The combination of environmental chamber exposure and bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) was used to study the effects of the common air pollutant nitrogen dioxide (NO2). Eighteen healthy nonsmokers were exposed to NO2 during 20 min in an exposure chamber during light bicycle ergometer work. All subjects were examined with BAL at least 3 wks before exposure, as a reference. The subjects were re-examined

A large proportion of breast cancer patients are treated with adjuvant chemotherapy after the primary operation, but some will recur in spite of this treatment. In order to achieve an improved and more individualised therapy, our knowledge in mechanisms for drug resistance needs to be increased. We have investigated to what extent cDNA microarray measurements could distinguish the likelihood of re

Molecular transport characterized by diffusion coefficients is a key feature of food processes and especially in dairy processes. Caseins represent 80% of the protein content in milk and are directly involved in the formation of dairy gels. Consequently, providing a quantitative description of the solute diffusion in casein gels should contribute significantly to rationalization of the dairy proce

OBJECTIVE: To examine the correlation between prostate volume, patient age and total prostate-specific antigen (tPSA) with the percentage-free PSA (f/tPSA) in a population-based cohort of men with no prostate cancer and with a tPSA of < 10.0 ng/mL. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: Men who in 1988-1989, after randomized selection in the general population, participated in a population-based screening study fo

A new design of equilibrium hollow fibre liquid phase microextraction (HF-LPME) was developed for the determination of three freely dissolved organophosphorus pesticides (OPPs), i.e. diazinon (O,O-diethyl-O-2-isopropyl-4-methyl-6-pyrimidyl thiophosphate), chlorpyrifos (O,O-diethyl-O-[3,5,6-trichloro-2-pyridyl] phosphorothioate), and fenthion (O,O-dimethyl-O-4-methylthio-m-tolyl phosphorothioate) a

Objectives: To evaluate the importance of different autoantibodies against modified low-density lipoprotein (LDL) in patients with coronary artery disease (CAD). Background: Previous studies of autoantibodies against LDL have shown that patients with CAD have increased titers of autoantibodies against LDL modified by copper and malondialdehyde (MDA), whereas there is a lack of information about au

Background: Retroperitoneal haematoma could be caused by different factors. It is increasing due to an increase in the use of antithrombotic and anticoagulant therapy. Diagnosis of retroperitoneal haematoma forms a big challenge in daily clinical practice. Patients with retroperitoneal haematoma could present with leg paresis, abdominal pain, shock or abdominal compartment syndrome. Retroperitonea

Aims. The glycosphingolipid beta-galactosylceramide-3-O-sulfate (sulfatide) is present in the secretory granules of the insulin producing beta-cells and may act as a molecular chaperone of insulin. The final step in sulfatide synthesis is performed by cerebroside sulfotransferase (CST) (EC 2.8.2.11). The aim of this study was to investigate whether two single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP), rs2267

Objective: To study the prevalence of orthopaedic surgery and to evaluate possible predictive factors for large joint replacements in patients with early rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Patients and methods: A cohort of 183 patients (116 (63.4%) female) with early RA was monitored for 16-20 years after recruitment during 1985-9. Mean (SD) age of patients 51.4 (12.4) years; mean (SD) duration of symptom

Local CNS inflammation takes place in many neurological disorders and is important for autoimmune neuroinflammation. Microglial activation is strain-dependent in rats and differential MHC class II expression is influenced by variations in the Mhc2ta gene. Despite sharing Mhc2ta and MHC class II alleles, BN and LEW.1N rats differ in MHC class II expression after ventral root avulsion (VRA). We stud

Different methods for treatment of leachate from a municipal solid waste (MSW) landfill were tested in a pilot plant. Raw leachate was pre-treated with aeration and sedimentation, followed by several parallel individual steps such as bioremediation, chemical oxidation, ozonation, and geo-bed filters. The efficiency of different treatment steps was evaluated according to one previously developed pr

We conducted a multicentre, cross- sectional study of 1042 haemophilia subjects across Europe to compare various health outcomes associated with on-demand vs. prophylactic factor-substitution therapy. Demographic, medical history, and healthcare resource utilization data were analysed along with the number of bleeding events over the past 6 months. Treatment-cost data were also examined to provide

The number of copies of DNA in human cells can be measured using array comparative genomic hybridization (aCGH), which provides intensity ratios of sample to reference DNA at genomic locations corresponding to probes on a microarray. In the present paper, we devise a statistical model, based on a latent continuous-index Markov jump process, that is aimed to capture certain features of aCGH data, i

We present a fast vectorized implementation of a transform that maps points in the unit square to the surface of the sphere, while preserving fractional area. The mapping uses the octahedral map combined with an equal-area param- eterization and has many desirable features such as low distortion, straightforward interpolation, and fast inverse and forward transforms. Our SIMD implementation c

Coherent control of collective spontaneous emission in an extended atomic ensemble resonantly interacting with single-photon wave packets is analyzed. A scheme for coherent manipulation of collective atomic states is developed such that superradiant states of the atomic system can be converted into subradiant ones and vice versa. Possible applications of such a scheme for optical quantum-state sto

We use the results from a recent investigation of hard parton-parton gravitational scattering in the ADD scenario to make semi-quantitative predictions for a few standard high-E-perpendicular to jet observables at the LHC. By implementing these gravitational scattering results in the PYTHIA event generator and combining it with the CHARYBDIS generator for black holes, we investigate the effects of

Using a variety of dedicated surface sensitive techniques, we studied the interaction of hydrogen with bare and adsorbate modified RuO2(110) surfaces on the atomic scale. Hydrogen interacts strongly with the undercoordinated O atoms, thereby forming hydroxyl groups and passivating available oxygen species on the oxide surface, for instance, for the catalytic CO oxidation reaction. Temperature prog

We present exact algorithms with exponential running times for variants of n-element set cover problems, based on divide-and-conquer and on inclusion exclusion characterizations. We show that the Exact Satisfiability problem of size l with m clauses can be solved in time 2(m)l(O(1)) and polynomial space. The same bounds hold for counting the number of solutions. As a special case, we can count the