The efficiency of retroviral-mediated gene transfer into hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) is dependent on the survival and self-renewal of HSC in vitro during retroviral infection. We have examined the effect of prestimulation of bone marrow with various cytokines, including the product of the Steel gene, Steel factor or stem cell factor (SCF) (the ligand for the c-kit receptor) on the efficiency...

We present and use a CPU-efficient activity-based simulation model to calculate the sojourn time of a packet and the packet loss rate in a tandem queueing network that depicts the path of a video flow. The video flow is characterized by a packet trace. Background traffic, also characterized by a trace, is allowed in the tandem queueing network. In our analysis we used real video traces (Telepre...

Acupuncture has been used in numerous diseases and for many types of symptoms. It has been also used for obstetric complaints, such as nausea and vomiting, insomnia and low back and girdle pain. There has long been concern that some points--called forbidden--might harm pregnancy owing to a potential abortifacient effect, but it is difficult to confirm this proposition. The small number of avail...

The purpose of this study was to obtain percentile curves for present teeth in smokers and non-smokers for use in oral health education. Dental examinations were carried out by two dentists. The number of present teeth in each subject was counted, excluding the third molars. Subjects consisted of 2,283 men aged between 25 and 54 years enrolled in the health insurance union of a bank in Yokohama...

Introduction: Delay in the diagnosis of tuberculosis increases the risk of death and enhances the transmission of disease in the community. This study aims to determine the patient and health service delay and factors affecting it in tuberculosis diagnosis. Materials & Methods: A cross-sectional survey that included all the public health centers was conducted in Markazi province from March 200...

We describe an efficient and accurate approximation method for calculating the bandwidth that should be allocated on each link along the path of a point-to-point MPLS connection, so that the end-to-end delay D is less than or equal to a given value T with a probability γ, that is, P(D≤T) = γ. We model a connection by a tandem queueing network of infinite capacity queues. The arrival process of ...