BACKGROUND Macrophage scavenger receptors (MSRs) play an important role in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis. Therefore, local modulation of MSR activity could have a beneficial effect on atherogenesis. METHODS AND RESULTS We cloned a secreted "decoy" MSR (sMSR) that contains an extracellular portion of the human MSR type AI and constructed an adenoviral vector that directs high-level expre...

Catechol-O-methyl transferase (COMT) plays a key role in the degradation of brain dopamine (DA). Specifically, low COMT activity results in higher DA levels in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), thereby reducing the vulnerability for attentional and cognitive deficits in both psychotic and healthy individuals. COMT activity is markedly reduced by a non-synonymous single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) ...

The purpose of this study was to investigate how the reciprocal inhibition of the ankle-flexor motoneuron by the ankle-extensor spindle afferents is altered during cortically-induced rhythmical jaw movement (RJM) in urethane-anesthetized rabbit. The monosynaptic reflex (MSR) was induced by test shock of the common peroneal nerve (CPN) and recorded from a distal point of the nerve. The condition...

Macrophage or macrophage-derived foam cell death is one of the characteristic events in the development of cell-poor lipid-rich cores of the advanced atherosclerotic plaques. Although the in vivo mechanism for the death of macrophages is unclear, one possible candidate for the agent which induces macrophage cell death is oxidized low density lipoprotein (Ox-LDL). To investigate the mechanism of...

A market scoring rule (MSR) – a popular tool for designing algorithmic prediction markets – is an incentive-compatible mechanism for the aggregation of probabilistic beliefs from myopic risk-neutral agents. In this paper, we add to a growing body of research aimed at understanding the precise manner in which the price process induced by a MSR incorporates private information from agents who dev...

Alspach [Bull. Inst. Combin. Appl., 52 (2008), pp. 7–20] defined the maximal matching sequencibility of a graph G, denoted ms(G), to be the largest integer s for which there is an ordering of the edges of G such that every s consecutive edges form a matching. Alspach also proved that ms(Kn) = ⌊ n−1 2 ⌋ . Brualdi et al. [Australas. J. Combin., 53 (2012), pp. 245–256] extended the definition to c...

The influence of magnesium content on the mechanosynthesis of ZrB2–SiC–ZrC composite in Mg/ZrSiO4/B2O3/C mixture was investigated. Thermodynamic evaluations revealed that the amount of Mg played a main role, thereby; the overall reaction enthalpy and adiabatic temperature (Tad) changed by variation of magnesium content. According to differential thermal analysis (DTA) results, after 45min milli...

A major difficulty of heterogeneous process migration is how to collect advanced dynamic data-structures, transform them into machine independent form, and restor them appropriately in a different hardware and software environment. In this study we introduce a data model, the Memory Space Representation (MSR) model, to recognize complex data structures in program address spaces. Supporting mech...

Staphylococcus aureus possesses three MsrA enzymes (MsrA1, MsrA2, MsrA3) that reduce the S-epimer of methionine sulfoxide (MetO) and an MsrB enzyme that reduces R-MetO. The four msr genes are expressed from three different promoters. The msrA1/msrB genes are coexpressed. To determine the expression pattern of msr genes, three independent reporter strains were constructed where msr promoter was ...

Surfactant-enhanced remediation technology has shown promising potential for removing residual organics from contaminated soils and groundwater. Using a homologous series of cationic surfactants, alkylpyridinium bromide, it was found that the molar solubilization ratio (MSR) for naphthalene decreases with decreasing carbon number in the hydrophobic tail. In contrast, with nonylphenyl ethoxylate...