The low potency of cobra antivenom has been an area of concern in immunotherapy for cobra envenomation. This study sought to investigate factors limiting the neutralizing potency of cobra antivenom, using a murine model. We examined the immunological reactivity and neutralizing potency of a Thai polyvalent antivenom against the principal toxins of Naja sumatrana (Equatorial spitting cobra) veno...

Cobra snakebites are one of the most frequent occurrences among the poisonous snakebites. The correlation between the serum concentrations of cobra venom in the victims with the severity of systemic and local symptoms after envenoming is still awaited for investigation. In this paper, we have developed an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) to detect Taiwan cobra venom existed in the seru...

The constraint-based reconstruction and analysis (COBRA) framework has been widely used to study steady-state flux solutions in genome-scale metabolic networks. One shortcoming of current COBRA methods is the possible violation of the loop law in the computed steady-state flux solutions. The loop law is analogous to Kirchhoff's second law for electric circuits, and states that at steady state t...

We performed a screen for genetic suppressors of cobra, an Arabidopsis mutant with defects in cellulose formation and an increased ratio of unesterified/esterified pectin. We identified a suppressor named mongoose1 (mon1) that suppressed the growth defects of cobra, partially restored cellulose levels, and restored the esterification ratio of pectin to wild-type levels. mon1 was mapped to the M...

COBrA is a Java-based ontology editor for bio-ontologies and anatomies that differs from other editors by supporting the linking of concepts between two ontologies, and providing sophisticated analysis and verification functions. In addition to the Gene Ontology and Open Biology Ontologies formats, COBrA can import and export ontologies in the Semantic Web formats RDF, RDFS and OWL. COBrA is be...

COnstraint-Based Reconstruction and Analysis (COBRA) provides a molecular mechanistic framework for integrative analysis of experimental data and quantitative prediction of physicochemically and biochemically feasible phenotypic states. The COBRA Toolbox is a comprehensive software suite of interoperable COBRA methods. It has found widespread applications in biology, biomedicine, and biotechnol...

We present a new, misuse-resistant scheme for online authenticated encryption, following the framework set forth by Fleischmann et al. (FSE 2012). Our scheme, COBRA, is roughly as efficient as the GCM mode of operation for nonce-based authenticated encryption, performing one block cipher call plus one finite field multiplication per message block in a parallelizable way. The major difference fr...

Many Americans under 65 have health insurance through an employer. Beginning in 1985, a federal law known as COBRA required that eligible workers and their dependents have the option to continue employer-based group health coverage when employment is terminated. Because premiums for COBRA coverage can be very expensive, the 111th Congress included provisions in the American Recovery and Reinves...

Thirty-six years ago, I was the first Cobra Pilot to shake the hand of a surviving Cobra Pilot who lost his tail rotor assembly while on a Hunter-Killer mission in South Vietnam. It was a hot, humid day at Quan Loi. I was an in-country trained Cobra maintenance officer for A Troop 3/ 17 Air Cav and Operation Lam Son 719 had been underway for weeks. The siren went off, which meant one of our Hel...

This Issue Brief discusses continuation-of-coverage mandates under the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985 (COBRA). It provides background information on health insurance portability and job mobility, data on the cost to employers of providing continuation of coverage to former employees, and a summary of empirical research on COBRA's effect on employee benefits and job mobil...