Reliability is one of the main salient assets of modern weapon systems. The estimation of the failure rate of the major subsystems of military defence systems is of utmost importance in the design of any country's overall defence system. The results of a study to estimate the failure rate of the main computer system of the launcher of a shore to sea missile launcher is presented in this study. ...

Severe sepsis refers to the syndrome of fever, hypotension and organ dysfunction resulting from infection, commonly due to Gram-negative or Gram-positive bacteria with or without bacteraemia1. Occasionally, non-bacterial pathogens, including fungi, rickettsiae, protozoa and viruses, can cause a similar syndrome. The first line of defence against infecting organisms comprises highly conserved in...

The antimicrobial defence of Drosophila relies on cellular and humoral processes, of which the inducible synthesis of antimicrobial peptides has attracted interest in recent years. Another potential line of defence is the activation, by a proteolytic cascade, of phenoloxidase, which leads to the production of quinones and melanin. However, in spite of several publications on this subject, the c...

Precise control of transgene expression is pivotal to the engineering of plants with increased disease resistance. Many early attempts to boost disease resistance used constitutive overexpression of defence components but frequently this resulted in poor quality plants. It is now clear that the extensive cellular reprogramming associated with defence will reduce yields if uncontrolled defence r...

The cytoskeleton undergoes dramatic reorganization during plant defence. This response is generally interpreted as part of the cellular repolarization establishing physical barriers against the invading pathogen. To gain insight into the functional significance of cytoskeletal responses for defence, two Vitis cell cultures that differ in their microtubular dynamics were used, and the cytoskelet...