Species introduction represents one of the most serious threats for biodiversity. The realized climatic niche of an invasive species can be used to predict its potential distribution in new areas, providing a basis for screening procedures in the compilation of black and white lists to prevent new introductions. We tested this assertion by modeling the realized climatic niche of the Eastern gre...

Defensins are small cationic peptides that could be used as the potential substitute for antibiotics. However, there is no efficient method for producing defensins. In this study, we developed a new strategy to produce defensin in nitrate reductase (NR)-deficient C. ellipsoidea (nrm-4). We constructed a plant expression vector carrying mutated NP-1 gene (mNP-1), a mature α-defensin NP-1 gene fr...

Normalized random measures (NRMs) provide a broad class of discrete random measures that are often used as priors for Bayesian nonparametric models. Dirichlet process is a well-known example of NRMs. Most of posterior inference methods for NRM mixture models rely on MCMC methods since they are easy to implement and their convergence is well studied. However, MCMC often suffers from slow converg...

BACKGROUND The impact of ABO incompatibility on hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) outcome is controversial. As ABH substances are expressed on tissues and secreted in body fluids, they could drive an immune response in minor ABO-incompatible HSCT. The aim of the study was to investigate the prognostic role of the recipients' ABH secretor status. STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS Patients ...

Detecting and monitoring the development of radioactive releases in the atmosphere is important. In many European countries monitoring networks have been established to perform this task. In the Netherlands the National Radioactivity Monitoring network (NRM) was installed. Currently, point maps are used to interpret the data from the NRM. Automatically generating maps in realtime would improve ...

To investigate analgesic neural circuits activated by electroacupuncture (EA) at different sets of acupoints in the brain, goats were stimulated by EA at set of Baihui-Santai acupoints or set of Housanli acupoints for 30 min. The pain threshold was measured using the potassium iontophoresis method. The levels of c-Fos were determined with Streptavidin-Biotin Complex immunohistochemistry. The re...

Seventy-one patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML), most of them (63/71) considered ineligible for conventional allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), were enrolled into a phase 2 study on reduced-intensity myeloablative conditioning with fractionated 8-Gy total body irradiation (TBI) and fludarabine (120 mg/m2). Patients received mobilized peripheral blood stem cells (n...

Descending projections arising from brainstem serotonergic (5HT) neurons contribute to both facilitatory and inhibitory controls of spinal cord "pain" transmission neurons. Unclear, however, are the brainstem networks that influence the output of these 5HT neurons. To address this question, here we used a novel neuroanatomical tracing method in a transgenic line of mice in which Cre recombinase...

A retrospective cohort analysis was performed to determine the impact of neutropenia on the outcome of hematopoietic cell transplantation (HSCT) in patients with myelodysplasia (MDS). Among 291 consecutive patients, 178 (61%) had absolute neutrophil counts (ANCs) <1500/microL and 113 (39%) had ANCs > or =1500/microL within 2 weeks before HSCT. Neutropenic patients more often had poor-risk karyo...

Nonmyeloablative (NMA) conditioning with total lymphoid irradiation and antithymocyte globulin (TLI/ATG) has been shown to protect against acute graft-versus-host disease (GVHD). We report here our institutional experience with allogeneic transplantation following NMA conditioning with TLI/ATG (n = 21). GVHD prophylaxis consisted of a combination of a calcineurin inhibitor and mycophenolate mof...