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The inside of the cell contains a large variety of different membrane transport vesicles, each of which needs to find and fuse with its correct target destination. The detailed mechanism specifying which vesicle can fuse with which target membrane has been the subject of an enormous amount of research. An additional layer of specificity in intracellular membrane trafficking across the Golgi complex is thought to involve particular membrane “tethers.” However, the importance of these tethers has been unclear. Wong and Munro used a clever trick to reveal how specific tethers can indeed ensure correct vesicle destination. Tether proteins experimentally expressed on mitochondria hijacked different transport vesicles and diverted them from their normal destination to the mitochondria. Science , this issue 10.1126/science.1256898 Specific proteins can tether and distinguish between specific intracellular transport vesicles in vivo. The Golgi apparatus is a multicompartment central sorting station at the intersection of secretory and endocytic vesicular traffic. The mechanisms that permit cargo-loaded transport vesicles from different origins to selectively access different Golgi compartments are incompletely understood. We developed a rerouting and capture assay to investigate systematically the vesicle-tethering activities of 10 widely conserved golgin coiled-coil proteins. We find that subsets of golgins with distinct localizations on the Golgi surface have capture activities toward vesicles of different origins. These findings demonstrate that golgins act as tethers in vivo, and hence the specificity we find to be encoded in this tethering is likely to make a major contribution to the organization of membrane traffic at the Golgi apparatus.

Quantitative microscopy is becoming increasingly crucial in efforts to disentangle the complexity of organogenesis, yet adoption of the potent new toolbox provided by modern data science has been slow, primarily because it is often not directly applicable to developmental imaging data. We tackle this issue with a newly developed algorithm that uses point cloud-based morphometry to unpack the rich information encoded in 3D image data into a straightforward numerical representation. This enabled us to employ data science tools, including machine learning, to analyze and integrate cell morphology, intracellular organization, gene expression and annotated contextual knowledge. We apply these techniques to construct and explore a quantitative atlas of cellular architecture for the zebrafish posterior lateral line primordium, an experimentally tractable model of complex self-organized organogenesis. In doing so, we are able to retrieve both previously established and novel biologically relevant patterns, demonstrating the potential of our data-driven approach.

Background The internal organization of cells depends on mechanisms to ensure that transport carriers, such as vesicles, fuse only with the correct destination organelle. Several types of proteins have been proposed to confer specificity to this process, and we have recently shown that a set of coiled-coil proteins on the Golgi, called golgins, are able to capture specific classes of carriers when relocated to an ectopic location. Results Mapping of six different golgins reveals that, in each case, a short 20–50 residue region is necessary and sufficient to capture specific carriers. In all six of GMAP-210, golgin-84, TMF, golgin-97, golgin-245, and GCC88, this region is located at the extreme N-terminus of the protein. The vesicle-capturing regions of GMAP-210, golgin-84, and TMF capture intra-Golgi vesicles and share some sequence features, suggesting that they act in a related, if distinct, manner. In the case of GMAP-210, this shared feature is in addition to a previously characterized “amphipathic lipid-packing sensor” motif that can capture highly curved membranes, with the two motifs being apparently involved in capturing distinct types of vesicles. Of the three GRIP domain golgins that capture endosome-to-Golgi carriers, golgin-97 and golgin-245 share a closely related capture motif, whereas that in GCC88 is distinct, suggesting that it works by a different mechanism and raising the possibility that the three golgins capture different classes of endosome-derived carriers that share many cargos but have distinct features for recognition at the Golgi. Conclusions For six different golgins, the capture of carriers is mediated by a short region at the N-terminus of the protein. There appear to be at least four different types of motif, consistent with specific golgins capturing specific classes of carrier and implying the existence of distinct receptors present on each of these different carrier classes.

Focuses upon shopping centre developments through joint venture enterprises. By adapting the process proposed by Churchill to develop measures of marketing constructs, an instrument to assess perceived attractiveness of joint venture shopping centres in China is formulated. The proposed instrument (SCATTR) contains 21 attributes in five dimensions and exhibits high internal consistency and validity. The purpose of this instrument is to provide China's joint venture shopping centres with an indication of their performance as well as an avenue to gain more knowledge about consumers in China. Concludes that the SCATTR instrument is a reliable and valid tool to assess the attractiveness and performance of shopping centres as perceived by consumers.

Since the \"open-door\" policy was introduced in 1978, China's socio-economic development has been impressive, and the standard of living of its approximately 1.2 billion population has generally improved. However, with the rapid economic development and technological advancement comes the inevitable income and social inequality between urban and rural residents as well as among the populace in different regions of China. The disparity in consumption and shopping patterns between higher income and lower income consumers, as well as the recent deflation and \"premature consumption psychology\" phenomenon in China, have become major challenges for existing shopping centers, and the development of the retail sector as a whole. Based on official data from 1991 to 1998 and empirical evidence from a 1998 9 study, this paper examines the differences in consumption and shopping patterns among consumers in China and discusses the reasons behind such disparity.

The Golgi apparatus is a multicompartment central sorting station at the intersection of secretory and endocytic vesicular traffic. The mechanisms that permit cargo-loaded transport vesicles from different origins to selectively access different Golgi compartments are incompletely understood. We developed a rerouting and capture assay to investigate systematically the vesicle-tethering activities of 10 widely conserved golgin coiled-coil proteins. We find that subsets of golgins with distinct localizations on the Golgi surface have capture activities toward vesicles of different origins. These findings demonstrate that golgins act as tethers in vivo, and hence the specificity we find to be encoded in this tethering is likely to make a major contribution to the organization of membrane traffic at the Golgi apparatus.

In spite of the unprecedented success of public housing in Singapore, the rapid rate at which the population is greying is causing housing stress in the matured Housing and Development Board (HDB) estates. Although new housing options such as studio apartments are being provided by the public sector while a recently formed housing cooperative is developing a retirement village, the majority of the elderly in Singapore prefer to age in place, notwithstanding the imbalance between the demands of their homes and the functioning level of the elderly persons' physical and biological systems. This implies that home modification, rather than new-built elderly housing, may be a more pragmatic solution to the elderly Singaporeans' housing problems that could also improve their quality of life. Since 85% of the population of Singapore live in public housing, this paper examines the types of home modifications that could be carried out to the existing stock of public housing so as to create a suitable living environment for the elderly. In addition, the paper considers the housing finance predicaments of the elderly Singaporean and explores possible financing instruments that could be implemented to support home modifications for Singapore's greying population. The paper concludes that since home modification(s) could improve the quality of life of the elderly persons more than specialised housing, public funds should be diverted from building new specialised housing to home modification(s) for elderly home owners.

Globalisation enables foreign liquidity to access local property markets. This paper depicts a strong connection between foreigners' property acquisitions and regional housing price movements in Singapore. Testing structure breaks also illustrates a ripple effect of prices from the central city to suburbs. A structural vector autoregression incorporates these two observations. Impulse-response function and forecast-error variance decomposition show that central region's foreign-liquidity shocks can greatly impact housing price growth in not only the central region but also the non-central region where foreign buyers are inactive. The ripple effect of prices plays an important role. Non-central region's foreign-liquidity shocks, in contrast, have small effects on both regions. Impacts of foreign-liquidity shocks can reach the public-housing market, where foreigners' participation is prohibited. The findings are useful to policy makers who consider regulations of foreign home buyers as an instrument to stabilise housing markets.

Quantitative microscopy is becoming increasingly crucial in efforts to disentangle the complexity of organogenesis, yet adoption of the potent and ever-growing toolbox provided by modern data science has been slow, primarily because data-driven tools focus on \"big data\" whereas microscopy produces \"rich data\". We tackle this issue using a newly developed algorithm for point cloud-based morphometry to unpack the rich information encoded in high-resolution 3D image data into a straightforward numerical representation. This allowed us to employ machine learning for multi-modal data integration of cell morphology, intracellular organization, gene expression and annotated contextual knowledge that facilitates data exploration. We apply these techniques to construct and explore a quantitative atlas of cellular architecture for the zebrafish posterior lateral line primordium, an experimentally tractable model of complex self-organized organogenesis. In doing so, we are able to retrieve both previously established and novel biologically relevant patterns, demonstrating the potential of our data-driven approach.

Problems ensuing from the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act are discussed. So far, Congress and the courts have not been able to provide any definitive answers to the problems.