A Primary Reference Preparation has been produced using pure, recombinant, Cystatin C in a solvent of 0.1 mol/L KCl. Dry mass determination of the Primary Reference Preparation resulted in a Cystatin C concentration of 5.20 g/L. Agarose-electrophoresis and SDS-electrophoresis, as well as N-terminal sequencing, verified the purity, homogeneity and identity of Cystatin C in the Primary Reference Pre

We investigated whether infections with Parvovirus B19 and Herpes viruses in early pregnancy increase risks of second trimester miscarriage or delivery before 32 gestational weeks. Blood samples taken in early pregnancy were analyzed for Parvovirus B19 or Herpes viruses. Viremia was found in blood samples of 11 (4.7%) women with second trimester miscarriage and 10 (3.7%)women with very preterm bir

Fischer-Tropsch (FT) synthesis is an important process to manufacture hydrocarbons and oxygenated hydrocarbons from mixtures of carbon monoxide and hydrogen (syngas). The catalysis process occurs on, for example, cobalt metal surfaces at elevated temperatures and pressures. A fundamental understanding of the reduction pathway of supported cobalt oxides, and the intermediate species present during

The vegetation component in climate models has advanced since the late 1960s from a uniform prescription of surface parameters to plant functional types (PFTs) PFTs are used in global land-surface models to provide parameter values for every model grid cell With a simple photosynthesis model we derive parameters for all site years within the Fluxnet eddy covariance data set We compare the model pa

Factor I (FI) is the major complement inhibitor that degrades activated complement components C3b and C4b in the presence of specific cofactors. Complete FI deficiency results in secondary complement deficiency due to uncontrolled spontaneous alternative pathway activation. In this study we describe two unrelated patients with complete FI deficiency and undetectable alternative complement pathway

Unlike most ordered molecular systems, globular proteins exhibit a temperature of maximum stability, implying that the structure can be disrupted by cooling. This cold denaturation phenomenon is usually linked to the temperature-dependent hydrophobic driving force for protein folding. Yet, despite the key role played by protein−water interactions, hydration changes during cold denaturation have no

This article deals with the legal understanding of the demands in working life on employees’ability to cooperate. The concept of cooperation ability is here used in the sense of an ability to actively facilitate communication and foster relationships with colleagues and supervisors through flexibility and commitment, and thereby benefit the employer’s business. Special attention is paid to the dis

This paper presents a multimode soft-output multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) signal detector that is efficient in hardware cost and energy consumption. The detector is capable of dealing with spatial-multiplexing (SM),break space-division-multiple-access (SDMA), and spatial-diversity (SD) signals of 4 ✕ 4 antenna and 64-QAM modulation. Implementation-friendly algorithms, which reuse most of t

The incidence of invasive group B streptococcus (GBS) infections in non-pregnant adults is increasing. Little is known about GBS in periprosthetic joint infections (PJIs). We aimed to analyse the clinical presentation of GBS PJI and its treatment in association with the outcome. The characteristics of 36 GBS PJIs collected from 10 centres were investigated. In 34 episodes, follow-up examination of

Cooking over open fire with solid fuels results in incomplete combustion and indoor air pollution (IAP) causing respiratory and other diseases leading to nearly two million premature deaths per year. In urban areas, IAP interacts with outdoor pollutants in toxic chemical mixtures affecting also other citizens and damaging regional air quality in terms of 'brown clouds'. Deaths result mainly in wom

The gamma p -> pi(0)pi(0) p reaction has been measured from threshold to 1.4 GeV using the Crystal Ball and TAPS photon spectrometers together with the photon tagging facility at the Mainz Microtron. The experimental results include total and differential cross sections as well as specific angular distributions, which were used to extract partial-wave amplitudes. In particular, the energy region b

Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women worldwide with approximately 1.150.000 new cases each year and accounting for over 400.000 deaths per year. The main cause of death for women with breast cancer is secondary tumors. Downregulation of Wnt5a in primary ductal breast cancer has been correlated with poor outcome and higher tumor grade and found to be an independent predictor of recu

Aims. The aims of this study were to: (1) compare older people care nursing staff's perceptions of their competence, work strain and work satisfaction in nursing homes and home-based care; and (2) to examine determinants of work satisfaction in both care settings. Background. The shift in older people care from hospitals to community-based facilities and home care has had implications for nursing

It is now increasingly recognized that aviation is an important driver of individual and global mobility. Growth in mobility is not evenly distributed, however: recent studies indicate that a relatively small, highly mobile part of society may account for a large share of the total distances travelled. In reviewing one of the processes that may lead to growth in individual aeromobility, the paper

Under 1800-talet tilltog de antikatolska stämningarna i Europa. Antikatolicismen hämtade sin näring från katolska kyrkans fördömande av såväl protestantismen som den moderna utvecklingen i riktning mot ett sekulärt samhälle. I flera länder utmynnade dessa motsättningar i veritabla sammandrabbningar mellan katolska kyrkan och den av liberala krafter dominerande statsmakten. Man talade om ”kulturkamIn Sweden, as in other Protestant countries, the gradual dismantling of the legislation on com-pulsory religious adherence saw the politicization of religious issues. In this situation, the imagery of the old enemy took on new functions. This was very much the case with the notion of the ‘Catholic danger’, which time and again surfaced in the Swedish media and in parlia-mentary debate. In the 1860

Control systems are often built using visual dataflow-based languages, and supporting different variants may be challenging. We introduce the concept of connection interception based on inheritance. This mechanism allows a diagram to extend another diagram and intercept connections defined in the supertype, that is, to replace it by two other connections, in order to specialize the behavior. This

Rotational coherent anti-Stokes Raman spectroscopy (CARS) in fuel-rich hydrocarbon flames, with a large content of hydrogen in the product gases (similar to 20%), has in previous work shown that evaluated temperatures are raised several tens of Kelvin by taking newly derived N-2-H-2 Raman line widths into account. To validate these results, in this work calibrated temperature measurements at aroun

Many façades made with thin rendering on thermal insulation have problems with biological growth. In this study surface temperature and surface RH were monitored over a 20 month period on test house façades with different constructions (thermal inertia), surface color and compass directions. This data were used to test three theoretical indices of biological growth with the aim of indicating the p