Objective: To evaluate a possible correlation between transvaginal ultrasound findings in miscarriages and cytogenetic analyses from chorionic villi obtained by dilatation and curettage. Design: Prospective, population-based study. Setting: University-based hospital. Patient(s): Five hundred seventy-six women with spontaneous miscarriage diagnosed between 6 and 12 completed pregnancy weeks. Interv

Modification and optimization of the anticancer drug cisplatin is of interest with respect to selective cell targeting and DNA binding efficiency. Attractive approaches contain both, modification of the platinum coordination sphere and design of hybrid molecules of the cisplatin binding moiety including peptide motifs. Peptides with cell penetrating, directing or recognizing properties can be impl

Selenium is an essential element, but its metabolism in humans is not well characterized. A few small studies indicate that the trimethylselenonium ion (TMSe) is a common selenium metabolite in humans.

Sensitive detection of molecular biomarkers in clinical samples is crucially important in disease diagnostics. This paper reports the developement of an aptamer microarray platform combined with sol-gel technology to identify low-abundance targets in complex serum samples. Because of the nanoporous structure of the sol-gel, a high capacity to immobilize the affinity specific aptamers is accomplish

Enzymatic synthesis of alkyl glycosides using glycoside hydrolases is well studied, but has yet to reach industrial scale, primarily due to limited yields. Reduced water content should increase yields by limiting the unwanted hydrolytic side reaction. However, previous studies have shown that a reduction in water content surprisingly favors hydrolysis over transglycosylation. In addition, glycosid

alpha decay is treated microscopically, where the unstable mother nucleus and residual daughter nucleus are described using Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov (HFB) wave functions, obtained with the Skyrme effective interaction. From these wave functions the amplitude for forming alpha particles in the mother nucleus is computed. Two different Skyrme parametrizations with different pairing properties are com

The nuisance alga Gonyostomum semen (Raphidophyceae) has expanded in the Nordic countries during the last decades and can dominate lake phytoplankton communities almost completely. A possible explanation to its dominance could be limited grazing by zooplankton. We investigated the potential grazing pressure on G. semen using an experimental approach supported by field data. We determined the grazi

Information on the ecological traits of species might improve predictions of climate-driven range shifts. However, the usefulness of traits is usually assumed rather than quantified. Here, we present a framework to identify the most informative traits, based on four key range-shift processes: emigration of individuals or propagules away from the natal location; the distance a species can move; est

The African humid tropical biome constitutes the second largest rainforest region, significantly impacts global carbon cycling and climate, and has undergone major changes in functioning owing to climate and land-use change over the past century. We assess changes and trends in CO2 fluxes from 1901 to 2010 using nine land surface models forced with common driving data, and depict the inter-model v

The perennial herbaceous crop Arundo donax is a potential feedstock for second-generation bioethanol production. In the present work, two different process options were investigated for the conversion of two differently steam-pretreated batches of A. donax. The pretreated raw material was converted to ethanol with a xylose-consuming Saccharomyces cerevisiae strain, VTT C-10880, by applying either

Study Objectives: Although hypothesized through animal studies, a temporal and causal association between hypocretin deficiency and the onset of narcolepsy with cataplexy (NC) has never been proven in humans. Setting: Paediatric Department, Blekinge Hospital, Sweden, and Danish Center for Sleep Medicine, Glostrup Hospital, Denmark. Patient and Results: Two weeks after his second Pandemrix-vaccinat

1. The ability of exotic plant species to establish and expand in new areas may be enhanced by a relatively high ability to acquire soil nutrients. To test this hypothesis, we predicted that the capacity for nutrient acquisition would be higher in seedlings of exotic species than in seedlings of native congeners. 2. We selected the five exotic species that had recently increased in abundance in a

Asymptomatic bacteriuria (ABU), established by intravesical inoculation of E.coli 83972, is protective in patients with recurrent UTI. In an RCT cross-over study, two patients developed three symptomatic UTI episodes while carrying E.coli 83972. This study examined if a reacquisition of virulence by symptom isolates may account for the switch from ABU to symptomatic UTI.

MD simulations can now explore the complex dynamics of proteins and their associated solvent in atomic detail on a millisecond time scale. Among the phenomena that thereby become amenable to detailed study are intermittent conformational transitions where the protein accesses transient high-energy states' that often play key roles in biology. Here, we present a coherent theoretical framework, base

One of the challenges facing prosthetic designers and engineers is to restore the missing sensory function inherit to hand amputation. Several different techniques can be employed to provide amputees with sensory feedback: sensory substitution methods where the recorded stimulus is not only transferred to the amputee, but also translated to a different modality (modality-matched feedback), which t

Imazalil (IMZ) is a fungicide used in the cultivation of vegetables, such as cucumbers, in green houses or post-harvest on fruit to avoid spoilage due to fungal growth. Agricultural workers can be occupationally exposed to IMZ and the general public indirectly by the diet. The purpose of this study was to develop and validate an LC-MS-MS method for the analysis of IMZ in human urine. The method us

Consider the random graph on n vertices 1,...,n. Each vertex i is assigned a type x(i) with x(1),...,x(n) being independent identically distributed as a nonnegative random variable X. We assume that EX3 < infinity. Given types of all vertices, an edge exists between vertices i and j independent of anything else and with probability min{1, x(i)x(j)/n (1 + a/n(1/3))}. We study the critical phase, wh