Antimicrobial polypeptides are widely distributed effec-tors of host defense in animals and plants. They include enzymes that digest vital microbial structures (e.g., lysozyme, neutrophil elastase, phospholipase A2), substances that bind and sequester iron or other essential nutrients (e.g., lacto-ferrin), and polypeptides that insert into and disrupt microbial membranes (e.g., bactericidal per...

© Schattauer 2012 Thrombosis and Haemostasis 108.4/2012 Recent findings indicate that naturally occurring polyphosphates, like nucleic acids and inorganic compounds, share the ability to trigger blood coagulation (1). The release of DNA or RNA by tissue damage can thus represent a first line of haemostatic defence against vascular injury. This view is further corroborated by the observation tha...

This article details the reasons behind adolescents' attraction to cults. It is recommended that parents, teachers, and counselors familiarize themselves with the warning signs. Suggestions are offered on how to make adolescents less vulnerable to cult overtures. Adolescence is the transitional period between the dependence of childhood and the assumption of the rights and responsibilities of a...

Non-linguistic social signals (e.g., `tone of voice’) are often as important as linguistic or affective content in predicting behavioral outcomes [1, 12]. This paper describes four automated measures of audio social signaling within the experimental context of speed dating. We find that this approach allows us to make surprisingly accurate predictions about the outcomes of social situations.

We consider a skew product with the interval [0,a] as a fiber space and maps in fibers that are concave and fix 0. If the map in the base is an irrational rotation of a circle, then it has been known that under some additional conditions there exists a Strange Nonchaotic Attractor (SNA) for the system. The proofs involved Lyapunov exponents and Birkhoff Ergodic Theorem. We show that the existen...

Biological membranes are fascinating two-dimensional microenvironments that exhibit unique solvent behaviours due to their varying lipid composition. Although many important bioenergetic and signalling events involve the transient or permanent assembly of membrane protein complexes, the characterization of the thermodynamic and kinetic properties behind this assembly is just beginning. In parti...

The “similarity-attraction” effect stands as one of the most well-known findings in social psychology. However, some research contends that perceived but not actual similarity influences attraction. The current study is the first to examine the effects of actual and perceived similarity simultaneously during a face-to-face initial romantic encounter. Participants attending a speeddating event i...

Case attraction has stood as a puzzling, and elusive, oddity of older Indo-European languages. This paper focuses on attraction in Ancient Greek, establishing both the regularity of the operation and its underlying motivation. A novel method is proposed for grounding case in terms of a feature-based representation of agentivity properties, loosely based on Dowty’s proto-role theory, but reformu...

This paper discusses the domain of attraction and its sensitivity for a class of chaotic attractors generated by using second-order linear systems with hysteresis-series. It is found that the domain of attraction of the chaotic attractors is determined by an unstable limit cycle. The chaotic dynamical behaviors are demonstrated by using the Poincaré map. The sensitivity of the domain of attract...

We study a continuous-time random walk on the d-dimensional lattice, subject to a drift and an attraction to large clusters of a subcritical Bernoulli site percolation. We find two distinct regimes: a ballistic one, and a subballistic one taking place when the attraction is strong enough. We identify the speed in the former case, and the algebraic rate of escape in the latter case. Finally, we ...