BACKGROUND Serum amyloid P component (SAP) and acute phase proteins like C-reactive protein contribute to the clearance of apoptotic cells. This response is diminished in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). OBJECTIVES To analyse SAP concentrations in SLE in relation to disease activity, and investigate whether SAP reacts like an acute phase protein. METHODS SAP was measured in 40 patients w...

The information carried by heart period (HP) given systolic arterial pressure (SAP) changes was assessed to characterize spontaneous baroreflex (i.e. the relation linking SAP variability to HP variability): the larger the information carried by HP given SAP changes, the greater the unpredictability of HP given SAP variations, the smaller the strength of the causal coupling from SAP series to HP...

BACKGROUND Drinking raw date palm sap is a risk factor for human Nipah virus (NiV) infection. Fruit bats, the natural reservoir of NiV, commonly contaminate raw sap with saliva by licking date palm's sap producing surface. We evaluated four types of physical barriers that may prevent bats from contacting sap. METHODS During 2009, we used a crossover design and randomly selected 20 date palm s...

The acute phase response (APR) is an early innate immune function that is initiated by inflammatory signals, leading to the release of acute phase proteins to the bloodstream to re-establish homeostasis following microbial infection. In this study we analysed the Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) whole-genome database and identified five C-reactive protein (CRP)/serum amyloid P component (SAP) like...

The ternary complex factors (TCFs; SAP-1, Elk-1, and Net) are serum response factor cofactors that share many functional properties and are coexpressed in many tissues. SAP-1, the predominant thymus TCF, is required for thymocyte positive selection. In this study, we assessed whether the different TCFs are functionally equivalent. Elk-1 deletion, but not the hypomorphic Net(delta) mutation, exa...

Genetic mutations disrupting the function of signaling lymphocytic activation molecule-associated protein (SAP) lead to T cell intrinsic defects in T cell-dependent Ab responses. To better understand how SAP enables Th cells to help B cells, we first assessed whether molecules important for B cell help are dysregulated in SAP-deficient (SAP knockout (KO)) mice. CD40 ligand (CD40L) expression wa...

Rice's only costume ball of the season, the Archi-Arts dance, will be held at River Oaks on February 21 with Lee's Owls playing. The affair will start at 10:30 and last until 3 a.m. with refreshments at midnight. Bids are on sale in sallyport and may be purchased until Tuesday noon and at the door. Date bids are priced at $3 and stags will be admitted, for $2.50, As this dance falls on the eve ...

How is reinforcement learning possible in a high-dimensional world? Without making any assumptions about the structure of the state space, the amount of data required to effectively learn a value function grows exponentially with the state space’s dimensionality. However, humans learn to solve highdimensional problems much more rapidly than would be expected under this scenario. This suggests t...