OBJECTIVES Oscillatoria agardhii agglutinin homologue (OAAH) proteins belong to a recently discovered lectin family. The founding member OAA and a designed hybrid OAAH (OPA) recognize similar but unique carbohydrate structures of Man-9, compared with other antiviral carbohydrate-binding agents (CBAs). These two newly described CBAs were evaluated for their inactivating properties on HIV replica...

Neisseria gonorrhoeae induces local infections in the human genitourinary tract and can disseminate to other organs to cause severe disease. Blood-derived factors present in the genital mucosa have been suggested to facilitate the spread of N. gonorrhoeae in disseminated gonococcal infections. Using gentamicin invasion assays and confocal microscopy, we observed a strong stimulatory effect of f...

The aims of this study were to check whether different biomarkers of inflammatory, apoptotic, immunological or lipid pathways had altered their expression in the occluded popliteal artery (OPA) compared with the internal mammary artery (IMA) and femoral vein (FV) and to examine whether glycemic control influenced the expression of these genes. The study included 20 patients with advanced athero...

BACKGROUND Leisure time physical activity (LTPA) is generally associated with favorable cardiovascular health outcomes, while occupational physical activity (OPA) shows less clear, or even opposite, cardiovascular effects. This apparent paradox is not sufficiently understood, but differences in temporal patterns of OPA and LTPA have been suggested as one explanation. Our aim was to investigate ...

The notions of density, thinness, residue and ideal in a free monoid can all be expressed in terms of the infix order. Guided by these definitions we introduce the same notions with respect to arbitrary binary relations. We then investigate properties of these generalized notions and explore the connection to the theory of codes. We show that, under certain assumptions about the relation, densi...

The one photon absorption (OPA) cross section of a current carrying two-orbital quantum dot (QD) with strong electron-phonon interaction (polaron regime) is considered. Using the self-consistent non-equilibrium Hartree-Fock (HF) approximation, we determine the dependence of OPA cross section on the applied bias voltage, the strength of effective electron-electron interaction, and level spacing ...

There are more than 15 million college students in the US alone. Academic advising for courses and scholarships is typically performed by human advisors, bringing an immense managerial workload to faculty members, as well as other staff at universities. This paper reports and discusses the development of two educational expert systems at a private international university. The first expert syst...