We have created a structure-selectivity database (AMPad) of frog-derived, helical antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), in which the selectivity was determined as a therapeutic index (TI), and then used the novel concept of sequence moments to study the lengthwise asymmetry of physicochemical peptide properties. We found that the cosine of the angle between two sequence moments obtained with different...

The aim of this study was to evaluate extracts from two medicinal plants, Acanthospermum hispidum and Ficus thonningii, used in traditional medicine in Congo Brazzaville, for in vitro antiplasmodial activities against two laboratory strains of Plasmodium falciparum: the chloroquine sensitive 3D7 and the chloroquine resistant Dd2. ELISA HRP2 assay was used to evaluate the in vitro inhibitory act...

A data set comprising of the selectivity index of pentachlorophenol-imprinted polymers against 53 pentachlorophenol and related compounds was obtained from the excellent work of Baggiani et al. Molecular descriptors of the phenol compounds were calculated with EDRAGON to obtain a total of 1,666 descriptors spanning 20 categories of molecular properties. Multivariate analysis of the data set was...

The Top Journal Selectivity Index (TJSI) is a scientometric index reflecting the potential importance of a new drug. It represents the ratio of the number of all types of articles on a particular drug in the top 20 journals relative to the number of articles in all (>5,000) biomedical journals covered by Medline over the 5 years since the drug's introduction. The TJSI can be an indicator of a d...

1. We tested quantitatively the responses of 147 middle temporal (MT) cells to light and dark bars moving at different speeds ranging over a 1,000-fold range (0.5-512 deg/s). 2. We derived the following quantities from the speed-response (SR) curves obtained for opposite directions of motion. Speed selectivity was characterized by the maximum response, optimum speed, upper cutoff speed, respons...

Recording of sensory information from afferent fibers can be used as feedback for the closed-loop control of neural prostheses. Clinical applications suggest that recording selectively from various nerve fascicles is important. Current nerve cuff electrodes are generally circular in shape and use a tripolar recording configuration. Preliminary experiments suggest that slowly changing the shape ...

Four insecticides were tested for their suitability to an integrated pest management program of woolly apple aphid (WAA). The tested insecticides were imidacloprid, pirimicarb, cartap and petroleum oil. Three indices were developed to determine the degree of selectivity of studied insecticides and to determine their suitability to WAA IPM program. WAA index used to measure the efficacy of the i...

BACKGROUND Adrenal venous sampling serves as a discrimination between uni- and bilateral forms of primary aldosteronism (PA). Even correctly performed adrenal venous sampling may lead to non-diagnostic results in some cases. RESULTS We describe 7 subjects with PA in whom correct cannulation of adrenal veins (high selectivity index defined as cortisol((adrenal))/cortisol((periphery)) ratio) wa...

The cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) enzyme binds to arachidonic acid resulting in the release of metabolites that induce pain and inflammatory responses. Recent studies have shown that strong COX-2 expression is highly correlated with increased tumor risk. Therefore, the development of potent COX-2 inhibitors to relieve pain and treat cancers requires further investigation. We used virtual screening t...