185,475 research outputs found
Surfactant protein D modulates HIV infection of both T-cells and dendritic cells
No full textSurfactant Protein D (SP-D) is an oligomerized C-type lectin molecule with immunomodulatory properties and involvement in lung surfactant homeostasis in the respiratory tract. SP-D binds to the enveloped viruses, influenza A virus and respiratory syncytial virus and inhibits their replication in vitro and in vivo. SP-D has been shown to bind to HIV via the HIV envelope protein gp120 and inhibit infectivity in vitro. Here we show that SP-D binds to different strains of HIV (BaL and IIIB) and the binding occurs at both pH 7.4 and 5.0 resembling physiological relevant pH values found in the body and the female urogenital tract, respectively. The binding of SP-D to HIV particles and gp120 was inhibited by the presence of several hexoses with mannose found to be the strongest inhibitor. Competition studies showed that soluble CD4 and CVN did not interfere with the interaction between SP-D and gp120. However, soluble recombinant DC-SIGN was shown to inhibit the binding between SP-D and gp120. SP-D agglutinated HIV and gp120 in a calcium dependent manner. SP-D inhibited the infectivity of HIV strains at both pH values of 7.4 and 5.0 in a concentration dependent manner. The inhibition of the infectivity was abolished by the presence of mannose. SP-D enhanced the binding of HIV to immature monocyte derived dendritic cells (iMDDCs) and was also found to enhance HIV capture and transfer to the T-cell like line PM1. These results suggest that SP-D can bind to and inhibit direct infection of T-cells by HIV but also enhance the transfer of infectious HIV particles from DCs to T-cells in vivo
David Hodil, Randall Dong
No full textDavid Hodil (left) and Randall Dong (right) are pictured because they were interns in Washington, D. C. through the University Honors Program.https://scholarsjunction.msstate.edu/ua-photo-collection/3485/thumbnail.jp
MeSH term explosion and author rank improve expert recommendations
No full textInformation overload is an often-cited phenomenon that reduces the productivity, efficiency and efficacy of scientists. One challenge for scientists is to find appropriate collaborators in their research. The literature describes various solutions to the problem of expertise location, but most current approaches do not appear to be very suitable for expert recommendations in biomedical research. In this study, we present the development and initial evaluation of a vector space model-based algorithm to calculate researcher similarity using four inputs: 1) MeSH terms of publications; 2) MeSH terms and author rank; 3) exploded MeSH terms; and 4) exploded MeSH terms and author rank. We developed and evaluated the algorithm using a data set of 17,525 authors and their 22,542 papers. On average, our algorithms correctly predicted 2.5 of the top 5/10 coauthors of individual scientists. Exploded MeSH and author rank outperformed all other algorithms in accuracy, followed closely by MeSH and author rank. Our results show that the accuracy of MeSH term-based matching can be enhanced with other metadata such as author rank
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
No full textThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
"Closing the R&D Gap, Evaluating the Sources of R&D Spending"
No full textBoth spending and tax policies have been implemented in the United States with the goal of stimulating private sector research and development (R&D). Karier questions whether current R&D policy, especially the research and experimentation tax credit, can contribute to closing the gap between nondefense expenditures on R&D in the United States and such expenditures in other countries, such as Japan and Germany. He also explores possible changes to our current R&D policy to make it more effective.
S. K. Dong with Two of his Grandchildren, Seoul, South Korea, 1965
No full textBrother S. K. Dong (D. D. Bell) and two of his grandchildren. S. K. Dong, the first member of Churches of Christ to work in Korea, both North and South, stands with two of his grandchildren. The nickname D. D. Bell was given to him by some members of Churches of Christ he visited while he was in America. It stood for Ding Dong Bell and was, unfortunately, derogatory in nature.https://digitalcommons.acu.edu/coc_missions_photos/2307/thumbnail.jp
Neodeightonia arengae Y. R. Xiong, Manawas., K. D. Hyde & Z. Y. Dong 2022, sp. nov.
No full textNeodeightonia arengae Y.R. Xiong, Manawas., K.D. Hyde & Z.Y. Dong, sp. nov. (FIGURE 2) Index Fungorum number: IF558659 Facesoffungi number: FoF 10227 Etymology: Epithet refers to the host genus from which the fungus was isolated Holotype: ZHKU 21-0095 Saprobic on leaf of Arenga tremula (Arecaceae). Sexual morph: not observed. Asexual morph: Conidiomata 200–330 µm length × 140–190 µm diam. (x =250 × 160 µm, n=10), pycnidial, semi-immersed, solitary, globose, unilocular, black dots, a crack on the surface of the host where the conidiomata is located. Peridium 20–30 µm (x =21 µm, n=5), composed of thick-walled, brown-black cells of textura angularis, thin inner wall, almost reduced to conidiogenesis region. Conidiophores reduced to conidogenous cells. Conidiogenous cells hyaline, holoblastic, rough. Conidia 10–30 µm × 10–15 µm (x =21 × 11 µm, n=40), hyaline, subglobose to ellipsoid, aseptate, granular content, one to two large guttules, broadly rounded at both ends, thin-wall without mucilaginous. Culture characters: colonies on PDA reach 7 cm diam. at 28˚C after five days. Upper view wrinkled, filamentous, entire margin, flat, cloudy, fluffy for aerial hyphae, become gray-black with time, dense for aerial hyphae, reverse becomes black. Material examined: CHINA. South China Botanical Garden, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, dead leaves of Arenga tremula (Blanco) Becc., 17 December 2020, Yinru Xiong, (holotype ZHKU 21-0095), living cultures ZHKUCC 21-0074 ex-holotype; ZHKUCC 21-0075, ZHKUCC 21-0076 ex-Paratype. Notes: Three isolates in the present study clustered together with the Neodeightonia species. The taxa from this study form two sister clades to N. palmicola (MFLUCC 10-0822) and N. planchoniae (MFLUCC 17-2427). Neodeightonia planchoniae is a sexual morph and it was characterized by sheaths around the ascospores, while N. arenge is an asexual morph and there was no sheath observed around the conidia. Neodeightonia arengae differs from N. palmicola conidia by the absence of the truncate base, while N. palmicola conidia sometimes appeared truncate at the base (Table 3). Neodeightonia arengae has one or two large guttules in conidia, while the conidia of N. palmicola lack guttules (Liu et al. 2010). The conidia of N. arengae have one morphological stage, hyaline, and aseptate, while the conidia of N. palmicola have two morphological stages initially hyaline. With age, conidia become cinnamon to sepia, forming one septum. Based on these polyphasic approaches we identified our isolates as novel Neodeightonia species.Published as part of Xiong, Yinru, Manawasinghe, Ishara S., Liao, Chunfang, Hyde, Kevin D. & Dong, Zhangyong, 2022, Neodeightonia arengae sp. nov., Botryosphaeriaceous taxa on Arenga tremula (Arecaceae) from Guangdong, China, pp. 130-140 in Phytotaxa 530 (2) on page 136, DOI: 10.11646/phytotaxa.530.2.1, http://zenodo.org/record/583261
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
No full textWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
Scholarly Communication and Publishing Lunch and Learn Talk #11: The ULS Open Access Author Fee Fund
No full textAt the May 2014 talk, you will learn about the ULS Open Access Author Fee Fund--what it is, why we do it, how it works, and how the program is going so far
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