Immunity in the urinary tract has distinct and poorly understood pathophysiological characteristics and urinary tract infections (UTIs) are important causes of morbidity and mortality. We investigated the role of the soluble pattern recognition molecule pentraxin 3 (PTX3), a key component of the humoral arm of innate immunity, in UTIs. PTX3-deficient mice showed defective control of UTIs and exace

Recent studies have identified a number of transcriptional regulators, including E proteins, EBF1, FOXO1, and PAX5, that act together to orchestrate the B-cell fate. However, it still remains unclear as to how they are linked at the earliest stages of B-cell development. Here, we show that lymphocyte development in HEB-ablated mice exhibits a partial developmental arrest, whereas B-cell developmen

In this paper, we describe a concise method for the feature-based representation of regions in an indoor environment and show how it can also be applied for door-passage-independent detection of transitions between regions to improve communication with a human user.

Background: The value of parental history as a risk indicator for venous thromboembolism (VTE) has not been determined in a nationwide setting. Objectives: This is the first nationwide study of age and sex specific familial VTE risks in offspring of parents hospitalized for VTE. Patients/Methods: The Swedish Multigeneration Register of 0-75-year-old subjects was linked to the Hospital Discharge Re

Wood ash additions of 3.3 and 6.6 t ha(-1) reduced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from a spruce forest (Picea abies) on a minerotrophic drained organic soil. Emissions of carbon dioxide (CO(2)), methane (CH(4)) and nitrous oxide (N(2)O) were measured using static dark chambers for two years following the ash treatment. The CO(2) emission from the soil was significantly reduced by 17-23% by both do

Early-onset dominantly inherited forms of Alzheimer's disease (AD) are rare, but studies of such cases have revealed important information about the disease mechanisms. Importantly, mutations in amyloid precursor protein (APP), presenilin 1 (PSEN1) and PSEN2, alter the APP processing and lead to an increased amyloid beta-peptide (A beta) 42/40 ratio. This, together with other studies on pathogenic

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: A pre-treatment determination of the thiopurine S-methyltransferase (TPMT) genotype or phenotype can identify patients at risk of developing severe adverse reactions from thiopurine treatment. The risk of misclassifying a patient might be dependent on the method used. The aim of this study was to investigate the concordance between TPMT genotyping and phenotyping. METHODS: T

Most known starfish species possess a compound eye at the tip of each arm, which, except for the lack of true optics, resembles an arthropod compound eye. Although these compound eyes have been known for about two centuries, no visually guided behaviour has ever been directly associated with their presence. There are indications that they are involved in negative phototaxis but this may also be go

Predicted responses of transpiration to elevated atmospheric CO2 concentration (eCO2) are highly variable amongst process-based models. To better understand and constrain this variability amongst models, we conducted an intercomparison of 11 ecosystem models applied to data from two forest free-air CO2 enrichment (FACE) experiments at Duke University and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. We analysed

In the course of the last four years, finance ministries have increasingly been involved in the international climate change negotiations. The involvement has to a large degree been due to the framing of climate change as a market failure. The framing calls for an active climate change policy and has therefore been at odds with the framing of climate change policy previously predominant in finance

One of the major setbacks of struvite recovery processes is the difficulty in harvesting struvite crystals. This study evaluates the use of different coagulants to improve precipitation of struvite (MgNH (4)PO(4)6H(2)O) crystals. Chitosan and poly(diallyldimethyl ammonium chloride) (Poly-DADMAC) as a coagulant-flocculent and alginate and bentonite as a coagulant aid have been examined in jar tests

This article investigates the impact of labour mobility on plant performance in Denmark. Our study shows that the effect of labour mobility can only be assessed when one accounts for the type of skills that flow into the plant and the degree to which these match the existing skills at the plant level. As expected, we found that the inflow of skills that are related to skills in the plant impacts p

Quinoline-3-carboxamides (Q-compounds) are currently in clinical development for both autoimmune disease and cancer. We have previously shown that the Q-compound paquinimod (ABR-215757) significantly ameliorates disease symptoms in several mouse models of human inflammatory disease. Considering that recruitment of inflammatory cells into tissue is a common denominator of these models, we have in t

Using Chiral Perturbation Theory at one-loop we analyze the consequences of twisted boundary conditions. We point out that due to the broken Lorentz and reflection symmetry a number of unexpected terms show up in the expressions. We explicitly discuss the pseudo-scalar octet masses, axial-vector and pseudo-scalar decay constants and electromagnetic form-factors. We show how the Ward identities are

Although knee osteoarthritis (OA) is common, its etiology is poorly understood. Specifically, it is not known whether knee OA is associated with abnormal anthropometric and musculoskeletal characteristics known to be associated with OA in general. We recently studied this topic for patients with hip arthritis; however, it is important to evaluate it for knee OA separately, because there are report

Many problems in computer vision can be turned into a large-scale boolean optimization problem, which is in general NP-hard. In this paper, we further develop one of the most successful approaches, namely roof duality, for approximately solving such problems for higher-order models. Two new methods that can be applied independently or in combination are investigated. The first one is based on cons