Activation of macrophages leads to the secretion of cytokines and enzymes that shape the inflammatory response and increase metabolic processes. This, in turn, results in increased production of reactive oxygen species. The role of Cu/Zn superoxide dismutase (SOD-1), an important enzyme in cellular oxygen metabolism, was examined in activated peritoneal elicited macrophages (PEM) and in several...

Polyelectrolyte complexes (PEC) are formed by mixing the solutions of oppositely charged polyelectrolytes, which were hitherto deemed "impossible" to process, since they are infusible and brittle when dry. Here, we describe the process of fabricating free-standing micro-patterned PEC films containing array of hollow or filled microchambers by one-step casting with small applied pressure and a P...

One of the target genes of pemetrexed (PEM), thymidylate synthase (TS), has been shown to have a close association with its efficacy. TS gene polymorphisms have been shown to be associated with the efficacy of antifolate treatment in enteron tumors. The purpose of this study was to investigate the clinical significance of TS gene polymorphisms in patients with advanced NSCLC receiving PEM-based...

Eigenfunction analyses have been widely used to model patterns of autocorrelation in time, space and phylogeny. In a phylogenetic context, Diniz-Filho et al. (1998) proposed what they called Phylogenetic Eigenvector Regression (PVR), in which pairwise phylogenetic distances among species are submitted to a Principal Coordinate Analysis, and eigenvectors are then used as explanatory variables in...

Fuel cells have become one of the major areas of research in the academia and the industry. The goal of most fish farmers is to maximize production and profits while holding labor and management efforts to the minimum. Risk of fish kills, disease outbreaks, poor water quality in most pond culture operations, aeration offers the most immediate and practical solution to water quality problems enc...

Embryogenic cultures of Norway spruce (Picea abies) are composed of pro-embryogenic masses (PEMs) and somatic embryos of various developmental stages. Auxin is important for PEM formation and proliferation. In this report we show that depletion of auxin blocks PEM development and causes large-scale cell death. Extracts of the media conditioned by embryogenic cultures stimulate development of PE...

This paper presents Neural Network (NN) model of Polymer Electrolyte Membran (PEM) Fuel Cell for electric vehicle. The NN model simplifies the conventional model that considered thermodynamics, electrochemistry, hydrodynamics and mass transfer theory. The NN has a multilayer feed forward network structure and is trained using a back propagation learning rule. The NN model is used to predict the...

Parasitic capacitances of Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) fuel cell are causing electrical effects resulting with change of dynamic behavior of fuel cell stack output voltage. This paper shows PEM fuel cell dynamic model with capability of easy integration of humidity, temperature and pressures dynamics, as well as their control. Fuel cell stack dynamic model was linked with boost converter aver...

Expression of Fgf-8, Bmp-4, Bmp-7, and shh in the branchial arches of the chick embryo is examined by in situ hybridization. Fgf-8 expression is initially broad and diffuse, becoming more tightly restricted, particularly in the epithelium of the posterior ectodermal margin (PEM) of the 2nd branchial arch. Bmp-7 transcripts, first seen at stage 12 in discrete regions corresponding to the develop...

A membrane electrode assembly (MEA) microbial fuel cell (MFC) with a non-woven paper fabric filter (NWF) was investigated as an alternative to a proton exchange membrane (PEM) separator. The MFC with a NWF generated a cell voltage of 545 mV and a maximum power density of 1027 mW/m(3), which was comparable to that obtained from MFCs with a PEM (551 mV, 609 mW/m(3)). The MFC with a NWF showed sta...