Flower colour is an important signal used by flowering plants to attract pollinators. Many anthophilous insects have an innate colour preference that is displayed during their first foraging bouts and which could help them locate their first nectar reward. Nevertheless, learning capabilities allow insects to switch their colour preferences with experience and thus, to track variation in floral nec

Temperature-corrected oxygen measurements were performed by using multi-mode diode laser correlation spectroscopy at temperatures ranging between 300 and 473 K. The experiments simulate in situ monitoring of oxygen in coal-combustion exhaust gases at the tail of the flue. A linear relationship with a correlation coefficient of -0.999 was found between the evaluated concentration and the gas temper

Hydroquinone glycosides were produced by transglycosylation reactions catalyzed by cyclodextrin glucanotransferase (CGTase) from Thermoanaerobacter sp. (Toruzyme (R) 3.0L). The reactions were carried out in an aqueous system containing hydroquinone (HQ) and maltodextrin as acceptor and donor substrate molecules respectively. The conditions for the synthesis of hydroquinone glucoside (alpha-arbutin

We investigated the brain-tissue response to nanowire implantations in the rat striatum after 1, 6, and 12 weeks using immunohistochemistry. The nanowires could be visualized in the scar by confocal microscopy (through the scattered laser light). For the nanowire-implanted animals, there is a significant astrocyte response at week 1 compared to controls. The nanowires are phagocytized by ED1 posit

Background: Although both labour dystocia and domestic violence during pregnancy are associated with adverse maternal and fetal outcome, evidence in support of a possible association between experiences of domestic violence and labour dystocia is sparse. The aim of this study was to investigate whether self-reported history of violence or experienced violence during pregnancy is associated with in

Single photons detected by the DELPHI experiment at LEP2 in the years 1997-2000 are reanalysed to investigate the existence of a single extra dimension in a modified ADD scenario with slightly warped large extra dimensions. The data collected at centre-of-mass energies between 180 and 209 GeV for an integrated luminosity of similar to 650 pb(-1) agree with the predictions of the Standard Model and

Background: Prostate cancer is a leading cause of death in the male population of the western world. Human kallikrein-related peptidase 2 (hK2) is abundantly expressed in malignant prostatic tissue, and its gene, KLK2, is regulated by the androgen receptor. 11B6 is a murine IgG(1) monoclonal antibody directed against free human hK2. In this study, we performed a preclinical evaluation of In-111-la

Using the ImmunoChip custom genotyping array, we analyzed 14,498 subjects with multiple sclerosis and 24,091 healthy controls for 161,311 autosomal variants and identified 135 potentially associated regions (P < 1.0 x 10(-4)). In a replication phase, we combined these data with previous genome-wide association study (GWAS) data from an independent 14,802 subjects with multiple sclerosis and 26,703

We study the effects of a phase difference on Yu-Shiba-Rusinov (YSR) states in a spinful Coulomb-blockaded quantum dot contacted by a superconducting loop. In the limit where charging energy is larger than the superconducting gap, we determine the subgap excitation spectrum, the corresponding supercurrent, and the differential conductance as measured by a normal-metal tunnel probe. In absence of a

Background: We have previously identified a locus on human chromosome 20q13.1, encompassing related genes of postulated WFDC-type protease inhibitors and semen coagulum proteins. Three of the genes with WFDC motif also coded for the Kunitz-type protease inhibitor motif. In this report, we have reinvestigated the locus for homologous genes encoding Kunitz motif only. The identified genes have been

We discuss four interconnected issues that we believe have hindered investigations into how language may affect thinking. These have had a tendency to reappear in the debate concerning linguistic relativity over the past decades, despite numerous empirical findings. The first is the claim that it is impossible to disentangle language from thought, making the question concerning "influence" pointle

This paper describes and discusses strategic reversal in a network context. Strategic reversal here refers to how a company implements a strategy and, with a lapse of time, decides to undo that strategic change. The paper discusses strategic reversal in terms of being: (i) driven by the network or changes therein; (ii) using the network to accomplish the reversal; and (iii) affecting network parti

Childhood Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia (ALL) has a unique place in the history of oncology, as it was the first cancer to be cured by drugs. It is therefore an important model upon which concepts of chemotherapy in other malignancies have been developed. Methotrexate is a major component of most contemporary childhood ALL treatment protocols. The main objectives of this thesis were to investigat

The isotopes (122),(124),Cd-126 were studied in a "safe" Coulomb-excitation experiment at the radioactive ion-beam facility REX-ISOLDE at CERN. The reduced transition probabilities B(E2; 0(g. s)(vertical bar) -> 2(1)(+)) and limits for the quadrupole moments of the first 2(+) excited states in the three isotopes were determined. The onset of collectivity in the vicinity of the Z = 50 and N = 82 sh

A search is performed for collimated muon pairs displaced from the primary vertex produced in the decay of long-lived neutral particles in proton-proton collisions at root s = 7 TeV centre-of-mass energy, with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. In a 1.9 fb(-1) event sample collected during 2011, the observed data are consistent with the Standard Model background expectations. Limits on the product of

Classical conditioning of a motor response such as eyeblink is associated with the development of a pause in cerebellar Purkinje cell firing that is probably an important driver of the overt response. This conditioned Purkinje cell response is adaptively timed and has a specific temporal profile that probably explains the time course of the overt behavior. It is generally assumed that the temporal

The growing need for valid assessment procedures of the outdoor thermal environment in the fields of public weather services, public health systems, urban planning, tourism & recreation and climate impact research raised the idea to develop the Universal Thermal Climate Index UTCI based on the most recent scientific progress both in thermo-physiology and in heat exchange theory. Following exte