Author: claimsbot

1. A mobile communication system, comprising:
a buffer configured to store storing packet data to be sent; and
a controller configured for discarding the packet data according to a value of a timer corresponding to the packet data, taking over the value of the timer corresponding to the packet data when a handover is performed,
wherein the discarding further includes discarding the corresponding packet data when the value of the timer, starting at reception of the packet data at a mobile terminal, reaches a given value.
2. The system as defined in claim 1, wherein the packet data is a service data unit (SDU) in a Packet Data Convergence Protocol (PDCP).
3. The system as defined in claim 1, wherein the reception of the packet data is reception from an upper layer to a layer of a Packet Data Convergence Protocol (PDCP).
4. The system as defined in claim 1, wherein the reception is reception of the packet data in the buffer.
5. A mobile communication system, comprising:
a controller configured for discarding stored packet data according to a value of a timer corresponding to the packet data; and
a transmitter configured for transferring the packet data from a source base station to a target base station and transferring the value of the timer corresponding to the packet data to be transferred when a handover is performed;
wherein the target base station sets a new value of the timer for the transferred packet data with the transferred value of the timer or the transferred value of the timer corrected with a transfer delay time, and when the value of the timer, starting at handover from the new value, reaches a given value, discards the corresponding packet data.
6. The system according to claim 5, wherein the source base station transfers the value of the timer by using a packet data reception state reporting protocol or a time stamp field included in a packet data transfer protocol header.
7. The system as defined in claim 5, wherein the packet data is a service data unit (SDU) in a Packet Data Convergence Protocol (PDCP).
8. A mobile communication system comprising:
a buffer configured to store packet data to be sent;
a transmitter for transferring the packet data from a source base station to a target base station and transferring a value of a timer corresponding to the packet data to be transferred when a handover is performed; and
a controller configured for setting a new value of the timer for the transferred packet data with the transferred value of the timer or the transferred value of the timer corrected with a transfer delay time, and for discarding the corresponding packet data when the value of the timer, starting at handover from the new value, reaches a given value, wherein the mobile communication system discards the packet data stored in the buffer according to the value of the timer corresponding to the packet data.
9. The mobile communication system according to claim 8, wherein the source base station transfers the value of the timer by using a packet data reception state reporting protocol or a time stamp field included in a packet data transfer protocol header.
10. The system as defined in claim 8, wherein the packet data is a service data unit (SDU) in a Packet Data Convergence Protocol (PDCP).
11. A mobile communication system comprising:
a buffer configured to store packet data to be sent;
a transmitter for transferring the packet data from a source base station to a target base station, and correcting a value of a timer corresponding to the packet data to be transferred with a transfer delay time and then transferring the value of the timer when a handover is performed; and
a controller configured for setting a new value of the timer for the corresponding packet data with the corrected value of the timer transferred thereto, and for discarding the corresponding packet data when the value of the timer, starting at handover from the new value, reaches a given value, wherein the mobile communication system discards the packet data stored in the buffer according to a value of the timer corresponding to the packet data.
12. The mobile communication system as defined in claim 11, wherein the packet data is a service data unit (SDU) in a Packet Data Convergence Protocol (PDCP).
13. A mobile terminal comprising:
a buffer configured to store packet data to be sent to a base station; and
a controller configured for discarding the packet data according to a value of a timer corresponding to the packet data, taking over the value of the timer corresponding to the packet data when a handover is performed,
wherein the discarding further includes discarding the corresponding packet data when the value of the timer, starting at reception of the packet data at the mobile terminal, reaches a given value.
14. The mobile terminal as defined in claim 13, wherein the reception of the packet data is reception from an upper layer to a layer of a Packet Data Convergence Protocol (PDCP).
15. The mobile terminal as defined in claim 13, wherein the reception is reception of the packet data in the buffer.
16. A base station comprising:
a transmitter configured to transmit control information relating to a timer for discarding packet data stored in a mobile terminal; and
a controller configured to control the timer for the mobile terminal by transmitting the control information, the mobile terminal including
a buffer configured to store the packet data to be sent to the base station, and
a controller configured for discarding the packet data according to a value of the timer corresponding to the packet data, taking over the value of the timer corresponding to the packet data when a handover is performed,
wherein the discarding further includes discarding the corresponding packet data when the value of the timer, starting at reception of the packet data at the mobile terminal, reaches a given value.
17. The base station as defined in claim 16, wherein the reception of the packet data is reception from an upper layer to a layer of a Packet Data Convergence Protocol (PDCP).
18. The base station as defined in claim 16, wherein the reception is reception of the packet data in the buffer.

The claims below are in addition to those above.
All refrences to claim(s) which appear below refer to the numbering after this setence.

1. A method of generating an application accessible by a user in accordance with a dialog system, the dialog system comprising one or more processors, the method comprising the steps of:
declaratively representing by the one or more processors of the dialog system interactions that the user may have with the dialog system as a data model and one or more user interaction elements that populate an application state of the data model and that are bound thereto, the application comprising the data model and the one or more user interaction elements wherein the one or more user interaction elements comprise one or more elementary programming components that characterize a dialog, independent of modalities, devices, and browsers employable to access information associated with the application programmed in accordance therewith;
wherein an intention of the user is determinable from an interpretation of the one or more user interaction elements and an extraction of a semantic meaning from a user input such that a dialog that the user has with the dialog system may be a mixed-initiative dialog whereby navigation through the application is performable in a non-sequential manner and at least partially user-driven;
wherein at least a portion of the one or more user interaction elements can be transformed or associated to one or more modality-specific renderings of the application which are presentable to the user and are one of selected and generated by a dialog manager algorithm; and
wherein the representation comprises attaching appropriate event handlers to each of a plurality of defined events comprising a parser event, a canonicalization event, a canonicalization response event, a backend submit event, a backend submit response event, a focus event, and a slot mutation event;
wherein populating the application state of the data model comprises the steps of:
scoring each of the one or more user interaction elements against one or more slots of each of a plurality of forms in accordance with a scoring algorithm;
selecting at least one of the plurality of forms to represent the application state based at least in part on the scoring; and
populating the one or more slots of the selected form by the one or more user interaction elements in accordance with the user’s interaction with the dialog system;
wherein the selected form specifies the scoring algorithm to be used for at least one subsequent scoring.
2. The method of claim 1, wherein the transforming operation comprises transcoding.
3. The method of claim 2, wherein the transcoding is performed in accordance with XSL transformation (XSLT) rules.
4. The method of claim 1, wherein the associating operation comprises selecting a precompiled presentation snippet.
5. The method of claim 1, wherein the associating operation comprises use of an authored presentation.
6. The method of claim 1, wherein at least one of the one or more slots of the application state is populatable in response to semantic meaning extracted from a user utterance in accordance with a natural language understanding engine associated with the dialog system.
7. The method of claim 6, wherein population of the one or more slots serves to interpret the intention of the user such that the mixed-initiative dialog may occur between the user and the dialog system.
8. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more modality-specific renderings comprise a speech-based representation of portions of the application.
9. The method of claim 8, wherein the speech-based representation is based on Voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML).
10. The method of claim 9, wherein VoiceXML is extended to support natural language understanding of a user input and generation of resulting attribute value pairs.
11. The method of claim 10, wherein the extension of VoiceXML comprises support for a language model.
12. The method of claim 9, wherein VoiceXML is extended to specify natural language (NL) parsing via introduction of a NL grammar as a speech data file.
13. The method of claim 12, wherein the extension of VoiceXML comprises support for a natural language grammar tag.
14. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more modality-specific renderings comprise a visual-based representation of portions of the application.
15. The method of claim 14, wherein the visual-based representation comprises a menu in a frame or a portion of a graphical user interface and an active region under focus.
16. The method of claim 14, wherein the visual-based representation is based on at least one of HyperText Markup Language (HTML), Extensible HTML (XHTML), and XHTML-Mobile Profile.
17. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more modality-specific renderings comprise a representation of the application based on at least one of Extensible HyperText Markup Language-Mobile Profile (XHTML-MP) and Wireless Markup Language (WML).
18. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more user interaction elements represent conversational gestures.
19. The method of claim 1, wherein the declarative representation is based on Extensible Markup Language (XML).
20. The method of claim 1, wherein the representation supports presentation of one or more snippets of the application to the user, the one or more snippets comprising at least a prompt and an input field, wherein the prompt is presented to the user and the input field specifies user input receivable in response to the prompt.
21. The method of claim 20, wherein the one or more snippets further comprise a submit instruction.
22. The method of claim 20, wherein the one or more snippets are one or more Voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML) snippets.
23. The method of claim 22, wherein the one or more VoiceXML snippets circumvent dialog management imposed by the VoiceXML form interpretation algorithm.
24. The method of claim 1, wherein the representation permits modeling of the application state along with associated type and cross-field constraints.
25. The method of claim 1, wherein the representation permits continuous maintaining and updating of the application state.
26. The method of claim 1, wherein the representation permits passing a user utterance to a natural language understanding (NLU) engine to extract semantic meaning.
27. The method of claim 26, wherein the representation permits using contextual knowledge present in the application state along with the semantic meaning returned by the NLU engine to permit contextual interpretation of the user utterance.
28. The method of claim 27, wherein the representation permits using the contextual interpretation to decide which portion of a dialog gets traversed next and updating of the application state.
29. The method of claim 1, wherein the representation specifies navigation inside the application thereby causing a focus shift based on one of the application state and a result of a generated event.
30. The method of claim 1, wherein the defined events comprise an update event and submission of context.
31. The method of claim 1, wherein the representation permits reuse of dialogs to allow the user to provide information about a new request inherited from a similar previous request.
32. The method of claim 1, further wherein the one or more user interaction elements are independent of content and presentation associated with the application.
33. The method of claim 1, further wherein the representation permits extraction of attribute value pairs from user input.
34. A dialog system for providing access to an application by a user, the dialog system comprising:
one or more processors operable to: (i) obtain the application from an application server, the application declaratively representing interactions that the user may have with the dialog system as a data model and one or more user interaction elements that populate an application state of the data model and that are bound thereto, the application comprising the data model and the one or more user interaction elements, wherein the one or more user interaction elements comprise one or more elementary programming components that characterize a dialog, independent of modalities, devices, and browsers employable to access information associated with the application programmed in accordance therewith, wherein an intention of the user is determinable from an interpretation of the one or more user interaction elements and an extraction of a semantic meaning from a user input such that a dialog that the user has with the dialog system may be a mixed-initiative dialog whereby navigation through the application is performable in a non-sequential manner and at least partially user-driven; and (ii) one of transforming and associating at least a portion of the one or more user interaction elements to one or more modality-specific renderings which are one of generated and selected by a dialog manager algorithm; and
memory, operatively coupled to the one or more processors, for storing at least a portion of results associated with at least one of the obtaining, transforming and associating operations;
wherein the representing operation comprises attaching appropriate event handlers to each of a plurality of defined events comprising a parser event, a canonicalization event, a canonicalization response event, a backend submit event, a backend submit response event, a focus event, and a slot mutation event
wherein populating the application state of the data model comprises the operations of:
scoring each of the one or more user interaction elements against one or more slots of each of a plurality of forms in accordance with a scoring algorithm;
selecting at least one of the plurality of forms to represent the application state based at least in part on the scoring; and
populating the one or more slots of the selected form by the one or more user interaction elements in accordance with the user’s interaction with the dialog system;
wherein the selected form specifies the scoring algorithm to be used for at least one subsequent scoring.
35. An article of manufacture comprising a memory storing one or more programs which when executed by a processor implement the steps of:
declaratively representing interactions that the user may have with the dialog system as a data model and one or more user interaction elements that populate an application state of the data model and that are bound thereto, the application comprising the data model and the one or more user interactions elements, wherein the one or more user interaction elements comprise one or more elementary programming components that characterize a dialog, independent of modalities, devices, and browsers employable to access information associated with the application programmed in accordance therewith;
wherein an intention of the user is determinable from an interpretation of the one or more user interaction elements and an extraction of a semantic meaning from a user input such that a dialog that the user has with the dialog system may be a mixed-initiative dialog whereby navigation through the application is performable in a non-sequential manner and at least partially user-driven;
wherein at least a portion of the one or more user interaction elements can be transformed or associated to one or more modality-specific renderings of the application which are presentable to the user and are one of selected and generated by a dialog manager algorithm;
wherein the representing step comprises attaching appropriate event handlers to each of a plurality of defined events comprising a parser event, a canonicalization event, a canonicalization response event, a backend submit event, a backend submit response event, a focus event, and a slot mutation event; and
wherein populating the application state of the data model comprises the steps of:
scoring each of the one or more user interaction elements against one or more slots of each of a plurality of forms in accordance with a scoring algorithm;
selecting at least one of the plurality of forms to represent the application state based at least in part on the scoring; and
populating the one or more slots of the selected form by the one or more user interaction elements in accordance with the user’s interaction with the dialog system;
wherein the selected form specifies the scoring algorithm to be used for at least one subsequent scoring.
36. A method of generating an application accessible by a user in accordance with a dialog system, the dialog system comprising one or more processors, the method comprising the steps of:
declaratively representing by the one or more processors of the dialog system interactions that the user may have with the dialog system as a data model and one or more user interaction elements that populate an application state of the data model and that are bound thereto, the application comprising the data model and the one or more user interaction elements, wherein the one or more user interaction elements comprise one or more elementary programming components that characterize a dialog, independent of modalities, devices, and browsers employable to access information associated with the application programmed in accordance therewith;
wherein an intention of the user is determinable from an interpretation of the one or more user interaction elements and an extraction of a semantic meaning from a user input such that a dialog that the user has with the dialog system may be a mixed-initiative dialog whereby navigation through the application is performable in a non-sequential manner and at least partially user-driven;
wherein at least a portion of the one or more user interaction elements can be transformed or associated to one or more modality-specific renderings of the application which are presentable to the user and are one of selected and generated by a dialog manager algorithm; and
wherein populating the application state of the data model comprises the steps of:
scoring each of the one or more user interaction elements against one or more slots of each of a plurality of forms in accordance with a scoring algorithm;
selecting at least one of the plurality of forms to represent the application state based at least in part on the scoring; and
populating the one or more slots of the selected form by the one or more user interaction elements in accordance with the user’s interaction with the dialog system;
wherein the selected form specifies the scoring algorithm to be used for at least one subsequent scoring.
37. The method of claim 36, wherein the transforming operation comprises transcoding.
38. The method of claim 37, wherein the transcoding is performed in accordance with XSL transformation (XSLT) rules.
39. The method of claim 36, wherein the associating operation comprises selecting a precompiled presentation snippet.
40. The method of claim 36, wherein the associating operation comprises use of an authored presentation.
41. The method of claim 36, wherein at least one of the one or more slots of the application state is populatable in response to semantic meaning extracted from a user utterance in accordance with a natural language understanding engine associated with the dialog system.
42. The method of claim 41, wherein population of the one or more slots serves to interpret the intention of the user such that the mixed-initiative dialog may occur between the user and the dialog system.
43. The method of claim 36, wherein the one or more modality-specific renderings comprise a speech-based representation of portions of the application.
44. The method of claim 43, wherein the speech-based representation is based on Voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML).
45. The method of claim 44, wherein VoiceXML is extended to support natural language understanding of a user input and generation of resulting attribute value pairs.
46. The method of claim 45, wherein the extension of VoiceXML comprises support for a language model.
47. The method of claim 44, wherein VoiceXML is extended to specify natural language (NL) parsing via introduction of a NL grammar as a speech data file.
48. The method of claim 47, wherein the extension of VoiceXML comprises support for a natural language grammar tag.
49. The method of claim 36, wherein the one or more modality-specific renderings comprise a visual-based representation of portions of the application.
50. The method of claim 49, wherein the visual-based representation comprises a menu in a frame or a portion of a graphical user interface and an active region under focus.
51. The method of claim 49, wherein the visual-based representation is based on at least one of HyperText Markup Language (HTML), Extensible HTML (XHTML), and XHTML-Mobile Profile.
52. The method of claim 36, wherein the one or more modality-specific renderings comprise a representation of the application based on at least one of Extensible HyperText Markup Language-Mobile Profile (XHTML-MP) and Wireless Markup Language (WML).
53. The method of claim 36, wherein the one or more user interaction elements represent conversational gestures.
54. The method of claim 36, wherein the declarative representation is based on Extensible Markup Language (XML).
55. The method of claim 36, wherein the representation supports presentation of one or more snippets of the application to the user, the one or more snippets comprising at least a prompt and an input field, wherein the prompt is presented to the user and the input field specifies user input receivable in response to the prompt.
56. The method of claim 55, wherein the one or more snippets further comprise a submit instruction.
57. The method of claim 55, wherein the one or more snippets are one or more Voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML) snippets.
58. The method of claim 57, wherein the one or more VoiceXML snippets circumvent dialog management imposed by the VoiceXML form interpretation algorithm.
59. The method of claim 36, wherein the representation permits modeling of the application state along with associated type and cross-field constraints.
60. The method of claim 36, wherein the representation permits continuous maintaining and updating of the application state.
61. The method of claim 36, wherein the representation permits passing a user utterance to a natural language understanding (NLU) engine to extract semantic meaning.
62. The method of claim 61, wherein the representation permits using contextual knowledge present in the application state along with the semantic meaning returned by the NLU engine to permit contextual interpretation of the user utterance.
63. The method of claim 62, wherein the representation permits using the contextual interpretation to decide which portion of a dialog gets traversed next and updating of the application state.
64. The method of claim 36, wherein the representation permits defined events and attaching appropriate event handlers to the events.
65. The method of claim 64, wherein the representation specification of navigation inside the application thereby causing a focus shift based on one of the application state and a result of a generated event.
66. The method of claim 64, wherein the defined events comprise at least one of a parser event, a request for at least one of canonicalization and disambiguation, results from at least one of canonicalization and disambiguation, an update event and submission of context.
67. The method of claim 36, wherein the representation permits reuse of dialogs to allow the user to provide information about a new request inherited from a similar previous request.
68. The method of claim 36, further wherein the one or more user interaction elements are independent of content and presentation associated with the application.
69. The method of claim 36, further wherein the representation permits extraction of attribute value pairs from user input.
70. A dialog system for providing access to an application by a user, the dialog system comprising:
one or more processors operable to: (i) obtain the application from an application server, the application declaratively representing interactions that the user may have with the dialog system as a data model and one or more user interaction elements that populate an application state of the data model and that are bound thereto, the application comprising the data model and the one or more user interactions elements, wherein the one or more user interaction elements comprise one or more elementary programming components that characterize a dialog, independent of modalities, devices, and browsers employable to access information associated with the application programmed in accordance therewith, wherein an intention of the user is determinable from an interpretation of the one or more user interaction elements and an extraction of a semantic meaning from a user input such that a dialog that the user has with the dialog system may be a mixed-initiative dialog whereby navigation through the application is performable in a non-sequential manner and at least partially user-driven; and (ii) one of transforming and associating at least a portion of the one or more user interaction elements to one or more modality-specific renderings which are one of generated and selected by a dialog manager algorithm; and
memory, operatively coupled to the one or more processors, for storing at least a portion of results associated with at least one of the obtaining, transforming and associating operations;
wherein populating the application state of the data model comprises the steps of:
scoring each of the one or more user interaction elements against one or more slots of each of a plurality of forms in accordance with a scoring algorithm;
selecting at least one of the plurality of forms to represent the application state based at least in part on the scoring; and
populating the one or more slots of the selected form by the one or more user interaction elements in accordance with the user’s interaction with the dialog system;
wherein the selected form specifies the scoring algorithm to be used for at least one subsequent scoring.
71. An article of manufacture comprising a memory storing one or more programs which when executed by a processor implement the steps of:
declaratively representing interactions that the user may have with the dialog system as a data model and one or more user interaction elements that populate an application state of the data model and that are bound thereto, the application comprising the data model and the one or more user interactions elements, wherein the one or more user interaction elements comprise one or more elementary programming components that characterize a dialog, independent of modalities, devices, and browsers employable to access information associated with the application programmed in accordance therewith;
wherein an intention of the user is determinable from an interpretation of the one or more user interaction elements and an extraction of a semantic meaning from a user input such that a dialog that the user has with the dialog system may be a mixed-initiative dialog whereby navigation through the application is performable in a non-sequential manner and at least partially user-driven;
wherein at least a portion of the one or more user interaction elements can be transformed or associated to one or more modality-specific renderings of the application which are presentable to the user and are one of selected and generated by a dialog manager algorithm;
wherein populating the application state of the data model comprises the steps of:
scoring each of the one or more user interaction elements against one or more slots of each of a plurality of forms in accordance with a scoring algorithm;
selecting at least one of the plurality of forms to represent the application state based at least in part on the scoring; and
populating the one or more slots of the selected form by the one or more user interaction elements in accordance with the user’s interaction with the dialog system;
wherein the selected form specifies the scoring algorithm to be used for at least one subsequent scoring.

1. A travel beginningend adjusting positioning structure for a sewing machine motor drive mechanism, the sewing machine including a control shaft, on the control shaft being provided a control element, the travel beginningend adjusting positioning structure comprising:
a fixed holder being provided with a fixing portion on an end thereof and fixed on the sewing machine;
a positioning holder having an end pivoted on a pivoting element together with the fixed holder, the control shaft being rotatably inserted through the pivot element, the positioning holder being further provided with a positioning portion opposite the fixing portion of the fixed holder, the positioning portion being formed with a through hole, the fixed holder having a side for mounting a motor, on a rotating shaft of the motor being mounted a rotating element, the rotating element being engaged with the control element of the control shaft; and
an adjusting apparatus including an adjusting element, a locking element screwed to the adjusting element, and an elastic element, the adjusting element having a head portion and a threaded adjusting shaft extending from the head portion, the locking element being formed with an arc peripheral surface and a threaded hole in the arc peripheral surface, the adjusting shaft of the adjusting element being inserted through the fixing portion of the fixed holder and the through hole of the positioning portion of the positioning folder, the adjusting shaft being screwed into the threaded hole locking element, the arc peripheral surface of the locking element cooperating with the through hole of the positioning portion of the positioning holder, the locking element rotating in an extending direction of the arc peripheral surface, the elastic element being mounted on the adjusting shaft of the adjusting element with both ends of the elastic element pushing against the fixing portion of the fixed holder and the positioning portion of the positioning holder.
2. The travel beginningend adjusting positioning structure for a sewing machine motor drive mechanism as claimed in claim 1, wherein the pivot element includes a pivot sleeve, the positioning holder is formed with a pivot hole.
3. The travel beginningend adjusting positioning structure for a sewing machine motor drive mechanism as claimed in claim 1, wherein the locking element is coaxially provided on each of two end surfaces thereof with a limiting cylinder which is smaller in diameter than the locking element, the arc peripheral surface of the locking element cooperates with the through hole of the positioning portion of the positioning holder, the two limiting cylinders push against the positioning portion.
4. The travel beginningend adjusting positioning structure for a sewing machine motor drive mechanism as claimed in claim 1, wherein the positioning portion of the positioning holder is provided with a limiting portion protruding at each of two opposite sides of the through hole, the locking element is arranged between the two limiting portions.
5. The travel beginningend adjusting positioning structure for a sewing machine motor drive mechanism as claimed in claim 1, wherein the head portion of the adjusting element is formed with an arc convex stopping surface on an end thereof which contacts the fixing portion, the fixing portion includes an insertion hole, and the stopping surface cooperates with the insertion hole.
6. The travel beginningend adjusting positioning structure for a sewing machine motor drive mechanism as claimed in claim 1, wherein the positioning holder is provided with a through hole, the fixed holder includes a through hole, the rotating shaft of the motor is inserted through the through hole of the positioning holder and the through hole of the fixed holder.
7. The travel beginningend adjusting positioning structure for a sewing machine motor drive mechanism as claimed in claim 1, wherein the locking element is in the form of a column, the through hole of the positioning portion of the positioning holder is a square through hole, the locking element cooperates with the square through hole to keep non-rotating relative to each other.
8. The travel beginningend adjusting positioning structure for a sewing machine motor drive mechanism as claimed in claim 1, wherein the head portion of adjusting element is disc-shaped.

The claims below are in addition to those above.
All refrences to claim(s) which appear below refer to the numbering after this setence.

1. A method of identifying an agent that alters NAD-dependent deacetylation activity of a Sir2 protein, comprising the steps of:
a) combining an acetylated protein, the agent to be tested and the Sir2 protein or a fragment of the Sir2 protein, wherein the fragment of the Sir2 protein comprises an amino acid sequence selected from the group consisting of the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO 2, SEQ ID NO: 3, SEQ ID NO: 4, SEQ ID NO: 5, SEQ ID NO: 9, SEQ ID NO: 10, SEQ ID NO: 11, SEQ ID NO: 12, SEQ ID NO: 13, SEQ ID NO: 14, SEQ ID NO: 15, SEQ ID NO: 16, SEQ ID NO: 17, SEQ ID NO: 18, SEQ ID NO: 19, SEQ ID NO: 20, SEQ ID NO: 21, SEQ ID NO: 22, SEQ ID NO: 23, SEQ ID NO: 24, SEQ ID NO: 27, SEQ ID NO: 28 and SEQ ID NO: 38;
b) measuring NAD-dependent deacetylation activity of the Sir2 protein or the fragment of the Sir2 protein with respect to at least one lysine residue in the acetylated protein; and
c) comparing the NAD-dependent deacetylation activity of the Sir2 protein or the fragment of the Sir2 protein with respect to at least one lysine residue in the acetylated protein in the presence of the agent with the NAD-dependent deacetylation activity of the Sir2 protein or the fragment of the Sir2 protein with respect to at least one lysine residue in the acetylated protein in the absence of the agent,
wherein a difference in the NAD-dependent deacetylation activity of the Sir2 protein or the fragment of the Sir2 protein with respect to at least one lysine residue in the acetylated protein in the presence of the agent identifies the agent that alters NAD-dependent deacetylation of the Sir2 protein.
2. The method of claim 1, wherein the acetylated protein is a nuclear protein.
3. The method according to claim 2, wherein the nuclear protein is a histone protein.
4. The method of claim 1, wherein the acetylated protein is a cytoplasmic protein.
5. The method according to claim 1, wherein the Sir2 protein is a Sir2\u03b1 protein.
6. The method of claim 5, wherein the Sir2\u03b1 protein comprises the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO: 1.
7. The method of claim 1, wherein the Sir2 protein is an isolated Sir2 protein.
8. The method of claim 7, wherein the isolated Sir2 protein is a recombinant Sir2 protein.
9. The method of claim 1, wherein the Sir2 protein is a human Sir2 protein.
10. The method of claim 9, wherein the human Sir2 protein comprises SEQ ID NO: 38.
11. The method of claim 1, wherein the Sir2 protein is an isolated nuclear protein.
12. The method of claim 1, wherein the difference in NAD-dependent deacetylation activity of the Sir2 protein or the fragment of the Sir2 protein is an increase in NAD-dependent deacetylation activity and identifies the agent that increases NAD-dependent deacetylation activity of the Sir2 protein.
13. The method of claim 12, wherein the agent is an agonist of NAD-dependent deacetylation activity of the Sir2 protein.
14. The method of claim 1, wherein the difference in NAD-dependent deacetylation activity of the Sir2 protein or the fragment of the Sir2 protein is a decrease in NAD-dependent deacetylation activity and identifies the agent that decreases NAD-dependent deacetylation activity.
15. The method of claim 14, wherein the agent is an antagonist of NAD-dependent deacetylation activity of the Sir2 protein.
16. The method of claim 1, wherein the fragment of the Sir2 protein comprises the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO: 9.
17. The method of claim 1, wherein the fragment of the Sir2 protein comprises the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO: 19.
18. The method of claim 1, wherein the fragment of the Sir2 protein comprises the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO: 38.