0022-2836/$ see front matter © 2010 E Integrins are heterodimeric transmembrane (TM) receptors formed by noncovalent associations of α and β subunits. Each subunit contains a single α-helical TM domain. Inside-out activation of an integrin involves the separation of its cytoplasmic tails, leading to disruption of αβ TM packing. The leukocyte integrin αLβ2 is required for leukocyte adhesion, mig...

BACKGROUND Recent work by Saito (2012) has demonstrated a simple conversion from energy-subtracted computed tomography (CT) values (ΔHU) obtained using dual-energy CT to relative electron density (RED) via a single linear relationship. The purpose of this study was to investigate the feasibility of this method to obtain RED from virtual monochromatic CT images obtained by the gemstone spectral ...

INTRODUCTION Sepsis-associated encephalopathy (SAE) is a state of acute brain dysfunction in response to a systemic infection. We propose that systemic inflammation during sepsis causes increased adhesion of leukocytes to the brain microvasculature, resulting in blood-brain barrier dysfunction. Thus, our objectives were to measure inflammatory analytes in plasma of severe sepsis patients to cre...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the long-term effects of treatments used in MS on the T-cell trafficking profile. METHODS We enrolled 83 patients with MS under fingolimod (FTY), natalizumab (NTZ), dimethyl fumarate (DMF), or other disease-modifying treatments (DMTs). Blood was drawn before treatment onset and up to 36-48 months. The ex vivo expression of CNS-related integrins (α4β1 and αL subunit of LF...

We propose a parallel implementation of the ReLPM (Real Leja Points Method) for the exponential integration of large sparse systems of ODEs, generated by Finite Element discretizations of 3D advectiondiffusion models. The performance of our parallel exponential integrator is compared with that of a parallelized Crank-Nicolson (CN) integrator, where the local linear solver is a parallel BiCGstab...

Let D be a Dynkin diagram, let Π = {α1, . . . , αl} be the simple roots of the corresponding Kac-Moody root system and let W denote the Weyl group. We show that for i 6= j, the simple roots αi and αj are in the same W -orbit if and only if vertices i and j in the Dynkin diagram corresponding to αi and αj are connected by a path consisting only of single edges. It follows that the disjoint orbit...

Due to the strong experimental evidence that the traffic to be offered to future broadband networks will display long-range dependence, it is important to study the possible implications that such traffic may have for the design and performance of these networks. In particular, an important question is whether the offered traffic preserves its long-range dependent nature after passing through a...

The effect of chronic inflammation induced by complete Freund's adjuvant (CFA) on anterior blood vessels of knee joint and its diameter was studied. Blood flow changes in response to phenylephrine (αl-adrenoceptor agonist) in CFA-treated and contralateral knee joints were observed over a 40-day period, using laser Doppler flowmetery (LDF) technique. Unilateral injection of CFA (0.2 ml) increase...

We show that a general curve in an explicit class of what we call Du Val pointed curves satisfies the Brill-Noether Theorem for pointed curves. Furthermore, we prove that a generic pencil of Du Val pointed curves is disjoint from all Brill-Noether divisors on the universal curve. This provides explicit examples of smooth pointed curves of arbitrary genus defined over Q which are Brill-Noether g...

The interaction between integrin lymphocyte function-associated antigen-1 (LFA-1) and its ligand intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1) is critical in immunological and inflammatory reactions but, like other adhesive interactions, is of low affinity. Here, multiple rational design methods were used to engineer ICAM-1 mutants with enhanced affinity for LFA-1. Five amino acid substitutions 1)...