Our findings suggest that the CYP2E1 genotype is a determinant of nasopharyngeal carcinoma risk.

The Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) open reading frame BGLF4 was identified as a potential Ser/Thr protein kinase gene through the recognition of amino acid sequence motifs characteristic of conserved regions within the catalytic domains of protein kinases. In order to investigate this potential kinase activity, BGLF4 was expressed in Escherichia coli and the purified protein was used to generate a specific antiserum. Recombinant vaccinia virus vTF7-3, which expresses the T7 RNA polymerase, was used to infect 293 and 293T cells after transient transfection with a plasmid containing BGLF4 under the control of the T7 promoter. Autophosphorylation of the BGLF4 protein was demonstrated using the specific antiserum in an immune complex kinase assay. In addition, EBNA-1-tagged BGLF4 and EBNA-1 monoclonal antibody 5C11 were used to demonstrate the specificity of the kinase activity and to locate BGLF4 in the cytoplasm of transfected cells. Manganese ions were found to be essential for autophosphorylation of BGLF4, and magnesium can stimulate the activity. BGLF4 can utilize GTP, in addition to ATP, as a phosphate donor in this assay. BGLF4 can phosphorylate histone and casein in vitro. Among the potential viral protein substrates we examined, the EBV early antigen (EA-D, BMRF1), a DNA polymerase accessory factor and an important transactivator during lytic infection, was found to be phosphorylated by BGLF4 in vitro. Amino acids 1 to 26 of BGLF4, but not the predicted conserved catalytic domain, were found to be essential for autophosphorylation of BGLF4.Protein kinases are known to be involved in the regulation of a wide variety of eukaryotic cellular functions including cell metabolism, cell cycle control, hormone response, and control of transcription and translation. Studying viral protein kinases might therefore lead to an understanding of the mechanisms of virus replication and virus-cell interactions. Most of the protein kinases of the retroviruses are Tyr protein kinases, such as v-src and v-erb, which may contribute to the growth transformation phenotype of the virally infected host cells (for a review, see reference 32). The first protein kinase gene demonstrated in a eukaryotic DNA virus was that contained in the unique short (US) regions of the related human and porcine alphaherpesviruses, herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1), and pseudorabies virus (20). Other protein kinases have been reported in DNA viruses, including protein kinase B1 of the poxviruses (45, 46) and ORF9 of baculovirus (42).Phosphorylation of cellular and viral proteins, which has been observed during lytic infection of cells by herpesviruses, seems to be a common phenomenon which involves a number of different protein kinase activities (21). Two groups of viral protein kinase activities, US3 and UL13, have been identified in alphaherpesviruses. The US3 gene of HSV-1 (37) and the VZV66 gene of varicella-zoster virus (VZV) (19) were predicted to encode protein kinases on the basis of their strong similarity to the family of eukaryotic serine/threon...

Indoor localization has received wide attention recently due to the potential use of wide range of intelligent services. This paper presents a deep learning-based approach for indoor localization by utilizing transmission channel quality metrics, including received signal strength (RSS) and channel state information (CSI). We partition a rectangular room plane into two-dimensional blocks. Each block is regarded as a class, and we formulate the localization as a classification problem. Using RSS and CSI, we develop four deep neural networks implemented with multi-layer perceptron (MLP) and one-dimensional convolutional neural network (1D-CNN) to estimate the location of a subject in a room. The experimental results indicate that the 1D-CNN using CSI information achieves excellent localization performance with much lower network complexity. INDEX TERMS Indoor localization, deep learning, convolutional neural network (CNN), received signal strength (RSS), channel state information (CSI).

This study aimed to assess independent effects of EBV and cigarette smoking on nasopharyngeal carcinoma, which have never been assessed in long-term followup studies. A cohort of 9,622 men was enrolled from 1984 to 1986. Blood samples collected at study entry were tested for antibodies against EBV antigens (anti-EBV) viral capsid antigen immunoglobulin A and DNase. The cigarette smoking habit was inquired through questionnaire interview. Newly developed nasopharyngeal carcinoma cases were ascertained through computerized linkage with national cancer registry profile. Cox's proportional hazard regression analysis was used to estimate multivariate-adjusted hazard ratio with its 95% confidence interval (95% CI). During the follow-up of 173,706 person-years, 32 pathologically confirmed nasopharyngeal carcinoma cases were identified >1 year after recruitment. Increasing serum levels of anti -EBV viral capsid antigen immunoglobulin A and DNase were significantly associated with nasopharyngeal carcinoma risk in a dose-response relationship.The multivariate-adjusted hazard ratio (95% CI) of developing nasopharyngeal carcinoma for low and high antibody levels compared with seronegatives was 9.5 (2.2-40.1) and 21.4 (2.8-161.7), respectively, for anti -EBV viral capsid antigen immunoglobulin A (P < 0.001 for trend), and 1.6 (0.5-4.6) and 16.0 (5.4-47.1), respectively, for anti -EBV DNase (P < 0.001 for trend). The shorter the time interval between study entry and nasopharyngeal carcinoma diagnosis, the higher was the proportion of anti -EBV viral capsid antigen immunoglobulin A among nasopharyngeal carcinoma patients. The multivariate-adjusted hazard ratio (95% CI) was 3.0 (1.3-7.2) for z30 pack-years of cumulative cigarette smoking compared with <30 pack-years as the reference. The longer and heavier the cigarette smoking habit, the higher was the nasopharyngeal carcinoma risk. Anti -EBV viral capsid antigen immunoglobulin A, anti -EBV DNase, and long-term heavy cigarette smoking are independent nasopharyngeal carcinoma risk predictors. (Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2009;18(4):1218 -26)