The transmission of H9N2 influenza viruses to humans and the realization that the A/Hong Kong/156/97-like (H5N1) (abbreviated HK/156/97) genome complex may be present in H9N2 viruses in southeastern China necessitated a study of the distribution and characterization of H9N2 viruses in poultry in the Hong Kong SAR in 1999. Serological studies indicated that H9N2 influenza viruses had infected a ...

Given a family of graphs F , a graph G is F-saturated if no element of F is a subgraph of G, but for any edge e in G, some element of F is a subgraph of G + e. Let sat(n,F) denote the minimum number of edges in an F-saturated graph of order n, which we refer to as the saturation number or saturation function of F . If F = {F}, then we instead say that G is F -saturated and write sat(n, F ). For...

Hexokinase (HK)(E.C.2.7.1.1) is the enzyme responsible for catalyzing the first step of glucose metabolism, the phosphorylation of glucose to glucose-6-phosphate (G6P). The present study investigated HK from tail muscle of the freshwater crayfish Oconectes virilis exploring changes to kinetic properties, phosphorylation levels and structural stability between two forms of the enzyme (aerobic co...

The function hK is called the support function of K because it provides information on support hyperplanes and halfspaces of K . Indeed, every support halfspace of K is of the form {x :x · u≤ hK(u)} for some u ∈ Sd−1 and since K equals the intersection of all its support halfspaces, the function hK uniquely determines K . For a proof of this and other elementary properties of the support functi...

We study the backward Euler fully discrete mixed finite element method for time-dependent Schrödinger equation; error result of solution is obtained in L2-norm with order O(τ+hk+1). Then, a two-grid presented scheme. Using this method, we solve original problem on much coarser grid and elliptic equations fine grid. In addition, also O(τ+hk+1+Hk+2). The numerical experiment provided to demonstra...

High and low molecular weight kininogens (HK and LK) modulate inflammatory responses, serve as precursors of kinins, inhibit cysteine proteinases, and modulate thrombin activation of platelets. Differential splicing yields two different mRNAs for HK and LK. We report the first molecular characterization of a kininogen gene mutation in a patient lacking LK and HK. No gross DNA deletion or insert...

As millions of immigrants moved to Hong Kong (HK) from China in the recent decades, large amount of residential housings were built in the early years and a substantial proportion of those buildings used asbestos-containing materials (ACMs). Since the number of new cases of ARDs diagnosed has increased year by year since 1990's, the remarkable increase of incidences had drawn the attention of t...

Two-component signal transduction pathways play a major role in the response of bacteria to external cues. These pathways are initiated by large collection of histidine kinases (HKs) containing a sensor domain that perceives the environmental signal followed by an HK domain that triggers a histidine-aspartate phosphorelay. Previous phylogenetic analyses identified 11 major families of two-compo...

Let G be a connected reductive algebraic group defined over a field k of characteristic not 2, θ an involution of G defined over k, H a k-open subgroup of the fixed point group of θ and Gk (resp. Hk) the set of k-rational points of G (resp. H). The variety Gk/Hk is called a symmetric k-variety. For real and -adic symmetric k-varieties the space L(Gk/Hk ) of square integrable functions decompose...

Bradykinin is a potent inflammatory mediator that induces vasodilation, vascular leakage, and pain sensations. This short-lived peptide hormone is liberated from its large precursor protein high molecular weight kininogen (HK) through the contact system cascade involving coagulation factor XII and plasma kallikrein. Although bradykinin release is well established in vitro, the factors and mecha...