In winter, small birds should be fat to avoid starvation and lean and agile to escape predators. This means that they face a tradeoff between the costs and benefits of carrying fat reserves. Every day they must gain enough fat to survive the coming night. Food-hoarding species can afford to carry less fat than nonhoarders because they can store energy outside the body. Furthermore, hoarders should

Temperature is an important factor regulating microbial activity and shaping the soil microbial community. Little is known, however, on how temperature affects the most important groups of the soil microorganisms, the bacteria and the fungi, in situ. We have therefore measured the instantaneous total activity (respiration rate), bacterial activity (growth rate as thymidine incorporation rate) and

High-resolution records of plant macrofossils, magnetic susceptibility, and total carbon content, complemented by pollen data, were obtained from a postglacial lake sediment sequence at alpine Lake Stentjarn (987 m a.s.l.), in west-central Sweden. Holocene vegetational and environmental changes were reconstructed from the data, with particular emphasis on the deglacial establishment of terrestrial

Studiens syfte var att undersöka hur många föräldrar som efter förlossningen önskade kontinuitet mellan graviditet och nyföddhetsperiod genom ett hembesök av den barnmorska som man lärt känna under graviditeten, hur dessa kvinnor och män formulerade sina erfarenheter och behov, om de skilde sig från föräldrar som inte önskade hembesök och om resultatet kunde ge synpunkter på en individualiserad hä

This thesis focuses on the provision and management of water supply and sanitation in housing areas in the City of Dar es Salaam. The main objective of the study is to contribute to knowledge and understanding of provision and management of urban water supply and sanitation in Tanzania in the context of sustainable urbanisation. A sectoral and single problem issue study approach was avoided and in

Adults normally perceive auditory scenes in terms of sound patterns emitted by concurrently active sources. Thus pattern formation is an important process of auditory object perception. The aim of the present study was to determine whether neonates group sounds by repeating pitch patterns. Standard ("S"; p = 80%) and deviant tones ("D", p = 20%) differing only in pitch were delivered either in a r

Popular Abstract in Swedish Gliom är en familj av hjärntumörer som är graderade beroende på hur snabbt och på vilket sätt de växer. Grad IV även kallad glioblastoma multiforme, är den mest elakartade av dessa. Patienter har en medelöverlevnadsprognos på ca 12 månader med behandling, såsom kirurgi, kemo- och strålningsterapi. Tumörerna är heterogena, vilket innebär att celler har flera typer av mutGliomas are neoplasms arising in the central nervous system (CNS), and constitute the most common primary brain tumor. They are classified depending on the grade and morphology, from grade I, pilocytic astrocytoma, to grade IV, glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). Glioblastomas constitute a great challenge in treatment due to their disseminating nature. Classical treatments such as surgery, radiation th

Co-digestion of various wastes has been shown to improve the digestibility of the materials and biogas yield. Batchwise digestion of sisal pulp and fish waste was studied both with the wastes separately and with mixtures in various proportions. While the highest methane yields from sisal pulp and fish waste alone were 0.32 and 0.39 m(3) CH4/kg volatile solids (VS), respectively, at total solid (TS

Combining nutritional supplements to achieve synergistic benefit is a common practice in the nutraceutical industry. However, establishing. added health benefit from a combination of natural ingredients is often assumed, untested and without regard to the principle of metabolic competition between the active components. Here, we report on the combination of a cat's claw water extract (C-Med-100, c

[1] Global wetlands are, at estimate ranging 115-237 Tg CH4/yr, the largest single atmospheric source of the greenhouse gas methane (CH4). We present a dataset on CH4 flux rates totaling 12 measurement years at sites from Greenland, Iceland, Scandinavia and Siberia. We find that temperature and microbial substrate availability (expressed as the organic acid concentration in peat water) combined ex

This thesis deals with the development of simultaneous saccharification and fermentation (SSF) in order to improve the economy of the softwood-to-ethanol process. The effect of process stream recirculation on ethanol production from steam-pretreated softwood based on SSF was investigated for two process cases. In the first case, part of the stillage stream after distillation was recycled and in th

In the adult brain, new neurons are continuously generated in the subventricular zone and dentate gyrus, but it is unknown whether these neurons can replace those lost following damage or disease. Here we show that stroke, caused by transient middle cerebral artery occlusion in adult rats, leads to a marked increase of cell proliferation in the subventricular zone. Stroke-generated new neurons, as

BACKGROUND: In developing countries, low birth weight (LBW) children are often not vaccinated with Calmette-Guerin bacillus (BCG) at birth. Recent studies have suggested that BCG may have a nonspecific beneficial effect on infant mortality. We evaluated the consequences of not vaccinating LBW children at birth in Guinea-Bissau. METHODS: Between 1989 and 1999, 7138 children born at the central hosp

The flapping flight of animals generates an aerodynamic footprint as a time-varying vortex wake in which the rate of momentum change represents the aerodynamic force. We showed that the wakes of a small bat species differ from those of birds in some important respects. In our bats, each wing generated its own vortex loop. Also, at moderate and high flight speeds, the circulation on the outer ( han

This article outlines an experimental and numerical study on short-term and long-term creep recovery in High Performance Concrete. About 200 cylinders and 800 cubes were tested. The ambient climate was held constant at 20 °C and 55% relative humidity. Results and analyses are presented as regards short-term and long-term creep recovery with some related properties. The creep deformations are separ