Streptococcus pneumoniae infections remain a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Therefore a detailed understanding and characterization of the mechanism of host cell colonization and dissemination is critical in order to gain control over this versatile pathogen. Here we identified a novel 72 kDa pneumococcal protein endopeptidase O (PepO), as a plasminogen and fibronectin binding p

Aims Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is responsible for a disproportionate number of breast cancer (BC) deaths, owing to its intrinsic aggressiveness and a lack of treatment options, especially targeted therapies. Thus, there is an urgent need for the development of better targeted treatments for TNBC. Molecular alteration of AKT-3 was previously reported in oestrogen receptor (ER)-positive B

Initial exertion of self-control impairs subsequent self-regulatory performance, which is referred to as the ego depletion effect. The current study examined how individual differences in dopamine level, as indexed by eye blink rate (EBR), would moderate ego depletion. An inverted-U-shaped relationship between EBR and subsequent self-regulatory performance was found when participants initially eng

Retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) is a vision-threatening disease in premature infants. Serum adiponectin (APN) concentrations positively correlate with postnatal growth and gestational age, important risk factors for ROP development. Dietary ω-3 (n-3) long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (ω-3 LCPUFAs) suppress ROP and oxygen-induced retinopathy (OIR) in a mouse model of human ROP, but the mechan

Metal-free porphyrin-dendrimers provide a convenient platform for the construction of membrane-impermeable ratiometric probes for pH measurements in compartmentalized biological systems. In all previously reported molecules, electrostatic stabilization (shielding) of the core porphyrin by peripheral negative charges (carboxylates) was required to shift the intrinsically low porphyrin protonation p

The goal of this paper is to explore the presuppositionality of factive verbs, with special emphasis on the verbs know and regret. The hypothesis put forward here is that the factivity related to know and the factivity related to regret are two different phenomena, as the former is a semantic implication (an entailment) that is licensed by the conventional meaning of know, while the latter is a pu

P>Infection of mice with the gastrointestinal nematode Trichuris muris represents a valuable tool to investigate and dissect intestinal immune responses. Resistant mouse strains respond to T. muris infection by mounting a T helper type 2 response. Previous results have shown that CD4+ T cells play a critical role in protective immunity, and that CD4+ T cells localize to the infected large intestin

Objective. To compare the diagnostic accuracy of ultrasound (US) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in the preoperative assessment of early-stage cervical cancer using pathologic findings as the reference standard. Patients and methods. Prospective multi-center trial enrolling 209 consecutive women with early-stage cervical cancer (FIGO IA2-IIA) scheduled for surgery. The following parameters we

To investigate the long term effects of continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion (insulin pump therapy) on cardiovascular diseases and mortality in people with type 1 diabetes.

NF-κB is constitutively activated in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL); however, the implicated molecular mechanisms remain largely unknown. Thus, we performed targeted deep sequencing of 18 core complex genes within the NF-κB pathway in a discovery and validation CLL cohort totaling 315 cases. The most frequently mutated gene was NFKBIE (21/315 cases; 7%), which encodes IκBε, a negative regulato

We consider iterated function systems on the interval with random perturbation. Let Yε be uniformly distributed in [1−ε, 1+ε] and let fi ∈ C 1+α be contractions with fixpoints ai . We consider the iterated function system {Yε fi + ai (1 − Yε )}, where each of the maps is chosen with probability pi . It is shown that the invariant density is in L2 and its L2 norm does not grow faster than 1/√ε as ε

Why are sensory signals and motor command signals combined in the neurons of origin of the spinocerebellar pathways and why are the granule cells that receive this input thresholded with respect to their spike output? In this paper, we synthesize a number of findings into a new hypothesis for how the spinocerebellar systems and the cerebellar cortex can interact to support coordination of our mult

Measuring the thermopower of a confined quantum system reveals important information about its excitation spectrum. Our simulations show how this kind of transport spectroscopy is able to extract a clear signal for the onset of Wigner localization in a nanowire segment. This demonstrates that thermopower measurements provide a tool for investigating complex many-body quantum effects, which is less

To investigate gaze behavior during communication between children with hearing impairment (HI) and normal-hearing (NH) peers.

Apolipoprotein A-I (apoA-I), the main protein constituent of HDL, has a central role in the reverse cholesterol-transport pathway, which together with the anti-inflammatory properties of apoA-I/HDL provide cardioprotection. Recent findings of direct stimulation of glucose uptake in muscle by apoA-I/HDL suggest that altered apoA-I and HDL functionality may be a contributing factor to the developmen

This paper focuses on the use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to evaluate the performance of seventeen control strategies in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). It tackles the importance of using site-specific factors for nutrient enrichment when decision-makers have to select best operating strategies. Therefore, the LCA evaluation is repeated for three different scenarios depending on the limita