This investigation was undertaken to assess biological variation, especially the within-subject variations of all- trans retinoic acid, 13- cis retinoic acid and retinol in human serum. Diurnal variation and variation over a week, a month and a year were studied in 11 males (aged 21 - 54 years) and 17 females (aged 22 - 63 years), all subjectively healthy. We found no diurnal variation with the ex

Objective:To study the time response of fission neutrons induced apoptosis in murine thymocytes with 60 Co γ-rays as the reference radiation and to investigate preliminarily its molecular mechanism. Methods: Apoptosis induction was detected by means of DNA gel electrophoresis, morphologic assay, flow cytometric (FCM) analysis and diphenylamine(DPA) method respectively. p53 and bcl-2 gene expressio

Little is known about the effect of gradual bone lengthening on peripheral nerves. In the present study, an external fixation device was applied to the rabbit tibia, which was then divided. After seven days, the tibia was subjected to 0.7 mm/day callus distraction for periods of up to one month. The tibial nerve was fixed in glutaraldehyde and plastic sections were cut in longitudinal and transver

During hydrolysis of lignocellulosic biomass, monomeric sugars and a broad range of inhibitory compounds are formed and released. These inhibitors, which can be organized around three main groups, furans, weak acids and phenolics, reduce ethanol yield and productivity by affecting the microorganism performance during the fermentation step. Among the microorganisms that have been evaluated for lign

Chromosomal region 13q21-q22 harbors a putative breast cancer susceptibility gene and has been implicated as a common site for somatic deletions in a variety of malignant tumors. We have built a complete physical clone contig for a region between D13S1308 and AFM220YE9 based on 18 yeast artificial chromosome and 81 bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) clones linked together by 22 genetic markers

The changes in the NO adsorption properties of Pd(1 0 0) due to the addition of Mn have been investigated using high resolution core level photoelectron spectroscopy. The Pd(1 0 0) surface was modified by forming a c(2 x 2)-PdMn surface alloy at two different Mn coverages, giving surfaces partly and fully alloyed, respectively, as shown by scanning tunneling microscopy. NO adsorption on the alloy

BACKGROUND: End-to-side nerve repair is attachment of a single distal nerve segment (recipient nerve) end-to-side to an intact donor nerve when there is a lack of proximal nerve segment after injury. The technique is currently used clinically but the mechanism(s) behind this technique are essentially unknown. METHODS: We have studied end-to-side nerve repair in the forelimb of rats, where a single

An existence and uniqueness result for bounded, positive solutions x(t) of the equation u" + f (t, u, u') = 0, t greater than or equal to t(0) greater than or equal to 0, is established by means of the Banach contraction principle. For such a solution it is shown that alpha(t) less than or equal to x'(t) less than or equal to beta(t), t greater than or equal to t(0), where alpha, beta are given no

A study of the formation of resonant states in the conduction band, induced by impurities outside heterostructure quantum wells, is presented. We derive general expressions for the capture and scattering amplitudes, the resonance position and width, and we also calculate the effect on the energy spectrum and the density of states in the quantum well. The theory is applied to two typical impurity p

L-DOPA-induced dyskinesia (LID) is among the motor complications that arise in Parkinson's disease (PD) patients after a prolonged treatment with L-DOPA. To this day, transcriptome analysis has been performed in a rat model of LID [Neurobiol. Dis., 17 (2004), 219] but information regarding the proteome is still lacking. In the present study, we investigated the changes occurring at the protein lev

Benzene-fluorobenzene complexes are used as model systems to simulate the interactions of the SBB-HCAII protein-ligand complex. Using the second-order Moller-Plesset [MP2] and the coupled cluster singles and doubles including connected triple excitations models recently implemented with Cholesky decompositions we evaluate accurate interaction energies for several benzene-fluorobenzene van der Waal

Synthetic peptides composed of multiples of the consensus heparin-binding Cardin and Weintraub sequences AKKARA and ARKKAAKA are antimicrobial. Replacement of lysine and arginine by histidine in these peptides completely abrogates their antimicrobial and heparin-binding activities at neutral pH. However, the antibacterial activity against Gram-negative (Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa) an