We report a 24-year-old Japanese female hospitalized with jaundice and ascites. She exhibited hepatosplenomegaly, severe liver dysfunction, and slight polycythemia with an increase in serum levels of beta-thromboglobin and platelet factor 4. Bone marrow was hypercellular with an increase in progenitor cells. The aggregation response of platelets to ADP and to collagen was markedly increased. Ve...

We study the classical game of peg solitaire when diagonal jumps are allowed. We prove that on many boards, one can begin from a full board with one peg missing, and finish with one peg anywhere on the board. We then consider the problem of finding solutions that minimize the number of moves (where a move is one or more jumps by the same peg), and find the shortest solution to the “central game...

We attempt to demonstrate that physicians overdiagnose loxoscelism (colloquially known as 'brown recluse spider bites') by comparing the numbers of such diagnoses to the historically known numbers of Loxosceles spiders from the same areas in four western American states. The medical community from non-endemic Loxosceles areas often makes loxoscelism diagnoses solely on the basis of dermonecroti...

Peucetia viridans (Hentz) lives almost exclusively on Croton ciliatoglandulifer (Ortega) in the dry forests of western Mexico. This spider is usually found on pubescent shrubs. Within their host plants, P. viridans has been associated with plant height and cover, as well as with number of flowers or inflorescences in anthesis. Flowers can be used as cues of good habitat conditions or because th...

Dense sensor event-related brain potentials were measured in participants with spider phobia and nonfearful controls during viewing of phobia-relevant spider and standard emotional (pleasant, unpleasant, neutral) pictures. Irrespective of the picture content, spider phobia participants responded with larger P1 amplitudes than controls, suggesting increased vigilance in this group. Furthermore, ...

Two mutant strains of Escherichia coli have been isolated in which the cellular location of an outer membrane protein, the phage lambda receptor (the lamB gene product), is altered. These mutations were initially selected in a strain containing a lamB-lacZ fusion. In the parent strain the protein coded for by the hybrid gene is located, at least in part, in the outer membrane. In the mutants it...

INTRODUCTION Leishmaniasis is a parasitic disease transmitted by phlebotomine sandflies. Between 700,000 and 1.2 million cases of cutaneous leishmaniasis and between 200,000 and 400,000 cases of visceral leishmaniasis (VL), which is fatal if left untreated, occur annually worldwide. Liposomal amphotericin B (LAMB), alone or in combination with other drugs, has been extensively studied as VL tre...

The fabrication of cellulose-spider silk bio-nanocomposites comprised of cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) and recombinant spider silk protein fused to a cellulose binding domain (CBD) is described. Silk-CBD successfully binds cellulose, and unlike recombinant silk alone, silk-CBD self-assembles into microfibrils even in the absence of CNCs. Silk-CBD-CNC composite sponges and films show changes in ...

Plants infested with the spider mite Tetranychus urticae Koch, may indirectly defend themselves by releasing volatiles that attract the predatory mite Phytoseiulus persimilis Athias-Henriot. Several plants from different plant families that varied in the level of spider mite acceptance were tested in an olfactometer. The predatory mites were significantly attracted to the spider mite-infested l...