Cellular signaling pathways exhibit complex response profiles with features such as thresholds and steep activation (i.e., ultrasensitivity). In a reconstituted mitotic spindle orientation pathway, activation of Drosophila Pins (LGN in mammals) by Gαi is ultrasensitive (apparent Hill coefficient of 3.1), such that Pins recruitment of the microtubule binding protein Mud (NuMA) occurs over a very...

Many graph search algorithms use a labeling of the vertices to compute an ordering of the vertices. We generalize this idea by devising a general vertex labeling algorithmic process called General Label Search (GLS), which uses a labeling structure which, when specified, defines specific algorithms. We characterize the vertex orderings computable by the basic types of searches in terms of prope...

A series of allosteric kidney-type glutaminase (GLS) inhibitors were designed and synthesized using 1,4-di(5-amino-1,3,4-thiadiazol-2-yl)butane as a core scaffold. A variety of modified phenylacetyl groups were incorporated into the 5-amino group of the two thiadiazole rings in an attempt to facilitate additional binding interactions with the allosteric binding site of GLS. Among the newly synt...

BACKGROUND With improved survival of patients undergoing primary bioprosthetic aortic valve replacement (AVR), reoperation to relieve severe prosthetic aortic stenosis (PAS) is increasing. Timing of redo surgery in asymptomatic/minimally symptomatic patients remains controversial. Left ventricular (LV) global longitudinal strain (GLS) is a marker of subclinical LV dysfunction. In asymptomatic/m...

BACKGROUND Left bundle branch block (LBBB) is common following trans-catheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) and has been linked to increased mortality, although whether this is related to less favourable cardiac reverse remodeling is unclear. The aim of the study was to investigate the impact of TAVR induced LBBB on cardiac reverse remodeling. METHODS 48 patients undergoing TAVR for severe ...

We propose a framework for joint entropy coding and encryption using Chaotic maps. We begin by observing that the message symbols can be treated as the symbolic sequence of a discrete dynamical system. For an appropriate choice of the dynamical system, we could back-iterate and encode the message as the initial condition of the dynamical system. We show that such an encoding achieves Shannon’s ...

BACKGROUND Left ventricular (LV) longitudinal systolic dysfunction has been identified even in asymptomatic patients with diabetes mellitus (DM) and preserved LV ejection fraction (LVEF). However, its relevant clinical features have not been fully evaluated. METHODS We studied 144 asymptomatic DM patients without coronary artery disease. Their mean age was 57 ± 15 years, 79 (55%) were female,...

BACKGROUND Different aspects of acute stroke management and strategies for stroke prevention derive from two viewpoints: specific traditional and historical backgrounds and evidence-based medicine from modern randomized controlled trials (RCTs), meta-analysis and authorized clinical practice guidelines (GLs). Regarding intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH), Cerebrovascular Diseases published the 2006 ...

PURPOSES We investigated whether patients with organ-confined prostate cancer (PCa) and positive surgical margins (SMs) had a similar biochemical recurrence (BCR) risk compared with patients with pT3a and preoperative prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels ≤ 10ng/ml. Furthermore, we examined the effects of incorporating SM status, Gleason score (Gls), and preoperative PSA level into the discrim...

Ng et al. [1] reported the results of a very interesting study on sepsis-induced myocardial dysfunction. The authors elegantly matched patients with septic shock (90-day mortality of 41.9 %) with a control group of patients with sepsis (90-day mortality of 0 %) using a relatively novel and more sophisticated echocardiographic approach for the diagnosis of myocardial dysfunction in septic patien...