פרסומים

Port Said was founded in 1859 and named after the Governor of Egypt, Sa‘id Pasha (1854–1863). Initially it housed foreign engineers and workers of the Suez Canal. Upon its inauguration in 1869, the Suez Canal was the main connection between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea — and further to India and South Asia — which replaced the long and costly trip around the south of Africa. Port Said thus became the Canal’s main harbour and principal coal station. During the later decades of the nineteenth century, it attracted foreign consuls and representatives of foreign business operations, coal workers and service personnel. Like many other cities in the colonized world, it was a divided city, as Egyptians and Europeans inhabited different neighbourhoods. From a modest beginning of 10,000 inhabitants in 1869, it became a city of 100,000 in the interwar period.

Mast cells are powerful immune modulators of the tissue microenvironment. Within seconds of activation, these cells release a variety of preformed biologically active products, followed by a wave of mediator synthesis and secretion. Increasing evidence suggests that an intricate network of inhibitory and activating receptors, specific signaling pathways, and adaptor proteins governs mast cell responsiveness to stimuli. Here, we discuss the biological and clinical relevance of negative and positive signaling modalities that control mast cell activation, with an emphasis on novel Fc$ε$RI regulators, immunoglobulin E (IgE)-independent pathways [e.g., Mas-related G protein-coupled receptor X2 (MRGPRX2)], tetraspanins, and the CD300 family of inhibitory and activating receptors.

Six buildings were overturned in the town of Onagawa during the 2011 Great East Japan tsunami. This study investigates the possible failure mechanisms of building overturning during tsunami flow. The tsunami inundation depth and flow velocity at each overturned building were recalculated by using a tsunami numerical simulation and verified using a recorded video. The overturning moment is a result of hydrodynamic and buoyancy forces, whereas the resisting moment is a result of building self-weight and pile resistance force. This study aimed to demonstrate that the building foundation design is critical for preventing buildings from overturning. The analysis results suggest that buoyancy force can generate a larger overturning moment than hydrodynamic force and the failure of a pile foundation could occur during both ground shaking and tsunami flow. For the pile foundation, pile resistance force plays a significant role due to both tension and shear capacities at the pile head and skin friction capacity between the pile and soil, which can be calculated from 18 soil boring data in Onagawa using a conventional method in the AIJ standards. In addition, soil liquefaction can reduce skin friction capacity between the pile and soil resulting in a decrease of the resisting moment from pile resistance force.

Abstract Olive (Olea europaea L.) inflorescences, formed in lateral buds, flower in spring. However, there is some debate regarding time of flower induction and inflorescence initiation. Olive juvenility and seasonality of flowering were altered by overexpressing genes encoding flowering locus T (FT). OeFT1 and OeFT2 caused early flowering under short days when expressed in Arabidopsis. Expression of OeFT1/2 in olive leaves and OeFT2 in buds increased in winter, while initiation of inflorescences occurred i n late winter. Trees exposed to an artificial warm winter expressed low levels of OeFT1/2 in leaves and did not flower. Olive flower induction thus seems to be mediated by an increase in FT levels in response to cold winters. Olive flowering is dependent on additional internal factors. It was severely reduced in trees that carried a heavy fruit load the previous season (harvested in November) and in trees without fruit to which cold temperatures were artificially applied in summer. Expression analysis suggested that these internal factors work either by reducing the increase in OeFT1/2 expression or through putative flowering repressors such as TFL1. With expected warmer winters, future consumption of olive oil, as part of a healthy Mediterranean diet, should benefit from better understanding these factors.

We suggest two psychological mechanisms, temporal discounting and feeling of resource scarcity, for explaining the relation between food insecurity and body overweight. We demonstrate how Nettle et al.'s findings could be explained, post hoc, by each of these accounts, suggesting that their data are not rich enough to allow identification of mechanisms that underlie food insecurity and overweight relationship.

COT1 is the founding member of the highly conserved nuclear Dbf2-related (NDR) Ser/Thr kinase family and plays a role in the regulation of polar growth and development in and other fungi. Changes in COT1 phosphorylation state have been shown to affect hyphal elongation, branching, and conidiation. The function of NDR protein kinases has been shown to be regulated by type 2A protein phosphatases (PP2As). PP2As are heterotrimers comprised of a catalytic and scaffolding protein along with an interchangeable regulatory subunit involved in determining substrate specificity. Inactivation of the PP2A regulatory subunits and conferred severe hyphal growth defects. Partial suppression of defects observed in the strain (but not in the Δ mutant) was observed in phosphomimetic mutants, demonstrating that altering COT1 phosphorylation state can bypass, at least in part, the requirement of a functional RGB1 subunit. The functional fusion proteins RGB1::GFP and B56::GFP predominantly localized to hyphal tips and septa, respectively, indicating that their primary activity is in different cellular locations. COT1 protein forms exhibited a hyperphosphorylated gel migration pattern in an mutant background, similar to that observed when the fungus was cultured in the presence of the PP2A inhibitor cantharidin. COT1 was hypophosphorylated in a Δ mutant background, suggesting that this regulatory subunit may be involved in determining COT1 phosphorylation state, yet in an indirect manner. Reciprocal co-immunoprecipitation analyses, using tagged COT1, PPH1, RGB1, and B56 subunits established that these proteins physically interact. Taken together, our data determine the presence of a functional and physical link between PP2A and COT1 and show that two of the PP2A regulatory subunits interact with the kinase and determine COT1 phosphorylation state.