Diabetic retinopathy is a major cause of new blindness among working-age individuals in developed countries and remains one of the most serious complications of diabetes. At the time, primary prevention with intensive glycemic control, strict blood pressure regulation and lipid-modifying therapy, as well as local ocular treatment (laser photocoagulation and pars plana vitrectomy) are the proven...

The authors have developed a tool for the study of inhibitor-induced amino acid starvation in bacteria which exploits the phenomenon of translational frameshifting. The inhibition of acetohydroxyacid synthase II by the herbicide sulfometuron methyl (SMM) has complex effects on branched-chain amino acid biosynthesis. Experiments were done with Salmonella typhimurium containing a plasmid with an ...

The present research dealt primarily with a special protective mechanism which appears to be part of the defence responses of plants to low temperature. It was found that the metabolisation of S-methylmethionine (SMM) had a stimulatory effect on polyamine biosynthesis. The results proved that SMM acted via a special metabolic pathway to increase the quantities of certain polyamines (putrescine,...

It is well known that clutter (spectral interference) from atmospheric constituents can be a severe limit for spectroscopic point sensors, especially where high sensitivity and specificity are required. In this paper, we will show for submillimeter/terahertz (SMM/THz) sensors that use cw electronic techniques the clutter limit for the detection of common target gases with absolute specificity (...

The major macromolecule on the surface of Leishmania major promastigotes is a lipophosphoglycan (LPG). This glycoconjugate plays a key role in determining infectivity and survival of parasites in the mammalian host cell. In addition, L. major LPG is able to induce a host-protective immune response. In this article, we summarise the evidence for recognition of highly purified LPG by T cells and ...

Monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS) and smoldering multiple myeloma (SMM) are asymptomatic, pre-malignant disorders characterized by monoclonal plasma cell proliferation in the bone marrow and absence of end-organ damage. Recent advances in the pathogenesis, natural history, and prognosis of MGUS and SMM are reviewed. A new risk stratification system to determine the progn...

Commonly used boundary-based solid and surface modeling methods in traditional computer aided design are not capable of constructing configurations with large numbers of particles or complex topology. In this paper, we propose a new geometric modeling scheme, periodic surface, for material design at atomic, molecular, and meso scales. At molecular scale, periodicity of the model allows thousand...

The male-specific region of the human Y chromosome (MSY) contains eight large inverted repeats (palindromes), in which high-sequence similarity between repeat arms is maintained by gene conversion. These palindromes also harbor microsatellites, considered to evolve via a stepwise mutation model (SMM). Here, we ask whether gene conversion between palindrome microsatellites contributes to their m...

System Management Mode (SMM) is an x86 processor feature designed to assist debugging for hardware manufacturers. Recent research has shown that SMM can also be used to protect the run-time integrity of software by invoking SMM to periodically check current system state and compare it with known pristine or trusted software states. Researchers and practitioners have claimed that any unauthorize...