PURPOSE We evaluated the clinical usefulness of interleukin-18 (IL-18) and soluble interleukin-2 receptor (sIL-2R) during chemotherapy of lung cancer in relation to the histological type of the tumor, clinical stage, response to therapy and time survival. MATERIAL AND METHODS Serum levels of IL-18 and sIL-2R were determined in 73 patients (62 males; mean age 64 years; 41 with non-small cell l...

We develop a method to build new 5D N=1 gauge models based on Sasaki-Einstein manifolds Yp,q. These extend the standard ones having unitary SU(p)q symmetry Particular focus is put building of family with symplectic SP(2r,R) symmetry. super QFTs are embedded in M-theory compactified folded toric Calabi-Yau threefolds Xˆ(Y2r,0) constructed from conical Y2r,0. By using outer-automorphism symmetrie...

Background: All To enhance the curative effect of radiotherapy, we established a radio-resistant cell line, CNE-2R from CNE-2, a radio-sensitive type of CNE, through repeated irradiation. The developed cell line provides a basis for further studies on the radio-resistance of CNE and the molecular mechanism of radiotherapy sensitization drugs. Materials and Methods: The CNE-2 cell line was selec...

Introduction: Antimicrobial peptides as the body's defense strategy play an important role in resistance against infection of microorganism. These peptides are able to modulate the immune and inflammatory processes through the production of defensive molecules. Therefore, the modulatory effects of Brevinin-2R, an antimicrobial peptide extracted from the skin of the frog (Rana ridibunda), was ev...

The hemilabile chiral C2 symmetrical bidentate substituted amide ligands (1R,2R)-5(a-d) and (1S,2S)-6(a-d) were synthesized in quantitative yield from (1R,2R)-(+)-3-methylenecyclo-propane-1,2-dicarboxylic acid (1R,2R)-3 and (1S,2S)-(-)-3-methylene-cyclopropane-1,2-dicarboxylic acid (1S,2S)-3, in two steps, respectively. The chiral Feist's acids (1R,2R)-3 and (1S,2S)-3 were obtained in good isom...

Blocked designs are useful in experiments. The general minimum lower order confounding (GMC) is an elaborate criterion which was proposed for selecting optimal fractional factorial designs. Zhang and Mukerjee (2009b) extended the GMC criterion to the B-GMC criterion for selecting a 2n−m : 2r design, where 2n−m : 2r denotes a two-level regular blocked design withN = 2n−m runs, n treatment factor...

The design and synthesis of chiral phosphane ligands have played a significant role in the development of efficient transition metal catalyzed reactions. Catalytic asymmetric hydrogenation, as one of the most practical and efficient methods for the synthesis of chiral building blocks, has attracted much attention in both academia and industry.[1] Although excellent enantioselectivities have bee...

Brevinin-2R is a novel non-hemolytic defensin that was isolated from the skin of the frog Rana ridibunda. It exhibits preferential cytotoxicity towards malignant cells, including Jurkat (T-cell leukemia), BJAB (B-cell lymphoma), HT29/219, SW742 (colon carcinomas), L929 (fibrosarcoma), MCF-7 (breast adenocarcinoma), A549 (lung carcinoma), as compared to primary cells including peripheral blood m...

Warm-up. It is an easy exercise to prove that for all A we have RigA(r) ≤ (n− r)2. This is nearly tight by a direct counting argument: Valiant [Val77, Theorem 6.4] proves that RigA(r) is at least about (n− r)2/ log n for a random A (and all fields F). This shows that rigid matrices exist in great numbers—however, as always, the challenge is to exhibit an explicit such matrix. Currently, the bes...