Aim Understanding the driving forces and mechanisms of changes in past plant distribution and abundance will help assess the biological consequences of future climate change scenarios. The aim of this paper is to investigate whether modelled patterns of climate parameters 6000 years ago can account for the European distribution of Fagus sylvatica at that time. Consideration is also given to the ro

The compaction of DNA by a cationic surfactant both in the bulk and adsorbed on the surface of latex particles was followed for the first time by SANS. In the bulk, a decrease in the overall size of the DNA coil in the presence of the cationic surfactant was observed at a negative-to-positive charge ratio far below the phase separation region, at a negative-to-positive charge ratio of 18. Addition

In this paper, a fully automatic method for the diagnosis of pulmonary embolism (PE) from V/Q-scans is presented. Image analysis is applied to the ventilation and the perfusion images obtained in the V/Q-scan. The difference of the ventilation and the perfusion is calculated after transformation and hot-spot reduction of the images. From this difference image the integral of the underperfused area

A set of rectangles S is said to be grid packed if there exists a rectangular grid (not necessarily regular) such that every rectangle lies in the grid and there is at most one rectangle of S in each cell. The area of a grid packing is the area of a minimal bounding box that contains all the rectangles in the grid packing. We present an approximation algorithm that given a set S of rectangles and

The surfactant tetra(ethylene oxide) n-dodecyl amide (TEDAd) was compared with the poly(ethylene oxide) n-alkyl ethers C12E5, C10E5, and C12E4. The adsorption to hydrophobic liquid-vapor and solid-liquid interfaces, as well as the wetting behavior on a hydrophobic surface, was investigated. The amide group is more hydrophilic than the ethylene oxide group, raising the cloud point and critical mice

We investigated the potential roles of specific isoforms of protein kinase C (PKC) in the regulation of leukotriene D(4)-induced Ca(2+) signaling in the intestinal epithelial cell line Int 407. RT-PCR and Western blot analysis revealed that these cells express the PKC isoforms alpha, betaII, delta, epsilon, zeta, and mu, but not betaI, gamma, eta, or theta;. The inflammatory mediator leukotriene D

Systemic Lupus International Collaborating Clinics (SLICC) comprises 27 centres from 11 countries. An inception cohort of 918 SLE patients has been assembled according to a standardized protocol between 2000 and 2006. Clinical features, classic coronary artery disease (CAD) risk factors, as well as other potential risk factors were collected. Of the 918 patients 89% were females, and of multi raci

A computer-controlled biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) analyzer has been developed for fast estimation of biochemical oxygen demand (BOD,,) automatically with the purpose of on-line monitoring of a process for conversion of biomass under field conditions. The instrument was tested by on-line monitoring of the connecting stream between two stages of a two-stage anaerobic process in laboratory scale.

Dysthymia and major depressive disorder (MDD) are both risk diagnoses for suicidal behaviour. The aim of the present study was to identify clinical differences between these disorders, with a special reference to dysthymia. We studied suicidal behaviour, comorbidity and psychiatric symptoms of inpatient suicide attempters with dysthymia and MDD. We used DSM III-R diagnostics, the Suicide Assessmen

We injected technetium-labeled albumin (at a concentration similar to that of the pleural fluid) in the costal region of anesthetized dogs (n = 13) either breathing spontaneously or apneic. The decay rate of labeled activity at the injection site was studied with a gamma camera placed either in the anteroposterior (AP) or laterolateral (LL) projection. In breathing animals (respiratory frequency a

Liquefaction of human semen involves proteolytic degradation of the seminal coagulum and release of motile spermatozoa. Several members of human kallikrein-related peptidases (KLKs) have been implicated in semen liquefaction, functioning through highly regulated proteolytic cascades. Among these, KLK3 (also known as prostate-specific antigen) is the main executor enzyme responsible for processing

Diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was performed with a high-resolution segmented echo-planar imaging technique, which provided images with substantially less susceptibility artifacts than images obtained with single-shot echo-planar imaging (EPI). Diffusion imaging performed with any multishot pulse sequence is inherently sensitive to motion artifacts and in order to reduce motion artifac

The loop region of chymotrypsin inhibitor 2 from barley has been employed as a scaffold for testing the intrinsic propensity of a peptide fragment to form a secondary structure. The helix formation of the nine amino acid residue segment Lys-Gln- Ala-Val- Asp- Asn- Ala-Tyr-Ala of helix E from subtilisin Carlsberg has been studied by the construction of a hybrid consisting of chymotrypsin inhibitor

The interest in phasor measurement technology has reached a peak in recent years, as the need for the best estimate of the power system's state is recognized to be a crucial element in improving its performance and its resilience in the face of catastrophic failures. In most countries installing the phasor measurement units (PMUs) and getting to know the PMU system behavior through continuous obse