Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) such as defensins and cathelicidins are small peptides with broad-spectrum activity against bacteria, fungi and viruses. In addition, several AMPs modulate mammalian cell behaviours including migration, proliferation and cytokine production. This review describes findings from recent studies showing the presence of various AMPs at the human ocular surface and discu...

Host defense peptides (historically called antimicrobial peptides, AMPs) are key components in the mammalian innate immune system, and are responsible for both direct killing and immunomodulatory effects in host defense against pathogenic organisms. In order to identify novel host defense peptides by sequence analysis, we constructed the AMPer resource (http://www.cnbi2.com/cgi-bin/amp.pl) that...

Low pressure system statistics derived from the Antarctic Mesoscale Prediction System (AMPS) and NCEP, NCEP2 and JRA25 re-analysis products are compared by using an automatic cyclone tracking scheme. Since AMPS model spatial and temporal resolutions are much higher than the ones of the re-analyses, this study provides a valuable insight of the ability of numerical models to simulate low pressur...

Why use op amps for RF design? Traditional RF design techniques using discrete transistors have been practiced successfully for decades. RF designers who are comfortable with things “as-is” will scrutinize introduction of a new design technique using op amps. The cost of high-speed op amps, in particular, will raise eyebrows. Why replace a transistor that costs a few cents with a component that...

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are small, cationic, amphiphilic peptides with broad-spectrum microbicidal activity against both bacteria and fungi. In mammals, AMPs form the first line of host defense against infections and generally play an important role as effector agents of the innate immune system. The AMP era was born more than 6 decades ago when the first cationic cyclic peptide antibioti...

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) have remarkably different structures as well as biological activity profiles, whereupon most of these peptides are supposed to kill bacteria via membrane damage. In order to understand their molecular mechanism and target cell specificity for Gram-positive bacteria, it is essential to consider the architecture of their cell envelopes. Before AMPs can interact with ...

For about a year I have been experimenting with extremely high intercept amplifiers using 2N5109 bipolar junction transistors (BJTs). These kinds of amplifiers, known as common base transformer feedback (CBTF) amplifiers, and also known as common base noiseless feedback amplifiers, if properly designed and used, offer MW DXers (and SW DXers, though their needs are not as extreme as MW DXers) am...

Mosquitoes that transmit many deadly infectious diseases also need to keep fighting against many microbial infections. Constitutive expression of multiple antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) in almost all body tissues is believed to facilitate the effective management of these local infections. When any infection breaches the local barrier, AMPs are induced rapidly in non-target tissues such as hemoc...

cross-linked polymeric organogels have attracted much attention in recent years. most synthesized organogels are based on low molecular weight or denderitic materials. the study focuses on the preparation of an alcohol absorbent organogel based on 2-acrylamido-2-methylpropane sulphonic acid (amps) through cross-linking polymerization. polyethylene glycol diacrylate-400 and ammonium persulphate ...