The nine-banded armadillo, Dasypus novemcinctus, has been expanding its range in the United State since the mid-1800s. There had been sporadic reports of this species in Illinois prior to 1990. I conducted a mail survey in 2003 of individuals knowledgeable about the fauna of southern Illinois to investigate the possible expansion of the armadillo into the state. I also sent questionnaires to an...

Background & Aims: Dry type localized cutaneous Leishmaniasis due to Leishmania tropica is one of the most prevalent cutaneous parasitic infections in Kerman province. It seems that cellular immune response and the nature of immune inflammatory cells comprising the inflammatory background play a determinant role in this infection. Methods: Skin biopsies of 53 patients with acute(<2 years durati...

background: hepatitis b virus (hbv) fails to produce appropriate immune responses in some healthy individuals; thus, different strategies have been adopted to promote immune responses. the current study aimed at evaluating the efficacy of hbv vaccine coadministered with tetanus-diphtheria (td) vaccine compared with hbv vaccine in healthy individuals through measuring hepatitis b surface antibod...

Immune infertility, in terms of reproductive failure, has become a serious health issue involving approximately 1 out of 5 couples at reproductive age. Semen that is defined as a complex fluid containing sperm, cellular vesicles and other cells and components, could sensitize the female genital tract. The immune rejection of male semen in the female reproductive tract is explained as the failur...

conclusions in conclusion, pegfp-kmp-gp96 (fusion) induced th1 platform immune response against leishmania major (mrho/ir/75/er) infection. results according to the results, the level of cytokines interferon-gamma (ifn-γ) and interleukin (il)-4, and ratio of ifn-γ /il4 was changed among different groups of mice before and seven weeks after immunization. the cytokines were increased significantl...

We purified from Dictyostelium lysates an 88-kDa protein that bound to a subset of small GTPases, including racE, racC, cdc42Hs, and TC4ran, but did not bind to R-ras or rabB. Cloning of the gene encoding this 88-kDa protein revealed that it contained multiple armadillo-like repeats most closely related to the mammalian GTP exchange factor smgGDS. We named this protein darlin (Dictyostelium arm...

BACKGROUND There is a high unmet need for sexual and reproductive health (SRH) information and services among youth (ages 15-24) worldwide (MacQuarrie KLD. Unmet Need for Family Planning among Young Women: Levels and Trends 2014). With the proliferation of mobile technology, and its popularity with this age group, mobile phones offer a novel and accessible platform for a discreet, on-demand ser...

We present the use of mapping functions to automatically generate levels of detail with known error bounds for polygonal models. We develop a piece-wise linear mapping function for each simplification operation and use this function to measure deviation of the new surface from both the previous level of detail and from the original surface. In addition, we use the mapping function to compute ap...