Background: Hypertriglyceridemia is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Variation in the apolipoprotein A5 (APOA5) and glucokinase regulatory protein (GCKR) genes has been associated with fasting plasma triacylglycerol. Objective: We investigated the combined effects of the GCKR rs780094C -> T, APOA5 -1131T -> C, and APOA5 56C -> G single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) on fasting triacylgly

An Imaginary Musical Road Movie revolves around two integrated objects: on the one hand, the programmatic and cyclic concept album Highway Rider (2010), which is jazz pianist and composer Brad Mehldau’s most complex instrumental work, and on the other hand transmediality, both as a concept and phenomenon. Musicologist Mats Arvidson claims that a deep understanding of an intermedial music culture i

Behavioral variation has been documented both between and within populations in a variety of traits. Many of these behavioral traits are phenotypically plastic and are conditional on the early environment an animal experiences, yet despite this the role of the environment in generating variation in boldness is not well understood. Here we investigate the importance of early and recent experience o

This paper is intended to give a short overview of the epidemiologic and experimental data on cancer risks associated with very low radiation absorbed doses. The paper will also discuss methods to present these data in an understandable way to those who are exposed e. g. in medical diagnostics and after a radiological or nuclear accident.

Nowadays neutron scattering science is increasing its instrumental power. Most of the neutron sources in the world are pushing the development of their technologies to be more performing. The neutron scattering development is also pushed by the European Spallation Source (ESS) in Sweden, a neutron facility which has just started construction. Concerning small-area detectors (similar to 1 m(2)), th

In a population-based study on cobalamin status and incident fractures in elderly men (n = 790) with an average follow-up of 5.9 years, we found that low levels of metabolically active and total cobalamins predict incident fractures, independently of body mass index (BMI), bone mineral density (BMD), plasma total homocysteine (tHcy), and cystatin C. Cobalamin deficiency in elderlies may affect bon

The high-spin states in Nd-141 were investigated using the Zr-96(Ca-48, 3n) reaction and the EU-ROBALL array. The level scheme has been extended up to an excitation energy of around 16MeV and spin 81/2. Two new bands of dipole transitions and three bands presumably of quadrupole transitions were identified and their connections to low-lying states were established. Cranked Nilsson-Strutinsky and t

Exposure to diesel exhaust causes inflammatory responses. Previous controlled exposure studies at a concentration of 300 μg/m(3) of diesel exhaust particles mainly lasted for 1 h. We prolonged the exposure period and investigated how quickly diesel exhaust can induce respiratory and systemic effects.

Human hematopoietic stem cells reside in the CD34+CD38-CD90+ population in cord blood and bone marrow. However, this cell fraction is heterogeneous, and the phenotype of the rare primitive stem cells remains poorly defined. We here report that primitive cord blood CD34+CD38-CD90+ stem cells, with the ability to reconstitute NOD/SCID-IL2Rγ(c) null mice long term, at 24 weeks after transplantation,

In this paper we address the problem of translating high-level stream programs, such as those written in MPEG's RVC-CAL dataflow language, into implementations in programmable hardware. Our focus is on two aspects: sufficient language coverage to make synthesis available for a large class of programs, and methodology and tool support providing analysis and guidance to improve and optimize an initi

Evidence of a possible association of cutaneous human papillomavirus (HPV) types, especially members of the genus Betapapillomavirus, and the development of non-melanoma skin cancer (NMSC) is accumulating. Vaccination with virus-like particles (VLPs) consisting of self-assembled L1, the major capsid protein, has been introduced to control anogenital HPV infection. This study examined the serologic

Alternative macrophage activation is implicated in diverse disease pathologies such as asthma, organ fibrosis, and granulomatous diseases, but the mechanisms underlying macrophage programming are not fully understood. Galectin-3 is a carbohydrate-binding lectin present on macrophages. We show that disruption of the galectin-3 gene in 129sv mice specifically restrains IL-4/IL-13-induced alternative

The estrogen receptor beta (ER beta) is emerging as an important player in the physiology of the endocrine pancreas. We evaluated the role and antidiabetic actions of the ER beta selective agonist WAY200070 as an insulinotropic molecule. We demonstrate that WAY200070 enhances glucose-stimulated insulin secretion both in mouse and human islets. In vivo experiments showed that a single administratio

A bulk of experimental evidence supports the idea that the stroke-damaged adult brain makes an attempt to repair itself by producing new neurons also in areas where neurogenesis does not normally occur (e.g., the striatum and cerebral cortex). Knowledge about mechanisms regulating the different steps of neurogenesis after stroke is rapidly increasing but still incomplete. The functional consequenc

The androgen receptor (AR) is the mediator of androgen actions. In the AR coding region there is a polymorphic CAG repeat encoding a stretch of the amino acid glutamine (Q). The repeat length modulates receptor activity and is normally distributed between 10-30 CAG with a median length of 22 repeats in white men. At the start of this work, a negative linear association between AR function and the

The interferon-inducible p53-target gene TRIM22 (Staf50) is a member of the TRIM (TRIpartite Motif) family. The TRIM family is a family of RING (Really Interesting New Gene) proteins, defined through a tripartite motif, containing a RING-domain, one or two B-boxes and a Coiled-coil-domain. The TRIM proteins are involved in diverse biological functions, such as apoptosis, cell-cycle- progression an

Background: For nuclei heavier than Pb-208 alpha decay is a dominating decay mode, and in the search of new superheavy elements one often observes chains of alpha decays. Purpose: Explore and test microscopic descriptions of alpha decay based on theories with effective nuclear interactions. Methods: The nuclear ground states are calculated with the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov (HFB) method using the Sk