We investigated the association of polymorphisms in CCR5, the major human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-1 coreceptor, and copy number of its potent ligand CCL3L1 with tuberculosis in 298 individuals from Colombia. The CCR5-HHD haplotype, a known genetic determinant of increased susceptibility to HIV-AIDS, and a high copy number of CCL3L1, a known genetic determinant of enhanced CCL3/CCL3L1 chemo...

CD8(+) T lymphocytes have been shown to be involved in controlling poxvirus infection, but no protective cytotoxic T-lymphocyte (CTL) epitopes are defined for variola virus, the causative agent of smallpox, or for vaccinia virus. Of several peptides in vaccinia virus predicted to bind HLA-A2.1, three, VETFsm(498-506), A26L(6-14), and HRP2(74-82), were found to bind HLA-A2.1. Splenocytes from HL...

The progression of hypertensive heart disease (HHD) to heart failure (HF) is associated with myocardial remodeling. Corresponding changes in three-dimensional organization of cardiac extracellular matrix have not been quantified or related fully to the development of HF. Spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHRs) and Wistar-Kyoto controls were studied at 3, 12, 18, and 24 mo. Hemodynamic and morpho...

In this paper, we consider the recognition problem on two classes of perfectly orderable graphs, namely, the HHD-free and the Welsh-Powell opposition graphs (or WPOgraphs). In particular, we prove properties of the chordal completion of a graph and show that a modified version of the classic linear-time algorithm for testing for a perfect elimination ordering can be efficiently used to determin...

Pressure-overload left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) is characterized by an increase in myocyte size and fibrosis. However, it is not clear how each of these components affects hypertensive heart disease (HHD). We have shown in 2 different rat models of hypertension that cardiac fibrosis can be reduced with N-acetyl-seryl-aspartyl-lysyl-proline (Ac-SDKP), an antifibrotic peptide normally presen...

Chlamydia pneumoniae (C. pneumoniae) is a common human pathogen causing a range of respiratory diseases from pharyngitis to pneumonia. Even though the majority of diseases are mild or even asymptomatic, persistent C. pneumoniae infections have been associated with chronic diseases such as asthma and atherosclerosis which represent significant health problems in many countries. Consequently, the...

Optical flow is a classical tool to estimate velocity vector fields from objects on a manifold. The Helmholtz-Hodge Decomposition (HHD) of vector fields has been used to isolate rotational and divergential features in vector fields, such as vortices in vector fields. However, the existing HHD techniques operate on flat, 2D domains, which is non-adequate to many potential applications. In this p...

HER-2/neu is a self-antigen expressed by tumors and nonmalignant epithelial tissues. The possibility of self-tolerance to HER-2/neu-derived epitopes has raised questions concerning their utility in antitumor immunotherapy. Altered HER-2/neu peptide ligands capable of eliciting enhanced immunity to tumor-associated HER-2/neu epitopes may circumvent this problem. The human CTL peptide HER-2/neu (...

Background: The incidence of hypertension is continuously increasing. This study aimed to investigate the changes in clinical biochemical indexes patients with heart failure preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF), or hypertensive disease (HHD) before and after treadmill exercise.

This paper presents the architecture of a multi-user distributed Virtual Environment (VE) software system currently used in the Virtual Perception Laboratory at the SRI International. It shows how the Linda parallel language helped in the realization of that system. An unusual interface used to fly through this shared VE is also presented: a handheld display (HHD).