OBJECTIVE To review the incidence of respiratory conditions and their effect on mortality in HIV-infected and uninfected individuals prior to and during the era of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART). DESIGN Two large observational cohorts of HIV-infected and HIV-uninfected men (Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study [MACS]) and women (Women's Interagency HIV Study [WIHS]), followed since 198...

Among various cryptographic schemes, CBC-based MACs belong to the few ones most widely used in practice. Such MACs iterate a blockcipher EK in the so called Cipher-Block-Chaining way, i.e. Ci = EK(Mi⊕Ci−1) , offering high efficiency in practical applications. In the paper, we propose a new deterministic variant of CBC-based MACs that is provably secure beyond the birthday bound. The new MAC 3kf...

Interleukin (IL)-15 is a pleiotropic immunomodulatory and anti-apoptotic cytokine. It stimulates the proliferation survival of key immunocytes including macrophages (MACs) invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cells, which are immunoinhibitory via IL-10 release clinically relevant in interferon gamma (IFNγ)-mediated inflammatory skin diseases such as alopecia areata. Using immunofluorescence micros...

In cryptography, secure channels enable the confidential and authenticated message exchange between authorized users. A generic approach of constructing such channels is by combining an encryption primitive with an authentication primitive (MAC). In this work, we introduce the design of a new cryptographic primitive to be used in the construction of secure channels. Instead of using general pur...

To explore possible mechanisms by which complement membrane attack complexes (MAC) that are deposited in the glomerular mesangium might be pathogenic, we stimulated rat glomerular mesangial cells grown in vitro with nascent MACs formed from the purified human complement components C5b6 and normal human serum and measured production of superoxide ion (O2-) and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2). Mesangial...

This study analyzes how Management Accounting and Control Systems (MACS) facilitate the appropriation of the benefits of sustainable innovations in organizations. In particular, this paper examines the moderating role of different types of MACS in the relationships between sustainable innovation and international performance at an organizational level. We collected survey data from 123 Spanish ...

Dietary fibers are non-digestible polysaccharides functionally known as microbiota-accessible carbohydrates (MACs), present in inadequate amounts in the Western diet. MACs are a main source of energy for gut bacteria so the abundance and variety of MACs can modulate gut microbial composition and function. This, in turn, impacts host immunity and health. In preclinical studies, MAC-deprived diet...

We present first results from the MAssive Cluster Survey (MACS), a new large-scale X-ray survey designed to find and characterize very massive, distant clusters of galaxies. Based on X-ray detections in the ROSAT All-Sky Survey, MACS aims to compile a sample of more than 200 X-ray luminous clusters at z ≥ 0.3, about 50 times the number of EMSS clusters in the same redshift and luminosity range....

Soluble peptides derived from the C-terminal heptad repeat domain of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) gp41 are potent inhibitors of HIV-1 entry and gp41-induced fusion. Target membrane-anchored variants of these peptides have been shown to retain inhibitory activity. Both soluble and membrane-anchored C peptides (MACs) are thought to block fusion by binding to the N-terminal coiled c...

Hair follicle stem cells (HfSCs) play crucial roles in hair follicle morphogenesis and hair cycling. These stem cells are self-renewable and have the multi-lineage potential to generate epidermis, sebaceous glands, and hair follicle. The separation and identification of hair follicle stem cells are important for further research in stem cell biology. In this study, we report on the successful e...