As said by former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, "Snakebite is the most important tropical disease you've never heard of." Listed as a priority neglected tropical disease by the World... Show moreAs said by former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, "Snakebite is the most important tropical disease you've never heard of." Listed as a priority neglected tropical disease by the World Health Organization, snakebite envenoming (SBE) kills in excess of 125,000 people per year. However, due to the complexity and overlap of snake venom compositions, few reliable venom diagnostic methods for genus-/species-specific identification, which is crucial for successful SBE therapy, are available. Here, we develop a strategy to select and prepare genus-specific snake venom antibodies, which allows rapid and efficient clinical diagnosis of snakebite. Multi-omics approaches are used to choose candidate antigens from snake venoms and identify genus-specific antigenic epitope peptide fragments (GSAEPs) with ideal immunogenicity, specificity, and spatial accessibility. Double-antibody sandwich ELISA kit was established by matching a polyclonal antibody against a natural antigen and a monoclonal antibody that was prepared by natural protein as antigen and can specifically target the GSAEPs. The kit shows the ability to accurately identify venoms from similar genera of Trimeresurus and Protobothrops with a detection limit of 6.25 ng/ml on the snake venoms and a little cross-reaction, thus proving high feasibility and applicability. Show less
This thesis consists of three papers that are centered around the common theme of Hausdorff uo-Lebesgue topologies and convergence structures on vector lattices and on vector lattices and vector... Show moreThis thesis consists of three papers that are centered around the common theme of Hausdorff uo-Lebesgue topologies and convergence structures on vector lattices and on vector lattices and vector lattice algebras of order bounded operators.Its origins lie in asking for possible analogues of the von Neumann bicommutant theorem in the context of Banach lattices and vector lattices. Apart from being interesting in their own right, such analogues are expected to be relevant for the study of vector lattice algebras and Banach lattice algebras of order bounded operators, as well as for representation theory in vector lattices and Banach lattices. Show less
We investigate equivalent-neighbor percolation models in two dimensions with a variable interaction range, and include the mean-field limit. We employ a Monte Carlo algorithm whose efficiency... Show moreWe investigate equivalent-neighbor percolation models in two dimensions with a variable interaction range, and include the mean-field limit. We employ a Monte Carlo algorithm whose efficiency depends only weakly on the number of equivalent neighbors within the range of the interactions. We consider 2 classes of models, one in which the interacting neighbors fill a circle, and one in which they fill a square. We first determine the critical points, and then determine the critical exponents. These are, for all finite ranges investigated, in agreement with the exactly known exponents of the nearest-neighbor model. Show less
