PURPOSE To report the frequency and relationship of eyelid retraction, lid lag, lagophthalmos, and von Graefe's sign in a group of patients with Graves' ophthalmopathy and compare these findings to those in a group of normal individuals. DESIGN Retrospective comparative cohort study. PARTICIPANTS Fifty consecutive Graves' ophthalmopathy patients were compared to a control group of 50 normal...

CD14(+) dendritic cells (DCs) present in the dermis of human skin represent a large subset of dermal DCs (dDCs) that are considered macrophage-like cells with poor antigen (cross)-presenting capacity and limited migratory potential to the lymph nodes. CD14(+) dDC highly express DC-specific ICAM-3-grabbing non-integrin (DC-SIGN), a receptor containing potent endocytic capacity, facilitating intr...

The MHC-encoded butyrophilin, BTN2A1, is a cell surface glycoprotein related to the extended family of B7 costimulatory molecules. BTN2A1 mRNA was expressed in most human tissues, but protein expression was significantly lower in leukocytes. An Ig-fusion protein of BTN2A1 bound to immature monocyte-derived dendritic cells. Binding diminished upon MoDC maturation and no binding was detected to L...

Data envelopment analysis (DEA) has been proven as an efficient technique to evaluate the performance of homogeneous decision making units (DMUs) where multiple inputs and outputs exist. In the conventional applications of DEA, the data are considered as specific numerical values with explicit designation of being an input or output. However, the observed values of the data are sometimes imprec...

A wide range of pathogens, including human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1), hepatitis C virus, Ebola virus, cytomegalovirus, dengue virus, Mycobacterium, Leishmania, and Helicobacter pylori, can interact with dendritic cell (DC)-specific ICAM3-grabbing nonintegrin (DC-SIGN), expressed on DCs and a subset of B cells. More specifically, the interaction of the gp120 envelope protein of HIV-1...

This study asks how users of British Sign Language (BSL) recognize individual signs in connected sign sequences. We examined whether this is achieved through modality-specific or modality-general segmentation procedures. A modality-specific feature of signed languages is that, during continuous signing, there are salient transitions between sign locations. We used the sign-spotting task to ask ...

Background: Communicative actions are specific movements or gestures which are accomplished by vocal tract articulators (lips, tongue, velum etc.) for speech, by facial articulators (eye brows, eye lids etc.) for co-verbal facial expression and by other bodily articulators (hands, arms etc.) for co-verbal gesturing. While action-based approaches already exist for spoken language processing it i...

Beneficial effects of breastfeeding are well-recognized and include both immediate neonatal protection against pathogens and long-term protection against allergies and autoimmune diseases. Although several proteins have been identified to have anti-viral or anti-bacterial effects like secretory IgA or lactoferrin, the mechanisms of immune modulation are not fully understood. Recent studies iden...

The authors present a series of 4 experiments designed to test the ability to perceive local shape information. Observers were presented with various smoothly varying 3-dimensional surfaces where they reported shape index and sign of Gaussian curvature at several probe locations. Results show that observers are poor at making judgments based on these local measures, especially when the region s...