OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to investigate liver fibrosis using non-invasive Real-time Tissue Elastography (RTE) and transient elastography (FibroScan) methods. METHODS RTE, FibroScan and percutaneous liver biopsy were all performed on patients with chronic liver disease, particularly hepatitis C, to investigate liver fibrosis. RESULTS FibroScan and RTE were compared for fibrous liv...

Let Fn be a free group of rank n. In this paper we discuss three algorithmic problems related to automorphisms of F2. A word u of Fn is called positive if u does not have negative exponents. A word u in Fn is called potentially positive if φ(u) is positive for some automorphism φ of Fn. We prove that there is an algorithm to decide whether or not a given word in F2 is potentially positive, whic...

The influenza A virus (IAV) PB1-F2 protein is a virulence factor contributing to the pathogenesis observed during IAV infections in mammals. In this study, using a mouse model, we compared the host response associated with PB1-F2 with an early transcriptomic signature that was previously associated with neutrophils and consecutively fatal IAV infections. This allowed us to show that PB1-F2 is p...

This study aimed to sequence and characterize two pro-coagulant genes, coagulation factor II (f2) and fibrinogen gamma chain (fgg), from the liver of the African lungfish Protopterus annectens, and to determine their hepatic mRNA expression levels during three phases of aestivation. The protein abundance of F2 and Fgg in the liver and plasma was determined by immunoblotting. The results indicat...

Bent functions (Dillon 1974; Rothaus 1976) are extremal objects in combinatorics and Boolean function theory. They have been studied for about 40 years; even more, under the name of difference sets in elementary Abelian 2-groups. The motivation for the study of these particular difference sets is mainly cryptographic (but bent functions play also a role in coding theory and sequences; and as di...

We initiate a systematic study of linear sketching over F2. For a given Boolean function f : {0, 1}n → {0, 1} a randomized F2-sketch is a distributionM over d×nmatrices with elements over F2 such that Mx suffices for computing f(x) with high probability. We study a connection between F2-sketching and a two-player one-way communication game for the corresponding XOR-function. Our results show th...

The Asp-derived amino acid pathway has been studied during the early stages of development in two maize genotypes, Io and F2, differing in germination efficiency and post-germination growth. In both genotypes expression of Ask2 (monofunctional Asp-kinase-2), Akh1 and Akh2 (bifunctional Asp-kinase-homo-Ser dehydrogenase-1 and 2), increased throughout germination and post-germination growth, sugg...

Alleles of the inducible nitric oxide synthase locus (Nos2) cosegregated highly significantly (P < 0.0001) with blood pressure in an F2 population [F2(S x MNS), n = 171] derived from a cross of inbred Dahl salt-sensitive (S) rats with Milan normotensive rats (MNS). In contrast, alleles at the constitutive brain nitric oxide synthase locus (Nos1) did not cosegregate with blood pressure in severa...

The functional analysis of the common prothrombin 20210 G>A(F2 20210(*)A) mutation has recently revealed gain of function of 3'end processing as a novel genetic mechanism predisposing to human disease. We now show that the physiologic G at the cleavage site at position 20210 is the functionally least efficient nucleotide to support 3'end processing but has evolved to be physiologically optimal....

The functional analysis of the common prothrombin 20210 G A (F2 20210*A) mutation has recently revealed gain-of-function of 3’end processing as a novel genetic mechanism predisposing to human disease. We now show that the physiological G at the cleavage site at position 20210 is the functionally least efficient nucleotide to support 3’end processing but has evolved to be physiologically optimal...