Streptococcus pneumoniae (pneumococcus) is an opportunistic bacterial pathogen responsible for causing several human diseases including pneumonia, meningitis, and otitis media. Pneumococcus is also a major cause of human ocular infections and is commonly isolated in cases of bacterial keratitis, an infection of the cornea. The ocular pathology that occurs during pneumococcal keratitis is partly...

Pneumolysin (PLY) is an important virulence factor of Streptococcus pneumoniae. We examined the ability of three murine monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) to PLY (PLY-4, PLY-5, and PLY-7) to affect the course of pneumococcal pneumonia in mice. The intravenous administration of antibodies PLY-4 and PLY-7 protected the mice from the lethal effect of the purified toxin. Mice treated with PLY-4 before in...

While the heights and numbers of tires in the assembly line are changing, the traditional methods are difficult to identify the types of the tires, so an indirect tire identification method is proposed to identify the types of the tires, which uses the widths of the tires, the diameters and the shapes of the hubs to classify the tires. First, the tires are identified according to the widths and...

We initiate the study of the vertex-ply of straight-line drawings, as a relaxation of the recently introduced ply number. Consider the disks centered at each vertex with radius equal to half the length of the longest edge incident to the vertex. The vertex-ply of a drawing is determined by the vertex covered by the maximum number of disks. The main motivation for considering this relaxation is ...

Between May 18 and December 4, 1986, 79 seagoing containers and their contents of 22,051 used tires were inspected for adult mosquitoes as well as eggs and larvae. Of the total inspected, 5,507 tires (25%) contained significant amounts of water. No adults or eggs were found. Fifteen tires contained mosquito larvae that were identified as Ae. albopictus, Ae. togoi, Culex pipiens complex, Tripter...

BACKGROUND Intranasal inoculation of Streptococcus pneumoniae D39 serotype 2 causes fatal pneumonia in mice. The cytotoxic and inflammatory properties of pneumolysin (PLY) have been implicated in the pathogenesis of pneumococcal pneumonia. METHODS To examine the role of PLY in this experimental model we performed ELISA assays for PLY quantification. The distribution patterns of PLY and apopto...

This paper describes the experimental investigation on the effect of ply thickness on the first ply failure, delamination, and the subsequent final failure of graphite/epoxy composite laminates. The laminates considered in this paper are a cross-ply and two quasi-isotropic laminates containing thin plies in the desired interface. The onset of the first ply failure and delamination, and the stre...

BACKGROUND For patients with non-small cell lung cancer the TNM staging system and other conventional prognostic factors fail to predict accurately the outcome of treatment and survival. This study attempts to determine the prognostic value for survival of the proportions of CD4+ lymphocytes in the pleural cavity (PLY) of patients with resectable non-small cell lung cancer. METHODS Lymphocyte...

This paper presents an innovative digital method to analyse agricultural tire profiles based on pictures. From this method, we can conclude that the deformation is caused by changes in vertical load and inflation pressure. The first stage 3D-scanning; cross-section created from obtained picture of tested tire. cross-section, deflection be determined. Then, horizontal - operation allows determin...

The efficacy of alpha-cypermethrin (Cyperthor) and lambda-cyhalothrin (Demand) to prevent mosquito larval colonization of water-containing receptacles was investigated using 2 differing applications in disused car tires in Darwin, Australia. Insecticide treatments were applied uniformly to the inside surfaces of 2 categories of tires: 1) dry tires that were partially filled with water 24 h afte...