The benzene–ethene and parallel-displaced (PD) benzene–benzene dimers are the most fundamental systems involving π–π stacking interactions. Several high-level ab initio investigations calculated binding energies of these using coupled-cluster with singles, doubles, quasi-perturbative triple excitations [CCSD(T)] method at complete basis set [CBS] limit various approaches such as reduced virtual...

Stem cell factor (SCF) is essential for the development of primordial follicles. By using cultured ovaries from neonatal rats, the effect of SCF on early follicular development was investigated. Steroidogenesis is a hallmark of follicular development. Expressions of three key protein factors in steroidogenesis, SF-1, StAR, and P450arom, were investigated using immunohistochemistry and in situ h...

We investigated the effects of stem cell factor (SCF) on the migration of murine bone marrow hematopoietic progenitor cells (HPC) in vitro using a modification of the checkerboard assay. Chemotactic and chemokinetic activities of SCF on HPC were evaluated by the numbers of HPC migrated on positive and negative gradients of SCF, respectively. On both positive and negative gradients of SCF, HPC b...

This paper addresses the recent development of a series of linear-scaling electronic structure calculation methods [1-9], which are based on the divide-and-conquer (DC) method by Yang et al. [11,12]. The DC method used to be applied mainly to pure density functional theory (DFT) or semi-empirical molecular orbital (MO) calculations. We have applied the DC method to the Hartree-Fock (HF) and hyb...

A novel hematopoietic growth factor, the stem cell factor (SCF), for primitive hematopoietic progenitor cells has recently been purified and its gene has been cloned. In this study we tested the mitogenic activity of recombinant human SCF on myeloid leukemia cells as well as the expression of its receptor. We have investigated the proliferation of 31 myeloid leukemia cell lines as well as fresh...

Mast cells are critical immune effectors abundant in tissues interfacing with the environment and have major roles in allergen-induced inflammation and host responses to infection. SCF is a regulator of mast cell function and growth. However, the critical mechanisms in SCF-directed events remain incompletely defined. Here, we have investigated the role of MKK3 in mast cell SCF signaling-depende...

Interaction of stem cell factor (SCF), a haematopoietic growth factor, with the receptor tyrosine kinase c-kit leads to autophosphorylation of c-kit as well as tyrosine phosphorylation of various substrates. Little is known about the role of the JAK/STAT pathway in signal transduction via receptor tyrosine kinases, although this pathway has been well characterized in cytokine receptor signal tr...

Preliminaries • A social choice function (SCF) maps every preference profile to a subset of the alternatives. • An SCF is majoritarian if it only depends on the (unweighted) 
 majority comparisons between alternatives. • An SCF satisfies independence of indifference voters (IIV) if an agent who is indifferent among all alternatives does not change the
 outcome. • A preference profile R’ is an f...

1. Abstract 2. Introduction 3. SCF, Kit and the PI3 kinase pathway 3.1. Kit and Kit ligand SCF 3.2. PI3 kinase 3.3. Akt and its activation 3.4. The FOXO subclass of forkhead box transcription factors 4. Kit-PI3 kinase signaling in mammalian oocytes 4.1. Kit and SCF in the mammalian ovary 4.2. Activation of the oocyte PI3 kinase pathway in mouse and rat oocytes by SCF 5. Mutant mouse models for ...

BACKGROUND Capillary hemangiomas, the most common tumors in young children, consist of proliferating capillary vessels and endothelial cells. These tumors also contain large numbers of mast cells, compared with the normal surrounding skin or tissue. We have recently shown that stem cell factor (SCF), the gene product of the murine steel locus, can act as a chemoattractant for mast cells. In thi...