ABSTRACT
Arabidopsis thaliana has emerged as a model system for studies of plant genetics and development, and its genome has been targeted for sequencing by an international consortium (the Arabidopsis Genome Initiative; http://genome-www. stanford.edu/Arabidopsis/agi.html). To support the genome-sequencing effort, we fingerprinted more than 20,000 BACs (ref. 2) from two high-quality publicly available libraries, generating an estimated 17-fold redundant coverage of the genome, and used the fingerprints to nucleate assembly of the data by computer. Subsequent manual revision of the assemblies resulted in the incorporation of 19,661 fingerprinted BACs into 169 ordered sets of overlapping clones ('contigs'), each containing at least 3 clones. These contigs are ideal for parallel selection of BACs for large-scale sequencing and have supported the generation of more than 5.8 Mb of finished genome sequence submitted to GenBank; analysis of the sequence has confirmed the integrity of contigs constructed using this fingerprint data. Placement of contigs onto chromosomes can now be performed, and is being pursued by groups involved in both sequencing and positional cloning studies. To our knowledge, these data provide the first example of whole-genome random BAC fingerprint analysis of a eucaryote, and have provided a model essential to efforts aimed at generating similar databases of fingerprint contigs to support sequencing of other complex genomes, including that of human.
Subject(s)
Arabidopsis/genetics , Genome, Plant , Chromosome Mapping , Chromosomes, Bacterial/genetics , DNA Fingerprinting , DNA, Plant/genetics , DNA, Plant/isolation & purification , Databases, Factual , Genomic Library , Humans , Sequence Analysis, DNAABSTRACT
STUDY OBJECTIVE: To determine whether quantitative measurement of end-tidal carbon dioxide (ETCO2) can differentiate between cardiac and obstructive causes of respiratory distress. DESIGN: Prospective observational study. SETTING: Emergency department (ED) of a tertiary care hospital. PATIENTS: Adult patients who presented to the ED with moderate-to-severe dyspnea. Patients were excluded if they were unable to cooperate with the performance of peak expiratory flow rate (PEFR) or ETCO2 tests, were younger than 18 years of age, or had received prehospital intervention for their respiratory distress. INTERVENTIONS: Physicians obtained an ETCO2 level and PEFR prior to ED pharmacologic intervention. A hand-held capnometer with digital read-out was used to obtain the ETCO2 level. The patient's age, sex, initial vital signs, breath sounds and medication history, the presence or absence of diaphoresis and/or orthopnea, the duration of symptoms, the chest radiograph interpretation, and final diagnosis were also recorded. MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS: Forty-two patients were eligible for inclusion in the analysis. The mean ETCO2 level was 31.1+/-9.4 mm Hg; the mean PEFR was 161.3+/-53.1 L/min. The ETCO2 levels for pulmonary edema/congestive heart failure (CHF) patients differed significantly from those of asthma/COPD patients (27.1+/-7.8 mm Hg vs 33.4+/-9.6 mm Hg; p=0.0375). However, no single ETCO2 level was found to be a reliable predictor of diagnosis. CONCLUSION: ETCO2 levels for pulmonary edema/CHF patients differ significantly from those of asthma/COPD patients. However, no single ETCO2 level reliably differentiates between the two disease processes.
Subject(s)
Airway Obstruction/complications , Capnography , Dyspnea/etiology , Heart Diseases/complications , Adult , Aged , Airway Obstruction/diagnosis , Asthma/complications , Asthma/diagnosis , Blood Pressure/physiology , Carbon Dioxide/metabolism , Chi-Square Distribution , Dyspnea/diagnosis , Female , Forecasting , Heart Diseases/diagnosis , Heart Failure/complications , Heart Failure/diagnosis , Heart Rate/physiology , Humans , Lung Diseases, Obstructive/complications , Lung Diseases, Obstructive/diagnosis , Male , Middle Aged , Peak Expiratory Flow Rate/physiology , Prospective Studies , Pulmonary Edema/complications , Pulmonary Edema/diagnosis , Radiography, Thoracic , Reproducibility of Results , Respiration/physiology , Respiratory Insufficiency/diagnosis , Respiratory Insufficiency/etiology , Respiratory Sounds/physiopathology , Sweating/physiology , Tidal Volume , Time FactorsABSTRACT
Subjects were grouped into eight experimental groups to control for mental age (MA) and chronological age (CA) and at the same time to allow the examination of the effects due to the proportion of lifetime spent institutionalised on an objective measure of social dependency. The results suggest that the longer proportion of life-time institutionalised, the more likely the retardate is to be socially dependent. The implications of this finding for retardates in institutional settings is discussed.
Subject(s)
Institutionalization , Intellectual Disability/therapy , Social Adjustment , Female , Humans , Male , Socialization , Time FactorsABSTRACT
The role of MA and visual-perceptual ability in number concept development was examined with nonretarded and retarded children from regular school settings. Both groups were matched on MA and divided into high and low perceptual-ability levels. Using the Dodwell Number Concept Test, we tested each subject on various Piagetian tasks. Although retarded and nonretarded groups differed in IQ and CA, equivalence in MA resulted in equivalent number concept performance. For both groups, regardless of variation in IQ and CA, perceptual ability exerted a significant influence on number concept, with high perceptual ability resulting in superior number concept performance.
