In e-commerce environments, the trustworthiness of a seller is utterly important to potential buyers, especially when the seller is unknown to them. Most existing trust evaluation models compute a single value to reflect the general trust level of a seller without taking any transaction context information into account. With such a result as the indication of reputation, a buyer may be easily d...

The larvae of Schistosoma mansoni invade their mammalian host by utilizing a serine protease, cercarial elastase (SmCE), to degrade macromolecular proteins in host skin. The catalytic activity of serine and cysteine proteases can be regulated after activation by serpins. SmSrpQ, one of two S. mansoni serpins found in larval secretions, is only expressed during larval development and in the earl...

Let k¿2; n=2+1; and let m0; : : : ; mk−1 each be a multiple of n. The graph Cm0×· · ·×Cmk−1 consists of isomorphic connected components, each of which is (n − 1)-regular and admits of a vertex partition into n smallest independent dominating sets. Accordingly, (independent) domination number of each connected component of this graph is equal to (1=n)th of the number of vertices in it. ? 2001 El...

Mesoporous, micro/nanosized TiO2/C composites with uniformly dispersed TiO2 nanoparticles embedded in a carbon matrix have been rationally designed and synthesized. In brief, TiO2 precursor was infiltrated into the channels of surface-oxidized mesoporous carbon (CMK-3) by means of electrostatic interaction, followed by in situ hydrolysis and growth of TiO2 nanocrystallites, resulting in ultrafi...