Our previous studies showed that during the embryonic development of avian long bones, growth of the cartilaginous component is regulated by multiple factors secreted by the surrounding perichondrium (PC) and periosteum (PO). The activities of these factors--which include both positive and negative regulators--can be detected in conditioned media from PC and PO cell cultures. In the present stu...

Obesity is associated with macrophage accumulation and inflammation in adipose tissue. Macrophage-secreted factors have been reported to inhibit the differentiation of preadipocytes into adipocytes and to modulate adipogenic extracellular matrix gene expression. To enlarge our understanding of macrophages and the scope of their interactions with preadipocytes, we investigated their effect on pr...

Neural representation in the auditory cortex is rapidly modulated by both top-down attention and bottom-up stimulus properties, in order to improve perception in a given context. Learning-induced, pre-attentive, map plasticity has been also studied in the anesthetized cortex; however, little attention has been paid to rapid, context-dependent modulation. We hypothesize that context-specific lea...

antiproliferative protein (app) isolated from conditioned media of two androgen-independent prostatic carcinoma cell lines, pc3 and du-145 was shown to inhibit selectively cell proliferation of androgen-dependent prostate cancer cell line lncap in a dose dependent manner. this protein was further purified with hplc using hydrophobic interaction column (phenyl 5pw) and was used to study the modu...

in the following, i describe the sufi path (tariqa) as a dialectical process which transforms the person through love. i examine the belief system of islamic mystics as a journey involving both creativity and passion. i do so by using a fresh approach, a perspective that has heretofore yet to be applied to the spiritual alchemy of the sufis.