BACKGROUND The Logistics Management Institute initially developed a medical cost-avoidance model (MCAM) to estimate the costs associated with the failure to eliminate or control health hazards of army materiel systems during 1997. METHODS Presented is an updated version of the MCAM that uses cost factors for individual health hazard categories. The earlier MCAM calculated army materiel acquis...

BACKGROUND HIV-1 in genital secretions may be opsonized by several molecules including complement components. Opsonized HIV-1 by complement enhances the infection of various mucosal target cells, such as dendritic cells (DC) and epithelial cells. RESULTS We herein evaluated the effect of HIV-1 complement opsonization on microbicide candidates' activity, by using three in vitro mucosal models:...

The plant lectins from Hippeastrum hybrid (HHA) and Galanthus nivalis (GNA) are 50,000-D tetramers showing specificity for alpha-(1,3) and/or alpha-(1,6)-mannose oligomers. They inhibit HIV-1 infection at a 50% effective concentration of 0.2 to 0.3 microg/ml. Escalating HHA or GNA concentrations (up to 500 microg/ml) led to the isolation of three HIV-1(III(B)) strains in CEM T cell cultures tha...

Hedgehog (Hh) genes play major roles in animal development and studies of their evolution, expression and function point to major differences among chordates. Here we focused on Hh genes in lampreys in order to characterize the evolution of Hh signalling at the emergence of vertebrates. Screening of a cosmid library of the river lamprey Lampetra fluviatilis and searching the preliminary genome ...

In this paper, the capacitated location-routing problem with fuzzy demands (CLRP-FD) is considered. The CLRP-FD is composed of two well-known problems: facility location problem and vehicle routing problem. The problem has many real-life applications of which some have been addressed in the literature such as management of hazardous wastes and food and drink distribution. In CLRP-FD, a set of c...

These studies employed the synthetic linear DNA, poly dGdC, in the B and cobalt hexammine chloride (Co)-induced Z form to determine the effect of conformation on protein-DNA interactions. The rate of the reaction of the restriction endonucleases, Hha I and Cfo I, are reduced with Z DNA as compared to B DNA. The ability of both restriction endonucleases to react with an aggregate form of Z DNA (...

Background The healthcare system in the United States has been plagued by service limitations imposed by financial constraints. Hospice is no exception, and hospice providers must continually seek out ways to provide cost-effective care. In response to this environment, many hospices are making a concerted effort to find efficient, low expenditure approaches to providing care without compromisi...

The virus-encoded envelope proteins of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) typically contain 26 to 30 sites for N-linked carbohydrate attachment. N-linked carbohydrate can be of three major types: high mannose, complex, or hybrid. The lectin proteins from Galanthus nivalis (GNA) and Hippeastrum hybrid (HHA), which specifically bind high-mannose carbohydrat...

In this paper, the capacitated location-routing problem with fuzzy demands (CLRP-FD) is considered. The CLRP-FD is composed of two well-known problems: facility location problem and vehicle routing problem. The problem has many real-life applications of which some have been addressed in the literature such as management of hazardous wastes and food and drink distribution. In CLRP-FD, a set of c...