The immune system is of profound importance for host survival due to its ability to clear many acquired diseases. In case of infections and cancer, disease arises due to under-performance of immune system. Whereas in autoimmunity and...
Skeletal muscle is the most abundant tissue in our body that provides a structural framework and regulates important biological processes. It is also a primary reservoir of protein. Skeletal muscle maintains its structural and functional integrity...
This project investigated the effect of hypothermia on the monocyte response with the goal of understanding, which intracellular processes are affected by hypothermia leading to differences in cytokine secretion. A better understanding of the...
Current high-throughput gene expression experiments have a straightforward design of examining
the gene expression of one group or condition relative to that of another. The data is typically
analyzed as if they represent strictly intracellular...
The vaccinia virus complement control protein (VCP) is involved in the modulation of the host inflammatory response during vaccinia virus infection. It possesses the ability to inhibit both classical and alternative pathways of complement...
Ischemic heart disease is the leading cause of mortality and morbidity in Western societies. Thus, understanding the molecular mechanisms to reduce myocardial ischemia and limit infarction size are of great importance. Ample evidence has shown that...
Colon (Anatomy)--Cancer--Genetic aspects; Cancer cells--Mathematical models
Research over the past twenty five years has led to the development of the hypothesis that colorectal cancer is caused by the accumulation of mutations in tumor suppressor genes and proto-oncogenes. The last ten years has also revealed that the...
Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) is a C-19 adrenal steroid and the most abundant circulating hormone in humans. Since circulating levels decline in late adulthood, treatment of humans with DHEA has been suggested to have beneficial health effects....
Congenital stationary night blindness 1 (CSNBl) is a genetic disorder characterized in humans by night blindness, low visual acuity and myopia. CSNB 1 is caused by defects in genes that are involved in signaling between photoreceptors and...
Pancreatic beta cells are extremely vulnerable to destruction by Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS). In type 1 diabetes and islet transplantation ROS are thought to be involved in the loss of beta cells. To test the role of antioxidant in islet...
In the age of high-throughput molecular biology techniques, scientists have incorporated the methodology of in-situ hybridization to map spatial patterns of gene expression. In order to compare expression patterns within a common tissue structure,...
Recent studies indicate post-translational deacetylation by members of the superfamily of histone deacetylase complexes (HDACs) is necessary for oligodendrocyte precursor cell (OPC) differentiation into mature oligodendrocytes (OLs). However, it...
The works of Maurice Duruflé (1902-1986) comprise a small but significant body of sacred music and compositions for organ, yet they have received little serious analytical attention. The present study examines an early organ work, the Prélude,...
A hyper basis function network (HyperBF) is a generalized radial basis function network (RBF) where the activation function is a radial function of a weighted distance. The local weighting of the distance accounts for the variation in local scaling...
Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are persistent environmental pollutants which
are detectable in the serum of all American adults. Amongst PCB congeners,
PCB 153 has the highest serum level. PCBs have been dose-dependently
associated with suspected...
Vascular injury and chronic arterial diseases such as atherosclerosis and restenosis result in exposure of vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) to increased concentrations of growth factors triggering a change from a contractile to a synthetic...
Hypoxia is characterized by an inadequate oxygen supply to the tissues in
proportion to their metabolic needs, and is a primary factor in traumatic CNS
injury, strokes, cardiopulmonary diseases, and obstructive sleep apnea. The
cAMP-dependent...
Parkinson's disease--Treatment; Stem cells--Therapeutic use
Parkinson's disease (PD) is a hypokinetic movement disorder resulting from the
progressive neurodegeneration of the dopaminergic nigrostriatal system in the brain and
the resulting imbalance between dopamine and acetylcholine in the basal ganglia...
Computer music; Sound--Recording and reproducing--Digital techniques; Music and technology; Computer sound processing
This thesis proposes a concept called low-time-resolution (LTR) structure in music, and investigates its potential significance and application in music-related computing tasks.
The contributions of the thesis are manifold. First, it proposes a...
Human adenoviruses (Ads) can infect and replicate in cells at different cell-cycle stages. Ads with the E1 B55K deletion preferentially replicate in cancer cells and cause oncolysis. Our laboratory has previously shown that the Ad E1 b gene is...