Although long-acting inhaled beta(2)-agonists improve various outcome measures in COPD, no double-blind study has yet shown a significant effect of these drugs on exercise capacity. In a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover study, patients received formoterol (4.5,9, or 18 mug b.i.d via Turbuhaler(R)), ipratroplum bromide (80 mug t.i.d via pMDI with spacer), or placebo for I wee

The subject of this thesis is the pushforward map on compactly supported distributions induced by a smooth mapping. Being the adjoint of the natural pullback operation on the class of smooth functions, the pushforward map is always well-defined, and as such it must be regarded as one of the fundamental operations of distribution theory. This thesis has two main aims: The first of these is to give

Deregulation of the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) pathway either through loss of PTEN or mutation of the catalytic subunit alpha of PI3K (PIK3CA) occurs frequently in human cancer. We identified PIK3CA mutations in 26% of 342 human breast tumor samples and cell lines at about equal frequency in tumor stages I to IV. To investigate the relationship between PTEN and PIK3CA, we generated a coh

This paper is the third in a series which recounts experiences in a project conducted in a newly created department of the University of Portsmouth, following a faculty reorganization. In this context, the 25 staff of the department wished to explore possibilities ofr development in a range of areas of work. A variant of the framework for Strategic Systemic Thinking (SST) was used to support such

This paper offers a method for quantifying the global exchange of (natural) space and (labor) time underlying the economic success of the British textile industry in the late 18th and early 19th century. Using historical statistics on inputs of land and labor embodied in cotton and wool production, respectively, estimates are made of the amount of British land and labor that were ‘saved’ by displa

The amount of software around us has increased incredibly. A lot of the new software is integrated into different devices, for example, home electronics, cars and cell-phones. As existing and new systems evolve through different maintenance releases, they naturally inherit functionality and characteristics from previous releases and therefore become what we refer to as legacy systems. Often new fu

We investigated the effects of UDCA on sphingomyelinase (SMase) in Caco 2 cells cultured in monolayer and polarized conditions. Alkaline SMase activity was high in polarized cells whereas. acid and neutral SMase activities were high in monolayer cells. In polarized cells, UDCA increased alkaline SMase expression and caspase 3 activity but had no effect on acid and neutral SMases. In monolayer cell

This paper describes structural characterization by NMR, MS and degradative studies of mucin glycans from normal human descending colon obtained freshly at autopsy. The saccharides were mainly based on core 3 (GlcNAcbeta1-3GalNAc). Among the terminal saccharide determinants Sd(a)/Cad-antigen-like structures were prominent, and Lewis x, sialyl Lewis x and sulphated Lewis x were found as minor compo

We present experiments on field-free molecular alignment of N-2 and CO2 probed with short XUV pulses that are obtained via high-harmonic generation. The XUV pulses induce a dissociative ionization or a Coulomb explosion of the molecule, where the fragment ion recoil (measured using the velocity map imaging technique) provides information on the alignment of the parent molecule at the time of ioniz

The conditional subjunction "äss" 'if' is used in many Swedish dialects. The article discusses its etymology and the connection between various phonetic variant as well as the process of its grammaticalization.

Latin poetry in the service of political propaganda. The poems commissioned by princes from hired writers of Latin verse had the same function as propagandist media and planted information has today. A survey from the Augustean times up till the 19th century.

Popular Abstract in Swedish Avloppsvatten renas från fosfor för att minimera utsläppet till sjöar och hav. Näringsämnena fosfor och kväve bidrar till övergödningen i våra vatten och kan reduceras kraftigt på avloppsreningsverken. Fosforavskiljning går huvudsakligen ut på att få löst fosfat att hamna i en fast fas ? slammet, för att sedan kunna avskilja det från det renade vattnet. Bakterier som vThe idea of phosphorus removal at wastewater treatment plants is to transfer dissolved phosphorus into a solid phase. Together with the rest of the produced sludge it is then removed from the water, resulting in a decreased concentration of phosphorus in the effluent and the prevention of the eutrophication in the recipient. Phosphorus can either be stored biologically, with enhanced biological p