Human biomonitoring (HBM) of dose and biochemical effect nowadays has tremendous utility providing an efficient and cost effective means of measuring human exposure to chemical substances. HBM considers all routes of uptake and all sources which are relevant making it an ideal instrument for risk assessment and risk management. HBM can identify new chemical exposures, trends and changes in expo...

OBJECTIVES High Bone Mass (HBM) is associated with (a) radiographic knee osteoarthritis (OA), partly mediated by increased BMI, and (b) pelvic enthesophytes and hip osteophytes, suggestive of a bone-forming phenotype. We aimed to establish whether HBM is associated with radiographic features of OA in non-weight-bearing (hand) joints, and whether such OA demonstrates a bone-forming phenotype. ...

We previously reported an association between high bone mass (HBM) and a bone-forming phenotype of radiographic hip osteoarthritis (OA). As knee and hip OA have distinct risk factors, in this study we aimed to determine (i) whether HBM is also associated with knee OA, and (ii) whether the HBM knee OA phenotype demonstrates a similar pattern of radiographic features to that observed at the hip. ...

As part of a study that explored the factors associated with consistent condom use among senior secondary school female learners in Mbonge subdivision of rural Cameroon, the Health Belief Model (HBM) was used as the framework. Literature was reviewed to ascertain how the entire HBM has been defined and what recommendations have been made as to how to apply the HBM as a framework in studies rega...

The tertiary structure of a maize (Zea mays ssp. mays) non-symbiotic hemoglobin (Hbm) was modeled using computer tools and the known tertiary structure of rice Hb1 as a template. This method was tested by predicting the tertiary structure of soybean leghemoglobin a (Lba) using rice Hb1 as a template. The tertiary structures of the predicted and native Lba were similar, indicating that our compu...

Human bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (hBM-MSCs) hold promise for treating incurable diseases and repairing of damaged tissues. However, hBM-MSCs face the disadvantages of painful invasive isolation and limited cell numbers. In this study we assessed characteristics of MSCs isolated from residual human bone marrow transplantation material and expanded to clinically relevant numbers at passag...

In this paper, a new acoustic model called time-inhomogeneous hidden Bernoulli model (TI-HBM) is introduced as an alternative to hidden Markov model (HMM) in continuous speech recognition. Contrary to HMM, the state transition process in TI-HBM is not a Markov process, rather it is an independent (generalized Bernoulli) process. This difference leads to elimination of dynamic programming at sta...

Lipoprotein lipase (LpL) binding to heparan sulfate proteoglycans (HSPGs) is hypothesized to stabilize the enzyme, localize LpL in specific capillary beds, and route lipoprotein lipids to the underlying tissues. To test these hypotheses in vivo, we created mice expressing a human LpL minigene (hLpL(HBM)) carrying a mutated heparin-binding site. Three basic amino acids in the carboxyl terminal r...

The aims of the study were to establish the prevalence of high bone mass (HBM) in a cohort of Spanish postmenopausal women (BARCOS) and to assess the contribution of LRP5 and DKK1 mutations and of common bone mineral density (BMD) variants to a HBM phenotype. Furthermore, we describe the expression of several osteoblast-specific and Wnt-pathway genes in primary osteoblasts from two HBM cases. A...

Endocannabinoids can affect multiple cellular targets, such as cannabinoid (CB) receptors, transient receptor potential cation channel, subfamily V, member 1 (TRPV1) and peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ (PPARγ). The stimuli to induce adipocyte differentiation in hBM-MSCs increase the gene transcription of the CB1 receptor, TRPV1 and PPARγ. In this study, the effects of three endocan...