Macrophages are necessary in multiple processes during the immune response or inflammation. This review emphasizes the critical role of the mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs) and mitogen kinase phosphatase-1 (MKP-1) in the functional activities of macrophages. While the phosphorylation of MAPKs is required for macrophage activation or proliferation, MKP-1 dephosphorylates these kinases, ...

The Multiple Knapsack problem (MKP) is a hard combinatorial optimization problem with large application, which embraces many practical problems from different domains, like cargo loading, cutting stock, bin-packing, financial and other management, etc. It also arise as a subproblem in several more complex problems like vehicle routing problem and the algorithms to solve these problems will bene...

Olive trees have been traditionally cultivated in dry conditions as it is a crop very well adapted to Mediterranean dry lands. Foliar fertilization is a widespread application method used by olive growers to correct frequent deficient levels of potassium in olive trees under rainfed conditions. Monopotassium Phosphate (MKP) is an economic and easily available fertilizer and a fast source of P a...

ANG II-stimulated production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) through NADPH oxidase is suggested to activate MAPK pathways, which are implicated in neurally mediated pressor effects of ANG II. Emerging evidence suggests that ANG-(1-7) up regulates MAPK phosphatases to reduce MAPK signaling and attenuate actions of ANG II. Whether angiotensin peptides participate in long-term regulation of these...

In the present study, IL (interleukin)-1beta increased GM-CSF (granulocyte/macrophage colony-stimulating factor) expression from pulmonary A549 cells and primary HBE (human bronchial epithelial) cells. These responses were repressed by the glucocorticoid dexamethasone, allowing the use of A549 cells as a relevant model. IL-1beta induced GM-CSF release into the culture medium by 6 h and in cell ...

Begum, Najma, and Louis Ragolia. High glucose and insulin inhibit VSMC MKP-1 expression by blocking iNOS via p38 MAPK activation. Am. J. Physiol. Cell Physiol. 278: C81–C91, 2000.—Our laboratory has recently demonstrated a role for the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase-mediated inducible NO synthase (iNOS) signaling pathway in acute regulation of insulin-induced mitogen-activated protein phosphatas...

Repair of damaged tissue requires the coordinated action of inflammatory and tissue-specific cells to restore homeostasis, but the underlying regulatory mechanisms are poorly understood. In this paper, we report new roles for MKP-1 (mitogen-activated protein kinase [MAPK] phosphatase-1) in controlling macrophage phenotypic transitions necessary for appropriate muscle stem cell-dependent tissue ...

Abstract In this paper, a new upper bound for the Multiple Knapsack Problem (MKP) is proposed, based on idea of relaxing MKP to Bounded Sequential Problem, i.e., multiple knapsack problem in which item sizes are divisible. Such relaxation, called sequential obtained by suitably replacing items instance with divisible sizes. Experimental results benchmark instances show that effective, terms qua...

Maternal pancreatic islets undergo a robust increase of mass and proliferation during pregnancy, which allows a compensation of gestational insulin resistance. Studies have described that this adaptation switches to a low proliferative status after the delivery. The mechanisms underlying this reversal are unknown, but the action of glucocorticoids (GCs) is believed to play an important role bec...

The mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinase signaling pathways help to mediate the hypertrophic response of the pressure-loaded adult heart, although their importance in fetal myocardium is less known. The goal of this study was to determine the role the MAP kinase signaling pathways play in regulating the response of the fetal heart to a pressure load. Aortic (Ao) and pulmonary artery (PA) band...