Background: The increasing concentration of populations into large conurbations in recent decades has not been matched by international health assessments, which remain largely focused at the country level. We aimed to demonstrate the use of routine survey data to compare the health of large metropolitan centres across Europe and determine the extent to which differences are due to socio-economic

Application of mycorrhizal inoculum could be one way to increase the yield of rice plants, and reduce the application of fertilizer. We therefore studied arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) in the roots of wetland rice (Oryza sativa L.) collected at the seedling, tillering, heading and ripening stages in four paddy wetlands that had been under a high-input and intensively irrigated rice cultivation

G protein-coupled estrogen receptor (GPER), or GPR30, is a membrane receptor reported to mediate non-genomic estrogen responses. Tamoxifen is a partial agonist at GPER in vitro. Here, we investigated if GPER expression is prognostic in primary breast cancer, if the receptor is treatment-predictive for adjuvant tamoxifen, and if receptor subcellular localization has any impact on the prognostic val

Aims/hypothesis Latent autoimmune diabetes in adults (LADA) is phenotypically a hybrid of type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Genetically LADA is poorly characterised but does share genetic predisposition with type 1 diabetes. We aimed to improve the genetic characterisation of LADA and hypothesised that type 2 diabetes-associated gene variants also predispose to LADA, and that the associations would be s

A fundamental question in ecology is whether microorganisms follow the same patterns as multicellular organisms when it comes to population structure and levels of genetic diversity. Enormous population sizes, predominately asexual reproduction and presumably high dispersal because of small body size could have profound implications on their genetic diversity and population structure. Here, we hav

Abstract in UndeterminedThis manuscript presents a new approach to the design of task scheduling algorithms, where system-theoretical methodologies are used throughout. The proposal implies a significant perspective shift with respect to mainstream design practices, but yields large payoffs in terms of simplicity, flexibility, solution uniformity for different problems, and possibility to formally

Blood pressure (BP) in patients with sickle cell disease (SCD) has been reported to be lower than in persons in the general population. Data on arterial stiffness, which is an important risk factor for the progression of BP, are inconclusive for this patient population. Forty-five adult patients with SCD and 40 controls matched for sex, age, and body mass index were studied. Brachial systolic BP (

Consider any discrete time sequence of investment fortunes Fn which has a finite long-run growth rate when subject to the present value capital drawdown constraint Fne-rn ≥ λ* max0≤k≤nFke-rk, where 0 ≤ λ* < 1, in the presence of a riskless asset affording a return of er dollars per time period per dollar invested. We show that money can be withdrawn for consumption from the invested capital withou

A procedure for the preparation of calcium alginate nanoparticles in the aqueous phase of water-in-oil (W/O) nanoemulsions was developed. The emulsions were produced from mixtures of the nonionic surfactant tetraethylene glycol monododecyl ether (C(12)E(4)), decane, and aqueous solutions of up to 2 wt % sodium alginate by means of the phase inversion temperature (PIT) emulsification method. This m

Deficiencies in the IL-7 signaling pathway result in severe disruptions of lymphoid development in adult mice. To understand more about how IL-7 deficiency impacts early lymphoid development, we have investigated lineage restriction events within the common lymphoid progenitor (CLP) compartment in IL-7 knockout mice. This revealed that although IL-7 deficiency had a minor impact on the development

Computational simulations of tissue differentiation have been able to capture the main aspects of tissue formation/regeneration observed in animal experiments—except for the considerable degree of variability reported. Understanding and modelling the source of this variability is crucial if computational tools are to be developed for clinical applications. The objective of this study was to test t

A measurement is presented of the (tt) over bar inclusive production cross section in pp collisions at a center-ofmass energy of pffisffiffi root s = 8 TeV using data collected by the ATLAS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The measurement was performed in the lepton + jets final state using a data set corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 20.3 fb(-1). The cross section was obtain

Meta-analyses of extant genome-wide data illustrate the need to focus on subtypes of ischemic stroke for gene discovery. The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke SiGN (Stroke Genetics Network) contributes substantially to meta-analyses that focus on specific subtypes of stroke.

The results of a search for charged Higgs bosons are presented. The analysis is based on 4.6 fb(-1) of proton-proton collision data at root s = 7TeV collected by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, using top quark pair events with a tau lepton in the final state. The data are consistent with the expected background from Standard Model processes. Assuming that the branching ratio of

Fms-like tyrosine kinase 3 (FLT3) is a receptor tyrosine kinase with important roles in hematopoietic progenitor cell survival and proliferation. It is mutated in approximately one-third of AML patients, mostly by internal tandem duplications (ITDs). Adaptor protein Lnk is a negative regulator of hematopoietic cytokine signaling. In the present study, we show that Lnk interacts physically with bot

Alzheimer's disease involves progressive neuronal loss. Linked to the disease is the amyloid beta (A beta) peptide, a 38-43-amino acid peptide found in extracellular amyloid plaques in the brain. Cyclodextrins are nontoxic, cone-shaped oligosaccharides with a hydrophilic exterior and a hydrophobic cavity making them suitable hosts for aromatic guest molecules in water. beta-Cyclodextrin consists o

Due to memory bandwidth limitations, chip multiprocessors (CMP) adopting the convenient shared memory model for their main memory architecture scale poorly. On-chip core-to-core communication is a solution to this problem, that can lead to further performance increase for a number of multithreaded applications. Programmatically, the Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP) paradigm provides a soun

Preeclampsia (PE) is a serious pregnancy-related condition that causes severe maternal and fetal morbidity and mortality. Within the recent years, there has been an increasing focus in predicting PE at the end of the first trimester of pregnancy. In this review, literature published between 2011 and 2015 was evaluated. In a total of six biomarker algorithms, for first and early second trimester, t

Biochemical methane potential (BMP) tests were carried out to investigate the influence of inoculum pre-treatments (filtration and pre-incubation) on methane production from cellulose and wheat straw. First-order model and Monod model were used to evaluate the kinetic constants of the BMP assays. The results demonstrated that fresh inoculum was the best option to perform BMP tests. This was eviden