Role of cyclooxygenase-2 in H5N1 viral pathogenesis and the potential use of its inhibitors

1. Cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2), along with TNF-α and other proinflammatory cytokines, was hyperinduced in H5N1- infected macrophages in vitro and in epithelial cells of autopsied lung tissues of infected patients. 2. The COX-2 mediated amplification of the proinflammatory response is rapid, and the effects elicited by the H5N1-triggered proinflammatory cascade are broader than those arising from direct viral infection. 3. Selective COX-2 inhibitors suppress the H5N1- hyperinduced cytokines in the proinflammatory cascade.published_or_final_versio

Impact of dye interlayer on the performance of organic photovoltaic devices

The influences of buffer interlayer at the donor/acceptor interface on the open circuit voltage (VOC) of typical copper phthalocyanine (CuPc) / C60 organic photovoltaic devices are studied. Six fluorescent dyes with progressively increasing ionization potentials (I P) were used to investigate the factors influencing the VOC. The short-circuit current and fill factor of CuPc/ C60 device incorporating dye interlayer are lower than those of standard bilayer device. On the other hand, the VOC increases linearly with the I P of dye material and falls off when the I P is equal to or greater than 5.6 eV, in which the energy offset between the highest occupied molecular orbitals at the interlayer/ C60 heterojunction is smaller than the C60 exciton binding energy. The findings underscore the importance of energy offsets in photovoltaic responses. © 2009 American Institute of Physics.published_or_final_versio

Trigeminal Neurosensory Deficit and Patient Reported Outcome Measures: The Effect on Life Satisfaction and Depression Symptoms

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THE FORMATION OF FACEBOOK STICKINESS: THE PERSPECTIVES OF MEDIA RICHNESS THEORY, USE & GRATIFICATION THEORY AND INTIMACY

With the advent of web 2.0, social networking sites (SNSs) have mushroomed. Gaining competitive advantage by retaining users in the SNS is an important issue for operators. By conceptualizing stickiness as the state of individuals’ prolong stay on the SNS, the aim of this study is to explore the process of formatting SNS stickiness in the context of Facebook from the perspectives of media richness theory, uses & gratifications (U & G) theory, and intimacy. Data was collected from the northern Taiwan University. A total of 187 questionnaires were selected for the data analysis. The results support the following conclusions: 1) the media richness provided by the Facebook website directly influences users’ gratifications, including interpersonal utility and social utility; 2) the intimacy is an important mediating variable involving in the process of formatting Facebook stickiness; and 3) Facebook stickiness is indirectly influenced by gratifications, interpersonal utility and social utility, which exerts its effect through intimacy. By integrating the theoretical perspectives of media richness theory, U & G theory with intimacy into the process model of formatting Facebook stickiness, this study provides both academics and practitioners with insight into how Facebook stickiness form and enable SNS manager to retain their users

MC-Fluid: Fluid Model-Based Mixed-Criticality Scheduling on Multiprocessors

A mixed-criticality system consists of multiple components with different criticalities. While mixed-criticality scheduling has been extensively studied for the uniprocessor case, the problem of efficient scheduling for the multiprocessor case has largely remained open. We design a fluid model-based multiprocessor mixed-criticality scheduling algorithm, called MC-Fluid in which each task is executed in proportion to its criticality-dependent rate. We propose an exact schedulability condition for MC-Fluid and an optimal assignment algorithm for criticality-dependent execution rates with polynomial-time complexity. Since MC-Fluid cannot be implemented directly on real hardware platforms, we propose another scheduling algorithm, called MC-DP-Fair, which can be implemented while preserving the same schedulability properties as MC-Fluid. We show that MC-Fluid has a speedup factor of (1 + √ 5) /2 (~ 1.618), which is best known in multiprocessor MC scheduling, and simulation results show that MC-DP-Fair outperforms all existing algorithms

Effects of depressive symptoms and family satisfaction on health related quality of life: The Hong Kong FAMILY study

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The localization of multiple cathepsin mRNAs in the seminiferous epithelium by in situ hybridization is consistent with their role in germ cell (GC) migration

Abstract no. 707published_or_final_versio