We present a simple dry release technique which uses a thin fluorocarbon film for efficient removal of plastic microdevices from a mould or a handling substrate by reducing the adhesion between the two. This fluorocarbon film is deposited on the substrate in an advanced Si dry etch device utilising the C4F8 passivation plasma. Micromachined polymer chips made of SU-8 are removed from the handling

Identification of incident myocardial infarction (MI) cases in a defined population using hospital discharge data and mortality data in combination has been suggested. This method of case identification was compared to that of use of MI community registers set up in accordance with principles adopted in a World Health Organization collaborative programme. The comparison comprised data for four Swe

The four major autoantigens (IA-2, IA-2 beta, GAD65 and insulin) of type 1 diabetes are all associated with dense core or synaptic vesicles. This raised the possibility that other secretory vesicle-associated proteins might be targets of the autoimmune response in type 1 diabetes. To test this hypothesis 56 proteins, two-thirds of which are associated with secretory vesicles, were prepared by in v

Patterns of feather wear in birds captured in spring have traditionally been analysed to describe the extent of winter moult in long-distance migrants. However, the interpretation of feather wear may be rendered extremely difficult due to long moult periods, by the progress of the season, and by the existence of complex moult patterns. Here, stable isotope analysis is used to determine the origin

Femtosecond time-resolved two-color four-wave mixing is employed to study the ultrafast excited-state relaxation processes in Ru(tbbpy)(3)(+2). The relaxation processes leading to a long-lived thermalized (MLCT)-M-3-state are found to take place on two distinct time-scales. An ultrafast process, which is attributed to intersystem crossing, rapidly depopulating the initially photoexcited (MLCT)-M-1

Both members of the diploid-tetraploid species pair Anthericum ramosum L. and Anthericum liliago L. occur as geographically disjunct isolates on the margins of their northern range in Scandinavia. Variation in floral morphology was studied in 33 populations of A. ramosum from four geographic regions and 25 populations of A. liliago from seven regions in Scandinavia. Tepal shape was characterized w

Molecularly imprinted nanoparticles were prepared using a simple distillation precipitation polymerization method. In this work, propranolol-imprinted nanoparticles were synthesized using different cross-linkers combined with methacrylic acid (MAA) as a functional monomer in refluxing acetonitrile. Using the new synthetic method, uniform prorpanolol-imprinted nanoparticles were obtained in less th

The novel promoter system IX/AgOTf (X = Cl or Br) has been evaluated in the synthesis of two bislactam analogues of GD3. We have carried out two high-yielding galactosylations in 97% and 98% yield, respectively, using ICl/AgOTf, and four sialylations in 93%, 59%, 40%, and 44% yield, using IBr/AgOTf, The choice of interhalogen (IX) is determined by the donor type used in the glycosylation. We also

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are important in the immune defense against invading pathogens, but they are also key molecules in the regulation of inflammatory reactions. Low levels of ROS production due to a polymorphism in the neutrophil cytosolic factor 1 (Ncf1) gene are associated with autoimmunity and arthritis severity in mouse models induced with adjuvant. We established an adjuvant-free ar

Unraveling functional and ancestral relationships between proteins as well as structure-prediction procedures require powerful protein-alignment methods. A structure-alignment method is presented where the problem is mapped onto a cost function containing both fuzzy (Potts) assignment variables and atomic coordinates. The cost function is minimized by using an iterative scheme, where at each step

We present a method for the measurement of a temperature differential across a single quantum dot that has transmission resonances that are separated in energy by much more than the thermal energy. We determine numerically that the method is accurate to within a few percent across a wide range of parameters. The proposed method measures the temperature of the electrons that enter the quantum dot a

Because of the high temperature applied in the steam pretreatment of lignocellulosic materials, different types of inhibiting degradation products of saccharides and lignin, such as acetic acid and furfural, are formed. The main objective of the present study was to examine the effect of acetic acid and furfural on the cellulase production of a filamentous fungus Trichoderma reesei RUT C30, which

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is the traditional workhorse for reconstructing evolutionary events. The frequent use of mtDNA in such analyses derives from the apparent simplicity of its inheritance: maternal and lacking bi-parental recombination. However, in hybrid zones, the reproductive barriers are often not completely developed, resulting in the breakdown of male mitochondrial elimination mechanis

This study aimed to examine the relationship between craniofacial dysmorphology and anomalies of brain morphology in schizophrenia. Assessments of craniofacial dysmorphology and magnetic resonance imaging of brain were performed independently of each other and blind to each other in 24 males with schizophrenia and 16 male controls. Ventricular cerebrospinal fluid volume was negatively correlated w

Tamoxifen (Tam) is widely used in chemotherapy of breast cancer. It inhibits proliferation and induces apoptosis of breast cancer cells by estrogen receptor (ER)-dependent modulation of gene expression. In addition, recent reports have shown that Tam also has nongenomic effects. We previously reported induction of a rapid mitochondrial death program in breast cancer cells at pharmacological concen

We consider the problem of maintaining a string of n brackets '('or')' under the operation reverse(i) that changes the ith bracket from '('to')' or vice versa, and returns 'yes' if and only if the resulting string is properly balanced. We show that this problem can be solved on the RAM in time O(log n/log log n) per operation using linear space and preprocessing. Moreover, we show that this is opt