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The liver has unique microenvironment which is known to induce tolerance of cytolytic CD8+ T cells to hepatic and extra hepatic antigens, resulting in persistence of infection of the liver by the hepatitis B and C viruses. However, under some conditions, functional immune responses can be elicited in the liver in particular to show preferential retention of activated CD8+ T cells. It is not clear whether this retention depends on the type of the exogenous immunostimulatory or the endogenous innate immune cells.
The T cell receptor (TCR) transgenic OT-1 (CD8+) mouse model was used in which OT-1 cells were harvested from the spleen of the donor and transferred into recipient mice followed by immunization with OVA peptide followed by injection of GM-CSF, CCL21 chemokine, or cytokines (IL-2, IL-12, or IL-15), or the toll-like receptor 3 agonist poly(I:C). Co-administration of any of these immunostimulatory agents relatively augmented the retention of CD8+ T cells with different levels of effects. Compared to spleen, the Ag-specific CD8+ T cells in the liver showed higher activities including expansion, proliferation, apoptosis and memory responses as well as cytolytic function. While depletion of natural killer cells significantly decreased the hepatic retention of the antigen-specific T cells, depletion of Kupffer cells showed opposite effect.
Taken together, the antigen reactive T cells in the liver have higher activities than their counterparts in the peripheral tissues such as spleen. These data have important clinical implications for designing immunotherapeutic protocols toward the liver diseases.

328 species in total were recorded at 500 sites between 30° 06’ and 24° 00’N in the Eastern Desert of Egypt. The occurrence of species was classified into 5 constancy classes: dominant, very common, common, occasional and sporadic. A sharp decrease in the number of recorded species was noticed along the N–S direction from Cairo-Suez road in the north to Aswan-Baranis road in the south (from 179 to 23), and an increase along the E–W direction from the Red Sea coast in the east to the River Nile Valley in the west (from 46 to 80). It was found out that geographical affinities affect the patterns of species distribution: 82 annual (therophyte) species are dominant life forms within the northern part of the study area, followed by 33 species in the southern part. Phanerophytes (trees) showed a decrease in their number from north (13 species) to south (9 species), but a slight increase from east (9 species) to west (10 species). Distribution maps of local geographical subtypes of each of the 4 major chorotypes are shown and a suggested improved phytogeographical map is presented.

In a recent paper [15], Saddeek introduced the so-called class of generalized strictly pseudo-contractive
mappings and established some strong convergence theorems for the generalized modified Krasnoselskii iterative
processes developed by Saddeek [15] for finding the minimum norm solutions of certain nonlinear equations when
p ≥ 2 in the framework of uniformly convex Banach spaces. This paper develops the work presented in [15] by
considering separately the case in which 1 < p < 2.

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The geology at Kottamiya, Rehab City and Zahraa–Madinat–Nasr to the East of Cairo (Egypt) is composed of low-velocity sediments on top of a rigid rock basement. Such sediments include the loose sands of the Gebel Ahmar formation, marl and shales of Maadi formation, in addition to sparse quaternary soil covers. Due to the contrast of the seismic impedance with the underlying bedrock, these soft sediments have the potential of considerably amplifying the ground motion during an earthquake. For the evaluation of site-specific seismic hazard, we computed the seismic site response in these areas by developing 1-D velocity models and derived average seismic velocities, including Vs30. To do that, we applied different active and passive source techniques, including the horizontal to vertical Fourier spectral ratio of ambient vibration recordings and multichannel analysis of artificially generated surface waves. A set of models representing the velocity structure of the site is then obtained by combined inversion of Rayleigh wave dispersion curves and ellipticity functions. While dispersion curves are used to constrain the uppermost low-velocity part of the soil profile, ellipticity helps in resolving the structure at the depth of the sediment–bedrock interface. From the retrieved velocity models, numerical ground-motion amplification is finally derived using 1-D SH-wave transfer function. We account for uncertainty in amplification by using a statistical model that accounts for the misfit of all the inverted velocity profiles. The study reveals that the different sites experience an important frequency-dependent amplification, with largest amplification occurring at the resonance frequencies of the sites. Amplification up to a factor of 5 is found, with some variability depending on the soil type (Vs30 ranges between 340 and 415 m s−2). Moreover, amplification is expected in the frequency range that is important for buildings (0.8–10 Hz), which is additional confirmation for the need of microzonation analysis of the area. The obtained results will be used for the development of a new seismic hazard model.

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