Decay-accelerating factor (DAF) is a glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI)-anchored membrane protein that inhibits both the classical and the alternative pathways of complement activation. DAF has been studied extensively in humans under two clinical settings: when absent from the erythrocytes of paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria (PNH) patients, who suffer from complement-mediated hemolytic anemia, and in transgenic pigs expressing human DAF, which have been developed to help overcome complement-mediated hyperacute rejection in xenotransplantation. Nevertheless, the exact role of DAF in regulating complement activation in vivo on the cell surface and the species specificity of this molecule remain to be fully characterized. To address these issues, we have used gene targeting to produce mice lacking GPI-anchored DAF. We found that erythrocytes from mice deficient in GPI-anchored DAF showed no increase in spontaneous complement activation in vivo but exhibited impaired regulation of zymosan-initiated bystander and antibodytriggered classical pathway complement activation in vitro, resulting in enhanced complement deposition. Despite a high level of C3 fixation, no homologous hemolysis occurred. It is noteworthy that GPI-linked DAF knockout erythrocytes, when tested with human and guinea pig sera, were more susceptible to heterologous complement lysis than were normal erythrocytes. These results suggest that DAF is capable of regulating homologous as well as heterologous complement activation via the alternative or the classical pathway. They also indicate that DAF deficiency alone is not sufficient to cause homologous hemolysis. In contrast, when the assembly of the membrane-attack complex is not properly regulated, as in the case of heterologous complement activation or in PNH patients, impaired erythrocyte DAF activity and enhanced C3 deposition could lead to increased hemolytic reaction.

The ob gene mRNA expression in rat brown adipose tissue (BAT) and epididymal white adipose tissue (WAT) was measured on Northern blots hybridized with a rat ob gene probe. The level of ob gene mRNA in BAT was about 40% of that in WAT. Fasting (36 h) or semi-starvation (10 days) decreased the ob gene mRNA level in both tissues by 62-68%, and cold exposure at 6°C (24 h) decreased it in BAT (-84%) but not in WAT. Acute administration of the /3a-adrenergic agonist Ro 16-8714 decreased the ob gene mRNA level in BAT (-51%) and WAT (-28%) of lean Zucker rats and only in BAT (-74%) of obese fa/fa rats. This study demonstrates that, in the rat, the ob gene is not only expressed in WAT but also in BAT, and suggests that in these two tissues, the modulation of the ob gene expression might be more closely associated with known alterations in cell lipid content than with changes in sympathetic activity.Key words." ob Gene; Fast; Cold; Rat brown and white adipose tissue db/db mouse and that would account for the up-regulation of the ob gene expression in the WAT of these animals.To date, the ob gene expression has been demonstrated in WAT [1,2] and also detected in brown adipose tissue (BAT) [3]. Since BAT is known to play an important role in the regulation of energy balance in rodents [4], the expression of the ob gene was examined in this tissue. The aims of this study therefore were: (i) to quantify the ob gene expression in rat interscapular BAT and to compare its level to that measured in epididymal WAT; and (ii) to investigate if the ob gene level is modulated by conditions which are known to reduce or increase BAT sympathetic and thermogenic activity, namely caloric restriction [5,6], cold exposure [6,7], or the administration of a fl3-adrenoceptor agonist [8]. Under each of these conditions, possible changes in the ob gene expression in epididymal WAT were also studied in parallel. Materials and methods

A classifier that incorporates both preprocessing and postprocessing procedures as well as a multilayer feedforward network (based on the back-propagation algorithm) in its design to distinguish between several major classes of radar returns including weather, birds, and aircraft is described. The classifier achieves an average classification accuracy of 89% on generalization for data collected during a single scan of the radar antenna. The procedures of feature selection for neural network training, the classifier design considerations, the learning algorithm development, the implementation, and the experimental results of the neural clutter classifier, which is simulated on a Warp systolic computer, are discussed. A comparative evaluation of the multilayer neural network with a traditional Bayes classifier is presented.

The novel PDE4 inhibitors MEM1018 and MEM1091 enhance memory in a manner generally similar to rolipram. PDE4D may be the primary target for the PDE4 inhibitors in the mediation of memory.

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