The development of therapeutic and diagnostic antibodies is a rapidly growing field of research, being the fastest expanding group of products on the pharmaceutical market, and appropriate quality controls are crucial for their application. We have identified and characterized the serine protease termed BspK (Bdellovibrio serine protease K) from Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus and here show its activit

The proton-conducting pathway of bacteriorhodopsin (BR) contains at least nine internal water molecules that are thought to be key players in the proton translocation mechanism. Here, we report the results of a multinuclear (1H, 2H, 17O) magnetic relaxation dispersion (MRD) study with the primary goal of determining the rate of exchange of these internal water molecules with bulk water. This rate

Internal traverse grinding with electro-plated cBN wheels combines the advantages of both internal hard turning and internal grinding, enabling a high material removal rate along with a high surface quality. The drawback, however, is a high thermal load on the workpiece, resulting in shape and dimension errors of the finished part. This paper deals with the compensation of these manufacturing erro

Relatively few studies have investigated how geography, environmental factors, and genetics affect floral trait variation. We used mixed-mating Collinsia heterophylla Buist to explore variation in a suite of floral traits related to mating system in populations representing four geographic regions of California, USA, and relate this variation to geography, climatic factors, and local site characte

Background: The decline of child mortality during the late 19th century is one of the most significant demographic changes in human history. However, there is evidence suggesting that the substantial reductions in mortality during the era did little to reduce mortality inequality between socioeconomic groups.Objective: The aim of this study is to examine the development of socioeconomic inequaliti

Modelling fire performance of building fire barriers would allow optimising the design solutions before performing costly fire resistance tests and promote performance-based fire safety engineering. Numerical heat conduction analysis is widely used for predicting the insulation capability of fire barriers. Heat conduction analysis uses material properties and boundary condition parameters as the i

More than three decades ago, Thomas Alerstam initiated the study of orientation and navigation of migratory songbirds in southern Sweden. Stensoffa Ecological Field Station, located approx. 20 km east of Lund, has since been a primary location for orientation experiments. However, it has often been difficult to record well-oriented behaviour in the seasonal appropriate migratory directions, in par

Aim and objective: To describe and understand the meaning of living with persistent rheumatoid arthritis. Background: A considerable number of patients with rheumatoid arthritis live with an ongoing active and symptomatic illness despite access to potent antirheumatic treatment. There is, however, a lack of knowledge about the meaning of living with this severe long-term illness, defined as persis

A negative association between interval length and infant and child mortality has been consistently identified in modern developing countries. The reasons for this association are unclear, however. Leading hypotheses explain these differences as a result of sibling competition, maternal depletion, infection transmission, or unobserved maternal factors, but none has received overwhelming support. U

Water chemistry is important for the maintenance of wetland structure and function. Interpreting ecological patterns in a wetland system therefore requires an in-depth understanding of the water chemistry of that system. We investigated the spatial distribution of chemical solutes both in soil pore water and surface water, along island-floodplain-channel hydrological gradients in seasonally and pe

Svensk sammanfattningUnder de senaste hundra åren har kulturlandskapet i norra Europa genomgått en dramatisk förändring. Det småskaliga jordbrukslandskapet med sin mosaik av naturtyper har till stor del ersatts av vidsträckta monokulturer. Artrika naturtyper och naturområden har blivit ovanligare och ligger idag ofta isolerats från varandra. Som en följd av detta har många arter gått tillbaka, visPlant species often adapt to local environmental conditions, which can result in the formation of genetically and phenotypically distinct ecotypes. Ecotypes can evolve rapidly, and may be a first step in the process of ecological speciation. Consequently, ecotypes may constitute an important part of the biodiversity in regions with a young flora, where few endemic taxa at the species level have ha

A Fourier analysis of the magnitudes and timing of the Phanerozoic mass extinctions (MEs) demonstrates that many of the periodicities claimed in other analyses are not statistically significant. Moreover we show that the periodicities associated with oscillations of the Solar System about the galactic plane are too irregular to give narrow peaks in the Fourier periodograms. This leads us to conclu

We investigate the effects of organizational culture and personal values on performance under individual and team contest incentives. We develop a model of regard for others and in-group favoritism that predicts interaction effects between organizational values and personal values in contest games. These predictions are tested in a computerized lab experiment with exogenous control of both organiz

Bark beetles are among the most devastating biotic agents affecting forests globally and several species are expected to be favored by climate change. Given the potential interactions of insect outbreaks with other biotic and abiotic disturbances, and the potentially strong impact of changing disturbance regimes on forest resources, investigating climatic drivers of destructive bark beetle outbrea

We study statistical properties of the 0+ spectrum of 208Pb in the energy region Ex ≤ 20 MeV. We use the Skyrme interaction SLy4 as our model Hamiltonian to create a single-particle spectrum and to analyze excited states. The finite-rank separable approximation for the particle–hole interaction enables us to perform the calculations in large configuration spaces. We show that while the position of