Complement factor C5a and its receptor C5aR are expressed in vulnerable atherosclerotic plaques; however, a causal relation between C5a and plaque rupture has not been established yet. Accelerated atherosclerosis was induced by placing vein grafts in male apoE(-/-) mice. After 24 days, when advanced plaques had developed, C5a or PBS was applied locally at the lesion site in a pluronic gel. Thre...

Primary cilia are essential conveyors of signals underlying major cell functions. Cerebral cortical progenitors and neurons have a primary cilium. The significance of cilia function for brain development and function is evident in the plethora of developmental brain disorders associated with human ciliopathies. Nevertheless, the role of primary cilia function in corticogenesis remains largely u...

Unexpected events — ranging from extreme weather to product contamination — can easily disrupt businesses in today's complex, interconnected global economy. The good news? A company can substantially increase its resilience by improving its ability to detect — and respond to — disruptions quickly.

Open reduction and screw fixation is the current standard treatment for displaced injuries of the ankle syndesmosis. Despite reduction and stable internal fixation, however, these injuries do not uniformly have excellent outcomes. In addition, screw fixation has potential disadvantages. The objective of this article was to provide an overview of the important anatomical and biomechanical issues...

It has been shown that input-output linkages along supply chains affect firms' performance such as sales, productivity, and innovative capacity. This paper explores a new aspect in the literature, examining how supply chain relations influence financial transactions between firms. More specifically, this paper, using an exhaustive dataset on buyer-supplier networks in Japan, studies whether sup...

In a tokamak disruption, a substantial fraction of the plasma current can be converted into runaway electrons. Although these are usually highly relativistic, their total energy is initially much smaller than that of the pre-disruption plasma. However, following a suggestion by Putvinski et al. [Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion 39, B157 (1997)], it is shown that as the post-disruption plasma drifts...

Recent years have witnessed the pervasive supply disruptions and their impacts on supply chain performance. In this paper, we investigate the optimal procurement design with supply disruptions and heterogeneous beliefs between the buyer and the supplier. We examine the impact of information asymmetry on the supplier’s belief, the control right of the backup production, and the verifiability of ...

The replacement of cartilage by bone is the net result of genetic programs that control chondrocyte differentiation, matrix degradation, and bone formation. Disruptions in the rate, timing, or duration of chondrocyte proliferation and differentiation result in shortened, misshapen skeletal elements. In the majority of these skeletal disruptions, vascular invasion of the elements is also perturb...

The vast majority of project scheduling efforts assume complete information about the scheduling problem to be solved and a static deterministic environment within which the pre-computed baseline schedule will be executed. In reality, however, project activities are subject to considerable uncertainty, which generally leads to numerous schedule disruptions. It is of interest to develop pre-sche...

Analysis of the interactions between genes by systematic gene disruptions and gene overexpressions is an important topic in molecular biology. This paper analyses the problem of identifying a genetic network from the data obtained by multiple gene disruptions and overexpressions in regard to the number of experiments and the complexity of experiments. An experiment consists of simultaneous gene...