The study presented here investigated the role of memory in normal sentence processing by looking at ERP effects to normal sentences and sentences containing grammatical violations. Sentences where the critical word was in the middle of the sentence were compared to sentences where the critical word always occurred in sentence-final position. Grammaticality judgments were required at the end of...

BACKGROUND Current diagnostic tests cannot identify which infected individuals are at risk for progression to tuberculosis (TB). Our aim was to identify biomarkers which can predict the development of TB prior to clinical diagnosis. METHOD In a retrospective case-control study, RNA of 14 HIV-infected drug users obtained before TB diagnosis (cases) and of 15 who did not develop TB (controls) w...

Clinically advanced and rapidly progressive AIDS-associated Kaposi sarcoma (AIDS-KS) tumors require an aggressive tumor-directed therapy. We have observed that AIDS-KS cells express high levels of receptors for immune regulatory cytokine, interleukin-13 (IL-13). Two tumorigenic AIDS-KS cell lines, KS Y-1 and KS-imm, expressed 4560 and 9480 IL-13 binding sites per cell with an affinity (kd) of a...

BACKGROUND Tobacco smoke and genetic susceptibility are risk factors for asthma and wheezing. The aim of this study was to investigate whether there is a combined effect of interleukin-13 gene (IL13) polymorphisms and tobacco smoke on persistent childhood wheezing and asthma. METHODS In the Isle of Wight birth cohort (UK, 1989-1999), five IL13 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs): rs1800925...

Despite urgent need, no single strategy has been widely effective at controlling the growth of rapidly progressive solid tumors. We demonstrate here a potent antitumor therapy using modified bacterial DNA and toxin. Treatment of human head and neck cancer established as xenografts in athymic mice with immunostimulatory CpG oligodeoxynucleotides encapsulated in sterically stabilized cationic lip...

In this preliminary study, we measured event-related potentials (ERPs) to melodic expectancy violations in a cross-cultural context. Subjects (n= 10) were college-age students born and raised in the United States. Subjects heard 30 short melodies based in the Western folk tradition and 30 from North Indian classical music. Each melody was presented in its original and deviation form, and subjec...

Noncoding RNA transcripts mapping to intergenic regions of the Il4-Il13 locus have been detected in Th2 cells harboring transcriptionally permissive Il4 and Il13 genes but not in Th1 cells where these genes are repressed. This correlation has given rise to the idea that intergenic transcription may be involved in maintaining the "open" chromatin structure of the Il4-Il13 locus in Th2 cells. We ...

BACKGROUND Associations between interleukin-13 (IL-13) polymorphisms and asthma risk remained controversial and ambiguous. Therefore, we performed a meta-analysis to assess the associations between IL-13 polymorphisms and asthma susceptibility. METHODS Pubmed, EMBASE, Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) and Wangfang databases were searched. Odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence i...

BACKGROUND The IL4, IL13, and IL4 receptor α chain (IL4RA) genes are candidate genes for atopic diseases. We hypothesized that the polymorphisms in these genes are associated with persistent allergic rhinitis (PER). OBJECTIVE To investigate the association of the potential functional polymorphisms in IL4, IL13, and IL4RA with PER induced by house dust mites in a Chinese population. METHODS ...

The Principle A of Chomsky's (1981) Binding Theory requires the reflexive pronoun in a sentence to be bound to its antecedent within its governing category. However, in Chinese sentences with a common structure "P-NP(1)+VP(1)+P-NP(2)+VP(2)+ziji", in which the P-NP stands for personal name and the reflexive ziji (standing for myself, himself, herself, yourself, ourselves etc., depending on conte...