The shape modeling technique based on the implicit surface representation is used for generating threedimensional surface models that interpolate given sets of scattered points. A number of techniques for generating interpolating surfaces have been proposed and significant progress has been made in the last decade [1]. In addition, the implicit surface representation is also useful for interact...

Mice with disruptions of the red blood cell (RBC) cytoskeleton provide severe hemolytic anemia models in which to study multiorgan thrombosis and infarction. The incidence of cerebral infarction ranges from 70% to 100% in mice with alpha-spectrin deficiency. To determine whether mutant RBCs abnormally bind adhesive vascular components, we measured adhesion of mouse and human RBCs to immobilized...

BACKGROUND Prostate apoptosis response-4 (Par-4) is a tumor-suppressor protein that selectively activates and induces apoptosis in cancer cells, but not in normal cells. The cancer specific pro-apoptotic function of Par-4 is encoded in its centrally located SAC (Selective for Apoptosis induction in Cancer cells) domain (amino acids 137-195). The SAC domain itself is capable of nuclear entry, ca...

   The objective of the present study is to develop and investigate the swelling behavior of pH-sensitive Superporous Hydrogel (SPH) and SPH composite (SPHC). A novel superporous hydrogel containing poly (methacrylic acid-co-acrylamide) was synthesized from methacrylic acid and acrylamide through the aqueous solution polymerization, using N,N-methylenebisacrylamide as a crosslinker and ammonium...

Many vertebrate small nuclear RNA gene promoters contain an SPH motif in their distal control regions that can confer transcriptional stimulation by RNA polymerase II or RNA polymerase III. Using the human U6 gene SPH motif as a probe, we isolated a cDNA encoding human SPH-binding factor (hSBF) from a HeLa cell expression library. The coding region of hSBF is almost identical to ZNF143, a 626 a...

The bioactive molecule sphingosine 1-phosphate (S1P) is abundantly stored in platelets and can be released extracellularly. However, although they have high sphingosine (Sph) kinase activity, platelets lack the de novo sphingolipid biosynthesis necessary to provide the substrates. Here, we reveal a generation pathway for Sph, the precursor of S1P, in human platelets. Platelets incorporated extr...

The Support Architecture for Large-Scale Subsurface Analysis (SALSSA) provides an extensible framework, sophisticated graphical user interface (GUI), and underlying data management system that simplifies the process of running subsurface models, tracking provenance information, and analyzing the model results. The SALSSA software framework is currently being applied to validating the Smoothed P...