The wood moisture content influences the service life of wood structures since wood is susceptible to decay by rot fungi if it is exposed to high moisture contents during long periods of time. In rain exposed structures, the moisture content close to end grain surfaces and joints can be significantly higher than the average moisture content, but moisture content determinations at such locations re

We present an interactive, searchable expressed sequence tag database for the periwinkle snail Littorina saxatilis, an upcoming model species in evolutionary biology. The database is the result of a hybrid assembly between Sanger and 454 sequences, 1290 and 147 491 sequences respectively. Normalized and non-normalized cDNA was obtained from different ecotypes of L. saxatilis collected in the UK an

Background Limited information is available regarding genetic contributions to valvular calcification, which is an important precursor of clinical valve disease. Methods We determined genomewide associations with the presence of aortic-valve calcification (among 6942 participants) and mitral annular calcification (among 3795 participants), as detected by computed tomographic (CT) scanning; the stu

As the physical consequences of accidental falls in the elderly are well-researched, the long-term associations between falls and quality of life and related concepts are less known. The aim of this study was to prospectively examine the long-term relations between falls and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and life satisfaction (LS) over six years in the general elderly population. One thou

Summary: The image of St. Birgitta in the liturgy Since the liturgy was the principal locus for the commemoration of Birgitta in the Middle Ages, the image which liturgical texts conveyed of her is of considerable interest. The essay analyzes the two offices in honour of Birgitta written by Archbishop Birger Gregersson (1367-1383) and Bishop Nils Hermansson (1374-1391,). First, what may be called

The splice variant INS-IGF2 entails the preproinsulin signal peptide, the insulin B-chain, eight amino acids of the C-peptide and 138 unique amino acids from an ORF in the IGF2 gene. The aim was to determine whether levels of specific INS-IGF2 autoantibodies (INS-IGF2A) were related to age at diagnosis, islet autoantibodies, HLA-DQ, or both, in newly diagnosed type 1 diabetes patients and controls

To identify novel genes influencing blood pressure response to thiazide diuretic therapy for hypertension, we conducted genome-wide association meta-analyses of approximate to 1.1 million single-nucleotide polymorphisms in a combined sample of 424 European Americans with primary hypertension treated with hydrochlorothiazide from the Pharmacogenomic Evaluation of Antihypertensive Responses study (n

Atherosclerosis is a systemic condition that eventually evolves into vulnerable plaques and cardiovascular events. Pathology studies reveal that rupture-prone atherosclerotic plaques have a distinct morphology, namely a thin, inflamed fibrous cap covering a large lipidic and necrotic core. With the fast development of imaging techniques in the last decades, detecting vulnerable plaques thereby ide

Populations that undergo a process of rapid evolution present excellent opportunities to investigate the mechanisms driving or restraining adaptive divergence. The genetic variance-covariance matrix (G) is often considered to constrain adaptation but little is known about its potential to evolve during phenotypic divergence. We compared the G-matrices of ancestral and recently established ecotype