Divergent-light halos are halos produced by light from nearby light sources, like street lamps being scattered by small crystals of ice floating in the air. The use of "brute-force" Monte Carlo methods to simulate such halos is extremely inefficient, as most scattered rays will not hit the eye of the observer. I present a new procedure for Monte Carlo simulations of divergent-light halos. This pro

Background: The high-risk method is an important strategy for studying the antecedents and causes of schizophrenia and other psychoses'. The Swedish High-Risk Project is a prospective longitudinal study of offspring of women with a history of schizophrenic, schizoaffective, affective, or unspecified functional psychoses and control women with no history of psychosis. The offspring and their enviro

Identifying relevant subgroups of nonspecific low back pain patients may improve research efficiency and clinical outcomes. This article presents available data supporting the rationale behind a new pathoanatomic oriented classification system for low back pain. A systematic framework was used to assess issues of validity, reliability, feasibility, and generalizability. Results from studies examin

This study explored time-frequency analysis of surface electrocardiograms in patients with persistent atrial fibrillation for monitoring atrial drug action. Drug loading over 3 days with oral flecainide (n = 13) or amiodarone (n = 17) organized the fibrillatory process expressed by decreased atrial fibrillatory rate, increased rate stability, and decreased exponential decay. Effects were more pron

Flows over two tandem cylinders were analysed using the newly developed collocated unstructured computational fluid dynamics (CUCFD) code, which is capable of handling complex geometries. A Reynolds number of 100, based on cylinder diameter, was used to ensure that the flow remained laminar. The validity of the code was tested through comparisons with benchmark solutions for flow in a lid-friven c

This review summarizes the knowledge on striated domains, which are ordered assemblies of transmembrane peptides and lipids under gel-state conditions. The structure, mechanism of function and utility of this system as a model for domain formation is described, resulting in a molecular description of the domains and a discussion on the relevance of these insights for the function/formation and str

In this study, the reversible conversion between the high- (HP) and low-potential (LP) forms of Cytb559 has been analyzed in Tris-washed photosystem II (PSII) enriched membranes. These samples are deprived of the Mn cluster of the water-oxidizing complex (WOC) and the extrinsic regulatory proteins. The results obtained by application of optical and EPR spectroscopy reveal that (i) under aerobic co

The recently discovered apolipoprotein M (apoM) is a plasma protein of the lipocalin family associated with the lipoproteins (mainly high-density lipoproteins, or HDLs). Expression of the apoM gene in the liver is regulated by transcription factors that control key steps in hepatic lipid and glucose metabolism. Although the concentration of plasma apoM correlates with that of cholesterol, apoM was

The number of leads needed in clinical electrocardiography depends on the clinical problem to be solved. The standard 12-lead ECG is so well established that alternative lead systems must prove their advantage through well-conducted clinical studies to achieve clinical acceptance. Certain additional leads seem to add valuable information in specific patient groups. The use of a large number of lea

To address the targeting of G protein-coupled receptors to caveolae-related lipid rafts (CLR), we studied the human B2 (B2R) and B1 (B1R) bradykinin receptor subtypes in HEK293 cells. CLR were enriched on the basis of their unique buoyant density and composition of cholesterol, caveolin-1, and flotillin-1 but not clathrin. CLR contained B2R and B1R as determined by both receptor immunoblotting and

The use of molecular clusters as a basis of molecular single-electronic systems is considered experimentally and theoretically. The Langmuir-Blodgett formation and scanning tunneling microscope study of structures with chemically different cluster molecules is described. I-V curves and control curves of molecular single-electron transistors based on various single molecules were studied at room te

Using a recombinant mini-laminin-332, we showed that truncation of the three C-terminal amino acids of the gamma2 chain, but not of the C-terminal amino acid of the beta3 chain, completely abolished alpha3beta1 integrin binding and its cellular functions, such as attachment and spreading. However, a synthetic peptide mimicking the gamma2 chain C-terminus did not interfere with alpha3beta1 integrin

1. Climate warming increases the cover of deciduous shrubs in arctic ecosystems and herbivory is also known to have a strong influence on the biomass and composition of vegetation. However, research combining herbivory with warming is largely lacking. Our study describes how warming and simulated herbivory affect vegetation, soil nutrient concentrations and soil microbial communities after 10-13 y

To test whether the arrangement of fibre types in the human muscle (m. vastus lateralis) from clinically healthy and young males can be regarded as random, fascicles at different parts of the muscle and with different fibre type proportions were studied. The randomness of the arrangement of fibre types was assessed by the number of enclosed fibres in a fascicle and, on the basis of a model, tested

Oxygen toxicity is thought to be an important factor involved in development of bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) in the very preterm infant. Glutathione (GSH) plays a major role in the antioxidant defense system in the preterm lung and there are theoretical implications that N-acetylcysteine (NAC) treatment could improve its function. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether NAC treatm