Small interfering RNA (siRNA)-induced RNA degradation has been used recently as an antivirus agent to inhibit specific virus replication. This report shows that 21 nt duplexes of siRNA of the influenza virus M gene can cause specific inhibition of influenza virus matrix (M1) protein expression in transfected 293T cells. Furthermore, it is shown that a lentivirus vector can be used to effectivel...

The cytotoxicity and the antivirus activity of native hemocyanin, RtH, derived from the Bulgarian marine mollusk Rapana thomasiana and its structural isoform, RtH2, against HSV replication was evaluated on three HSV strains--two wt strains, TM (HSV 1) and Bja (HSV 2), and one ACVR mutant with tk gene mutation, DD (HSV 2). The experiments were performed on continuous RD 64 cells and three HSV 1 ...

INTRODUCTION The agent paradigm has recently increased its influence in the research and development of computational logic-based systems. A clear and correct specification is made through Logic Programming (LP) and Non-nomotonic Reasoning that have been brought (back) to the spotlight. Also, the recent significant improvements in the efficiency of LP implementations for Non-monotonic Reasoning...

Artificial agents engaged in real world applications require accurate resource allocation strategies. For instance, open systems may require artificial agents with the capability to filter out all information which are irrelevant with respect to the actual intentions and goals. In this work we develop a model of surprise-driven belief update. We formally define a strategy for epistemic reasonin...

A new model for high-level concurrent programming is presented. Designed for implementing programs which manipulate and react to shared data which is highly structured, its main elements are: a shared constraint store, deened as a theory-update system a notion of reactor, which is a program fragment written in a generic reactive programming language; a general use of agents, deened as arbitrary...

We present a logical framework and the declarative semantics of a multi-agent system in which each agent can communicate with and update other agents, can react to the environment, is able to prefer, whether beliefs or reactions, when several alternatives are possible, and is able to abduce hypotheses to explain observations. The knowledge state of an agent is represented by an updatable priori...

To achieve high quality and efficiency standards, interoperability between different information systems in healthcare is strongly required. Distribution, high modularity, robustness are features of agent oriented architectures, making MultiAgent Systems (MAS) ideal for Health Information Systems (HIS), as the healthcare domain is characterized by system and data heterogeneity. This paper prese...

This paper shows how propositional dynamic logic (PDL) can be interpreted as a logic for multi-agent belief revision. For that we revise and extend the logic of communication and change (LCC) of [9]. Like LCC, our logic uses PDL as a base epistemic language. Unlike LCC, we start out from agent plausibilities, add their converses, and build knowledge and belief operators from these with the PDL ...