Shallow groundwater in unconsolidated sediments represents a substantial water resource in the Chinese Loess Plateau. However, prior to development of the water supply for agriculture, annual and seasonal fluctuation of the recharge mechanism should be clarified. Since the region is arid, the effect of plant water uptake on groundwater fluctuation must also be assessed. A study was therefore under

JavaScript is a sequential programming language, and Thread-Level Speculation has been proposed to dynamically extract parallelism in order to take advantage of parallel hardware. In previous work, we have showed significant speed-ups with a simple on/off speculation heuristic. In this paper, we propose and evaluate three heuristics for dynamically adapt the speculation: a 2-bit heuristic, an expo

Objective The NORAM (Nonrenal Wegener's Granulomatosis Treated Alternatively with Methotrexate [MTX]) trial demonstrated that MTX can replace cyclophosphamide (CYC) as remission-inducing treatment for patients with newly diagnosed early systemic antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibodyassociated vasculitis. Duration of relapse-free survival was longer among CYC-treated patients than among MTX-treated p

Objective The objective of this article is to determine if maternal obesity is associated with an increased risk of Down syndrome in the offspring and whether the risk estimates for trisomy 21 based on combined screening is affected by maternal body mass index (BMI). Methods Study group I consisted of a nationwide cohort of 1 568 604 women giving birth; outcome was infants born with Down syndrome

The sperm chromatin structure assay (SCSA) parameter DNA fragmentation Index (DFI) is a valuable tool for prediction of fertility in vivo. Clinical data show that a DFI above 30% is associated with very low chance for achieving pregnancy by natural conception or by insemination. Already when DFI is above 20% the chance of natural pregnancy is reduced, this despite normal conventional semen paramet

A statistically significant association with uterine rupture during a trial of labour after caesarean delivery was found in at least two studies for the following variables: inter-delivery interval (higher risk with short interval), birth weight (higher risk if 4000 g or over), induction of labour (higher risk), oxytocin dose (higher risk with higher doses), and previous vaginal delivery (lower ri

This study investigated patterns and controls of the seasonal and inter-annual variations in energy fluxes (i.e., sensible heat, H, and latent heat, lambda E) and partitioning of the water budget (i.e., precipitation, P; evapotranspiration, ET; discharge, Q; and soil water storage, Delta S) over five years (2001-2005) in a boreal oligotrophic fen in northern Sweden based on continuous eddy covaria

In conventional presentations of continuum mechanics, the reference placement of a solid body is taken to be independent of the observer. Furthermore, the Euclidean spaces associated with different frames of reference are taken to be identical. In this paper these assumption are abandoned and different framings, as well as reference placements, will correspond to different Euclidean spaces. This r

Enterococcus faecium is an important pathogen that is resistant to many antibiotics and is able to form biofilms on implanted medical devices. In this study, the efficacy of rifampicin-containing antibiotic regimens against biofilms of E. faecium in vitro was investigated by determination of the minimum biofilm eradication concentration and by time-kill experiments of bacteria in biofilms formed o

Infantile malignant osteopetrosis (IMO) is caused by lack of functional osteoclasts leading to skeletal abnormalities, blindness due to compression of the optic nerves, bone marrow (BM) failure and early death. In most patients TCIRG1, a proton pump subunit essential for bone resorption, is mutated. Oc/oc mice represent a model for IMO due to a deletion in Tcirg1 and die around 4 weeks. To determi

Ecology Letters (2011) ABSTRACT: Partial migration, whereby only a fraction of the population migrates, is thought to be the most common type of migration in the animal kingdom, and can have important ecological and evolutionary consequences. Despite this, the factors that influence which individuals migrate and which remain resident are poorly understood. Recent work has shown that consistent ind

ObjectivesTo assess the in vitro antibiotic susceptibility of Enterococcus faecalis in biofilms.MethodsE. faecalis isolates were from infections of prosthetic hip and knee joints. Minimal biofilm eradication concentrations (MBECs) for ampicillin, vancomycin, linezolid, ciprofloxacin and rifampicin, alone and in combinations, were determined. E. faecalis biofilms in microtitre plate wells or on bea

BACKGROUND: Pulmonary embolism (PE) is diagnosed with imaging techniques such as ventilation/perfusion (V/P) lung scintigraphy or multidetector computed tomography of the pulmonary arteries (MDCT). Lung scintigraphy can be performed with planar (V/P PLANAR) and tomographic (V/P SPECT) techniques. V/P SPECT has higher sensitivity and specificity than V/P PLANAR. As nephrotoxic contrast media are no

Water exchange through the cell membranes is an important feature of cells and tissues. The rate of exchange is determined by factors such as membrane lipid composition and organization, as well as the type and activity of aquaporins. A method for noninvasively estimating the rate of water exchange would be useful for characterizing pathological conditions, e.g., tumors, multiple sclerosis, and is

BACKGROUND: Negative pressure wound therapy (NPWT) contracts the wound and alters the microvascular blood flow in the wound edge, which may be crucial in promoting wound healing. The aim of the present study was to examine these biological effects in the wound edge using different types of wound fillers. METHODS: Wounds were created on the backs of pigs and filled with green foam, black foam or g

Neurons in the hippocampus exhibit subpopulations of dendritic spines that contain endoplasmic reticulum (ER). ER in spines is important for synaptic activity and its associated Ca(2+) signaling. The dynamic distribution of ER to spines is regulated by diacylglycerol and partly mediated by protein kinase C, metalloproteinases and γ-secretase. In this study, we explored whether pharmacological acti

This paper presents a theoretical model of stability and coordination of posture and locomotion, together with algorithms for continuous-time quadratic optimization of motion control. Explicit solutions to the Hamilton-Jacobi equation for optimal control of rigid-body motion are obtained by solving an algebraic matrix equation. The stability is investigated with Lyapunov function theory and it is

The rd1 mouse serves as a model for inherited photoreceptor degeneration: retinitis pigmentosa. Microarray techniques were employed to compare the transcriptomes of rd1 and congenic wild-type retinas at postnatal day 11, when degenerative processes have started but most photoreceptors are still present. Of the several genes that were differentially expressed, focus was put on those associated with