Background: Exosomes in synovial fluid (SF) has a close relationship with the pathogenesis of rheumatiod arthritis. As complex biological fluid, SF presents challenges for exosomes isolation using standard methods, such as Exoquick TM kit and ultracentrifugation. Objectives: The study aims to compared quality separated by (TM), kit+Exoquick TC (TM-TC), ultracentrifugation (UC) TM-TC+UC(TM-TC-UC...

AIMS Thrombomodulin (TM), a potent anticoagulant, is not detected in quiescent vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs). In diseased vessels, VSMC expresses TM, but the mechanisms are unclear. This study examined molecular mechanisms for TM expression in VSMCs. METHODS AND RESULTS Platelet-derived growth factor-BB (PDGF-BB) induced TM expression in cultured human aortic VSMCs. PDGF-induced TM is ...

Tropomyosin (TM) is an integral component of the thin filament in muscle fibers and is involved in regulating actin-myosin interactions. TM is encoded by a family of four alternatively spliced genes that display highly conserved nucleotide and amino acid sequences. To assess the functional and developmental significance of alpha-TM, the murine alpha-TM gene was disrupted by homologous recombina...

Until today, the explicit speci cation of "software contracts" by means of class invariants and method preand post-conditions was only available to Ei el developers. iContract is the rst tool that provides the same thorough support for Java. iContract is a freely available source-code pre-processor that instruments sourcecode with checks for class invariants as well as preand post-conditions th...

Transactional Memory (TM) simplifies parallel programming by transferring responsibility for concurrency management from the programmer to the system. Nevertheless, a number of challenges must be addressed for TM to be widely adopted. This dissertation presents work towards improving the practicality of TM across three dimensions. The first challenge addressed is that of integrating TM with pop...

Transmembrane (TM) proteins have crucial roles in various cellular processes. The location of post-translational modifications (PTMs) on TM proteins is associated with their functional roles in various cellular processes. Given the importance of PTMs in the functioning of TM proteins, this study developed topPTM (available online at http://topPTM.cse.yzu.edu.tw), a new dbPTM module that provide...

In service-oriented systems a constellation of services cooperate, sharing potentially sensitive information and responsibilities. Cooperation is only possible if the different participants trust each other. As trust may depend on many different factors, in a flexible framework for Trust Management (TM) trust must be computed by combining different types of information. In this paper we describ...

Loss of endothelial thrombomodulin (TM) function is associated with macrovascular, microvascular, and inflammatory diseases. Loss of TM function impairs the generation of the anticoagulant protease activated protein C (aPC), which conveys important neuroprotective effects. Yet, the physiological relevance and the mechanism through which the TM-aPC system maintains nerve function remain unknown....

IMPORTANCE Intensive care unit (ICU) telemedicine (TM) programs have been promoted as improving access to intensive care specialists and ultimately improving patient outcomes, but data on effectiveness are limited and conflicting. OBJECTIVE To examine the impact of ICU TM on mortality rates and length of stay (LOS) in an integrated health care system. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS Obser...