Neisseria meningitidis accounted for over half the 2,360 notified cases of meningitis in England and Wales in 19971 and is the leading infectious cause of death in childhood2–4. There were twice as many notifications of meningococcal disease in 1997 as in 1994 and the mortality remained at around 10% (ca 240 deaths)1,2. This article focuses on the presentation and management of meningococcal di...

In order to study giant resonance induced by Li scattering, optical model (OM) analysis of Li elastic scattering is necessary to get the optical parameters. OM has been widely used to analyze the heavy ion scattering data in term of empirical Woods-Saxon (W-S) parameterizations of the nuclear potential. However, it was found that a satisfactory microscopic understanding of heavy ion scattering ...

The effects of dexamethasone on adenosine 5'-triphosphatase (ATPase) activity and the intracellular Ca(2+) concentration ([Ca(2+)](i)) were investigated in acidotic mouse brain. Dexamethasone (3 mg/kg, i.p.) or vehicle was administered 3 h before decapitation ischemia, and the brain concentration of adenosine 5'-triphosphate (ATP) was determined 0.5-2 min after ischemia. The effects of dexameth...

We consider undirected graphs without loops or multiple edges. A weighting of a graph G is an assignment of a positive integer w( e) to each edge of G. For a vertex x€V(G), the (weighted) degree d(x) is the sum ofweights on the edges ofG incident to x. The irregularity strength s( G) of a graph G was introduced by Chartrand et al. in [1] a.s the minimum integer t such that G has a weighting wit...

Because inhibitory synaptic transmission is a major mechanism of general anesthesia, we examined the effects of isoflurane on properties of GABAergic inhibitory currents in the reticular thalamic nucleus (nRT) in brain slices. The evoked IPSCs (eIPSCs) and spontaneous miniature synaptic currents (mIPSCs) of visualized nRT cells in young and adult rats were recorded. Consistent with postsynaptic...

Syntaxin is a key presynaptic protein that binds to N- and P/Q-type Ca(2+) channels in biochemical studies and affects gating of these Ca(2+) channels in expression systems and in synaptosomes. The present study was aimed at understanding the molecular basis of syntaxin modulation of N-type channel gating. Mutagenesis of either syntaxin 1A or the pore-forming alpha(1B) subunit of N-type Ca(2+) ...

Calprotectin (CP) is an antimicrobial protein produced and released by neutrophils that inhibits the growth of pathogenic microorganisms by sequestering essential metal nutrients in the extracellular space. In this work, spectroscopic and thermodynamic metal-binding studies are presented to delineate the zinc-binding properties of CP. Unique optical absorption and EPR spectroscopic signatures f...

cross-sectional images of common and superficial femoral arteries (CFA and SFA). Fig 2 Shows the difference of CA burden in the CFA and SFA. Statistically significant differences were detected between the two segments (P<0.01). CFA had a bigger CA burden than SFA. Fig 3 Comparison of CA burden in different NWI groups. A statistically significant difference occurred between the three groups (P<0...