Introduction: Bacteria have at least one sigma factor (σ-factor) that transcribes the genes required for cell viability. Usually, transcription of σ-factors occurs and changes in response to a variety of environmental stresses. Expression of σ-factors is one of the strategies which is used in response to different stress conditions. This study was aimed to evaluate the effects...

We consider the merit factor of binary sequences obtained by appending an initial fraction of an m-sequence to itself. We show that, for all sufficiently large n, there is some rotation of each m-sequence of length n that has merit factor greater than 3.34 under suitable appending. This is the first proof that the asymptotic merit factor of a binary sequence family can be increased under append...

Many electronic payment systems have been developed to facilitate the purchase of goods and services over the internet. However none of the system was able to be implemented on large scale [1]. This paper identifies the factors which cause failure to these payment systems. Moreover this paper presents the NetBill protocol and describes its social aspects along with its security and transactiona...

Survivin is a recently described inhibitor of apoptosis and mitotic regulator which is selectively over-expressed in human tumors. Its expression rate is predictive of disease progression, early recurrences and resistance to therapy. Up-regulation of survivin in oral pre-malignant lesions (OPL) and in oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) has already been demonstrated in previous studies. A criti...

For many industrial and scientific laser applications, such as materials processing, fiber coupling, beam collimation, and beam focusing, it is necessary to have a good laser beam quality. In general, propagating laser beams deviate from an ideal Gaussian intensity distribution. The degree of deviation can be conveniently quantified by a quality factor M (called the “M-squared” factor or the “t...

A module M is called epi-retractable if every submodule of M is a homomorphic image of M. Dually, a module M is called co-epi-retractable if it contains a copy of each of its factor modules. In special case, a ring R is called co-pli (resp. co-pri) if RR (resp. RR) is co-epi-retractable. It is proved that if R is a left principal right duo ring, then every left ideal of R is an epi-retractable ...

Here we introduce the M-Pin client-server protocol, which features two-factor client authentication as an alternative to Username/Password. Despite the mathematical complexity of the protocol we demonstrate that an M-Pin client can be implemented in an environment with limited computational capability.

The incidence of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is increasing at an alarming rate. Insulin secretory dysfunction and insulin resistance are characteristic features of T2DM. However, their relative contributions to the progression from normal glucose tolerance to impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) to T2DM remain unknown. This limits the capacity of researchers to establish therapeutic interventio...