Arenaviruses have a bisegmented negative-strand RNA genome whose proteomic capability is limited to only four polypeptides, namely, nucleoprotein (NP), surface glycoprotein (GP) that is proteolytically processed into GP1+GP2, polymerase (L), and a small (11-kDa) RING finger protein (Z). The role of Z during the Lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV) life cycle is poorly understood. We invest...

Three mutants of the antibiotic nisin Z, in which the Val32 residue was replaced by a Glu, Lys or Trp residue, were produced and characterized for the purpose of establishing the role of charge differences in the C-terminal part of nisin on antimicrobial activity and signaling properties. 1H-NMR analyses showed that all three mutants harbor an unmodified serine residue at position 33, instead o...

Galaxy evolution and AGN growth in the early universe are believed to be strongly driven by merging (hierarchical growth) and galaxy dynamical interactions. Thus, a fall exploration of the environmental influences is absolutely essential to understanding this early evolution. The Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS, [Scoville et al. 2007a]) is specifically designed to probe the correlated coevoluti...

E. R. van Dam gave an example of primitive non-amorphous association schemes in which every nontrivial relation is a strongly regular graph, as a fusion scheme of the cyclotomic scheme of class 45 on GF(212). The aim of this paper is to present a new example of primitive non-amorphous association schemes in which every nontrivial relation is a strongly regular graph, as a fusion scheme of the c...

Almost all finite graphs have the n-e.c. adjacency property, although until recently few explicit examples of such graphs were known. We survey some recently discovered families of explicit finite n-e.c. graphs, and present a new construction of strongly regular n-e.c. arising from affine planes.

In this paper, we study the density of fixed strongly connected subtournaments on 5 vertices in large tournaments. We determine the maximum density asymptotically for three tournaments as well as extremal families for each tournament. We use Razborov’s semidefinite method for flag algebras to prove the upper bounds.

We give an alternative proof of the fact that a planar function cannot exist on groups of even order. The argument involved leads us to define a class of functions which we call semi-planar. Through the introduction of an incidence structure we construct semi-biplanes using semi-planar functions. The method involved represents a new approach to constructing semi-biplanes and provides infinite c...

We prove that any strongly regular Weingarten surface in Euclidean space carries locally geometric principal parameters. The basic theorem states that any strongly regular Weingarten surface is determined up to a motion by its structural functions and the normal curvature function satisfying a geometric differential equation. We apply these results to the special Weingarten surfaces: minimal su...