Abstract:
The invention provides gene-targeted non-human animals comprising a genetically modified 11βHSD1 gene encodes a mutant 11βHSD1 polypeptide which is modulated by human 11βHSD1 modulating compounds. The invention further provides cells expressing mutant 11βHSD1 and cells isolated from gene-targeted animals, which cells produce a mutant 11βHSD1. The invention further provides methods of identifying agents that modulate 11βHSD1 activity, and are useful to treat 11βHSD1-related metabolic disorders.
Abstract:
A computer program product being embodied on a computer readable medium for extracting semantic information about a plurality of documents being accessible via a computer network, the computer program product including computer-executable instructions for: generating a plurality of tokens from at least one of the documents, each token being indicative of a displayed item and a corresponding position; and, constructing at least one parse tree indicative of a semantic structure of the at least one document from the tokens dependently upon a grammar being indicative of presentation conventions.
Abstract:
A system and method for ensuring large and frequent updates to a data warehouse. The process leverages a set of temporary staging tables to track the updates. A set of intermediate steps are performed to accomplish bulk deletions of the outdated changed records, and perform modifications to the map tables for models such as snowflake. Finally, bulk load operations load the updates and insert them into the final dimension tables. The process ensures performance comparable to insertion-only schemes with at most only slight performance degradation. Furthermore, a modified process is applied on the newfact data warehouse dimension model. The process can be readily adapted to handle star schema and other hierarchical data warehouse models.
Abstract:
A method of data loading for large information warehouses includes performing checkpointing concurrently with data loading into an information warehouse, the checkpointing ensuring consistency among multiple tables; and recovering from a failure in the data loading using the checkpointing. A method is also disclosed for performing versioning concurrently with data loading into an information warehouse. The versioning method enables processing undo and redo operations of the data loading between a later version and a previous version. Data load failure recovery is performed without starting a data load from the beginning but rather from a latest checkpoint for data loading at an information warehouse level using a checkpoint process characterized by a state transition diagram having a multiplicity of states; and tracking state transitions among the states using a system state table.
Abstract:
In embodiments of the present invention, a biodegradable/biodegradable polymer film may be used as a scaffold for tissue engineering scaffolds for engineering organized organs, such as vascular grafts, for example. In one embodiment, an ultraviolet (UV) resin made from a diacrylated biodegradable oligomer is molded into a flexible scaffold having cavities and/or channels. Channel/cavity size may be on the order of micrometers and/or nanometers, and thus the walls may have high aspect ratios. Smooth muscle cells may be deposited in the channels and because of the high aspect ratios, the cells may align along the channels/cavities as confluence is reached.
Abstract:
Methods for identifying inducers and inhibitors of programmed cell death in a cell-free system are described. The methods exploit the finding that programmed cell death is accompanied by shutdown of cellular protein synthesis and by phosphorylation of eIF-2.alpha. and that the dephosphorylation of eIF-2.alpha. prevents the shutdown of protein synthesis.