Significance: The epidermal barrier prevents water loss and serves as the body's first line of defense against toxins, chemicals, and infectious microbes. Disruption of the barrier, either through congenital disorders of barrier formation or through wounds, puts the individual at risk for dehydration, hypersensitivity, infection, and prolonged inflammation. Epidermal barrier disorders affect mi...

A set of sensors establishes barrier coverage of a given line segment if every point of the segment is within the sensing range of a sensor. Given a line segment I, n mobile sensors in arbitrary initial positions on the line (not necessarily inside I) and the sensing ranges of the sensors, we are interested in finding final positions of sensors which establish a barrier coverage of I so that th...

this field study was conducted  to investigate barriers to applying principles of management in wards of tehran university on medical science hospitals: head nurses' viewpoints .75 hednurses who  were working  in selected hospitals affiliated to tehran university of medical sciences. the data collection tool was a questionnaire that  it,s validity and reliability was obtained using content...

The interconnection of different tissue-tissue interfaces may extend organ-on-chips to a new generation of sophisticated models capable of recapitulating more complex organ-level functions. Single interfaces are largely recreated in organ-on-chips by culturing the cells on opposite sides of a porous membrane that splits a chamber in two or by connecting the cells of two adjacent compartments th...

Glomerular podocyte cells are critical for the function of the renal ultrafiltration barrier. Especially, the highly specialized cell-cell junction of podocytes, the slit diaphragm, has a central role in the filtration barrier. This is highlighted by the fact that mutations in molecular components of the slit diaphragm, including nephrin and Cd2-associated protein (Cd2ap), result in proteinuric...

assessment of the correlation between rock brittleness and rock fracture toughness has been the subject of extensive research works in the recent years. unfortunately, the brittleness measurement methods have not yet been standardized, and rock fracture toughness cannot be estimated satisfactorily by the proposed indices. in the present study, statistical analyses are performed on some data col...

one of the main distinctions between geomaterials and other engineering materials is the spatial variation of their properties in different directions. this characteristic of geomaterials -so called heterogeneity- is studied herewith. several spatial distributions are introduced to describe probabilistic variation of geotechnical properties of soils. among all, the absolute normal distribution ...

the purpose of this study is to compare the results of different probabilistic methods such as the perturbation method, stochastic finite element method (sfem) and monte carlo method. these methods were used to study the convergence of direct approach for slope stability analysis and are developed for a linear soil behavior. in this study, two dimensional random fields are used and both the fir...

Regulation of the intestinal epithelial barrier is a differentiated process, which is profoundly deranged in inflammatory bowel diseases. Recent data provide evidence that the glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) is critically involved in intestinal epithelial wound healing and barrier maturation and exerts antiapoptotic effects under certain conditions. Furthermore, not only the ...

Mucosal barriers separate self from non-self and are essential for life. These barriers, which are the first line of defense against external pathogens, are formed by epithelial cells and the substances they secrete. Rather than an absolute barrier, epithelia at mucosal surfaces must allow selective paracellular flux that discriminates between solutes and water while preventing the passage of b...