthy subjects were imaged using the HP MR tagging, as well as a high-resolution 3D proton MR sequence (TrueFISP) at the end-of-inhalation (EOI) and the end-of-exhalation (EOE). Ground truth of lung motion and corresponding displacement vector field (tDVF) was derived from HP tagging MRI by manually tracking the displacement of tagging grids between EOI and EOE.more » Seven different DIR methods were applied to the high-resolution TrueFISP MR images (EOI and EOE) to generate the DIR-based DVFs (dDVF). The DIR methods include Velocity (VEL), MIM, Mirada, multi-grid B-spline from Elastix (MGB) and 3 other algorithms from DIRART toolbox (Double Force Demons (DFD), Improved Lucas-Kanade (ILK), and Iterative Optical Flow (IOF)). All registrations were performed by independent experts. Target registration error (TRE) was calculated as tDVF – dDVF. Analysis was performed for the entire lungs, and separately for the upper and lower lungs. Results: Significant differences between tDVF and dDVF were observed. Besides the DFD and IOF algorithms, all other dDVFs showed similarity in deformation magnitude distribution but away from the ground truth. The average TRE for entire lung ranged 2.5−23.7mm (mean=8.8mm), depending on the DIR method and subject's breathing amplitude. Larger TRE (13.3–23.7mm) was found in subject with larger breathing amplitude of 45.6mm. TRE was greater in lower lung (2.5−33.9 mm, mean=12.4mm) than that in upper lung (2.5−11.9 mm, mean=5.8mm). Conclusion: Significant differences were observed in lung motion estimation between the HP gas tagging MRI method and the DIR methods, especially when lung motion is large. Large variation among different

  19. Learning Semantic Tags from Big Data for Clinical Text Representation.

    PubMed

    Li, Yanpeng; Liu, Hongfang

    2015-01-01

    In clinical text mining, it is one of the biggest challenges to represent medical terminologies and n-gram terms in sparse medical reports using either supervised or unsupervised methods. Addressing this issue, we propose a novel method for word and n-gram representation at semantic level. We first represent each word by its distance with a set of reference features calculated by reference distance estimator (RDE) learned from labeled and unlabeled data, and then generate new features using simple techniques of discretization, random sampling and merging. The new features are a set of binary rules that can be interpreted as semantic tags derived from word and n-grams. We show that the new features significantly outperform classical bag-of-words and n-grams in the task of heart disease risk factor extraction in i2b2 2014 challenge. It is promising to see that semantics tags can be used to replace the original text entirely with even better prediction performance as well as derive new rules beyond lexical level.

  20. LDRD final report on imaging self-organization of proteins in membranes by photocatalytic nano-tagging.

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Zavadil, Kevin Robert; Shelnutt, John Allen; Sasaki, Darryl Yoshio

    We have developed a new nanotagging technology for detecting and imaging the self-organization of proteins and other components of membranes at nanometer resolution for the purpose of investigating cell signaling and other membrane-mediated biological processes. We used protein-, lipid-, or drug-bound porphyrin photocatalysts to grow in-situ nanometer-sized metal particles, which reveal the location of the porphyrin-labeled molecules by electron microscopy. We initially used photocatalytic nanotagging to image assembled multi-component proteins and to monitor the distribution of lipids and porphyrin labels in liposomes. For example, by exchanging the heme molecules in hemoproteins with a photocatalytic tin porphyrin, a nanoparticle was grownmore » at each heme site of the protein. The result obtained from electron microscopy for a tagged multi-subunit protein such as hemoglobin is a symmetric constellation of a specific number of nanoparticle tags, four in the case of the hemoglobin tetramer. Methods for covalently linking photocatalytic porphyrin labels to lipids and proteins were also developed to detect and image the self-organization of lipids, protein-protein supercomplexes, and membrane-protein complexes. Procedures for making photocatalytic porphyrin-drug, porphyrin-lipid, and porphyrin-protein hybrids for non-porphyrin-binding proteins and membrane components were pursued and the first porphyrin-labeled lipids was investigated in liposomal membrane models. Our photocatalytic nanotagging technique may ultimately allow membrane self-organization and cell signaling processes to be imaged in living cells. Fluorescence and plasmonic spectra of the tagged proteins might also provide additional information about protein association and membrane organization. In addition, a porphyrin-aspirin or other NSAID hybrid may be used to grow metal nanotags for the pharmacologically important COX enzymes in membranes so that the distribution of the protein can be imaged at

  1. Tagged Neutron Source for API Inspection Systems with Greatly Enhanced Spatial Resolution

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    None

    2012-06-04

    We recently developed induced fission and transmission imaging methods with time- and directionally-tagged neutrons offer new capabilities for characterization of fissile material configurations and enhanced detection of special nuclear materials (SNM). An Advanced Associated Particle Imaging (API) generator with higher angular resolution and neutron yield than existing systems is needed to fully exploit these methods.

  2. Influence of the Distribution of Tag IDs on RFID Memoryless Anti-Collision Protocols

    PubMed Central

    Cmiljanic, Nikola; Landaluce, Hugo; Perallos, Asier; Arjona, Laura

    2017-01-01

    In recent years, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) has become very popular. The main feature of this technology is that RFID tags do not require close handling and no line of sight is required between the reader and the tags. RFID is a technology that uses radio frequencies in order to identify tags, which do not need to be positioned accurately relative to the reader. Tags share the communication channel, increasing the likelihood of causing a problem, viz., a message collision. Tree based protocols can resolve these collisions, but require a uniform tag ID distribution. This means they are very dependent of the distribution of the IDs of the tags. Tag IDs are written in the tag and contain a predefined bit string of data. A study of the influence of the tag ID distribution on the protocols’ behaviour is proposed here. A new protocol, called the Flexible Query window Tree (FQwT) is presented to estimate the tag ID distribution, taking into consideration the type of distribution. The aim is to create a flexible anti-collision protocol in order to identify a set of tags that constitute an ID distribution. As a result, the reader classifies tags into groups determined by using a distribution estimator. Simulations show that the FQwT protocol contributes to significant reductions in identification time and energy consumption regardless of the type of ID distribution. PMID:28817070

  3. Influence of the Distribution of Tag IDs on RFID Memoryless Anti-Collision Protocols.

    PubMed

    Cmiljanic, Nikola; Landaluce, Hugo; Perallos, Asier; Arjona, Laura

    2017-08-17

    In recent years, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) has become very popular. The main feature of this technology is that RFID tags do not require close handling and no line of sight is required between the reader and the tags. RFID is a technology that uses radio frequencies in order to identify tags, which do not need to be positioned accurately relative to the reader. Tags share the communication channel, increasing the likelihood of causing a problem, viz., a message collision. Tree based protocols can resolve these collisions, but require a uniform tag ID distribution. This means they are very dependent of the distribution of the IDs of the tags. Tag IDs are written in the tag and contain a predefined bit string of data. A study of the influence of the tag ID distribution on the protocols' behaviour is proposed here. A new protocol, called the Flexible Query window Tree (FQwT) is presented to estimate the tag ID distribution, taking into consideration the type of distribution. The aim is to create a flexible anti-collision protocol in order to identify a set of tags that constitute an ID distribution. As a result, the reader classifies tags into groups determined by using a distribution estimator. Simulations show that the FQwT protocol contributes to significant reductions in identification time and energy consumption regardless of the type of ID distribution.

  4. Real-time single-molecule electronic DNA sequencing by synthesis using polymer-tagged nucleotides on a nanopore array

    PubMed Central

    Fuller, Carl W.; Kumar, Shiv; Porel, Mintu; Chien, Minchen; Bibillo, Arek; Stranges, P. Benjamin; Dorwart, Michael; Tao, Chuanjuan; Li, Zengmin; Guo, Wenjing; Shi, Shundi; Korenblum, Daniel; Trans, Andrew; Aguirre, Anne; Liu, Edward; Harada, Eric T.; Pollard, James; Bhat, Ashwini; Cech, Cynthia; Yang, Alexander; Arnold, Cleoma; Palla, Mirkó; Hovis, Jennifer; Chen, Roger; Morozova, Irina; Kalachikov, Sergey; Russo, James J.; Kasianowicz, John J.; Davis, Randy; Roever, Stefan; Church, George M.; Ju, Jingyue

    2016-01-01

    DNA sequencing by synthesis (SBS) offers a robust platform to decipher nucleic acid sequences. Recently, we reported a single-molecule nanopore-based SBS strategy that accurately distinguishes four bases by electronically detecting and differentiating four different polymer tags attached to the 5′-phosphate of the nucleotides during their incorporation into a growing DNA strand catalyzed by DNA polymerase. Further developing this approach, we report here the use of nucleotides tagged at the terminal phosphate with oligonucleotide-based polymers to perform nanopore SBS on an α-hemolysin nanopore array platform. We designed and synthesized several polymer-tagged nucleotides using tags that produce different electrical current blockade levels and verified they are active substrates for DNA polymerase. A highly processive DNA polymerase was conjugated to the nanopore, and the conjugates were complexed with primer/template DNA and inserted into lipid bilayers over individually addressable electrodes of the nanopore chip. When an incoming complementary-tagged nucleotide forms a tight ternary complex with the primer/template and polymerase, the tag enters the pore, and the current blockade level is measured. The levels displayed by the four nucleotides tagged with four different polymers captured in the nanopore in such ternary complexes were clearly distinguishable and sequence-specific, enabling continuous sequence determination during the polymerase reaction. Thus, real-time single-molecule electronic DNA sequencing data with single-base resolution were obtained. The use of these polymer-tagged nucleotides, combined with polymerase tethering to nanopores and multiplexed nanopore sensors, should lead to new high-throughput sequencing methods. PMID:27091962

  5. Seasonal migration and environmental conditions of Pacific halibut Hippoglossus stenolepis, elucidated from pop-up archival transmitting (PAT) tags

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Loher, Timothy; Seitz, Andrew C.

    2006-01-01

    Pop-up archival transmitting (PAT) tags were used to study the fall migration of halibut in the Gulf of Alaska (GOA). We tagged 6 Pacific halibut Hippoglossus stenolepis on summer feeding grounds in the eastern GOA and another 6 in the western GOA from June 13 to August 6, 2002. The tags were programed to be released from the fish on January 15, 2003, at the height of the winter spawning season: 10 tags successfully detached, transmitted archived environmental data (depth and temperature), and generated accurate latitude–longitude coordinates shortly after pop-up; 2 tags deployed off SE Alaska were lost. The tags revealed that 6 fish had moved a considerable distance (>200 km) between tagging and pop-up, and all of these had moved northward to some extent. The longest of the observed migrations was from the southern Alaska Peninsula to Yakutat Bay, a linear displacement of 1153 km; 4 fish showed little evidence of geographic displacement, exhibiting migrations that ranged only from 30 to 69 km. Although 2 fish had moved inshore by the end of the tagging period, all other fish had moved offshore regardless of their overall migration distance. The precise timing of offshore movements varied, beginning as early as August and as late as January. These observations generally corroborate conventional tagging, indicating migration of halibut toward winter spawning grounds in the northern GOA, and movement of fish to deep water in fall. However, no single stereotypic migration behavior was apparent, and a variety of vertical movement patterns and temperature profiles were observed. Halibut spent most time in waters of 5 to 7°C, but experienced temperatures ranging from 2.6 to 11.6°C. Depth observations ranged from 0 to 736 m, with summertime activity concentrated in depths from 0 to 400 m, and halibut that exhibited offshore movement were typically observed at 300 to 700 m by mid-winter. Vertical movement (short-period changes in depth) varied among fish and over time

  6. Technique for the application of a streamer-type fish tag

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Joeris, Leonard S.

    1953-01-01

    Principal features of the technique are: attachment of the plastic tag by means of a nylon-thread loop prepared in advance of field work; use of a curved surgical needle with cutting edge and a split eye for application of the tag. The procedures for splitting the needle's eye and for applying the tag are described and illustrated by a series of photographs.

  7. The use of archived tags in retrospective genetic analysis of fish.

    PubMed

    Bonanomi, Sara; Therkildsen, Nina Overgaard; Hedeholm, Rasmus Berg; Hemmer-Hansen, Jakob; Nielsen, Einar E

    2014-05-01

    Collections of historical tissue samples from fish (e.g. scales and otoliths) stored in museums and fisheries institutions are precious sources of DNA for conducting retrospective genetic analysis. However, in some cases, only external tags used for documentation of spatial dynamics of fish populations have been preserved. Here, we test the usefulness of fish tags as a source of DNA for genetic analysis. We extract DNA from historical tags from cod collected in Greenlandic waters between 1950 and 1968. We show that the quantity and quality of DNA recovered from tags is comparable to DNA from archived otoliths from the same individuals. Surprisingly, levels of cross-contamination do not seem to be significantly higher in DNA from external (tag) than internal (otolith) sources. Our study therefore demonstrates that historical tags can be a highly valuable source of DNA for retrospective genetic analysis of fish. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  8. Tagging and Playback Studies to Toothed Whales

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2013-09-30

    different deep-diving species, long-finned pilot whales (Globicephala melas ). b) Compare responses of beaked whales vs other odontocetes to playbacks of...deployments Playbacks Globicephala melas 1 0 Med10 Tag deployments Playbacks Globicephala melas 16 0 Ziphius cavirostris Two days of attempts 0 Med11...Tag deployments Playbacks Globicephala melas 19 8 (4 animals, KW + PRN) 3 RESULTS Over the past three years, we have developed a powerful

  9. Backward Channel Protection Based on Randomized Tree-Walking Algorithm and Its Analysis for Securing RFID Tag Information and Privacy

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Choi, Wonjoon; Yoon, Myungchul; Roh, Byeong-Hee

    Eavesdropping on backward channels in RFID environments may cause severe privacy problems because it means the exposure of personal information related to tags that each person has. However, most existing RFID tag security schemes are focused on the forward channel protections. In this paper, we propose a simple but effective method to solve the backward channel eavesdropping problem based on Randomized-tree walking algorithm for securing tag ID information and privacy in RFID-based applications. In order to show the efficiency of the proposed scheme, we derive two performance models for the cases when CRC is used and not used. It is shown that the proposed method can lower the probability of eavesdropping on backward channels near to ‘0.’

  10. Recoveries of tagged, hatchery-reared lake trout from Lake Superior

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Buettner, Howard J.

    1961-01-01

    Plantings that totaled 13,384 tagged, hatchery-reared lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush)—18, 25, 30, or 37 months old—were made at four Lake Superior localities in 1955-57 to: measure possible increases of return from rearing to greater size and age; study the effect of season of planting on the rate of return; compare returns from different types of tags; and follow the movements of hatchery-reared fish. The great advantage of spring over fall planting, demonstrated for fingerling lake trout in earlier experiments, did not hold for fish planted at ages of 18 to 37 months. The improvement of recovery rates with increase of age over the same 18- to 37-month interval appears to be too small to justify the cost of rearing to the higher ages. The recovery rates were closely similar (3.9 to 4.8 percent) for lower-jaw tags and two types of nylon-streamer tags but were much lower than the rate for Petersen tags (12.4 percent). The pins of Petersen tags render the fish highly vulnerable to entanglement in the webbing of gill nets, the principal gear in Lake Superior. Recoveries of Petersen tags also came earlier after planting than did those of other tags. The time between planting and recovery and the distance traveled by the fish were clearly but not closely correlated. Mean distance between points of planting and recovery increased with time out, and average time out increased with the number of miles traveled. More than half of the recoveries of fish that had been at liberty over 2 years were made within 25 miles of the point of release.

  11. HapMap tagSNP transferability in multiple populations: general guidelines

    PubMed Central

    Xing, Jinchuan; Witherspoon, David J.; Watkins, W. Scott; Zhang, Yuhua; Tolpinrud, Whitney; Jorde, Lynn B.

    2008-01-01

    This PDF receipt will only be used as the basis for generating PubMed Central (PMC) documents. PMC documents will be made available for review after conversion (approx. 2–3 weeks time). Any corrections that need to be made will be done at that time. No materials will be released to PMC without the approval of an author. Only the PMC documents will appear on PubMed Central -- this PDF Receipt will not appear on PubMed Central. Linkage disequilibrium (LD) has received much recent attention because of its value in localizing disease-causing genes. Due to the extensive LD between neighboring loci in the human genome, it is believed that a subset of the single nucleotide polymorphisms in a region (tagSNPs) can be selected to capture most of the remaining SNP variants. In this study, we examined LD patterns and HapMap tagSNP transferability in more than 300 individuals. A South Indian and an African Mbuti Pygmy population sample were included to evaluate the performance of HapMap tagSNPs in geographically distinct and genetically isolated populations. Our results show that HapMap tagSNPs selected with r2 >= 0.8 can capture more than 85% of the SNPs in populations that are from the same continental group. Combined tagSNPs from HapMap CEU and CHB+JPT serve as the best reference for the Indian sample. The HapMap YRI are a sufficient reference for tagSNP selection in the Pygmy sample. In addition to our findings, we reviewed over 25 recent studies of tagSNP transferability and propose a general guideline for selecting tagSNPs from HapMap populations. PMID:18482828

  12. Cost-effective HLA typing with tagging SNPs predicts celiac disease risk haplotypes in the Finnish, Hungarian, and Italian populations.

    PubMed

    Koskinen, Lotta; Romanos, Jihane; Kaukinen, Katri; Mustalahti, Kirsi; Korponay-Szabo, Ilma; Barisani, Donatella; Bardella, Maria Teresa; Ziberna, Fabiana; Vatta, Serena; Széles, György; Pocsai, Zsuzsa; Karell, Kati; Haimila, Katri; Adány, Róza; Not, Tarcisio; Ventura, Alessandro; Mäki, Markku; Partanen, Jukka; Wijmenga, Cisca; Saavalainen, Päivi

    2009-04-01

    Human leukocyte antigen (HLA) genes, located on chromosome 6p21.3, have a crucial role in susceptibility to various autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, such as celiac disease and type 1 diabetes. Certain HLA heterodimers, namely DQ2 (encoded by the DQA1*05 and DQB1*02 alleles) and DQ8 (DQA1*03 and DQB1*0302), are necessary for the development of celiac disease. Traditional genotyping of HLA genes is laborious, time-consuming, and expensive. A novel HLA-genotyping method, using six HLA-tagging single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and suitable for high-throughput approaches, was described recently. Our aim was to validate this method in the Finnish, Hungarian, and Italian populations. The six previously reported HLA-tagging SNPs were genotyped in patients with celiac disease and in healthy individuals from Finland, Hungary, and two distinct regions of Italy. The potential of this method was evaluated in analyzing how well the tag SNP results correlate with the HLA genotypes previously determined using traditional HLA-typing methods. Using the tagging SNP method, it is possible to determine the celiac disease risk haplotypes accurately in Finnish, Hungarian, and Italian populations, with specificity and sensitivity ranging from 95% to 100%. In addition, it predicts homozygosity and heterozygosity for a risk haplotype, allowing studies on genotypic risk effects. The method is transferable between populations and therefore suited for large-scale research studies and screening of celiac disease among high-risk individuals or at the population level.

  13. Single cell analysis using surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) tags

    PubMed Central

    Nolan, John P.; Duggan, Erika; Liu, Er; Condello, Danilo; Dave, Isha; Stoner, Samuel A.

    2013-01-01

    Fluorescence is a mainstay of bioanalytical methods, offering sensitive and quantitative reporting, often in multiplexed or multiparameter assays. Perhaps the best example of the latter is flow cytometry, where instruments equipped with multiple lasers and detectors allow measurement of 15 or more different fluorophores simultaneously, but increases beyond this number are limited by the relatively broad emission spectra. Surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) from metal nanoparticles can produce signal intensities that rival fluorescence, but with narrower spectral features that allow a greater degree of multiplexing. We are developing nanoparticle SERS tags as well as Raman flow cytometers for multiparameter single cell analysis of suspension or adherent cells. SERS tags are based on plasmonically active nanoparticles (gold nanorods) whose plasmon resonance can be tuned to give optimal SERS signals at a desired excitation wavelength. Raman resonant compounds are adsorbed on the nanoparticles to confer a unique spectral fingerprint on each SERS tag, which are then encapsulated in a polymer coating for conjugation to antibodies or other targeting molecules. Raman flow cytometry employs a high resolution spectral flow cytometer capable of measuring the complete SERS spectra, as well as conventional flow cytometry measurements, from thousands of individual cells per minute. Automated spectral unmixing algorithms extract the contributions of each SERS tag from each cell to generate high content, multiparameter single cell population data. SERS-based cytometry is a powerful complement to conventional fluorescence-based cytometry. The narrow spectral features of the SERS signal enables more distinct probes to be measured in a smaller region of the optical spectrum with a single laser and detector, allowing for higher levels of multiplexing and multiparameter analysis. PMID:22498143

  14. Evaluation of coded wire tags for marking lake trout

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Elrod, Joseph H.; Schneider, Clifford P.

    1986-01-01

    Among hatchery-reared lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush) of the 1979-1982 year classes stocked in New York waters of Lake Ontario, more than 3 million fish were marked with a coded wire tag (CWT) plus an adipose fin clip, and 1.5 million with only conventional fin clips. Altogether, 7,640 tags were recovered from fish collected with bottom trawls and gill nets or caught by anglers during 1980-1983. One person was able to extract and decipher 200 or more CWTs per day with about a 1% error rate in reading and recording codes. Presence of the CWT did not affect growth. The adipose fin clip did not regenerate. The occurrence of fish with an adipose fin clip but no CWT resulted primarily from the regeneration of paired fins among fish marked with a combination of the adipose fin and a paired fin. Loss of CWTs between marking and stocking (generally 4-5 months for fish stocked in spring and 1-8 d for fish stocked in fall) declined from nearly 11% for the 1979 year class stocked as fall fingerlings to less than 3% for the 1981 and 1982 year classes - a difference that primarily reflected improvements in instrumentation and tagging technique. The rate of CWT loss after the marked fish were stocked was probably less than 1% per year. The CWT is a reliable method for marking hatchery-reared lake trout. A large number of experimental groups can be uniquely marked, and fish from each group can be accurately identified throughout their life. Use of this technique should greatly facilitate evaluations of genetic strain, hatchery experience, condition at time of stocking, season of stocking, size at stocking, method of stocking and other factors that affect poststocking survival and performance of lake trout stocked in the Great Lakes.

  15. N-terminal processing of affinity-tagged recombinant proteins purified by IMAC procedures.

    PubMed

    Mooney, Jane T; Fredericks, Dale P; Christensen, Thorkild; Bruun Schiødt, Christine; Hearn, Milton T W

    2015-07-01

    The ability of a new class of metal binding tags to facilitate the purification of recombinant proteins, exemplified by the tagged glutathione S-transferase and human growth hormone, from Escherichia coli fermentation broths and lysates has been further investigated. These histidine-containing tags exhibit high affinity for borderline metal ions chelated to the immobilised ligand, 1,4,7-triazacyclononane (tacn). The use of this tag-tacn immobilised metal ion affinity chromatography (IMAC) system engenders high selectivity with regard to host cell protein removal and permits facile tag removal from the E. coli-expressed recombinant protein. In particular, these tags were specifically designed to enable their efficient removal by the dipeptidyl aminopeptidase 1 (DAP-1), thus capturing the advantages of high substrate specificity and rates of cleavage. MALDI-TOF MS analysis of the cleaved products from the DAP-1 digestion of the recombinant N-terminally tagged proteins confirmed the complete removal of the tag within 4-12 h under mild experimental conditions. Overall, this study demonstrates that the use of tags specifically designed to target tacn-based IMAC resins offers a comprehensive and flexible approach for the purification of E. coli-expressed recombinant proteins, where complete removal of the tag is an essential prerequisite for subsequent application of the purified native proteins in studies aimed at delineating the molecular and cellular basis of specific biological processes. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  16. Role of attentional tags in working memory-driven attentional capture.

    PubMed

    Kuo, Chun-Yu; Chao, Hsuan-Fu

    2014-08-01

    Recent studies have demonstrated that the contents of working memory capture attention when performing a visual search task. However, it remains an intriguing and unresolved question whether all kinds of items stored in working memory capture attention. The present study investigated this issue by manipulating the attentional tags (target or distractor) associated with information maintained in working memory. The results showed that working memory-driven attentional capture is a flexible process, and that attentional tags associated with items stored in working memory do modulate attentional capture. When items were tagged as a target, they automatically captured attention; however, when items were tagged as a distractor, attentional capture was reduced.

  17. 9 CFR 2.52 - How to obtain tags.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-01-01

    ... 9 Animals and Animal Products 1 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false How to obtain tags. 2.52 Section 2.52 Animals and Animal Products ANIMAL AND PLANT HEALTH INSPECTION SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE ANIMAL WELFARE REGULATIONS Identification of Animals § 2.52 How to obtain tags. Dealers or exhibitors may obtain...

  18. 9 CFR 2.52 - How to obtain tags.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

    2012-01-01

    ... 9 Animals and Animal Products 1 2012-01-01 2012-01-01 false How to obtain tags. 2.52 Section 2.52 Animals and Animal Products ANIMAL AND PLANT HEALTH INSPECTION SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE ANIMAL WELFARE REGULATIONS Identification of Animals § 2.52 How to obtain tags. Dealers or exhibitors may obtain...

  19. 9 CFR 2.52 - How to obtain tags.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

    2014-01-01

    ... 9 Animals and Animal Products 1 2014-01-01 2014-01-01 false How to obtain tags. 2.52 Section 2.52 Animals and Animal Products ANIMAL AND PLANT HEALTH INSPECTION SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE ANIMAL WELFARE REGULATIONS Identification of Animals § 2.52 How to obtain tags. Dealers or exhibitors may obtain...

  20. 9 CFR 2.52 - How to obtain tags.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

    2013-01-01

    ... 9 Animals and Animal Products 1 2013-01-01 2013-01-01 false How to obtain tags. 2.52 Section 2.52 Animals and Animal Products ANIMAL AND PLANT HEALTH INSPECTION SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE ANIMAL WELFARE REGULATIONS Identification of Animals § 2.52 How to obtain tags. Dealers or exhibitors may obtain...

  1. 9 CFR 2.52 - How to obtain tags.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-01-01

    ... 9 Animals and Animal Products 1 2011-01-01 2011-01-01 false How to obtain tags. 2.52 Section 2.52 Animals and Animal Products ANIMAL AND PLANT HEALTH INSPECTION SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE ANIMAL WELFARE REGULATIONS Identification of Animals § 2.52 How to obtain tags. Dealers or exhibitors may obtain...

  2. Predicting hospital visits from geo-tagged Internet search logs.

    PubMed

    Agarwal, Vibhu; Han, Lichy; Madan, Isaac; Saluja, Shaurya; Shidham, Aaditya; Shah, Nigam H

    2016-01-01

    The steady rise in healthcare costs has deprived over 45 million Americans of healthcare services (1, 2) and has encouraged healthcare providers to look for opportunities to improve their operational efficiency. Prior studies have shown that evidence of healthcare seeking intent in Internet searches correlates well with healthcare resource utilization. Given the ubiquitous nature of mobile Internet search, we hypothesized that analyzing geo-tagged mobile search logs could enable us to machine-learn predictors of future patient visits. Using a de-identified dataset of geo-tagged mobile Internet search logs, we mined text and location patterns that are predictors of healthcare resource utilization and built statistical models that predict the probability of a user's future visit to a medical facility. Our efforts will enable the development of innovative methods for modeling and optimizing the use of healthcare resources-a crucial prerequisite for securing healthcare access for everyone in the days to come.

  3. Fluorescent Labeling of COS-7 Expressing SNAP-tag Fusion Proteins for Live Cell Imaging

    PubMed Central

    Provost, Christopher R.; Sun, Luo

    2010-01-01

    SNAP-tag and CLIP-tag protein labeling systems enable the specific, covalent attachment of molecules, including fluorescent dyes, to a protein of interest in live cells. These systems offer a broad selection of fluorescent substrates optimized for a range of imaging instrumentation. Once cloned and expressed, the tagged protein can be used with a variety of substrates for numerous downstream applications without having to clone again. There are two steps to using this system: cloning and expression of the protein of interest as a SNAP-tag fusion, and labeling of the fusion with the SNAP-tag substrate of choice. The SNAP-tag is a small protein based on human O6-alkylguanine-DNA-alkyltransferase (hAGT), a DNA repair protein. SNAP-tag labels are dyes conjugated to guanine or chloropyrimidine leaving groups via a benzyl linker. In the labeling reaction, the substituted benzyl group of the substrate is covalently attached to the SNAP-tag. CLIP-tag is a modified version of SNAP-tag, engineered to react with benzylcytosine rather than benzylguanine derivatives. When used in conjunction with SNAP-tag, CLIP-tag enables the orthogonal and complementary labeling of two proteins simultaneously in the same cells. PMID:20485262

  4. Single-step affinity and cost-effective purification of recombinant proteins using the Sepharose-binding lectin-tag from the mushroom Laetiporus sulphureus as fusion partner.

    PubMed

    Li, Xiao-Jing; Liu, Jin-Ling; Gao, Dong-Sheng; Wan, Wen-Yan; Yang, Xia; Li, Yong-Tao; Chang, Hong-Tao; Chen, Lu; Wang, Chuan-Qing; Zhao, Jun

    2016-03-01

    Previous research showed that a lectin from the mushroom Laetiporus sulphureus, designed LSL, bound to Sepharose and could be eluted by lactose. In this study, by taking advantage of the strong affinity of LSL-tag for Sepharose, we developed a single-step purification method for LSL-tagged fusion proteins. We utilized unmodified Sepharose-4B as a specific adsorbent and 0.2 M lactose solution as an elution buffer. Fusion proteins of LSL-tag and porcine circovirus capsid protein, designated LSL-Cap was recovered with purity of 90 ± 4%, and yield of 87 ± 3% from crude extract of recombinant Escherichia coli. To enable the remove of LSL-tag, tobacco etch virus (TEV) protease recognition sequence was placed downstream of LSL-tag in the expression vector, and LSL-tagged TEV protease, designated LSL-TEV, was also expressed in E. coli., and was recovered with purity of 82 ± 5%, and yield of 85 ± 2% from crude extract of recombinant E. coli. After digestion of LSL-tagged recombinant proteins with LSL-TEV, the LSL tag and LSL-TEV can be easily removed by passing the digested products through the Sepharose column. It is of worthy noting that the Sepharose can be reused after washing with PBS. The LSL affinity purification method enables rapid and inexpensive purification of LSL-tagged fusion proteins and scale-up production of native proteins. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  5. Pseudo-orthogonal frequency coded wireless SAW RFID temperature sensor tags.

    PubMed

    Saldanha, Nancy; Malocha, Donald C

    2012-08-01

    SAW sensors are ideal for various wireless, passive multi-sensor applications because they are small, rugged, radiation hard, and offer a wide range of material choices for operation over broad temperature ranges. The readable distance of a tag in a multi-sensor environment is dependent on the insertion loss of the device and the processing gain of the system. Single-frequency code division multiple access (CDMA) tags that are used in high-volume commercial applications must have universal coding schemes and large numbers of codes. The use of a large number of bits at the common center frequency to achieve sufficient code diversity in CDMA tags necessitates reflector banks with >30 dB loss. Orthogonal frequency coding is a spread-spectrum approach that employs frequency and time diversity to achieve enhanced tag properties. The use of orthogonal frequency coded (OFC) SAW tags reduces adjacent reflector interactions for low insertion loss, increased range, complex coding, and system processing gain. This work describes a SAW tag-sensor platform that reduces device loss by implementing long reflector banks with optimized spectral coding. This new pseudo-OFC (POFC) coding is defined and contrasted with the previously defined OFC coding scheme. Auto- and cross-correlation properties of the chips and their relation to reflectivity per strip and reflector length are discussed. Results at 250 MHz of 8-chip OFC and POFC SAW tags will be compared. The key parameters of insertion loss, cross-correlation, and autocorrelation of the two types of frequency-coded tags will be analyzed, contrasted, and discussed. It is shown that coded reflector banks can be achieved with near-zero loss and still maintain good coding properties. Experimental results and results predicted by the coupling of modes model are presented for varying reflector designs and codes. A prototype 915-MHz POFC sensor tag is used as a wireless temperature sensor and the results are shown.

  6. Preening behavior of adult gyrfalcons tagged with backpack transmitters

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Booms, T.L.; Schempf, P.F.; Fuller, M.R.

    2011-01-01

    Radio transmitters provide data that enhance understanding of raptor biology (Walls and Kenward 2007) and are now used to answer a multitude of research questions (Meyburg and Fuller 2007). However, transmitters affect the birds that carry them (Barron et al. 2010), and it is important to document and evaluate such effects (Casper 2009). For example, decreased survival has been documented in Prairie Falcons (Falco mexicanus; Steenhof et al. 2006), Northern Goshawks (Accipiter gentilis; Reynolds et al. 2004), and Spotted Owls (Strix occidentalis; Paton et al. 1991) tagged with radio transmitters. However, no such effects were reported for Peregrine Falcons (Falco peregrinus; Fuller et al. 1998, McGrady et al. 2002) and a number of other species (Kenward 2001). White and Garrott (1990) noted that in general, animals tagged with radio transmitters often altered their behaviors for 1–14 d after release during an adjustment period that included increased preening and grooming frequencies. Although more than 90 Gyrfalcons (Falco rusticolus) have been tagged with radio transmitters (e.g., Burnham 2007, McIntyre et al. 2009, T. Booms unpubl. data), the effects of transmitters on this species are not well documented. Anecdotal information suggests some Gyrfalcons might be negatively affected by radio-tagging (Booms et al. 2008). As part of a study investigating Gyrfalcon breeding biology, we conducted opportunistic, focused observations on two radio-tagged adult female Gyrfalcons and their unmarked mates. We here describe and quantify preening behavior of Gyrfalcons shortly after radio-tagging.

  7. Barcode tagging of human oocytes and embryos to prevent mix-ups in assisted reproduction technologies.

    PubMed

    Novo, Sergi; Nogués, Carme; Penon, Oriol; Barrios, Leonardo; Santaló, Josep; Gómez-Martínez, Rodrigo; Esteve, Jaume; Errachid, Abdelhamid; Plaza, José Antonio; Pérez-García, Lluïsa; Ibáñez, Elena

    2014-01-01

    Is the attachment of biofunctionalized polysilicon barcodes to the outer surface of the zona pellucida an effective approach for the direct tagging and identification of human oocytes and embryos during assisted reproduction technologies (ARTs)? The direct tagging system based on lectin-biofunctionalized polysilicon barcodes of micrometric dimensions is simple, safe and highly efficient, allowing the identification of human oocytes and embryos during the various procedures typically conducted during an assisted reproduction cycle. Measures to prevent mismatching errors (mix-ups) of the reproductive samples are currently in place in fertility clinics, but none of them are totally effective and several mix-up cases have been reported worldwide. Using a mouse model, our group has previously developed an effective direct embryo tagging system which does not interfere with the in vitro and in vivo development of the tagged embryos. This system has now been tested in human oocytes and embryos. Fresh immature and mature fertilization-failed oocytes (n = 21) and cryopreserved day 1 embryos produced by in vitro fertilization (IVF) or intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) (n = 205) were donated by patients (n = 76) undergoing ARTs. In vitro development rates, embryo quality and post-vitrification survival were compared between tagged (n = 106) and non-tagged (control) embryos (n = 99). Barcode retention and identification rates were also calculated, both for embryos and for oocytes subjected to a simulated ICSI and parthenogenetic activation. Experiments were conducted from January 2012 to January 2013. Barcodes were fabricated in polysilicon and biofunctionalizated with wheat germ agglutinin lectin. Embryos were tagged with 10 barcodes and cultured in vitro until the blastocyst stage, when they were either differentially stained with propidium iodide and Hoechst or vitrified using the Cryotop method. Embryo quality was also analyzed by embryo grading and time

  8. Bifunctional redox tagging of carbon nanoparticles

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Poon, Jeffrey; Batchelor-McAuley, Christopher; Tschulik, Kristina; Palgrave, Robert G.; Compton, Richard G.

    2015-01-01

    Despite extensive work on the controlled surface modification of carbon with redox moieties, to date almost all available methodologies involve complex chemistry and are prone to the formation of polymerized multi-layer surface structures. Herein, the facile bifunctional redox tagging of carbon nanoparticles (diameter 27 nm) and its characterization is undertaken using the industrial dye Reactive Blue 2. The modification route is demonstrated to be via exceptionally strong physisorption. The modified carbon is found to exhibit both well-defined oxidative and reductive voltammetric redox features which are quantitatively interpreted. The method provides a generic approach to monolayer modifications of carbon and carbon nanoparticle surfaces.

  9. Fully Integrated Passive UHF RFID Tag for Hash-Based Mutual Authentication Protocol.

    PubMed

    Mikami, Shugo; Watanabe, Dai; Li, Yang; Sakiyama, Kazuo

    2015-01-01

    Passive radio-frequency identification (RFID) tag has been used in many applications. While the RFID market is expected to grow, concerns about security and privacy of the RFID tag should be overcome for the future use. To overcome these issues, privacy-preserving authentication protocols based on cryptographic algorithms have been designed. However, to the best of our knowledge, evaluation of the whole tag, which includes an antenna, an analog front end, and a digital processing block, that runs authentication protocols has not been studied. In this paper, we present an implementation and evaluation of a fully integrated passive UHF RFID tag that runs a privacy-preserving mutual authentication protocol based on a hash function. We design a single chip including the analog front end and the digital processing block. We select a lightweight hash function supporting 80-bit security strength and a standard hash function supporting 128-bit security strength. We show that when the lightweight hash function is used, the tag completes the protocol with a reader-tag distance of 10 cm. Similarly, when the standard hash function is used, the tag completes the protocol with the distance of 8.5 cm. We discuss the impact of the peak power consumption of the tag on the distance of the tag due to the hash function.

  10. Fully Integrated Passive UHF RFID Tag for Hash-Based Mutual Authentication Protocol

    PubMed Central

    Mikami, Shugo; Watanabe, Dai; Li, Yang; Sakiyama, Kazuo

    2015-01-01

    Passive radio-frequency identification (RFID) tag has been used in many applications. While the RFID market is expected to grow, concerns about security and privacy of the RFID tag should be overcome for the future use. To overcome these issues, privacy-preserving authentication protocols based on cryptographic algorithms have been designed. However, to the best of our knowledge, evaluation of the whole tag, which includes an antenna, an analog front end, and a digital processing block, that runs authentication protocols has not been studied. In this paper, we present an implementation and evaluation of a fully integrated passive UHF RFID tag that runs a privacy-preserving mutual authentication protocol based on a hash function. We design a single chip including the analog front end and the digital processing block. We select a lightweight hash function supporting 80-bit security strength and a standard hash function supporting 128-bit security strength. We show that when the lightweight hash function is used, the tag completes the protocol with a reader-tag distance of 10 cm. Similarly, when the standard hash function is used, the tag completes the protocol with the distance of 8.5 cm. We discuss the impact of the peak power consumption of the tag on the distance of the tag due to the hash function. PMID:26491714

  11. Challenges and opportunities in the purification of recombinant tagged proteins.

    PubMed

    Pina, Ana Sofia; Lowe, Christopher R; Roque, Ana Cecília A

    2014-01-01

    The purification of recombinant proteins by affinity chromatography is one of the most efficient strategies due to the high recovery yields and purity achieved. However, this is dependent on the availability of specific affinity adsorbents for each particular target protein. The diversity of proteins to be purified augments the complexity and number of specific affinity adsorbents needed, and therefore generic platforms for the purification of recombinant proteins are appealing strategies. This justifies why genetically encoded affinity tags became so popular for recombinant protein purification, as these systems only require specific ligands for the capture of the fusion protein through a pre-defined affinity tag tail. There is a wide range of available affinity pairs "tag-ligand" combining biological or structural affinity ligands with the respective binding tags. This review gives a general overview of the well-established "tag-ligand" systems available for fusion protein purification and also explores current unconventional strategies under development. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  12. Tagging RDT&E. Volume 1. Technology Assessment and Development Reports

    DTIC Science & Technology

    1994-03-01

    weapon system component could have a unique, counterfeit and transfer resistant, and tamper indicating identifier (or tag), inspectors could...the random nature of the reflective surfaces on each particle, the tag is highly resistant to counterfeiting . Sym t, n- BDM Jnvolvement RPT Sandia...layers) that tampering has occurred. A reflective particle (RP) disk was added by PNL to increase the difficulty of counterfeiting the tag and to make

  13. PASTE: patient-centered SMS text tagging in a medication management system.

    PubMed

    Stenner, Shane P; Johnson, Kevin B; Denny, Joshua C

    2012-01-01

    To evaluate the performance of a system that extracts medication information and administration-related actions from patient short message service (SMS) messages. Mobile technologies provide a platform for electronic patient-centered medication management. MyMediHealth (MMH) is a medication management system that includes a medication scheduler, a medication administration record, and a reminder engine that sends text messages to cell phones. The object of this work was to extend MMH to allow two-way interaction using mobile phone-based SMS technology. Unprompted text-message communication with patients using natural language could engage patients in their healthcare, but presents unique natural language processing challenges. The authors developed a new functional component of MMH, the Patient-centered Automated SMS Tagging Engine (PASTE). The PASTE web service uses natural language processing methods, custom lexicons, and existing knowledge sources to extract and tag medication information from patient text messages. A pilot evaluation of PASTE was completed using 130 medication messages anonymously submitted by 16 volunteers via a website. System output was compared with manually tagged messages. Verified medication names, medication terms, and action terms reached high F-measures of 91.3%, 94.7%, and 90.4%, respectively. The overall medication name F-measure was 79.8%, and the medication action term F-measure was 90%. Other studies have demonstrated systems that successfully extract medication information from clinical documents using semantic tagging, regular expression-based approaches, or a combination of both approaches. This evaluation demonstrates the feasibility of extracting medication information from patient-generated medication messages.

  14. PASTE: patient-centered SMS text tagging in a medication management system

    PubMed Central

    Johnson, Kevin B; Denny, Joshua C

    2011-01-01

    Objective To evaluate the performance of a system that extracts medication information and administration-related actions from patient short message service (SMS) messages. Design Mobile technologies provide a platform for electronic patient-centered medication management. MyMediHealth (MMH) is a medication management system that includes a medication scheduler, a medication administration record, and a reminder engine that sends text messages to cell phones. The object of this work was to extend MMH to allow two-way interaction using mobile phone-based SMS technology. Unprompted text-message communication with patients using natural language could engage patients in their healthcare, but presents unique natural language processing challenges. The authors developed a new functional component of MMH, the Patient-centered Automated SMS Tagging Engine (PASTE). The PASTE web service uses natural language processing methods, custom lexicons, and existing knowledge sources to extract and tag medication information from patient text messages. Measurements A pilot evaluation of PASTE was completed using 130 medication messages anonymously submitted by 16 volunteers via a website. System output was compared with manually tagged messages. Results Verified medication names, medication terms, and action terms reached high F-measures of 91.3%, 94.7%, and 90.4%, respectively. The overall medication name F-measure was 79.8%, and the medication action term F-measure was 90%. Conclusion Other studies have demonstrated systems that successfully extract medication information from clinical documents using semantic tagging, regular expression-based approaches, or a combination of both approaches. This evaluation demonstrates the feasibility of extracting medication information from patient-generated medication messages. PMID:21984605

  15. An advanced method of contributing emissions to short-lived chemical species (OH and HO2): the TAGGING 1.1 submodel based on the Modular Earth Submodel System (MESSy 2.53)

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Rieger, Vanessa S.; Mertens, Mariano; Grewe, Volker

    2018-06-01

    To mitigate the human impact on climate change, it is essential to determine the contribution of emissions to the concentration of trace gases. In particular, the source attribution of short-lived species such as OH and HO2 is important as they play a crucial role for atmospheric chemistry. This study presents an advanced version of a tagging method for OH and HO2 (HOx) which attributes HOx concentrations to emissions. While the former version (V1.0) only considered 12 reactions in the troposphere, the new version (V1.1), presented here, takes 19 reactions in the troposphere into account. For the first time, the main chemical reactions for the HOx chemistry in the stratosphere are also regarded (in total 27 reactions). To fully take into account the main HO2 source by the reaction of H and O2, the tagging of the H radical is introduced. In order to ensure the steady-state assumption, we introduce rest terms which balance the deviation of HOx production and loss. This closes the budget between the sum of all contributions and the total concentration. The contributions to OH and HO2 obtained by the advanced tagging method V1.1 deviate from V1.0 in certain source categories. For OH, major changes are found in the categories biomass burning, biogenic emissions and methane decomposition. For HO2, the contributions differ strongly in the categories biogenic emissions and methane decomposition. As HOx reacts with ozone (O3), carbon monoxide (CO), reactive nitrogen compounds (NOy), non-methane hydrocarbons (NMHCs) and peroxyacyl nitrates (PAN), the contributions to these species are also modified by the advanced HOx tagging method V1.1. The contributions to NOy, NMHC and PAN show only little change, whereas O3 from biogenic emissions and methane decomposition increases in the tropical troposphere. Variations for CO from biogenic emissions and biomass burning are only found in the Southern Hemisphere.

  16. 78 FR 16133 - Availability of E-Tag Information to Commission Staff

    Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

    2013-03-14

    ... available to the Commission pursuant to Order No. 771 as being submitted pursuant to a request for... Intra-Balancing Authority e-Tags in the same manner as interchange e-Tags; and the requirement on... Commission as an addressee on the e-Tags. In response to this rule, requests for rehearing and/or...

  17. Instantaneous characterization of vegetable oils via TAG and FFA profiles by easy ambient sonic-spray ionization mass spectrometry.

    PubMed

    Simas, Rosineide C; Catharino, Rodrigo R; Cunha, Ildenize B S; Cabral, Elaine C; Barrera-Arellano, Daniel; Eberlin, Marcos N; Alberici, Rosana M

    2010-04-01

    A fast and reliable method is presented for the analysis of vegetable oils. Easy ambient sonic-spray ionization mass spectrometry (EASI-MS) is shown to efficiently desorb and ionize the main oil constituents from an inert surface under ambient conditions and to provide comprehensive triacylglyceride (TAG) and free fatty acid (FFA) profiles detected mainly as either [TAG + Na](+) or [FFA-H](-) ions. EASI(+/-)-MS analysis is simple, easily implemented, requires just a tiny droplet of the oil and is performed without any pre-separation or chemical manipulation. It also causes no fragmentation of TAG ions hence diacylglyceride (DAG) and monoacylglyceride (MAG) profiles and contents can also be measured. The EASI(+/-)-MS profiles of TAG and FFA permit authentication and quality control and can be used, for instance, to access levels of adulteration, acidity, oxidation or hydrolysis of vegetable oils in general.

  18. Tag SNP selection via a genetic algorithm.

    PubMed

    Mahdevar, Ghasem; Zahiri, Javad; Sadeghi, Mehdi; Nowzari-Dalini, Abbas; Ahrabian, Hayedeh

    2010-10-01

    Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) provide valuable information on human evolutionary history and may lead us to identify genetic variants responsible for human complex diseases. Unfortunately, molecular haplotyping methods are costly, laborious, and time consuming; therefore, algorithms for constructing full haplotype patterns from small available data through computational methods, Tag SNP selection problem, are convenient and attractive. This problem is proved to be an NP-hard problem, so heuristic methods may be useful. In this paper we present a heuristic method based on genetic algorithm to find reasonable solution within acceptable time. The algorithm was tested on a variety of simulated and experimental data. In comparison with the exact algorithm, based on brute force approach, results show that our method can obtain optimal solutions in almost all cases and runs much faster than exact algorithm when the number of SNP sites is large. Our software is available upon request to the corresponding author.

  19. SPECHT - single-stage phosphopeptide enrichment and stable-isotope chemical tagging: quantitative phosphoproteomics of insulin action in muscle.

    PubMed

    Kettenbach, Arminja N; Sano, Hiroyuki; Keller, Susanna R; Lienhard, Gustav E; Gerber, Scott A

    2015-01-30

    The study of cellular signaling remains a significant challenge for translational and clinical research. In particular, robust and accurate methods for quantitative phosphoproteomics in tissues and tumors represent significant hurdles for such efforts. In the present work, we design, implement and validate a method for single-stage phosphopeptide enrichment and stable isotope chemical tagging, or SPECHT, that enables the use of iTRAQ, TMT and/or reductive dimethyl-labeling strategies to be applied to phosphoproteomics experiments performed on primary tissue. We develop and validate our approach using reductive dimethyl-labeling and HeLa cells in culture, and find these results indistinguishable from data generated from more traditional SILAC-labeled HeLa cells mixed at the cell level. We apply the SPECHT approach to the quantitative analysis of insulin signaling in a murine myotube cell line and muscle tissue, identify known as well as new phosphorylation events, and validate these phosphorylation sites using phospho-specific antibodies. Taken together, our work validates chemical tagging post-single-stage phosphoenrichment as a general strategy for studying cellular signaling in primary tissues. Through the use of a quantitatively reproducible, proteome-wide phosphopeptide enrichment strategy, we demonstrated the feasibility of post-phosphopeptide purification chemical labeling and tagging as an enabling approach for quantitative phosphoproteomics of primary tissues. Using reductive dimethyl labeling as a generalized chemical tagging strategy, we compared the performance of post-phosphopeptide purification chemical tagging to the well established community standard, SILAC, in insulin-stimulated tissue culture cells. We then extended our method to the analysis of low-dose insulin signaling in murine muscle tissue, and report on the analytical and biological significance of our results. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  20. DESIGN, SYNTHESIS, AND APPLICATION OF THE TRIMETHOPRIM-BASED CHEMICAL TAG FOR LIVE CELL IMAGING

    PubMed Central

    Jing, Chaoran; Cornish, Virginia W.

    2013-01-01

    Over the past decade chemical tags have been developed to complement the use of fluorescent proteins in live cell imaging. Chemical tags retain the specificity of protein labeling achieved with fluorescent proteins through genetic encoding, but provide smaller, more robust tags and modular use of organic fluorophores with high photon-output and tailored functionalities. The trimethoprim-based chemical tag (TMP-tag) was initially developed based on the high affinity interaction between E.coli dihydrofolatereductase and the antibiotic trimethoprim and subsequently rendered covalent and fluorogenic via proximity-induced protein labeling reactions. To date, the TMP-tag is one of the few chemical tags that enable intracellular protein labeling and high-resolution live cell imaging. Here we describe the general design, chemical synthesis, and application of TMP-tag for live cell imaging. Alternative protocols for synthesizing and using the covalent and the fluorogenic TMP-tags are also included. PMID:23839994

  1. Survival of Seaward-Migrating PIT and Acoustic-Tagged Juvenile Chinook Salmon in the Snake and Columbia Rivers: An Evaluation of Length-Specific Tagging Effects

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Brown, Richard S.; Oldenburg, Eric W.; Seaburg, Adam

    Studies examining the survival of juvenile salmon as they emigrate to the ocean provide important information regarding the management of regulated river systems. Acoustic telemetry is a widely used tool for evaluating the behavior and survival of juvenile salmonids in the Columbia River basin. Thus, it is important to understand how the surgical tagging process and the presence of a transmitter affect survival so any biases can be accounted for or eliminated. This study evaluated the effects of fish length and tag type on the survival of yearling and subyearling Chinook salmon during their seaward migrations through the Snake andmore » Columbia rivers during 2006, 2007, and 2008. Fish were collected at Lower Granite Dam on the Snake River (river kilometer 695) and implanted with either only a passive integrated transponder (PIT) tag (PIT fish) or both a PIT tag and an acoustic transmitter (AT fish). Survival was estimated from release at Lower Granite Dam to multiple downstream locations (dams) using the Cormack–Jolly–Seber single release model, and analysis of variance was used to test for differences among length-classes and between tag types. No length-specific tag effect was detected between PIT and AT fish (i.e., length affected the survival of PIT fish in a manner similar to which it affected the survival of AT fish). Survival among the smallest length class (i.e., 80–89 mm) of both PIT and AT subyearling Chinook salmon was markedly low (i.e., 4%). Fish length was positively correlated with the survival of both PIT and AT fish. Significant differences in survival were detected between tag types; the survival of PIT fish was generally greater than that of AT fish. However, confounding variables warrant caution in making strong inferences regarding this factor. Further, results suggest that tag effects may be due to the process of surgically implanting the transmitter rather than the presence of the transmitter.« less

  2. Application of an E. coli signal sequence as a versatile inclusion body tag.

    PubMed

    Jong, Wouter S P; Vikström, David; Houben, Diane; van den Berg van Saparoea, H Bart; de Gier, Jan-Willem; Luirink, Joen

    2017-03-21

    Heterologous protein production in Escherichia coli often suffers from bottlenecks such as proteolytic degradation, complex purification procedures and toxicity towards the expression host. Production of proteins in an insoluble form in inclusion bodies (IBs) can alleviate these problems. Unfortunately, the propensity of heterologous proteins to form IBs is variable and difficult to predict. Hence, fusing the target protein to an aggregation prone polypeptide or IB-tag is a useful strategy to produce difficult-to-express proteins in an insoluble form. When screening for signal sequences that mediate optimal targeting of heterologous proteins to the periplasmic space of E. coli, we observed that fusion to the 39 amino acid signal sequence of E. coli TorA (ssTorA) did not promote targeting but rather directed high-level expression of the human proteins hEGF, Pla2 and IL-3 in IBs. Further analysis revealed that ssTorA even mediated IB formation of the highly soluble endogenous E. coli proteins TrxA and MBP. The ssTorA also induced aggregation when fused to the C-terminus of target proteins and appeared functional as IB-tag in E. coli K-12 as well as B strains. An additive effect on IB-formation was observed upon fusion of multiple ssTorA sequences in tandem, provoking almost complete aggregation of TrxA and MBP. The ssTorA-moiety was successfully used to produce the intrinsically unstable hEGF and the toxic fusion partner SymE, demonstrating its applicability as an IB-tag for difficult-to-express and toxic proteins. We present proof-of-concept for the use of ssTorA as a small, versatile tag for robust E. coli-based expression of heterologous proteins in IBs.

  3. On the optimal identification of tag sets in time-constrained RFID configurations.

    PubMed

    Vales-Alonso, Javier; Bueno-Delgado, María Victoria; Egea-López, Esteban; Alcaraz, Juan José; Pérez-Mañogil, Juan Manuel

    2011-01-01

    In Radio Frequency Identification facilities the identification delay of a set of tags is mainly caused by the random access nature of the reading protocol, yielding a random identification time of the set of tags. In this paper, the cumulative distribution function of the identification time is evaluated using a discrete time Markov chain for single-set time-constrained passive RFID systems, namely those ones where a single group of tags is assumed to be in the reading area and only for a bounded time (sojourn time) before leaving. In these scenarios some tags in a set may leave the reader coverage area unidentified. The probability of this event is obtained from the cumulative distribution function of the identification time as a function of the sojourn time. This result provides a suitable criterion to minimize the probability of losing tags. Besides, an identification strategy based on splitting the set of tags in smaller subsets is also considered. Results demonstrate that there are optimal splitting configurations that reduce the overall identification time while keeping the same probability of losing tags.

  4. ICP-MS as a novel detection system for quantitative element-tagged immunoassay of hidden peanut allergens in foods.

    PubMed

    Careri, Maria; Elviri, Lisa; Mangia, Alessandro; Mucchino, Claudio

    2007-03-01

    A novel ICP-MS-based ELISA immunoassay via element-tagged determination was devised for quantitative analysis of hidden allergens in food. The method was able to detect low amounts of peanuts (down to approximately 2 mg peanuts kg(-1) cereal-based matrix) by using a europium-tagged antibody. Selectivity was proved by the lack of detectable cross-reaction with a number of protein-rich raw materials.

  5. Feasibility of ultra-wideband SAW RFID tags meeting FCC rules.

    PubMed

    Härmä, Sanna; Plessky, Victor P; Li, Xianyi; Hartogh, Paul

    2009-04-01

    We discuss the feasibility of surface acoustic wave (SAW) radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags that rely on ultra-wideband (UWB) technology. We propose a design of a UWB SAW tag, carry out numerical experiments on the device performance, and study signal processing in the system. We also present experimental results for the proposed device and estimate the potentially achievable reading distance. UWB SAW tags will have an extremely small chip size (<0.5 x 1 mm(2)) and a low cost. They also can provide a large number of different codes. The estimated read range for UWB SAW tags is about 2 m with a reader radiating as low as <0.1 mW power levels with an extremely low duty factor.

  6. Obstruction of critical information on over-the-counter medication packages by external tags.

    PubMed

    Sansgiry, Sujit S; Pawaskar, Manjiri D

    2005-02-01

    Over-the-counter (OTC) medication packages are important sources of information for consumers during product selection and use. Consumers may not be able to access information from OTC packages if external tags, namely price or anti-theft tags, are improperly placed. To determine the amount and type of information concealed by anti-theft tags and price tags affixed on OTC drug packages. A field study was performed by evaluating packages containing acetaminophen and combinations of acetaminophen in stores located in Houston. Five packages for 4 products selected from each store after an initial survey for presence of an external tag were examined. A data collection sheet was prepared that extracted the type and amount of information concealed by these tags. Data were analyzed by performing descriptive analyses to provide an understanding of the information obscured. A total of 24 stores were considered in the study, and 67 products and 285 packages were evaluated. External tags, both anti-theft and price tags, obscured significant amounts of information on the principal display panel (53.4%) and the Drug Facts panel (47.7%) of OTC packages. These tags concealed crucial information on various aspects of labels such as brand names (42.3%), product description (36.3%), warnings (51.5%), uses (10.4%), and purposes (7.2%). Results suggest that improper use of external tags clearly obscured important information on OTC medication packages necessary for consumers to make informed decisions regarding product selection and use. Tagging practices should be altered to allow consumers full access to drug information on the product.

  7. Design, synthesis, and application of the trimethoprim-based chemical tag for live-cell imaging.

    PubMed

    Jing, Chaoran; Cornish, Virginia W

    2013-01-01

    Over the past decade, chemical tags have been developed to complement the use of fluorescent proteins in live-cell imaging. Chemical tags retain the specificity of protein labeling achieved with fluorescent proteins through genetic encoding, but provide smaller, more robust tags and modular use of organic fluorophores with high photon output and tailored functionalities. The trimethoprim-based chemical tag (TMP-tag) was initially developed based on the high affinity interaction between E. coli dihydrofolate reductase and the antibiotic trimethoprim and was subsequently rendered covalent and fluorogenic via proximity-induced protein labeling reactions. To date, the TMP-tag is one of the few chemical tags that enable intracellular protein labeling and high-resolution live-cell imaging. Here we describe the general design, chemical synthesis, and application of TMP-tag for live-cell imaging. Alternate protocols for synthesizing and using the covalent and the fluorogenic TMP-tags are also included. © 2013 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

  8. Automatic land cover classification of geo-tagged field photos using deep learning method

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Xu, G.; Zhu, X.; Fu, D.; Dong, J.; Xiao, X.

    2016-12-01

    With the popularity of smartphones, more and more crowdsourcing geo-tagged field photos have been shared by the public online. They are becoming a potentially valuable information source for the environmental studies. However, the labelling and recognition of these photos are time-consuming. To utilise and exploit such information, this research aims to propose a land cover type recognition model for geo-tagged field photo based on the deep learning technique. This model combines a pre-trained convolutional neural network (CNN) as the image feature extractor and the softmax regression model as the feature classifier. The pre-trained CNN model Inception-v3 is used in this study. The previously labelled field photos from the Global Geo-Referenced Field Photo Library (http://eomf.ou.edu/photos) are chosen for model training and validation. The results indicate that our field photo recognition model achieves an acceptable accuracy (50.34% for top-1 prediction and 78.20% for top-3 prediction) of land cover classification. What is more important, this model can provide the probabilities for the predictions as the self-assessment of uncertainty. After filtering out the predictions with the certainty of less than 75%, the overall accuracy can increase to 80.14%, which implies that the model is fully aware of its prediction uncertainty and can quantitatively assess it. Hopefully, by proving the possibility of this type of research, other similar studies could be further conducted, such as geological and atmospheric information extraction from field photos. This research could be a critical exploration of how artificial intelligence and crowd-sourced data can help the earth studies.

  9. Batch affinity adsorption of His-tagged proteins with EDTA-based chitosan.

    PubMed

    Hua, Weiwei; Lou, Yimin; Xu, Weiyuan; Cheng, Zhixian; Gong, Xingwen; Huang, Jianying

    2016-01-01

    Affinity adsorption purification of hexahistidine-tagged (His-tagged) proteins using EDTA-chitosan-based adsorption was designed and carried out. Chitosan was elaborated with ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA), and the resulting polymer was characterized by FTIR, TGA, and TEM. Different metals including Ni(2+), Cu(2+), and Zn(2+) were immobilized with EDTA-chitosan, and their capability to the specific adsorption of His-tagged proteins were then investigated. The results showed that Ni(2+)-EDTA-chitosan and Zn(2+)-EDTA-chitosan had high affinity toward the His-tagged proteins, thus isolating them from protein mixture. The target fluorescent-labeled hexahistidine protein remained its fluorescent characteristic throughout the purification procedure when Zn(2+)-EDTA-chitosan was used as a sorbent, wherein the real-time monitor was performed to examine the immigration of fluorescent-labeled His-tagged protein. Comparatively, Zn(2+)-EDTA-chitosan showed more specific binding ability for the target protein, but with less binding capacity. It was further proved that this purification system could be recovered and reused at least for 5 times and could run on large scales. The presented M(2+)-EDTA-chitosan system, with the capability to specifically bind His-tagged proteins, make the purification of His-tagged proteins easy to handle, leaving out fussy preliminary treatment, and with the possibility of continuous processing and a reduction in operational cost in relation to the costs of conventional processes.

  10. Particle tagging and its implications for stellar population dynamics

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Le Bret, Theo; Pontzen, Andrew; Cooper, Andrew P.; Frenk, Carlos; Zolotov, Adi; Brooks, Alyson M.; Governato, Fabio; Parry, Owen H.

    2017-07-01

    We establish a controlled comparison between the properties of galactic stellar haloes obtained with hydrodynamical simulations and with 'particle tagging'. Tagging is a fast way to obtain stellar population dynamics: instead of tracking gas and star formation, it 'paints' stars directly on to a suitably defined subset of dark matter particles in a collisionless, dark-matter-only simulation. Our study shows that 'live' particle tagging schemes, where stellar masses are painted on to the dark matter particles dynamically throughout the simulation, can generate good fits to the hydrodynamical stellar density profiles of a central Milky Way-like galaxy and its most prominent substructure. Energy diffusion processes are crucial to reshaping the distribution of stars in infalling spheroidal systems and hence the final stellar halo. We conclude that the success of any particular tagging scheme hinges on this diffusion being taken into account, and discuss the role of different subgrid feedback prescriptions in driving this diffusion.

  11. Documentation and tagging of casualties in multiple casualty incidents.

    PubMed

    Garner, Alan

    2003-01-01

    The use of triage tags is widely advocated as a tool to improve the management of multiple casualty incident scenes. However, there are no published reports to suggest that triage tags have improved the management of incidents involving more than 24 persons, and a number of reports have detailed problems associated with triage tag use. Alternative systems of scene management such as geographical triage have been successfully used in very large incidents, and are recommended as an alternative to triage tags. Documentation cards attached to casualties may be of use in situations where casualties will pass through an extended evacuation chain, and clear labels for deceased casualties are of benefit as they discourage repeat assessments. Adoption of an evidence-based approach to multiple casualty incident scene management will require a paradigm shift in the thinking of ambulance services. A broad-based educational approach that encourages critical reappraisal of existing procedures is recommended.

  12. Proteome Analysis Using Isobaric Tags for Relative and Absolute Analysis Quantitation (iTRAQ) Reveals Alterations in Stress-Induced Dysfunctional Chicken Muscle.

    PubMed

    Xing, Tong; Wang, Chong; Zhao, Xue; Dai, Chen; Zhou, Guanghong; Xu, Xinglian

    2017-04-05

    The current study was designed to investigate changes in the protein profiles of pale, soft, and exudative (PSE)-like muscles of broilers subjected to transportation under high-temperature conditions, using isobaric tags for relative and absolute analysis quantitation (iTRAQ). Arbor Acres chickens (n = 112) were randomly divided into two treatments: unstressed control (CON) and 0.5 h of transport (T). Birds were transported according to a designed protocol. Pectoralis major (PM) muscle samples in the T group were collected and classified as normal (T-NOR) or PSE-like (T-PSE). Plasma activities of stress indicators, muscle microstructure, and proteome were measured. Results indicated that broilers in the T-PSE group exhibited higher activities of plasma stress indicators. The microstructure of T-PSE group showed a looser network and larger intercellular spaces in comparison to the other groups. Proteomic analysis, based on iTRAQ, revealed 29 differentially expressed proteins in the T-NOR and T-PSE groups that were involved in protein turnover, signal transduction, stress and defense, calcium handling, cell structure, and metabolism. In particular, proteins relating to the glycolysis pathway, calcium signaling, and molecular chaperones exhibited significant differences that may contribute to the inferior post-mortem meat quality. Overall, the proteomic results provide a further understanding of the mechanism of meat quality changes in response to stress.

  13. The Use of Social Tags in Text and Image Searching on the Web

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kim, Yong-Mi

    2011-01-01

    In recent years, tags have become a standard feature on a diverse range of sites on the Web, accompanying blog posts, photos, videos, and online news stories. Tags are descriptive terms attached to Internet resources. Despite the rapid adoption of tagging, how people use tags during the search process is not well understood. There is little…

  14. Monitoring and localization of buried plastic natural gas pipes using passive RF tags

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Mondal, Saikat; Kumar, Deepak; Ghazali, Mohd. Ifwat; Chahal, Prem; Udpa, Lalita; Deng, Yiming

    2018-04-01

    A passive harmonic radio frequency (RF) tag on the pipe with added sensing capabilities is proposed in this paper. Radio frequency identification (RFID) based tagging has already emerged as a potential solution for chemical sensing, location detection, animal tagging, etc. Harmonic transponders are already quite popular compared to conventional RFIDs due to their improved signal to noise ratio (SNR). However, the operating frequency, transmitted power and tag efficiency become critical issues for underground RFIDs. In this paper, a comprehensive on-tag sensing, power budget and frequency analyses is performed for buried harmonic tag design. Accurate tracking of infrastructure burial depth is proposed to reduce the probability of failure of underground pipelines. Burial depth is estimated using phase information of received signals at different frequencies calculated using genetic algorithm (GA) based optimization for post processing. Suitable frequency range is determined for a variety of soil with different moisture content for small tag-antenna size. Different types of harmonic tags such as 1) Schottky diode, 2) Non-linear Transmission Line (NLTL) were compared for underground applications. In this study, the power, frequency and tag design have been optimized to achieve small antenna size, minimum signal loss and simple reader circuit for underground detection at up to 5 feet depth in different soil medium and moisture contents.

  15. Expert system for identification of simultaneous and sequential reactor fuel failures with gas tagging

    DOEpatents

    Gross, Kenny C.

    1994-01-01

    Failure of a fuel element in a nuclear reactor core is determined by a gas tagging failure detection system and method. Failures are catalogued and characterized after the event so that samples of the reactor's cover gas are taken at regular intervals and analyzed by mass spectroscopy. Employing a first set of systematic heuristic rules which are applied in a transformed node space allows the number of node combinations which must be processed within a barycentric algorithm to be substantially reduced. A second set of heuristic rules treats the tag nodes of the most recent one or two leakers as "background" gases, further reducing the number of trial node combinations. Lastly, a "fuzzy" set theory formalism minimizes experimental uncertainties in the identification of the most likely volumes of tag gases. This approach allows for the identification of virtually any number of sequential leaks and up to five simultaneous gas leaks from fuel elements.

  16. Expert system for identification of simultaneous and sequential reactor fuel failures with gas tagging

    DOEpatents

    Gross, K.C.

    1994-07-26

    Failure of a fuel element in a nuclear reactor core is determined by a gas tagging failure detection system and method. Failures are catalogued and characterized after the event so that samples of the reactor's cover gas are taken at regular intervals and analyzed by mass spectroscopy. Employing a first set of systematic heuristic rules which are applied in a transformed node space allows the number of node combinations which must be processed within a barycentric algorithm to be substantially reduced. A second set of heuristic rules treats the tag nodes of the most recent one or two leakers as background'' gases, further reducing the number of trial node combinations. Lastly, a fuzzy'' set theory formalism minimizes experimental uncertainties in the identification of the most likely volumes of tag gases. This approach allows for the identification of virtually any number of sequential leaks and up to five simultaneous gas leaks from fuel elements. 14 figs.

  17. Electronic tagging of green sturgeon reveals population structure and movement among estuaries

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Lindley, S.T.; Erickson, D.L.; Moser, M.L.; Williams, G.; Langness, O.P.; McCovey, B.W.; Belchik, M.; Vogel, D.; Pinnix, W.; Kelly, J.T.; Heublein, J.C.; Klimley, A.P.

    2011-01-01

    Green sturgeon Acipenser medirostris spend much of their lives outside of their natal rivers, but the details of their migrations and habitat use are poorly known, which limits our understanding of how this species might be affected by human activities and habitat degradation.We tagged 355 green sturgeon with acoustic transmitters on their spawning grounds and in known nonspawning aggregation sites and examined their movement among these sites and other potentially important locations using automated data-logging hydrophones. We found that green sturgeon inhabit a number of estuarine and coastal sites over the summer, including the Columbia River estuary, Willapa Bay, Grays Harbor, and the estuaries of certain smaller rivers in Oregon, especially the Umpqua River estuary. Green sturgeon from different natal rivers exhibited different patterns of habitat use; most notably, San Francisco Bay was used only by Sacramento River fish, while the Umpqua River estuary was used mostly by fish from the Klamath and Rogue rivers. Earlier work, based on analysis of microsatellite markers, suggested that the Columbia River mixed stock was mainly composed of fish from the Sacramento River, but our results indicate that fish from the Rogue and Klamath River populations frequently use the Columbia River as well. We also found evidence for the existence of migratory contingentswithin spawning populations.Our findings have significant implications for the management of the threatened Sacramento River population of green sturgeon, which migrates to inland waters outside of California where anthropogenic impacts, including fisheries bycatch and water pollution, may be a concern. Our results also illustrate the utility of acoustic tracking to elucidate the migratory behavior of animals that are otherwise difficult to observe. ?? American Fisheries Society 2011.

  18. MR colonography with fecal tagging: do individual patient characteristics influence image quality?

    PubMed

    Kinner, Sonja; Kuehle, Christiane A; Langhorst, Jost; Ladd, Susanne C; Nuefer, Michael; Barkhausen, Joerg; Lauenstein, Thomas C

    2007-05-01

    To evaluate if different patient characteristics influence performance of fecal tagging (a new MR colonography (MRC) technique to label stool to avoid bowel cleansing) and, consecutively, MR image quality. A total of 333 patients (mean age = 61 years) underwent MRC with fecal tagging. Four segments of the large bowel (ascending, transverse, descending, and sigmoid colon) were assessed as for the presence of nontagged stool particles, which can impede an assessment of the colonic wall. Ratings were correlated with patients' characteristics including patient age (<55 vs. > or =55 years), body mass index (BMI) (<25 vs. > or =25), gender, and acceptance levels for fecal tagging. Statistical analysis was performed using a Mann-Whitney U-test. A total of 1332 colonic segments were evaluated. Among them, 327 segments (25%) did not contain any visible stool particles. Considerably reduced image quality was found in 61 segments (5%). Best image quality was found in the sigmoid colon (mean value = 1.9), while image quality of the ascending colon turned out to be worst (mean value = 2.6). Fecal tagging effectiveness showed a reverse correlation with patient age. However, all other characteristics did not have a statistically significant influence on fecal tagging outcome. MRC in conjunction with barium-based fecal tagging led to diagnostic image quality in 95% of all colonic segments. Since tagging results were significantly decreased in patients > or =55 years, tagging protocols should to be modified in this group, i.e., by increasing the time interval of tagging administration. (c) 2007 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

  19. Characterization of SV-40 Tag rats as a model to study prostate cancer

    PubMed Central

    2009-01-01

    Background Prostate cancer is the second most frequently diagnosed cancer in men. Animal models that closely mimic clinical disease in humans are invaluable tools in the fight against prostate cancer. Recently, a Simian Virus-40 T-antigen (SV-40 Tag) targeted probasin promoter rat model was developed. This model, however, has not been extensively characterized; hence we have investigated the ontogeny of prostate cancer and determined the role of sex steroid receptor and insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) signaling proteins in the novel SV-40 Tag rat. Methods The SV-40 Tag rat was histopathologically characterized for time to tumor development, incidence and multiplicity and in the ventral, dorsal, lateral and anterior lobes of the prostate. Immunoassay techniques were employed to measure cell proliferation, apoptosis, and sex steroid receptor and growth factor signaling-related proteins. Steroid hormone concentrations were measured via coated well enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) kits. Results Prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia (PIN) and well-differentiated prostate cancer developed as early as 2 and 10 weeks of age, respectively in the ventral prostate (VP) followed by in the dorsolateral (DLP). At 8 weeks of age, testosterone and dihydrotestosterone (DHT) concentrations in SV-40 Tag rats were increased when compared to non-transgenic rats. High cell proliferation and apoptotic indices were found in VP and DLP of transgenic rats. Furthermore, we observed increased protein expression of androgen receptor, IGF-1, IGF-1 receptor, and extracellular signal-regulated kinases in the prostates of SV-40 Tag rats. Conclusion The rapid development of PIN and prostate cancer in conjunction with the large prostate size makes the SV-40 Tag rat a useful model for studying prostate cancer. This study provides evidence of the role of sex steroid and growth factor proteins in prostate cancer development and defines appropriate windows of opportunity for preclinical

  20. Migration and diving behavior of Centrophorus squamosus in the NE Atlantic. Combining electronic tagging and Argo hydrography to infer deep ocean trajectories

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Rodríguez-Cabello, Cristina; González-Pola, Cesar; Sánchez, Francisco

    2016-09-01

    A total of nine leafscale gulper sharks Centrophorus squamosus (Bonnaterre, 1788), were tagged with pop-up, satellite, archival, transmitting tags (PSAT) in the Marine Protected Area (MPA) of El Cachucho (Le Danois Bank) located in waters to the north of Spain, (NE Atlantic). Tags provided data on time, pressure and temperature that were used to examine movement patterns and diving behavior. Data collected from Argo floats in the study area have been used to devise a simple geolocation algorithm to infer the probable routes followed by this species. Tag release points revealed that C. squamosus moved both to the west (Galician waters) and to the north (Porcupine Bank) from the tagging area, suggesting well defined preferred pathways. The inferred trajectories indicated that sharks alternate periods constrained to specific geographical regions with quick and prompt movements covering large distances. Two sharks made conspicuous diurnal vertical migrations being at shallower depths around midnight and at maximum depths at midday, while other sharks did not make vertical migrations. Vertical movements were done smoothly and independently of the fish swimming long-distances or resting in the area. Overall results confirm that this species is highly migratory, supporting speeds of 20 nautical miles.day-1 and well capable to swim and make vertical migrations well above the abyssal plain.