Lesions appearing in the CNS of patients in the chronic phase of the inflammatory, demyelinating disease multiple sclerosis often fail to repair, resulting in neurological dysfunction. This failure of remyelination appears, in many cases, to be due not to the destruction of the local oligodendrocyte precursor population, a source for new myelin-forming cells, but to the failure of the precursor...

abstract research and development (r&d;) spending plays a major role in innovation, raising productivity and increasing economic growth. the purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of r&d; spending on growth and total factor productivity (tfp) in iran's agricultural sector. we estimate growth and productivity models using auto-regressive distributed lag (ardl) approach and data over ...

In a previous paper (Bohn et al., Carbohydr. Res., 2007, 342, 2522) the relative O3/O4 reactivities of both alpha- and beta-methyl glycosides of N-dimethylmaleoyl (DMM) glucosamine acceptors protected at O6 with three different groups were assessed by us, using two glycosyl donors. The alpha-anomers showed preferential or exclusive substitution at O3, whereas the beta-anomers gave preferential ...

Caffeic acid, rosmarinic acid and oligomers of caffeic acid with multiple catechol groups are all constituents of Salvia officinalis. Their antioxidant potential was investigated with regard to their radical scavenging activity and the stability and structure of the intermediate radicals. Pulse-radiolytic studies revealed very high rate constants with hydroxyl radicals. Evidence from kinetic mo...

Metabolic activation of some N-nitroso compounds (NOCs), an important class of DNA damaging agents, can induce the carboxymethylation of nucleobases in DNA. Very little was previously known about how the carboxymethylated DNA lesions perturb DNA replication in human cells. Here, we investigated the effects of five carboxymethylated DNA lesions, i.e. O6-CMdG, N6-CMdA, N4-CMdC, N3-CMdT and O4-CMd...

The competition between hydrogen- and halogen-bonding interactions in complexes of 5-halogenated 1-methyluracil (XmU; X = F, Cl, Br, I, or At) with one or two water molecules in the binding region between C5-X and C4=O4 is investigated with M06-2X/6-31+G(d). In the singly-hydrated systems, the water molecule forms a hydrogen bond with C4=O4 for all halogens, whereas structures with a halogen bo...

Mechanisms that regulate oligodendrocyte (OL) precursor migration and differentiation are important in normal development and in demyelinating/remyelinating conditions. We previously found that the tetraspanin CD82 is far more highly expressed in O4(+) OL precursors of the adult rat brain than those of the neonatal brain. CD82 has been physically linked to cMet, the hepatocyte growth factor (HG...

Effects of yokukansan, a traditional Japanese medicine, on proliferation and differentiation of oligodendrocytes were examined using purified mouse cortical oligodendrocyte precursor cells (OPCs). OPCs were cultured for four days, and proliferation was evaluated by counting A2B5 (a specific antibody to OPC)-reactive cells on the second day of cell culture. Differentiation from OPC to oligodendr...

We analytically study optimal capacity and flexible technology selection in parallel queuing systems. We consider N stochastic arrival streams that may wait in N queues before being processed by one of many resources (technologies) that differ in their flexibility. A resource’s ability to process k different arrival types or classes is referred to as level-k flexibility. We determine the capaci...