Aims. We challenge the accepted distance of 3.2 kpc of GRO J1655-40. We present VLT-UVES spectroscopic observations to estimate the absorption toward the source, and determine a maximum distance of GRO J1655-40. Methods. We show that the accepted value of 3.2 kpc is taken for granted by many authors. We retrieved in the ESO archive UVES spectra taken in April 2004 when GRO J1655-40 was in quies...

We show that the phenotype associated with gro-1(e2400) comprises the whole suite of features that characterize the phenotype of the clk mutants in Caenorhabditis elegans, including deregulated developmental, behavioral, and reproductive rates, as well as increased life span and a maternal effect. We cloned gro-1 and found that it encodes a highly conserved cellular enzyme, isopentenylpyrophosp...

A new neutrophil-activating peptide, termed ENA-78, was identified in the conditioned media of stimulated human type II epithelial cell line A549. In response to stimulation with either interleukin 1 beta (IL-1 beta) or tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha), ENA-78 was produced and secreted concomitantly with IL-8, GRO alpha, and GRO gamma. ENA-78 consists of 78 amino acids [sequence; see tex...

PURPOSE Dental hygienists report a lack of confidence in initiating Tobacco Dependence Counseling (TDC) with their patients who smoke. The purpose of this study was to determine if the confidence of dental hygiene students in providing TDC can be increased by Standardized Patient (SP) training, and if that confidence can be sustained over time. METHODS This 2-parallel group randomized design...

Quantitative measurements to detect lymphedema early in persons at-risk for breast cancer (BC) treatment-related lymphedema (BCRL) can aid clinical evaluations. Since BCRL may be initially manifest in skin and subcutis, the earliest changes might best be detected via local tissue water (LTW) measurements that are specifically sensitive to such changes. Tissue dielectric constant (TDC) measureme...

INTRODUCTION Tendon tissue engineering (TTE) tries to produce tendinous tissue of high quality to replace dysfunctional tissue. One possible application of TTE might be the replacement of ruptured tissue of the rotator cuff. Autologous tenocytes seem to be most suitable as no differentiation in vitro is necessary. Today it is still uncertain if there is a difference between tendon-derived cells...

Activation of both PAR-1 (proteinase-activated receptor-1) and PAR-2 resulted in release of the chemokine GRO (growth-regulated oncogene)/CINC-1 (cytokine-induced neutrophil chemoattractant-1), a functional counterpart of human interleukin-8, from rat astrocytes. Here, we investigate whether the two PAR receptor subtypes can signal separately. PAR-2-induced GRO/CINC-1 release was independent of...

We propose using multi-scale image textures to investigate links between neuroanatomical regions and clinical variables in MRI. Texture features are derived at multiple scales of resolution based on the Laplacian-of-Gaussian (LoG) filter. Three quantifier functions (Average, Standard Deviation and Entropy) are used to summarize texture statistics within standard, automatically segmented neuroan...

A reaction model was developed for the pyrolysis of binary mixtures of compounds whose reactions can be apportioned into three or fewer parallel chains coupled by chain transfer. A representative application of this model to the pyrolysis of mixtures of the asphaltene model compounds n-pentadecylbenzene (PDB) and n-tridecylcyclohexane (TDC) illustrates its utility. The model, along with its ass...