Characterization of template switching and recombination during Moloney murine leukemia virus replication

Retroviruses uniquely co-package two copies of their genomic RNA within each virion. The two copies are used as templates for synthesis of the proviral DNA during the process of reverse transcription. Two template switches are required to complete retroviral DNA synthesis by the retroviral enzyme, reverse transcriptase. With two RNA genomes present in the virion, reverse transcriptase can make template switches utilizing only one of the RNA templates (intramolecular) or utilizing both RNA templates (intermolecular) during the process of reverse transcription. The results presented in this study show that during a single cycle of Moloney murine leukemia virus replication, both nonrecombinant and recombinant proviruses predominantly underwent intramolecular minus- and plus-strand transfers during the process of reverse transcription. This is the first study to examine the nature of the required template switches occurring during MLV replication and these results support the previous findings for SNV, and the hypothesis that the required template switches are ordered events. This study also determined rates for deletion and a rate of recombination for a single cycle of MLV replication. The rates reported here are comparable to the rates previously reported for both SNV and MLV. ^

‘The best thing I’ve ever done is ring these people…’: Making a Difference through Family Support

Effective family support strategies offer early intervention and help for families and children at risk of experiencing social exclusion and maltreatment. This paper reports a study which evaluated client outcomes from participation in an Intensive Family Support Service by comparing views of workers and service users on perceived benefits. It profiles the characteristics and circumstances of families recruited to service, services and interventions delivered and the potential of IFSS to lead to safe and positive outcomes for children and families. Findings discussed highlight the individualized and collaborative approach and the high degree of engagement with service users that facilitated gains in the domains of child and family functioning targeted. Implications of the findings for policy and practice in responding to vulnerable families and children are discussed.

Manual constitucional para la práctica de IVE. Lineamientos constitucionales para el ejercicio del derecho al aborto en Colombia

Los derechos y obligaciones constitucionales frente a la prestación del servicio de aborto, reconocidos a partir de la sentencia C-355/06 y la jurisprudencia posterior de la Corte Constitucional, tienen plena vigencia. Sin embargo, la suspensión del Decreto Reglamentario 4444 del Ministerio de Protección Social por parte del Consejo de Estado, ha creado una confusión generalizada que puede poner en peligro los derechos a la vida, a la salud, a la integridad personal y a la dignidad humana de las mujeres colombianas. Por esta razón Women´s Link Worldwide decide elaborar esta publicación, que compila de manera sistemática los diferentes lineamientos constitucionales que deben seguirse para la práctica de interrupciones voluntarias del embarazo (IVE)

Norma técnica para la atención de la interrupción voluntaria del embarazo (IVE).

Adaptado de "Aborto sin riesgo: Guía técnica y de políticas para sistemas de salud” - Organización Mundial de la Salud - Ginebra 2003

Manual de procedimientos para el manejo sanitario de la interrupción voluntaria del embarazo (IVE): según Ley 18.987 del 17.10.2012

El presente Manual promueve la implementación, en el marco de la Ley 18987, de la regulación de la interrupción voluntaria del embarazo en condiciones específicas. Esta ley, junto con la 18426, busca asegurar el ejercicio pleno de los derechos sexuales y reproductivos de la población y garantizar el derecho a la procreación consciente y responsable. Su propósito es bregar por la sistematización de prácticas que aseguren la calidad de atención, el trato digno y el respeto a derechos en la implementación de la interrupción voluntaria del embarazo (IVE). Se enmarca en los avances en la atención de la salud sexual y reproductiva, con perspectiva de derechos y género, en particular vinculada a la disminución de riesgos y daños del aborto inseguro y a las consecuencias del embarazo no intencional ni planificado, al descenso de la mortalidad y morbilidad de las mujeres, - ya avanzada en el país mediante la instrumentación de la Normativa “Medidas de protección materna frente al aborto provocado en condiciones de riesgo”.

Guía técnica para la interrupción voluntaria del embarazo (IVE).

Este documento se preparó de acuerdo con las recomendaciones de la OMS incluidas en la 2ª edición de la “Guía Técnica y de Políticas para Sistemas de Salud, Aborto sin Riesgo” con algunas modificaciones basadas en las condiciones locales (2012). No debe ser interpretado como una norma que dicta una forma exclusiva de tratamiento. Podrán introducirse variaciones en la práctica basadas en las necesidades individuales de las pacientes o de acuerdo a los recursos y limitaciones institucionales. El uso de las recomendaciones clínicas debe adaptarse a cada mujer, y se debe enfatizar su condición clínica y el método de aborto específico que se utilizará. Se considerarán, de ser factible, las preferencias de cada mujer respecto de la atención.

Stress Detection by means of Stress Physiological Template

This paper describes a stress detection system based on fuzzy logic and two physiological signals: Galvanic Skin Response and Heart Rate. Instead of providing a global stress classification, this approach creates an individual stress templates, gathering the behaviour of individuals under situations with different degrees of stress. The proposed method is able to detect stress properly with a rate of 99.5%, being evaluated with a database of 80 individuals. This result improves former approaches in the literature and well-known machine learning techniques like SVM, k-NN, GMM and Linear Discriminant Analysis. Finally, the proposed method is highly suitable for real-time applications

A comparative study on unconstrained hand biometrics

Biometrics applied to mobile devices are of great interest for security applications. Daily scenarios can benefit of a combination of both the most secure systems and most simple and extended devices. This document presents a hand biometric system oriented to mobile devices, proposing a non-intrusive, contact-less acquisition process where final users should take a picture of their hand in free-space with a mobile device without removals of rings, bracelets or watches. The main contribution of this paper is threefold: firstly, a feature extraction method is proposed, providing invariant hand measurements to previous changes; second contribution consists of providing a template creation based on hand geometric distances, requiring information from only one individual, without considering data from the rest of individuals within the database; finally, a proposal for template matching is proposed, minimizing the intra-class similarity and maximizing the inter-class likeliness. The proposed method is evaluated using three publicly available contact-less, platform-free databases. In addition, the results obtained with these databases will be compared to the results provided by two competitive pattern recognition techniques, namely Support Vector Machines (SVM) and k-Nearest Neighbour, often employed within the literature. Therefore, this approach provides an appropriate solution to adapt hand biometrics to mobile devices, with an accurate results and a non-intrusive acquisition procedure which increases the overall acceptance from the final user.

Minimal template size for Iris-Recognition

A method to achieve improvement in template size for an iris-recognition system is reported. To achieve this result, the biological characteristics of the human iris have been studied. Processing has been performed by image processing techniques, isolating the iris and enhancing the area of study, after which multi resolution analysis is made. Reduction of the pattern obtained has been obtained via statistical study.

How can irrigated agriculture adapt to climate change? Insights from the Guadiana Basin in Spain

Climate change is already affecting many natural systems and human environments worldwide, like the semiarid Guadiana Basin in Spain. This paper illustrates a systematic analysis of climate change adaptation in the Guadiana irrigation farming region. The study applies a solution-oriented diagnostic framework structured along a series of sequential analytical steps. An initial stage integrates economic and hydrologic modeling to evaluate the effects of climate change on the agriculture and water sectors. Next, adaptation measures are identified and prioritized through a stakeholder-based multi-criteria analysis. Finally, a social network analysis identifies key actors and their relationships in climate change adaptation. The study shows that under a severe climate change scenario, water availability could be substantially decreased and drought occurrence will augment. In consequence, farmers will adapt their crops to a lesser amount of water and income gains will diminish, particularly for smallholder farms. Among the various adaptation measures considered, those related to private farming (new crop varieties and modern irrigation technologies) are ranked highest, whereas public-funded hard measures (reservoirs) are lowest and public soft measures (insurance) are ranked middle. In addition, stakeholders highlighted that the most relevant criteria for selecting adaptation plans are environmental protection, financial feasibility and employment creation. Nonetheless, the social network analysis evidenced the need to strengthen the links among the different stakeholder groups to facilitate the implementation of adaptation processes. In sum, the diagnostic framework applied in this research can be considered a valuable tool for guiding and supporting decision making in climate change adaptation and communicating scientific results.

Generador de código para BBDD Oracle

RESUMEN Las empresas tienen programas que acceden a sus bases de datos, estos programas pueden quedarse obsoletos o dejar de serles útiles por alguna razón y deben ser actualizados o reemplazados. Sin embargo la base de datos se suele mantener, ya que la estructura de la información no cambia. Llegado el momento de actualizar o migrar ese software que accede a la base de datos, se puede recurrir a una estructura de clases, las cuales están basadas en la metainformación de la base de datos, y así facilitar el desarrollo del nuevo software. La herramienta desarrollada en este proyecto accede a la metainformación de la base de datos, obtiene la estructura de las tablas y a través de plantillas genera las clases necesarias para empezar el nuevo software. Al estar la herramienta basada en plantillas, adaptar éstas a un nuevo lenguaje es sencillo, haciendo la herramienta mucho más polivalente. En conclusión, una herramienta de este tipo puede facilitar el desarrollo de un nuevo software siempre que la estructura de la base de datos se mantenga intacta haciendo que el nuevo proyecto se desarrolle de forma más rápida. ABSTRACT Companies have software that access their databases, this software can become obsolete or fail to be useful for some reason and must be upgraded or replaced. However the database is usually maintained as the information does not change. It is for this reason that when you migrate the software that accesses the database can use a class structure based on information in the database to facilitate the development of new software. The tool developed in this project accesses the metadata of the database to obtain the structure of the tables and through templates generate the necessary classes to start the new software. Being template‐based tool, adapt these to a new language is simple, making a more versatile tool. In conclusion, a tool of this kind can facilitate the development of a new software provided that the structure of the database is intact making the new project develops more quickly.

Alanine is helix-stabilizing in both template-nucleated and standard peptide helices

Alanine-based peptides of defined sequence and length show measurable helix contents, allowing them to be used as a model system both for analyzing the mechanism of helix formation and for investigating the contributions of side-chain interactions to protein stability. Extensive characterization of many peptide sequences with varying amino acid contents indicates that the favorable helicity of alanine-based peptides can be attributed to the large helix-stabilizing propensity of alanine. Based on their analysis of alanine-rich sequences N-terminally linked to a synthetic helix-inducing template, Kemp and coworkers [Kemp, D. S., Boyd, J. G. & Muendel, C. C. (1991) Nature (London) 352, 451–454; Kemp, D. S., Oslick, S. L. & Allen, T. J. (1996) J. Am. Chem. Soc. 118, 4249–4255] argue that alanine is helix-indifferent, however, and that the favorable helix contents of alanine-based peptides must have some other explanation. Here, we show that the helix contents of template-nucleated sequences are influenced strongly by properties of the template–helix junction. A model in which the helix propensities of residues at the template–peptide junction are treated separately brings the results from alanine-based peptides and template-nucleated helices into agreement. The resulting model provides a physically plausible resolution of the discrepancies between the two systems and allows the helix contents of both template-nucleated and standard peptide helices to be predicted by using a single set of helix propensities. Helix formation in both standard peptides and template–peptide conjugates can be attributed to the large intrinsic helix-forming tendency of alanine.

Binding of RNA template to a complex of HIV-1 reverse transcriptase/primer/template

HIV-1 reverse transcriptase (RT) catalyzes the synthesis of DNA from DNA or RNA templates. During this process, it must transfer its primer from one template to another RNA or DNA template. Binary complexes made of RT and a primer/template bind an additional single-stranded RNA molecule of the same nucleotide sequence as that of the DNA or RNA template. The additional RNA strand leads to a 10-fold decrease of the off-rate constant, koff, of RT from a primer/DNA template. In a binary complex of RT and a primer/template, the primer can be cross-linked to both the p66 and p51 subunits. Depending on the location of the photoreactive group in the primer, the distribution of the cross-linked primers between subunits is dependent on the nature of the template and of the additional single-stranded molecule. Greater cross-linking of the primer to p51 occurs with DNA templates, whereas cross-linking to p66 predominates with RNA templates. Excess single-stranded DNA shifts the distribution of cross-linking from p66 to p51 with RNA templates, and excess single-stranded RNA shifts the cross-linking from p51 to p66 with DNA templates. RT thus uses two primer/template binding modes depending on the nature of the template.