BACKGROUND AND AIMS: A pre-treatment determination of the thiopurine S-methyltransferase (TPMT) genotype or phenotype can identify patients at risk of developing severe adverse reactions from thiopurine treatment. The risk of misclassifying a patient might be dependent on the method used. The aim of this study was to investigate the concordance between TPMT genotyping and phenotyping. METHODS: T

Most known starfish species possess a compound eye at the tip of each arm, which, except for the lack of true optics, resembles an arthropod compound eye. Although these compound eyes have been known for about two centuries, no visually guided behaviour has ever been directly associated with their presence. There are indications that they are involved in negative phototaxis but this may also be go

Predicted responses of transpiration to elevated atmospheric CO2 concentration (eCO2) are highly variable amongst process-based models. To better understand and constrain this variability amongst models, we conducted an intercomparison of 11 ecosystem models applied to data from two forest free-air CO2 enrichment (FACE) experiments at Duke University and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. We analysed

In the course of the last four years, finance ministries have increasingly been involved in the international climate change negotiations. The involvement has to a large degree been due to the framing of climate change as a market failure. The framing calls for an active climate change policy and has therefore been at odds with the framing of climate change policy previously predominant in finance

One of the major setbacks of struvite recovery processes is the difficulty in harvesting struvite crystals. This study evaluates the use of different coagulants to improve precipitation of struvite (MgNH (4)PO(4)6H(2)O) crystals. Chitosan and poly(diallyldimethyl ammonium chloride) (Poly-DADMAC) as a coagulant-flocculent and alginate and bentonite as a coagulant aid have been examined in jar tests

This article investigates the impact of labour mobility on plant performance in Denmark. Our study shows that the effect of labour mobility can only be assessed when one accounts for the type of skills that flow into the plant and the degree to which these match the existing skills at the plant level. As expected, we found that the inflow of skills that are related to skills in the plant impacts p

Quinoline-3-carboxamides (Q-compounds) are currently in clinical development for both autoimmune disease and cancer. We have previously shown that the Q-compound paquinimod (ABR-215757) significantly ameliorates disease symptoms in several mouse models of human inflammatory disease. Considering that recruitment of inflammatory cells into tissue is a common denominator of these models, we have in t

Using Chiral Perturbation Theory at one-loop we analyze the consequences of twisted boundary conditions. We point out that due to the broken Lorentz and reflection symmetry a number of unexpected terms show up in the expressions. We explicitly discuss the pseudo-scalar octet masses, axial-vector and pseudo-scalar decay constants and electromagnetic form-factors. We show how the Ward identities are

Although knee osteoarthritis (OA) is common, its etiology is poorly understood. Specifically, it is not known whether knee OA is associated with abnormal anthropometric and musculoskeletal characteristics known to be associated with OA in general. We recently studied this topic for patients with hip arthritis; however, it is important to evaluate it for knee OA separately, because there are report

Many problems in computer vision can be turned into a large-scale boolean optimization problem, which is in general NP-hard. In this paper, we further develop one of the most successful approaches, namely roof duality, for approximately solving such problems for higher-order models. Two new methods that can be applied independently or in combination are investigated. The first one is based on cons

Introduction and objective. Swine confinement buildings are known to contain large concentrations of airway irritants, and a number of studies have shown acute inflammatory effects in previously unexposed subjects when introduced to the environment in such buildings. However, studies comparing different methods of assessing such reactions are lacking, and it is not known if a measurable response c

In higher natural science education, the scientific report is the prevailing genre of writing. Despite the fact that communicative skills are highly valued in working life, earlier studies have shown deficiencies among science students. In this paper, we highlight the need for varied communication training, in particularly arguing for the possibilities that students’ popular science writing offers

Abstract in Undetermined Although ancient DNA from sediments (sedaDNA) has been used to investigate past ecosystems, the approach has never been directly compared with the traditional methods of pollen and macrofossil analysis. We conducted a comparative survey of 18 ancient permafrost samples spanning the Late Pleistocene (4612.5 thousand years ago), from the Taymyr Peninsula in northern Siberia.

PURPOSE: To assess and analyze refractive outcome after cataract surgery in Sweden from 2008 though 2010. SETTING: Swedish cataract surgery units participating in outcome registration of National Cataract Register. DESIGN: Cohort study. METHODS: Planned and actual postoperative refractions were analyzed for cataract procedures and preoperative and postoperative corneal astigmatism for procedures p

We are grateful to the commentators for taking the time to respond to our article. Too many interesting and important points have been raised for us to tackle them all in this response, and so in the below we have sought to draw out the major themes. These include problems with both the term ‘ultimate causation’ and the proximate-ultimate causation dichotomy more generally, clarification of the me

We studied the evolutionary history of the Parmeliaceae (Lecanoromycetes, Ascomycota), one of the largest families of lichen-forming fungi with complex and variable morphologies, also including several lichenicolous fungi. We assembled a six-locus data set including nuclear, mitochondrial and low-copy protein-coding genes from 293 operational taxonomic units (OTUs). The lichenicolous lifestyle ori

First, we study geometric variants of the standard set cover motivated by assignment of directional antenna and shipping with deadlines, providing the first known polynomial-time exact solutions. Next, we consider the following general (non-necessarily geometric) capacitated set cover problem. There is given a set of elements with real weights and a family of sets of the elements. One can use a s