BACKGROUND The degree of conversion (DC) of resin based materials depends, beside other factors, on the light-intensity applied during light curing. A lower DC might be correlated with an increased cytotoxicity of the respective materials. Therefore, aim of the present study was to investigate the influence of the distance between light-curing tip and adhesives on their cytotoxicity and degree ...

Down-conversion in lanthanide doped luminescent materials is a promising route to significantly enhance the energy efficiency of silicon solar cells, plasma display panels, or mercury-free lighting tubes because it results in the emission of two photons for each absorbed higher energy photon. The Gd3+ /Eu3+ ion couple shows down-conversion of vacuum-ultraviolet light into visible light with an ...

we consider a 2-dimensional representation of the hecke algebra h(g7; u), whereg7 is the complex re ection group and u is the set of indeterminatesu = (x1; x2; y1; y2; y3; z1; z2; z3):after specializing the indetrminates to non zero complex numbers, we then determine a nec-essary and sucient condition that guarantees the irreducibility of the complex specializationof the representation of the ...

To develop a vaccination approach for prevention of type 1 diabetes (T1D) that selectively attenuates self-reactive T-cells targeting specific autoantigens, we selected phage-displayed single chain antigen receptor libraries for clones binding to a complex of the NOD classII MHC I-A(g7) and epitopes derived from the islet autoantigen RegII. Libraries were generated from B-cell receptor repertoi...

Islet-specific glucose-6-phosphatase catalytic subunit-related protein (IGRP) has been identified as a novel CD8(+) T cell-specific autoantigen in NOD mice. This study was undertaken to identify MHC class II-specific CD4(+) T cell epitopes of IGRP. Peptides named P1, P2, P3, P4, P5, P6, and P7 were synthesized by aligning the IGRP protein amino acid sequence with peptide-binding motifs of the N...

This paper is motivated by the observation that the Great Inflation, i.e., the high and volatile inflation that developed in the mid 1960s and lasted for almost twenty years, was an international phenomenon. Given that observation, we argue that an explanation for the Great Inflation should be consistent with the timing of the events in many developed countries, and not only with the US. We pro...

Chromogranin A (ChgA) is an autoantigen for CD4(+) T cells in the nonobese diabetic (NOD) mouse model of type 1 diabetes (T1D). The natural ChgA-processed peptide, WE14, is a weak agonist for the prototypical T cell, BDC-2.5, and other ChgA-specific T-cell clones. Mimotope peptides with much higher activity share a C-terminal motif, WXRM(D/E), that is predicted to lie in the p5 to p9 position i...

Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is a CD4+ T cell-driven autoimmune disease resulting from the destruction of insulin-producing pancreatic beta cells. Clinical evidence and studies in non-obese diabetic (NOD) mice suggest that insulin is a major autoantigen. With this in mind, we developed insulin B10-23:IAg7 tetramer reagents to track insulin-specific CD4+ T cells in mice and interrogated the role of Pro...

Untrained rats selectively bred for either high (HCR) or low (LCR) treadmill running capacity previously demonstrated divergent physiological traits as early as the seventh generation (G7). We asked whether continued selective breeding to generation 15 (G15) would further increase the divergence in skeletal muscle capillarity, morphometry, and oxidative capacity seen previously at G7. At G15, m...

BACKGROUND CD4(+)CD25(+) regulatory T cell (Treg)-based immunotherapy is considered a promising regimen for controlling the progression of autoimmune diabetes. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that the therapeutic effects of Tregs in response to the antigenic epitope stimulation depend on the structural properties of the epitopes used. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Splenic lymphocytes...