Functional and genetic analysis of regulatory regions of coliphage H-19B: location of shiga-like toxin and lysis genes suggest a role for phage functions in toxin release

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/74784/1/j.1365-2958.1998.00890.x.pd

Prunella vulgaris: A comprehensive review of chemical constituents, pharmacological effects and clinical applications.

Prunella vulgaris (PV) is a perennial herb belonging to the Labiate family and is widely distributed in northeastern Asian countries such as Korea, Japan, and China. It is reported to display diverse biological activities including anti-microbial, anti-cancer, and anti-inflammation as determined by in vitro or in vivo studies. So far, about 200 compounds have been isolated from PV plant and majority of these have been characterized mainly as triterpenoids, sterols and flavonoids, followed by coumarins, phenylpropanoids, polysaccharides and volatile oils. This review summarizes and analyzes the current knowledge on the chemical constituents, pharmacological activities, mechanisms of action and clinical applications of the PV plant including its potential as a future medicinal plant. Although some of the chemical constituents of the PV plant and their mechanism of action have been investigated the biological activities of many of these remain unknown and further clinical trials are required to further enhance its reputation as a medicinal plant

Grain refinement of magnesium alloys: a review of recent research, theoretical developments and their application

This paper builds on the ‘‘Grain Refinement of Mg Alloys’’ published in 2005 and reviews the grain refinement research onMg alloys that has been undertaken since then with an emphasis on the theoretical and analytical methods that have been developed. Consideration of recent research results and current theoretical knowledge has highlighted two important factors that affect an alloy’s as-cast grain size. The first factor applies to commercial Mg-Al alloys where it is concluded that impurity and minor elements such as Fe and Mn have a substantially negative impact on grain size because, in combination with Al, intermetallic phases can be formed that tend to poison the more potent native or deliberately added nucleant particles present in the melt. This factor appears to explain the contradictory experimental outcomes reported in the literature and suggests that the search for a more potent and reliable grain refining technology may need to take a different approach. The second factor applies to all alloys and is related to the role of constitutional supercooling which, on the one hand, promotes grain nucleation and, on the other hand, forms a nucleation-free zone preventing further nucleation within this zone, consequently limiting the grain refinement achievable, particularly in low solute-containing alloys. Strategies to reduce the negative impact of these two factors are discussed. Further, the Interdependence model has been shown to apply to a broad range of casting methods from slow cooling gravity die casting to fast cooling high pressure die casting and dynamic methods such as ultrasonic treatment

Riociguat treatment in patients with chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension: Final safety data from the EXPERT registry

Objective: The soluble guanylate cyclase stimulator riociguat is approved for the treatment of adult patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) and inoperable or persistent/recurrent chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH) following Phase

Multilineage differentiation and characterization of the human fetal osteoblastic 1.19 cell line: A possible in vitro model of human mesenchymal progenitors

The in vitro study of human bone marrow mesenchymal stromal cells (BMMSCs) has largely depended on the use of primary cultures. Although these are excellent model systems, their scarcity, heterogeneity, and limited lifespan restrict their usefulness. This has led researchers to look for other sources of MSCs, and recently, such a population of progenitor/stem cells has been found in mesodermal tissues, including bone. We therefore hypothesized that a well-studied and commercially available clonal human osteoprogenitor cell line, the fetal osteoblastic 1.19 cell line (hFOB), may have multilineage differentiation potential. We found that undifferentiated hFOB cells possess similar cell surface markers as BMMSCs and also express the embryonic stem cell-related pluripotency gene, Oct-4, as well as the neural progenitor marker nestin. hFOB cells can also undergo multilineage differentiation into the mesodermal lineages of chondrogenic and adipocytic cell types in addition to its predetermined pathway, the mature osteoblast. Moreover, as with BMMSCs, under neural-inducing conditions, hFOB cells acquire a neural-like phenotype. This human cell line has been a widelyused model of normal osteoblast differentiation. Our data suggest that hFOB cells may provide for researchers an easily available, homogeneous, and consistent in vitro model for study of human mesenchymal progenitor cells

Peripheral Tools to Support Collaboration: Probing to Design Collaboration Through Role-Playing

Peripheral devices like smart phones offer an opportunity to lower the barrier to spontaneous collection and sharing of information during distributed collaboration. We have completed development of guidelines and a framework that focuses on peripheral devices in collaboration. In order to explore the design space generated by our principles, we conducted a role-playing experiment about commissioning a building, in which an “on-site” team and a “design” team were expected to find and resolve discrepancies between requirements, design documents, and the actual site. The teams were given Styrofoam panels to act as pretend smart peripherals to invoke play and help probe the design space. We found that “reflection on action” (debriefing and subsequent brainstorming) was fruitful for ideation and theorem building about interaction, but “reflection in action” failed. Yet, reflection in action, particularly with such probes, is important to capture the “mechanics of collaboration”. Therefore, we are considering adapting improvisational theatre to our study of distributed collaboration

Prevalence, infectivity and oocyst sporulation time of rabbit-coccidia in Taiwan

Prevalence of Eimeria species parasitizing rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus) in Taiwan were investigated. Six Eimeria species, namely: Eimeria media (prevalence, 158/642; 24.6%), Eimeria magna (101/642; 15.7%), Eimeria perforans (58/642; 9.0%), Eimeria coecicola (46/642; 7.2%), Eimeria piriformis (16/642; 2.5%), and Eimeria exigua (9/642; 1.4%) were observed. The overall prevalence of these coccidial infections in rabbits from pet shops and farms was 46.2% and 41.7%, respectively. Concurrent infections involving 2 or 3 species were often observed, while quadruple-infection was rare. Significant differences (p < 0.005) in prevalence were observed between the adult and juvenile rabbits. The minimum time required for oocyst sporulation of E. media, E. piriformis, E. magna, E. perforans, E. exigua, E. coecicola were 10, 20, 32, 12, 16, and 36 hr, respectively. This is the first report on the prevalence of Eimeria intestinal infection in commercial domestic rabbits in Taiwan. We demonstrated that these rabbit-infecting Eimeria species have high biopotential in that the ingestion of a single sporulated oocyst could successfully produce patent infection in a rabbit. In addition, they also possess high host specificity in that they could not infect mice, golden hamsters, Mongolian gerbils, rats, and guinea pigs

An econometric analysis of SARS and Avian Flu on international tourist arrivals to Asia

This paper compares the impacts of SARS and human deaths arising from Avian Flu on international tourist arrivals to Asia. The effects of SARS and human deaths from Avian Flu are compared directly according to the number of human deaths. The nature of the short run and long run relationship is examined empirically by estimating a static line fixed effect model and a difference transformation dynamic model, respectively. Empirical results from the static fixed effect and difference transformation dynamic models are consistent, and indicate that both the short run and long run SARS effect have a more significant impact on international tourist arrivals than does Avian Flu. In addition, the effects of deaths arising from both SARS and Avian Flu suggest that SARS is more important to international tourist arrivals than is Avian Flu. Thus, while Avian Flu is here to stay, its effect is currently not as significant as that of SARS. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Trends in Applied Intelligent Systems

This paper presents the detection and classification part of an industrial machine for automated assembly of decorative tessellae over patterned tiles that have significant reliefs. The machine consists of two vision systems for detecting the tiles and the tessellae, and a robotic manipulator to make the assembly. One of the vision systems detects the tessellae and the other one detects and classifies the tiles, finding the positions and orientations on the tiles where tessellae have to be mounted. Lateral illumination is used to enhance shadows and characterize the relief pattern. The shadow pattern is used as the main feature for classifying a tile to a model. The method works with a variety of models, is quite robust, and achieves very good classification results, as required for an industrial application