Hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia (HHT), or Osler-Rendu-Weber syndrome, is a heterogeneous inherited disorder characterized by multi-systemic vascular dysplasia and wide variation in its phenotypic expression. Hepatic manifestation is seen in about 8 to 30 % of the patients. The molecular basis for liver involvement is unknown. We screened the two known HHT disease loci, the ALK1 (ACVRL1) a...

Hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia (HHT) is an inherited disorder that is characterized by abnormal communication between the arteries and veins in the skin, mucosa, and various organs. HHT has been reported to show significant phenotypic variability and genetic heterogeneity with wide ethnic and geographic variations. Although mutations in the endoglin (ENG) and activin A receptor type II-l...

When functional neuromuscular stimulation (FNS) is used to restore the use of paralyzed limbs after a spinal cord injury or stroke, it may be possible to control the stimulation using feedback information relayed by natural sensors in the skin. In this study we tested the hypothesis that the force applied on glabrous skin can be extracted from the electroneurographic (ENG) signal recorded from ...

Pre-eclampsia is a devastating disease of late (after week 20) pregnancy. The condition features hypertension, proteinuria, premature labor, haemolysis, liver abnormalities, thrombocytopenia (HELLP syndrome), seizures (eclampsia) and death [1]. Both mothers and children, if they survive delivery, can expect subsequent increased cardiovascular risk in the future. Preeclampsia affects about 5% of...

The relation between the equivalent roughness and different grain size percentiles of the sediment in gravel-bed rivers was determined under the hypothesis that the vertical distribution of the flow velocity follows a logarithmic law. A set of 954 data points was selected from rivers with gravel size sediment or larger, with a non-sinuous alignment and free of vegetation or obstacles. According...

This paper presents the dynamic neural networks partial least squares (DNNPLS) as a strategy for open-loop identification of multivariable chemical processes that circumvent some of the difficulties associated with multivariable process control. The DNNPLS is an extension of the neural networks’ partial least squares (NNPLS) developed by Qin and McAvoy (Comp. Chem. Eng. 20 (1992) 379). Here, a ...

Increased levels of a soluble form of endoglin (sEng) circulating in plasma have been detected in various pathological conditions related to cardiovascular system. High concentration of sEng was also proposed to contribute to the development of endothelial dysfunction, but there is no direct evidence to support this hypothesis. Therefore, in the present work we analyzed whether high sEng levels...

The problem of scheduling under bounded uncertainty is addressed. We propose a novel robust optimization methodology, which when applied to mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) problems produces “robust” solutions which are in a sense immune against bounded uncertainty. Both the coefficients in the objective function, the left-hand-side parameters and the right-hand-side parameters of the in...

Two beta-1,4-endoglucanase (EGase) cDNAs were isolated from Globodera tabacum, the tobacco cyst nematode, and have been designated as GT-eng-1 and GT-eng-2. GT-eng-1 and GT-eng-2 encode precursor proteins with a predicted secretion signal sequence, cellulolytic catalytic domain, and a linker domain. The protein product GT-ENG-1 contains an additional 95 amino acid carboxy terminal sequence with...

[3] R. Bütikofer and P. Lawrence, “Electrocutaneous nerve stimulation—II: Stimulus waveform selection,” IEEE Trans. Biomed. Eng., vol. BME-26, Feb. 1979. [4] A. Peper and C. Grimbergen, “EEG measurement during electrical stimulation,” IEEE Trans. Biomed. Eng., vol. BME-30, Apr. 1983. [5] C. Poletto and C. Van Doren, “A high voltage, constant current stimulator for electrocutaneous stimulation t...