We investigated the properties of an artificial chimeric peptide that contains an Arg-Gly-Asp (RGD)tripeptide, the versatile cell recognition signal of extracellular matrix protein components, coupled to a carboxyl-terminal fragment of the highly specific a-thrombin hibitor, hirudin (residues 53-64): WG-SANGDFEEIPEEYL (RGD-hir~din'~-'~). Hir ~ d i n ~ ~ ' ~ and RGD-hir~din'~-'~ inhibited th...

BACKGROUND Sponges have long been known to be ecologically important members of the benthic fauna on coral reefs. Recently, it has been shown that sponges are also important contributors to the nitrogen biogeochemistry of coral reefs. The studies that have been done show that most sponges are net sources of dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN; NH4 (+) and NO3 (-)) and that nitrification, mediated...

Availability and leaching of dissolved inorganic N (DIN = NH4 + NO3) in soil were measured in a periodically flooded forest of the Central Amazon floodplain (v rzea) during one terrestrial phase. Special emphasis was on the effects of a legume and a nonlegume tree species. NH4-N accounted for more than 85% of DIN even at the end of the terrestrial phase although it decreased throughout the expe...

We develop the helicity formalism for spin-2 particles and apply it to the case of gravity in flat extra dimensions. We then implement the large extra dimensions scenario of Arkani-Hamed, Dimopoulos and Dvali in the program AMEGIC++, allowing for an easy calculation of arbitrary processes involving the emission or exchange of gravitons. We complete the set of Feynman rules derived by Han, Lykke...

We compared the virulence properties of a collection of asymptomatic bacteriuria (ABU) Escherichia coli strains to urinary tract infection (UTI) strains isolated from pregnant women in a university hospital over 1 year. The in vitro and in vivo studies suggest that ABU strains presented a virulence behavior similar to that of strains isolated from cases of cystitis.

Relatively high deposition of nitrogen (N) in the northeastern United States has caused concern because sites could become N saturated. In the past, mass-balance studies have been used to monitor the N status of sites and to investigate the impact of increased N deposition. Typically, these efforts have focused on dissolved inorganic forms of N (DIN = NH4-N + NO3-N) and have largely ignored dis...