Non-typeable Haemophilus influenzae (NTHi), a commensal organism in pre-school children, is an opportunistic pathogen causing respiratory tract infections including acute otitis media. Adults suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are persistently colonized by NTHi. Previous research has suggested that, in some bacterial species, the intracellular elongation factor thermo-unst

The remarkable growth of e-commerce has defined the recent years of various industries worldwide. Driven by consumers, the e-commerce surge (e-retail in particular) stems from the final leg of the supply chain: the last mile. As the growing flow of e-commerce orders continues to generate new records for annual revenues, key actors in the last mile face the challenges of increasing customer demands

The sustainable development of cities is threatened by a worldwide water crisis. Improved social learning is urgently needed to transform urban water governance and make it more integrated and adaptive. However, empirical studies remain few and fragmented. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to analyse how social learning has supported or inhibited sustainable transformations in urban water govern

We describe how an arousal system that controls the levels of awareness can be implemented in a robot. The different levels of awareness correspond to different states of consciousness and we argue that an artificial arousal system modeled after its biological counterpart has a useful function in controlling the cognitive processing of a brain-like cognitive architecture. The level of awareness de

Objectives. The aim of this study was to investigate how high K+ concentrations can be safely used in cardioplegic solutions without causing severe coronary artery vasocontraction. Design. Twenty-four 50 kg pigs were used. The distal part of the left anterior descending coronary artery was cut into ring segments and transferred into organ baths with Krebs solution bubbled with 95% O2 and 5% CO2. K

Purpose: To evaluate the access to human rights of persons with disabilities who use prosthetic and orthotic assistive devices, and to compare groups of participants in terms of gender, residential area, income, and type and level of assistive device. The addressed areas were rights to: health, a standard of living adequate for health, education, marry and establish a family, vote, and work. Metho

Hybridization among naturally separate taxa is increasing owing to human impact, and can result in taxon loss. Previous classification of anthropogenic hybridization has largely ignored the case of bimodal hybrid zones, in which hybrids commonly mate with parental species, resulting in many backcrossed individuals with a small proportion of introgressed genome. Genetic markers can be used to detec

We present the first spatially resolved (∼0.5 kpc) measurements of the molecular gas depletion time τ depl across the disk of the interacting spiral galaxy NGC 2276, a system with an asymmetric morphology in various star formation rate (SFR) tracers. To estimate τ depl, we use new NOEMA observations of the 12CO(1-0) emission tracing the bulk molecular gas reservoir in NGC 2276, and extinction-corr

Niche expansion is attained by adaptations in two generalized phenotypical traits - niche position and niche width. This gives room for a wide range of conceptual ways of niche filling. The niche variation hypothesis reduces the range by predicting that expansion occurs by increasing variation in niche position, which has been debated on empirical and theoretical grounds as also other options seem

Objectives: Medial meniscal body extrusion ≥ 3 mm on MRI is often considered “pathologic.” The aims of this study were to (1) assess the adequacy of 3 mm as cut-off for “pathological” extrusion and (2) find an optimal cut-off for meniscal extrusion cross-sectionally associated with radiographic knee osteoarthritis, bone marrow lesions (BMLs), and cartilage damage. Methods: Nine hundred fifty-eight

Study Design: This is a cross-sectional study. Objectives: To describe the association between cardiovascular risk factors (body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), blood pressure, blood glucose and lipids) and leisure time physical activity (LTPA) in older adults with long-term spinal cord injury (SCI). Setting: Community settings, southern Sweden. Methods: Data from the baseline data col

CONCLUSIONS: The main change that has occurred in the GLOB blood group system since the GLOB review published in this journal in 2013 is the addition of an antigen. The high-prevalence PX2 antigen, originally recognized as the x2 glycosphingolipid, is expressed on red blood cells of most individuals and is elevated in the rare PP1Pk-negative p blood group phenotype. P synthase, encoded by B3GALNT1

Background: Atrial septal defect (ASD) is a congenital heart lesion that often remains undiagnosed until adulthood. The reasons for this may be multifactorial. It is, however, known that closure of a hemodynamically significant ASD improves exercise capacity. This study aimed to explore whether the aerobic capacity in late adolescence is associated with time to diagnosis and intervention in adult

The Carnian Humid Episode is an interval of prominent climatic changes in the Late Triassic. We studied the carbon isotope (δ13C) geochemistry of carbonates from sections in southwestern China and northern Oman. δ13C records from the Yongyue section (western Guizhou, South China) show a progressive positive shift from 1.4 to 2.8‰ in the early to middle Julian 1 substage. This positive trend is fol

The trade-off between radiation efficiency and antenna bandwidth, expressed in terms of Q-factor, for small antennas is formulated as a multi-objective optimization problem in current distributions of predefined support. Variants on the problem are constructed to demonstrate the consequences of requiring a self-resonant current as opposed to one tuned by an external reactance. The trade-offs are e