Food is the main source of trace elements for the general Population. The gastrointestinal absorption of certain trace elements, e.g., cadmium, is strongly influenced by iron (Fe) status. This factor may also be relevant for the bioavailability of other trace elements. Therefore, we investigated relationships between Fe status indicators and trace element concentrations in blood and serum of 234 b

Software packages are widely used for quantification of myocardial perfusion defects. The quantification is used to assist the physician in his/her interpretation of the study. The purpose of this study was to compare the quantification of reversible perfusion defects by three different commercially available software packages. We included 50 consecutive patients who underwent myocardial perfusion

After a long period of focus on western and East Asian scripts there is now a general trend in the on-line handwriting recognition community to explore recognition of other scripts such as Arabic and various Indic scripts. One difficulty with the Arabic script is the number and position of diacritic marks associated to Arabic characters. This paper explores the application of a template matching s

An environmentally benign and volume efficient process for enzymatic production of alkanolamides is described. Immobilized Candida antarctica lipase B, Novozym (R) 435, was used to catalyze the condensation of lauric acid with monothanolamine. The raction temperature of 90 degrees C was required to keep the reactants in a liquid state. Atepwise addition of the amine minimized problems caused by th

In this paper we consider a coupled system of elastic and rigid bodies. It can be mathematically formulated as a coupled system of ordinary and partial differential equations, often written in its weak form. The discretisation is performed by a Galerkin-type ansatz in connection with a finite element approach or known eigenfunctions. Here, we demonstrate instead the use of a recently published Gal

A numerical study of how changes in the micromechanical modeling affect the formability of voided metal sheets is conducted. A homogenization technique, where periodic representative volume elements are used, permits investigations of the global formability where the local material mechanisms and the microstructure are accounted for. A nonlocal material model, containing a constitutive material le

BACKGROUND: The aim of this study was to investigate how much perfusion pressure an artery can tolerate without significant loss of endothelium-dependent relaxation (EDR) and vascular contractility. METHODS: The abdominal aortas of 396 Sprague-Dawley rats were used. One hundred twenty aortas were flush-perfused for 1 or 5 minutes with cold St. Thomas' Hospital cardioplegic (STHC) solution or with

The effect of external osmotic pressure on the extent of DNA ejection from bacteriophage- was recently investigated (Evilevitch et al., 2003). The total length of DNA ejected was measured via the 260-nm absorption by free nucleotides, after opening of the capsids in the presence of varying amounts of polyethylene glycol 8000 and DNase I. As a function of osmolyte concentration, this absorption was

Methodological aspects of planar gamma scintigraphy used to quantify pulmonary aerosol deposition were investigated using an experimental dry powder formulation. Particles of micronized salbutamol sulphate were labelled with technetium-99m and admixed to an ordered mixture of unlabelled micronized salbutamol sulphate and larger carrier particles of lactose. The radioaerosol was administered to 24

A combination of laboratory scale derived correlations and measurements of grain size distribution, DOC (dissolved organic carbon) concentration, and density of suspended bacteria promises to be useful in estimating Hg(II) sorption in heterogeneous streambeds and groundwater environments. This was found by shaking intact sediment and fractions thereof (

The prevalence of abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) is high in the brothers of patients with aneurysm. A genetic component in the development of AAA has, therefore, been postulated. In this study the offspring of patients who had died from AAA rupture were invited to undergo ultrasonography of the abdominal aorta. The attendance rate was 69 per cent. Thirty-nine sons of median age 60 (range 45-75) y

The stability toward thermal and urea denaturation was measured for HAMLET (human -lactalbumin made lethal to tumor cells) and -lactalbumin, using circular dichroism and fluorescence spectroscopy as well as differential scanning calorimetry. Under all conditions examined, HAMLET appears to have the same or lower stability than -lactalbumin. The largest difference is seen for thermal denaturation o

In this work, the problem of designing feedback controllers for the rejection of narrow-band disturbances is considered. The design technique proposed herein is based upon the overparameterization of a nominal minimum-variance controller, which is designed by means of an ARMA model of a sinusoid in noise. The extra degrees of freedom so introduced are used to improve the robustness of the nominal

Objective. Human papilloma virus (HPV) testing and repeat cytology are both proposed as methods to triage women with minor cytological cervical lesions. By triage, those women can be identified who need referral for diagnostic exploration with colposcopy and/or biopsy. Methods. We conducted meta-analyses of reported studies on the accuracy to detect high-grade cervical intra-epithelial neoplasia o

While several techniques exist for assessing quantitative differences among proteomes representing different cell states, methods for assessing how these differences are mediated are largely missing. We present a method that allows one to differentiate between cellular processes, such as protein synthesis, degradation and PTMs which affect protein concentrations. An induced systemic perturbation o

A stable numerical algorithm is presented for an elastostatic problem involving a crack close to and in front of an inclusion interface. The algorithm is adaptive and based on an integral equation of Fredholm’s second kind. This enables accurate analysis also of rather difficult situations. Comparison with stress intensity factors of cracks close to straight infinite bimaterial interfaces are made