Publications by authors named "Michael Leitner"

Voltage-gated K (K) channels govern K ion flux across cell membranes in response to changes in membrane potential. They are formed by the assembly of four subunits, typically from the same family. Electrically silent K channels (KS), however, are unable to conduct currents on their own.

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Improving separation efficiency in capillary electrophoresis (CE) requires systematic study of the influence of the electric field (or solute linear velocity) on plate height for a better understanding of the critical parameters controlling peak broadening. Even for poly(diallyldimethylammonium chloride) (PDADMAC)/poly(sodium styrenesulfonate) (PSS) successive multiple ionic-polymer layer (SMIL) coatings, which lead to efficient and reproducible separations of proteins, plate height increases with migration velocity, limiting the use of high electric fields in CE. Solute adsorption onto the capillary wall was generally considered as the main source of peak dispersion, explaining this plate height increase.

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Ensuring adequate and equitable access to affordable HIV testing is a crucial step toward ending the HIV epidemic (EHE). Using the high-burden Baton Rouge Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) as an example, we measure spatial access to HIV testing facilities for vulnerable populations and assess whether their access would improve if eliminating a considerable barrier-costs. Locations and status (free, low-cost, and full cost) of HIV testing facilities are searched on the Internet and confirmed through a field survey.

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Background And Purpose: A recent paradigm shift in proarrhythmic risk assessment suggests that the integration of clinical, non-clinical, and computational evidence can be used to reach a comprehensive understanding of the proarrhythmic potential of drug candidates. While current computational methodologies focus on predicting the incidence of proarrhythmic events after drug administration, the objective of this study is to predict concentration-response relationships of QTc as a clinical endpoint.

Experimental Approach: Full heart computational models reproducing human cardiac populations were created to predict the concentration-response relationship of changes in the QT interval as recommended for clinical trials.

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Introduction: A significant number of (RT) paradigms claim to ameliorate visual field loss after stroke by re-activating neuronal connections in the residual visual cortex due to repeated bright light-stimulation at the border of the blind and intact fields. However, the effectiveness of RT has been considered controversial both in science and clinical practice for years. The main points of the controversy are (1) the reliability of perimetric results which may be affected by compensatory eye movements and (2) heterogeneous samples consisting of patients with visual field defects and/or visuospatial neglect.

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Article Synopsis
  • Scientists studied a special fat called PI(4,5)P2 that helps cells send signals and control different processes.
  • They looked at a protein called tubbyCT that sticks to PI(4,5)P2 and found that it gathers in special spots where the cell's outer layer meets another part called the endoplasmic reticulum.
  • This study showed that tubbyCT is important for understanding how these special connections work and could help reveal new functions of related proteins called TULPs.
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The endosymbiotic bacterium blocks replication of several arboviruses in transinfected mosquitoes. However, the mechanism of virus blocking remains poorly understood. Here, we characterized an gene from , which is rapidly induced in response to dengue virus (DENV) infection.

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Mouth-to-nose face masks became ubiquitous due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This ignited studies on the perception of emotions in masked faces. Most of these studies presented still images of an emotional face with a face mask digitally superimposed upon the nose-mouth region.

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Mosquito-borne flaviviruses are responsible for viral infections and represent a considerable public health burden. is the principal vector of dengue virus (DENV), therefore understanding the intrinsic virus-host interactions is vital, particularly in the presence of the endosymbiont which blocks virus replication in mosquitoes. Here, we examined the transcriptional response of -transinfected Aag2 cells to DENV infection.

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Subtype-specific human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (hiPSC-CMs) are promising tools, e.g., to assess the potential of drugs to cause chronotropic effects (nodal hiPSC-CMs), atrial fibrillation (atrial hiPSC-CMs), or ventricular arrhythmias (ventricular hiPSC-CMs).

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Objective: "Visual Restitution Therapies" (VRT) claim to ameliorate visual field defects of neurological patients by repeated visual light stimulation, leading to training-related neuroplasticity and resulting in reconnection of lesioned neurons in early cortical areas. Because existing systems are stationary, uncomfortable, and unreliable, we developed a training instrument based on virtual reality goggles. The goal of the "Salzburg Visual Field Trainer" (SVFT) is twofold: (1) The device facilitates the clinical evaluation of established neuropsychological rehabilitation approaches, such as VRT.

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This research compares and evaluates different approaches to approximate offense times of crimes. It contributes to and extends all previously proposed naïve and aoristic temporal approximation methods and one recent study [1] that showed that the addition of historical crimes with accurately known time stamps to temporal approximation methods can outperform all traditional approximation methods. It is paramount to work with crime data that possess precise temporal information to conduct reliable (spatiotemporal) analysis and modeling.

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A patient suffering from visuo-spatial neglect was investigated as a special interest case during a study on the effectiveness of "restorative approaches" after visual field loss. This patient trained with our newly developed Virtual Reality (VR) system "Salzburg Visual Field Trainer" for 254 days. Perimetric results show a visual field expansion of 48.

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Aedes aegypti transmits one of the most significant mosquito-borne viruses, dengue virus (DENV). The absence of effective vaccines and clinical treatments and the emergence of insecticide resistance in A. aegypti necessitate novel vector control strategies.

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Humans grossly underestimate exponential growth, but are at the same time overconfident in their (poor) judgement. The so-called 'exponential growth bias' is of new relevance in the context of COVID-19, because it explains why humans have fundamental difficulties to grasp the magnitude of a spreading epidemic. Here, we addressed the question, whether logarithmic scaling and contextual framing of epidemiological data affect the anticipation of exponential growth.

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Hydrophobins are surface-active proteins produced by filamentous fungi. The amphiphilic structure of hydrophobins is very compact, containing a distinct hydrophobic patch on one side of the molecule, locked by four intramolecular disulfide bridges. Hydrophobins form dimers and multimers in solution to shield these hydrophobic patches from water exposure.

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Objective: Several studies report evidence for training-related neuroplasticity in the visual cortex, while other studies suggest that improvements simply reflect inadequate eye fixation control during perimetric prediagnostics and postdiagnostics.

Methods And Analysis: To improve diagnostics, a new eye-tracking-based methodology for visual field analysis (eye-tracking-based visual field analysis (EFA)) was developed. The EFA is based on static automated perimetry and additionally takes individual eye movements in real time into account and compensates for them.

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Biosensing atomic force microscopy (AFM) offers the unique feature to determine the energy landscape of a bimolecular interaction at the real single molecule level. Furthermore, simultaneous and label-free mapping of molecular recognition and the determination of sample topography at the nanoscale gets possible. A prerequisite and one of the major parts in biosensing AFM are the bio-functionalized AFM tips.

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Spatial crime analysis, together with perceived (crime) safety analysis have tremendously benefitted from Geographic Information Science (GISc) and the application of geospatial technology. This research study discusses a novel methodological approach to document the use of emerging geospatial technologies to explore perceived urban safety from the lenses of fear of crime or crime perception in the city of Baton Rouge, USA. The mixed techniques include a survey, spatial video geonarrative (SVG) in the field with study participants, and the extraction of moments of stress (MOS) from biosensing wristbands.

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The consolidation of Highway-Railroad Grade Crossing (HRGC) is one of the effective approaches to decrease the number of crashes between trains and vehicles. From 2015-2019, there were 57 HRGC crashes at crossings in East Baton Rouge Parish (EBRP), resulting in thirteen injuries with $346,875 cost of vehicle damages. Consolidation programs help to close redundant crossings and thereby decrease the crash risks; however, it is difficult to find the best crossing in a neighborhood for closure.

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Reversing the regioselectivity of the renowned Diels-Alder reaction by overriding the usual thermodynamic and kinetic governing factors has always been a formidable challenge to synthetic organic chemists. Anthracenes are well-known to undergo [4 + 2]-cycloadditions with dienophiles at their 9,10-positions (central ring) over 1,4-positions (terminal ring) guided by the relative aromatic stabilization energy of the two possible products, and also by harboring the largest orbital coefficients of the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) at the 9,10-positions. We, herein, report a 1,4-selective [4 + 2]-cycloaddition strategy of 9,10-unsubstituted anthracenes by installing electron-donating substituents on the terminal rings which is heretofore unprecedented to the best of our knowledge.

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Sporting events attract high volumes of people, which in turn leads to increased use of social media. In addition, research shows that sporting events may trigger violent behavior that can lead to crime. This study analyses the spatial relationships between crime occurrences, demographic, socio-economic and environmental variables, together with geo-located Twitter messages and their 'violent' subsets.

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Auditory inner hair cells (IHCs) convert sound vibrations into receptor potentials that drive synaptic transmission. For the precise encoding of sound qualities, receptor potentials are shaped by K conductances tuning the properties of the IHC membrane. Using patch-clamp and computational modeling, we unravel this membrane specialization showing that IHCs express an exclusive repertoire of six voltage-dependent K conductances mediated by K1.

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