Particulate air pollution is linked to increased pneumonia epidemiologically and diminished lung bacterial clearance experimentally. We investigated the effect of concentrated ambient particles (CAPs, </= PM(2.5)) on the interaction of murine primary alveolar macrophages (AMs) and the murine macrophage cell line, J774 A.1, with Streptococcus pneumoniae. We found that CAPs increased binding of b...

Previous studies indicated that CAPS (calcium-dependent activator protein for secretion) functions as an essential component for the Ca2+-dependent exocytosis of dense-core vesicles in neuroendocrine cells. However, recent mouse knock-out studies suggested an alternative role in the vesicular uptake or storage of catecholamines. To genetically assess the functional role of CAPS, we characterize...

Priming of large dense-core vesicles (LDCVs) is a Ca-dependent step by which LDCVs enter a release-ready pool. The underlying molecular step involves the formation of the SNAREcomplex consisting of syntaxin, SNAP-25 and synaptobrevin, which is facilitated by priming proteins such as Munc13s. By using mutant mice lacking both isoforms of the calcium dependent activator protein for secretion (CAP...

This paper details an algorithm for unfolding a class of convex polyhedra, where each polyhedron in the class consists of a convex cap over a rectangular base, with several restrictions: the cap’s faces are quadrilaterals, with vertices over an underlying integer lattice, and such that the cap convexity is “radially monotone,” a type of smoothness constraint. Extensions of Cauchy’s arm lemma ar...

4 Yeast Division of the Centraalbureau voor Schimmelcultures, Julianalaan 67, 2628 BC Delft, The Netherlands The septal pore cap (SPC) of Trichosporon sporotrichoides CBS 8245 is vesiculartubular, connected with flat-tubular endoplasmic reticulum (ER), and stains densely with zinc/iodine/osmium tetroxide, as does the ER. The SPC of Schizophy//um commune CBS 340.81 is more complex, about 600 nm ...

A cap in a projective or affine geometry is a set of points with the property that no line meets the set in more than two points. Barwick, et al. (Conics and caps. J. Geom., 100:15–28, 2011) provide a construction of caps in PG(4, q) by “lifting” arbitrary caps of PG(2, q2), such as conics. In this article, we extend this construction by considering when the union of two or more conics in AG(2,...

It is widely accepted that Mars had an atmosphere at least 4 Gyr ago. The processes that led to the loss of the Martian atmosphere are still debated. Solar-wind-induced sputtering, impact erosion, weathering, sequestration into the regolith and polar caps, and photodissociative reactions are the mechanisms believed to be responsible for removing the atmosphere. No one process has been shown to ...

|S|=n a(S) m. Specifically, we present an explicit formula for F (m,n) as a product of two matrices, ultimately yielding a polynomial in q = pd. The first matrix is independent of n while the second makes no mention of finite fields. However, the complexity of calculating each grows with m. The main tools here are the Schur-Weyl duality theorem, and some elementary properties of symmetric funct...

A d-dimensional dual arc in PG(n, q) is a higher dimensional analogue of a dual arc in a projective plane. For every prime power q other than 2, the existence of a d-dimensional dual arc (d ≥ 2) in PG(n, q) of a certain size implies n ≤ d(d + 3)/2 (Theorem 1). This is best possible, because of the recent construction of d-dimensional dual arcs in PG(d(d + 3)/2, q) of size ∑d−1 i=0 qi , using th...