Purpose: To prospectively compare nephrotoxicity and radiodensity of plasma hyperosmotic gadolinium chelates (attenuation-osmotic ratio of 1: 1) with those of plasma iso-osmotic iodine-based contrast media (attenuation-osmotic ratio of 3: 1 or 6: 1) after renal arteriography in ischemic porcine kidneys. Materials and Methods: The local animal care committee approved this study. The following contr

The oxidation of Pd(100) and the formation of PdO was studied in situ using surface x-ray diffraction. A bulklike, epitaxial PdO film is formed at oxygen partial pressures beyond 1 mbar and sample temperatures exceeding 650 K. The main orientation is PdO(001)/Pd(001), based upon bulk reflections from the PdO film. By comparing with measurements from the Pd crystal truncation rods, we estimate an r

Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPAN) has gained interest in the last few years and several air interfaces have been proposed to cover WPAN applications. A Multi-Carrier Spread Spectrum (MC-SS) air interface specified to achieve 130 Mbps in typical WPAN channels, is presented in this paper. It operates in the 5.2 GHz ISM band and achieves a spectral efficiency of 3.25 b.s-1.Hz-1. Besides the robu

Realizing a 20% energy efficiency improvement in Europe by 2020 requires the introduction of good new energy efficiency policies as well as strengthening and enforcing the existing policies. This raises the question: what characterizes good and effective energy efficiency policies and their implementation? Systematic ex post evaluation of energy efficiency policies can reveal factors determining n

Purpose: To investigate whether increased fluctuation of intraocular pressure (IOP) is an independent factor for glaucoma progression. Design: A cohort of patients was followed up in a randomized clinical trial. Participants: Two hundred fifty-five glaucoma patients from the Early Manifest Glaucoma Trial (EMGT; 129 treated and 126 control patients). Methods: Study visits, conducted every 3 months,

In a cross-sectional study of 115 premenopausal non-smoking women, we examined the relationship between lymphocyte levels of 8-hydroxy-2'-deoxyguanosine (8-oxodGuo) and habitual alcohol consumption. The study was conducted in four different regions of Europe, including Potsdam (Germany), Turin (Italy), Malmo (Sweden) and Granada (Spain). Mean 8-oxodGuo levels differed significantly across study ce

We used giving-up densities (GUD) to study patch use decisions of small granivorous passerines throughout the year. We measured GUDs continuously in four sites for a period of 9-10 months per year during 2004 and 2005 in a savannah area in Jos, central Nigeria. The study thus covered a period from the middle of the dry season, through the wet season to the beginning of the next dry season in each

To investigate the effects of a vitamin D3 analogue (BXL628) in a model of chronic cystitis, as calcitriol analogues might be an interesting new therapeutic option for interstitial cystitis, for although the cause of the disease remains unclear, the increase in mast cells in the mucosa and detrusor muscle are significant. We devised a mouse model of allergen-induced allergic cystitis that is assoc

One of the most challenging problems in medical imaging is to ``see{''} a tumour embedded into tissue, which is a turbid medium, by using fluorescent probes for tumour labeling. This problem, despite the efforts made during the last years, has not been fully encountered yet, due to the non-linear nature of the inverse problem and the convergence failures of many optimization techniques. This paper

Purpose: To determine dosimetric properties of unflattened megavoltage photon beams. Materials and methods: Dosimetric data including depth dose, profiles, output factors and phantom scatter factors from three different beam qualities provided by Elekta Precise linacs, operated with and without flattening filter were examined. Additional measurements of leaf transmission, leakage radiation and sur

Thermodynamic stability of an alkaline protease from a new alkaliphilic Nesterenkonia sp. AL-20, was investigated and compared with that of Subtilisin Carlsberg. The amount of calcium bound to the AL-20 protease was determined to be only about 0.14 mol/mol of protease. Differential scanning calorimetry scan of the enzyme at increasing temperature showed the denaturation of the enzyme to be a two-s

We present a batch method for recovering Euclidian camera motion from sparse image data. The main purpose of the algorithm is to recover the motion parameters using as much of the available information and as few computational steps as possible. The algorithm thus places itself in the gap between factorisation schemes, which make use of all available information in the initial recovery step, and s

Different bases were used for the pretreatment of Rice bran biomass. Pretreatment with bases such as NaOH, Ca(OH)(2) and Al(OH)(3) were found to improve biosorption capacity. But in Rice bran, treatment with 0.5 M NaOH increased its nickel selective adsorption ability very much. The main binding site of nickel in NaOH treated cells is assumed to be carboxylic, hydroxyl, sulphate, phosphate and ami

1 Islands representing four stage classes, dated by their height above sea level, in a Baltic land uplift area were used to study genet level dynamics during colonization of the clonal moss Hylocomium splendens. Allozyme electrophoresis involving 10 polymorphic loci enabled accurate identification of 103 haplotypes from a sample of 694 shoots collected along transects across 10 islands. 2 The popu

The aim of this study was to investigate what nurses do to improve the health of men who are receiving radiotherapy treatment due to prostate cancer. The method was a literature review using a systematic approach. The Cochrane Library, Medline and CINAHL databases were used in a search that covered the period from January 1994 to April 2006. The screening of 200 abstracts resulted in 14 articles c

Book reviews: Buzan, Barry and Richard Little, International Systems in World History: Remaking the Study of International Relations (reviewed by Martin Hall); Denemark, Robert A., Jonathan Friedman, Barry K. Gills and George Modelski (eds.), World System History: The Social Science of Long Term Change (reviewed by Martin Hall); Hobden Stephen and John Hobson(eds.), Historical Sociology of Interna

The idea of applying extracorporeal immunoadsorption (ECIA) in radioimmunodiagnosis and radioimmunotherapy has been proposed previously. The authors here report on the development of new concept using a general method for ECIA based on biotinylated MoAb adsorbed on an avidin column. Athymic rats heterotransplanted with either human melanomas or human lung carcinoma were injected with iodine-125-la

Objective. The phenotypic complexity, together with the multifarious nature of the so-called schizophrenic psychoses, limits our ability to form a simple and logical biologically based hypothesis for the disease group. Biological markers are defined as biochemical, physiological or anatomical traits that are specific to particular conditions. An important aim of biomarker discovery is the detectio

Conformational disorder of conjugated polymers is an important issue to be understood and quantified. In this paper we present a new method to assess the chain conformation of conjugated polymers based on measurements of intrachain energy transfer. The chain conformation is modeled on the basis of monomer-monomer interactions, such as torsion, bending, and stretching of the connecting bond. The la

Migratory birds use multiple sources of compass information for orientation, including the geomagnetic field, the sun, skylight polarization patterns and star patterns. In this paper we review the results of cue-conflict experiments designed to determine the relative importance of the different compass mechanisms, and how directional information from these compass mechanisms is integrated. We focu