The relatively simple Ohta-Kawasaki density functional theory for diblock copolymer melts allows us to construct and analyze exact solutions to the EulerLagrange equation by singular perturbation techniques. First we consider a solution of a single sphere pattern that models a cell in the spherical morphology. We show the existence of the sphere pattern and find a stability threshold, so that i...

BACKGROUND Chikungunya virus (CHIKV) re-emerged in Sri Lanka in late 2006 after a 40-year hiatus. We sought to identify and characterize acute chikungunya infection (CHIK) in patients presenting with acute undifferentiated febrile illness in unstudied rural and semi-urban southern Sri Lanka in 2007. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS We enrolled febrile patients ≥ 2 years of age, collected unifor...

Two separate projects were undertaken to improve technology for entangled photon sources, useful for quantum optics. In one project, a pulsed, mode-locked erbium-doped fiber laser, designed to be used as a seed laser for a 390 nm source, was built using polarization-maintaining components to address polarization drift. The fiber laser operated at a center wavelength of 1560.0 nm with an output ...

Materials. DOTAP (1,2-dioleoyloxypropyl)-N,N,N-trimethylammonium chloride), DOPE (1,2-dioleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphoethanolamine) and cholesterol (Chol) were purchased from Avanti Polar lipids (USA). Solvents (chloroform and methanol) were obtained from Fisher Scientific (UK). Scrambled siRNA and apoptotic siPLK1 were purchased from Eurogentec (Southampton, UK). The fluorescence dye NIR-797 (λex...

Objective: To analyze the differences in the incidence of postoperative complications in the bladder and urinary system between patients who received modified laparoscopic-assisted vaginal hysterectomy (LAVH) and those who received classical LAVH to reduce bladder and urinary system complications. Method: Patients who underwent LAVH for uterine disease at Inje University Haeundae Paik Hospital ...

The coronavirus spike protein (S) plays a key role in the early steps of viral infection, with the S1 domain responsible for receptor binding and the S2 domain mediating membrane fusion. In some cases, the S protein is proteolytically cleaved at the S1-S2 boundary. In the case of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV), it has been shown that virus entry requires the endoso...

Memristor is a new electrical element which has been predicted and described in 1971 by Leon O. Chua and for the first time realized by HP laboratory in 2008. Chua proved that memristor behavior could not be duplicated by any circuit built using only the other three elements (resistor, capacitor, inductor), which is why the memristor is truly fundamental. Memristor is a contraction of memory re...

Smooth muscle myosin light chain kinase (MLCK) is stable in the presence of Ca2+/calmodulin and does not undergo inactivation as reported for skeletal muscle MLCK (Kennelly, P.J., Starovasnik, M.A., Edelman, A.M., and Krebs, E.G. (1990) J. Biol. Chem. 265, 1742-1749). The 61-kDa tryptic fragment of smMLCK-(283-779) with the pseudosubstrate/calmodulin binding sequence deleted undergoes rapid ina...

Brown fat expresses two PGC-1α isoforms (PGC-1α and NT-PGC-1α) and both play a central role in the regulation of cellular energy metabolism and adaptive thermogenesis by interacting with a wide range of transcription factors including PPARγ, PPARα, ERRα, and NRF1. PGC-1α consists of 797 amino acids, whereas alternative splicing of the PGC-1α gene produces a shorter protein called NT-PGC-1α (aa ...