Mutations in the surfactant protein (SP)-C gene are responsible for familial and sporadic interstitial lung disease (ILD). The consequences of such mutations on pulmonary surfactant composition and function are poorly understood. To determine the effects of a mutation in the SP-C gene on surfactant, we obtained lung tissue at the time of transplantation from a 14-mo-old infant with progressive ...

The composition, presentation, and spatial orientation of extracellular matrix molecules and growth factors are key regulators of cell behavior. Here, we used self-assembling peptide nanofiber gels as a modular scaffold to investigate how fibronectin-derived adhesion ligands and different modes of epidermal growth factor (EGF) presentation synergistically regulate multiple facets of primary rat...

Late Embryogenesis Abundant (LEA) proteins, a group of hydrophilic proteins, have been linked to survival in plants and animals in periods of stress, putatively through safeguarding enzymatic function and prevention of aggregation in times of dehydration/heat. Yet despite decades of effort, the molecular-level mechanisms defining this protective function remain unknown. In this paper, we summar...

The self-interaction of proteins is of paramount importance in aggregation and crystallization phenomena. Solution conditions leading to a change in the state of aggregation of a protein, whether amorphous or crystalline, have mainly been discovered by the use of trial and error screening of large numbers of solutions. Self-interaction chromatography has the potential to provide a quantitative ...

Decision-making procedure based on fuzzy relational composition may require that the involved connectives are not idempotent to handle signi cant information properly. Yet, non-idempotence may result in meaningless inference when the universes of discourse are dense. Here we propose a novel kind of connective and a formal de nition of relational composition for dense universes of discourse whic...

this study aimed to develop an index that can rank welding workplace that associate well with possible health risk of welders.welding fumes health index (wfhi) were developed based on data from case studies conducted in plant 1 and plant 2. personal sampling of welding fumes to assess the concentration of metal constituents along with series of lung function tests was conducted. fifteen metal c...

We study the problem of aggregation of M arbitrary estimators of a regression function with respect to the mean squared risk. Three main types of aggregation are considered: model selection, convex and linear aggregation. We define the notion of optimal rate of aggregation in an abstract context and prove lower bounds valid for any method of aggregation. We then construct procedures that attain...