BACKGROUND Platelet activation can lead to enhanced oxidative stress, inflammatory response, and endothelial dysfunction. To quantify the effects of platelet inhibition on endothelial function, we assessed platelet activity of healthy persons before and after clopidogrel administration and evaluated its effects on endothelial function. We hypothesized that clopidogrel, by attenuating platelet a...

Neurodegenerative diseases constitute a class of illnesses marked by pathological protein aggregation in the brains of affected individuals. Although these disorders are invariably characterized by the degeneration of highly specific subpopulations of neurons, protein aggregation occurs in all cells, which indicates that toxicity arises only in particular cell biological contexts. Aggregation-a...

Blood viscosity is dependent on the shear rate at which it is measured. Reversible red cell aggregation is largely a function of fibrinogen-red cell interaction at normal hematocrits. Red cell aggregation is the basis for the anomalous rheological behavior of blood, since a considerable fraction of the shear stress applied to blood flowing at low shear rates is required to break up the aggregat...

We have read with interest the recently published article by Sargento et al. [1], regarding the haemostatic, haemorheologic and inflammatory profile in transmural myocardial infarction survivors during a 12-month follow-up period. With respect to haemorheological parameters, the authors found that plasma viscosity and fibrinogen concentration decreased over the 12-month period while haematocrit...

Blood viscosity is dependent on the shear rate at which it is measured. Reversible red cell aggregation is largely a function of fibrinogen-red cell interaction at normal hematocrits. Red cell aggregation is the basis for the anomalous rheological behavior of blood, since a considerable fraction of the shear stress applied to blood flowing at low shear rates is required to break up the aggregat...

In order to test the hypothesis that the increase of vascular resistance observed in vivo at low flow rates is due in part to blood Theological properties, the apparent viscosity of human blood was measured in small tubes in a range of shear rates. Pressure-flow relationships were obtained in vertical glass tubes (29 to 94 fjiin i.d.) perfused with blood at hematocrits between 0.13 and 0.65. Vi...

BACKGROUND Energy drink consumption has been anecdotally linked with sudden cardiac death and, more recently, myocardial infarction. As myocardial infarction is strongly associated with both platelet and endothelial dysfunction, we tested the hypothesis that energy drink consumption alters platelet and endothelial function. METHODS Fifty healthy volunteers (34 male, aged 22+/-2 years) partici...

Aggregation functions and utility functions belong to very interesting parts of modern decision making theory. We develop basic concept of the connection of aggregation functions theory and utility theory to determine gross annual premium in general insurance. We introduce specific values of the gross annual premium on the basis of aggregation of the person’s utility functions which were determ...

Polyamine induced aggregation of various DNAs has been studied under conditions usually employed in many enzymatic assays where DNA is one of the substrates. Spermine was by far the most efficient polyamine in causing aggregation followed by spermidine and cadaverine. All double-stranded and naturally occurring single-stranded DNAs were found to aggregate. No aggregation of single-stranded homo...

We introduce new estimators of the inhomogeneous K-function and pair correlation function a spatial point process as well cross bivariate under assumption second-order intensity-reweighted stationarity. These rely on ‘global’ normalisation factor which depends an aggregation intensity function, while existing depend ‘locally’ at individual observed points. The advantages our global over local a...