Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus (VEE) produces an acute infection in humans and induces a well-characterized cytopathic effect in neurons of the central nervous system (CNS). However, little is known about the role of glial cells in response to VEE infection of the CNS. Our results demonstrate that VEE is capable of a productive infection in primary astrocyte cultures and that this infecti...

Endocytic trafficking is a critical mechanism for cells to decode complex signaling pathways, including those activated by G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). Heterogeneity in the endosomal network enables GPCR activity to be spatially restricted between early endosomes (EEs) and the recently discovered endosomal compartment, the very early endosome (VEE). However, the molecular machinery driv...

Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus (VEEV) is an emerging pathogen of equids and humans, but infection of its rodent reservoir hosts has received little study. To determine whether responses to infection vary among geographic populations, we inoculated 3 populations of cotton rats with 2 enzootic VEEV strains (Co97-0054 [enzootic ID subtype] and 68U201 [enzootic IE subtype]). The 3 populations...

The bi-objective warehouse problem in a crisp environment is often not eective in dealing with the imprecision or vagueness in the values of the problem parameters. To deal with such situations, several researchers have proposed that the parameters be represented as fuzzy numbers. We describe a new algorithm for fuzzy bi-objective warehouse problem using a ranking function followed by an applic...

Venezuelan equine encephalitis (VEE) is reemerging in Peru. VEE virus subtype ID in Peru has not been previously associated with severe disease manifestations. In 2006, VEE virus subtype ID was isolated from a boy with severe febrile disease and gastrointestinal bleeding; the strain contained 2 mutations within the PE2 region.

In this paper, we have introduced the concept of fuzzy ordered AG-groupoids which is the generalization of fuzzy ordered semigroups first considered by Kehayopulu and Tsingelis (2002). We have studied some important features of a left regular ordered AG-groupoid in terms of fuzzy left ideals, fuzzy right ideals, fuzzy two-sided ideals, fuzzy generalized bi-ideals, fuzzy bi-ideals, fuzzy interio...

One of the most important questions in arbovirology concerns the origin of epidemic Venezuelan equine encephalitis (VEE) viruses; these viruses caused periodic, extensive epidemics/epizootics in the Americas from 1938-1973 (reaching the United States in 1971) but had recently been presumed extinct. We have documented the 1992 emergence of a new epidemic/epizootic VEE virus in Venezuela. Phyloge...

An epitope-blocking enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay was developed for the rapid differentiation of serologic responses to enzootic variety IE and ID versus epizootic variety IAB and IC strains of Venezuelan equine encephalitis (VEE) virus. Two monoclonal antibodies that differentially recognize epizootic versus enzootic VEE virus epitopes were used to measure the serotype-specific blocking ab...

Qualitative thematic maps are graphic representations of the process of areal differentiation, a process recognized as one of the hallmarks of the geographer’s craft and one of geography’s grand traditions. Traditionally the process can best be described as classification based on Boolean Set Theory wherein the area bounded by the cartographic line is considered to be in that class for the targ...

In this paper, a new approach is prposed for ordering fuzzy numbers based on bi-symmetrical weighted distance. The proposed method considers the bi-symmetrical weighted function and the bisymmetrical weighted distance of fuzzy numbers to rank fuzzy numbers. Some examples to compare the advantage of this approch with the existing metric index ranking methods is illustrated. The process to rank t...