Cannabidiol (CBD) is a component of cannabis, which does not cause the typical marijuana-type effects, but has a high potential for use in several therapeutic areas. In contrast to Δ(9)-tetrahydrocannabinol (Δ(9)-THC), it binds very weakly to the CB1 and CB2 cannabinoid receptors. It has potent activity in both in vitro and in vivo anti-inflammatory assays. Thus, it lowers the formation of tumo...

Affine Transformations: So far we have been stepping through the basic elements of geometric programming. We have discussed points, vectors, and their operations, and coordinate frames and how to change the representation of points and vectors from one frame to another. Our next topic involves how to map points from one place to another. Suppose you want to draw an animation of a spinning ball....

Recap: Last time we introduced the principal elements of skeletal models and discussed forward kinematics. Recall that a skeletal model consists of a collection of joints, which have been joined into a rooted tree structure. Each joint of the skeleton is associated with a coordinate frame which specifies its position and orientation in space. Each joint can be rotated (subject to sum constraint...

Unity: Unity is a widely-used cross-platform game develop system. It consists of a game engine and an integrated development environment (IDE). It can be used to develop games for many different platforms, including PCs, consoles, mobile devices, and deployment on the Web. In this lecture, we will present the basic elements of Unity. However, this is a complex system, and we will not have time ...

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a common and leading cause of death worldwide. Here, we identified that a cell-cell adhesion gene, CTNNA3, is a tumor suppressor in HCC. CTNNA3 inhibited the proliferation, migration and invasion of HCC cell lines. In these cells, CTNNA3 inhibited Akt signal, and in turn decreased the proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) and the matrix metallopeptidase MMP...

BACKGROUND LTC4 synthase is essential for the production of cysteinyl leukotrienes (Cys-LT), critical mediators in asthma. We have identified a novel promoter polymorphism at position -1072 (G/A) and a -444 (A/C) polymorphism has previously been reported. The role of these polymorphisms in the genetic susceptibility to asthma was examined. METHODS To test for genetic association with asthma p...