Lentivirus infection activates CD4(+) CD25(+) T regulatory (Treg) cells. Activation of Treg cells may be due to direct virus infection or chronic antigenic stimulation. Herein we demonstrate that in vitro feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) infection, but not UV-inactivated virus, activates Treg cells as measured by immunosuppressive function and upregulation of GARP, FoxP3, and membrane-bound ...

It is well known that hormones affect both brain and behavior, but less is known about the extent to which hormones affect economic decision-making. Numerous studies demonstrate gender differences in attitudes to risk and loss in financial decision-making, often finding that women are more loss and risk averse than men. It is unclear what drives these effects and whether cyclically varying horm...

* Corresponding author. ** This work was partially supported by the Research Department of the Government of French Polynesia. Abstract Biological invasion is one of the main drivers for global biodiversity loss. In the islands of French Polynesia, the worst invasive alien species is arguably the small tree Miconia calvescens. The knowledge of miconia distribution and dynamics is critical for m...

The organization and dynamics of the plant endomembrane system require both universal and plant-specific molecules and compartments. The latter, despite the growing wealth of information, remains poorly understood. From the study of an Arabidopsis thaliana male gametophytic mutant, it was possible to isolate a gene named POKY POLLEN TUBE (POK) essential for pollen tube tip growth. The similarit...

Ecological niche modeling (ENM) algorithms, Maximum Entropy Species Distribution Modeling (Maxent) and Genetic Algorithm for Rule-set Prediction (GARP), were used to develop models in Iowa for three species of mosquito - two significant, extant West Nile virus (WNV) vectors (Culex pipiens L and Culex tarsalis Coquillett (Diptera: Culicidae)), and the nuisance mosquito, Aedes vexans Meigen (Dipt...

In this paper, the focus is on the design of an aggregation network for offering high-bandwidth services to fast moving users (e.g., users in trains or cars). The overall considered network architecture consists of two parts: an access network part and an aggregation network part. The users in the fast moving vehicles are connected to the access network via a wireless connection. In the aggrega...

This article presents the design and evaluation of a tool for inspecting conceptual models of system behaviour. The basis for this research is the GARP framework for qualitative simulation. This framework includes modelling primitives, such as entities, quantities and causal dependencies, which are combined into model fragments and scenarios. Given a library of model fragments and a scenario de...

Species distribution models should provide conservation practioners with estimates of the spatial distributions of species requiring attention. These species are often rare and have limited known occurrences, posing challenges for creating accurate species distribution models. We tested four modeling methods (Bioclim, Domain, GARP, and Maxent) across 18 species with different levels of ecologic...