Microvascular rarefaction increases vascular resistance and pressure in systemic arteries and is a hallmark of fixed essential hypertension. Preventing rarefaction by activation of angiogenic processes could lower blood pressure. Endothelial tip cells in angiogenic sprouts direct branching of microvascular networks; the process is regulated by microRNAs, particularly the miR-30 family. We inves...

Hedgehog, FGF, VEGF, and Notch signaling pathways network together for vascular remodeling during embryogenesis and carcinogenesis. HHIP1 (HHIP) is an endogenous antagonist for SHH, IHH, and DHH. Here, comparative integromics analyses on HHIP family members were performed by using bioinformatics and human intelligence. HHIP1, HHIP2 (HHIPL1 or KIAA1822) and HHIP3 (HHIPL2 or KIAA1822L) constitute...

BACKGROUND Congenital heart defects are the most common birth defects worldwide. Although defective Notch signaling is the major cause of mouse embryonic death from cardiovascular defects, how Notch signaling is regulated during embryonic vasculogenesis and heart development is poorly understood. METHODS AND RESULTS Regulator of G protein signaling 6 (RGS6)-/-/Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent protei...

The present investigation was designed to study the effect of an active compound isolated from Justicia wynaadensis against multi drug resistant organisms (MDRO's) associated with diabetic patients. The drug resistant pathogens implicated in wound and urinary tract infection of diabetic patients were isolated and identified by molecular sequencing. Solvent-solvent fractionation of crude methano...

The response to a potential disaster can require the evacuation of personnel from a specified area. Generally, such efforts are restricted to the orderly mass departure of individuals across pre-planned and well maintained transportation routes. In the U.S., evacuations of up to 1,000 subjects take place every two to three weeks, with more extreme evacuations involving two million or more every...

This Thesisexamines recent trends in flexible forms of employment and how those forms of employment influence and at the same time are influenced by the economic, structural and regulatory environments in the different countries of the European Union, as well as their diverse labour market regimes. Those interactions are used as the basis for an analysis of the likelihood of convergence or dive...

How do shared problems affect politics and policy in a divided society? We examine some common intuitions about preference polarization and policy-making in light of such problems and show that the relationships they imply are fundamentally contingent. When actors’ individual costs from a policy addressing a commonly shared problem differ, their preferences over the appropriate policy respond a...

The fundamental problem of distance geometry, F P DG , involves the characterization and study of sets of points based only on given values of (some of) the distances between pairs of points. This problem has a wide range of applications in various areas of mathematics, physics, chemistry, and engineering. Euclidean Distance Matrices, EDM , play an important role in F P DG . They use the square...

Brief background Christchurch Public Hospital (CPH) and Christchurch Women’s Hospital (CWH) occupy the same physical site but are distinctively different buildings. They are sited close to the Avon River and Hagley Park and about a 10 minute walk to the central business district. CWH opened in 2005 as a “state-of-the-art” tertiary level women’s hospital that accommodates a tertiary level neonat...