OBJECTIVES To investigate outcomes for postnatal women attributed to special training for health visitors (HVs) in systematically identifying postnatal depression and delivering psychologically informed interventions, and to establish the cost-effectiveness of the intervention. DESIGN A pragmatic randomised cluster trial with clusters allocated to experimental HV training arms or control, wit...

Previous studies from our laboratory have demonstrated that administration of a myogenic plasmid that encodes a protease-resistant growth hormone-releasing hormone (HV-GHRH) to pregnant rat dams augmented long-term growth in first-generation progeny. In the present study, gilts were injected intra-muscularly at day 85 of gestation with 0, 0.1, 0.5, 1, or 5 mg of the HV-GHRH-expressing plasmid a...

It is known that asbestos exposure can cause malignant mesothelioma (MM) and that CD8(+) T cells play a critical role in antitumor immunity. We examined the properties of peripheral blood CD8(+) lymphocytes from asbestos-exposed patients with pleural plaque (PL) and MM. The percentage of CD3(+)CD8(+) cells in PBMCs did not differ among the three groups, although the total numbers of PBMCs of th...

BACKGROUND Identifying the potential for drug-induced kidney injury is essential for the successful research and development of new drugs. Newer and more sensitive preclinical drug-induced kidney injury biomarkers are now qualified for use in rat toxicology studies, but biomarkers for clinical studies are still undergoing qualification. The current studies investigated biomarkers in healthy vol...

For each vertex v in a graph G, let there be associated a subgraph Hv of G. The vertex v is said to dominate Hv as well as dominate each vertex and edge of Hv. A set S of vertices of G is called a full dominating set if every vertex of G is dominated by some vertex of S, as is every edge of G. The minimum cardinality of a full dominating set of G is its full domination number γFH(G). A full dom...

Spleen cells primed by Prospect Hill (PH) or Puumala (Pu) virus could cross-react with Hantaan virus (HV) 76-118 strain-infected target cells after in vitro stimulation with HV-infected cells, although anti-PH or anti-Pu immune serum showed no cross-reactive neutralizing (NT) activity to HV without complement. These results and our previous findings with cross-reactive cytotoxic T lymphocytes (...

Gene electrotransfer is gaining momentum as an efficient methodology for nonviral gene transfer. In skeletal muscle, data suggest that electric pulses play two roles: structurally permeabilizing the muscle fibers and electrophoretically supporting the migration of DNA toward or across the permeabilized membrane. To investigate this further, combinations of permeabilizing short high-voltage puls...

The extracellular matrix (ECM) environment plays a critical role in organism development and disease. Surface sensitive microscopy techniques for studying the structural and chemical properties of ECMs are often performed in high vacuum (HV) environments. In this report, we examine the affect HV conditions have on the bioactivity and mechanical properties of type I collagen fibrillar matrices. ...

The type-I intermittency route to (or out of) chaos is investigated within the horizontal visibility (HV) graph theory. For that purpose, we address the trajectories generated by unimodal maps close to an inverse tangent bifurcation and construct their associated HV graphs. We show how the alternation of laminar episodes and chaotic bursts imprints a fingerprint in the resulting graph structure...

Low tidal volume (Vt) ventilation is protective against ventilator-induced lung injury but can promote development of atelectasis. Periodic deep inflation (DI) can open the lung, but if delivered too frequently may cause damage via repeated overdistention. We therefore examined the effects of varying DI frequency on lung mechanics, gas exchange, and biomarkers of injury in mice. C57BL/6 males w...