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The internal carotid artery of spontaneously hypertensive rats and stroke-prone spontaneously hypertensive rats has a thicker media than that of normotensive Wistar Kyoto rats as early as 15 days of age; furthermore, the media-to-lumen ratio is increased in the larger pial arteries. Since several studies have indicated that the mean arterial pressure is slightly elevated in spontaneously hypertens
Isolation and expansion of neural stem cells (NSCs) of human origin are crucial for successful development of cell therapy approaches in neurodegenerative diseases. Different epigenetic and genetic immortalization strategies have been established for long-term maintenance and expansion of these cells in vitro. Here we report the generation of a new, clonal NSC (hc-NSC) line, derived from human fet
Background. Nurse managers act under constant pressure to develop strategies in response to professional challenges within a changing and restructured health care system. When such environmental stress is present, they need access to sufficient psychosocial recourses. Aim. The study aimed to investigate whether nurse managers' professional networks, psychosocial work conditions, job support, soci
The Ag II spectrum emitted from hollow cathode discharges has been recorded in the region 940–8500 Šwith Fourier transform and high dispersion photographic instruments. 311 lines have been classified and measured at high accuracy (±0.03–0.003 cm-1 above 2000 Ŭ ±0.002–0.0005 Šin the VUV region). Improved energy level values have been derived from the lines, and 24 new odd levels have been found. Th
It is recommended that intervention thresholds should be based on absolute fracture risk, but there is a large variation in hip fracture incidence from different regions of the world. The aim of this study was to examine heterogeneity of hip fracture probability in different regions from recent estimates of hip fracture incidence and mortality to adjust intervention thresholds. Ten-year probabilit
The long-term fates of duplicate genes are well studied both empirically and theoretically, but how the short-term evolution of duplicate genes contributes to phenotypic variation is less well known. Here, we have studied the genetic basis of flowering tithe variation in the disomic tetraploid Capsella bursa-pastoris. We sequenced four duplicate candidate genes for flowering time and 10 background
Estimating the extinction risk of natural populations is not only an urgent problem in conservation biology but also involves some profound aspects of population dynamics. Apart from the obvious case of a continuous decrease in a population's carrying capacity, understanding the extinction process necessarily includes environmental and demographic stochasticity. Here, we build from first principle
A seventh-order accurate and extremely stable algorithm for the rapid computation of stress fields inside cracked rectangular domains is presented. The algorithm is seventh-order accurate since it incorporates basis functions, taking the asymptotic shape of the stress fields close to crack tips and corners into account at least up to order six. The algorithm is stable since it is based on a Fredho
We study the self-adjoint Pauli operators that can be realized as the square of a self-adjoint Dirac operator and correspond to a magnetic field consisting of a finite number of Aharonov–Bohm solenoids and a regular part, and prove an Aharonov–Casher type formula for the number of zero-modes for these operators. We also see that essentially only one of the Pauli operators are spin-flip invariant,
To study the relationship between foveal thickness assessed by optical coherence tomography (OCT) and foveal function measured with multi focal electroretinography (mfERG) in patients with non-proliferative diabetic retinopathy, and with no previous laser treatment. Twenty-six eyes from 18 diabetic patients (13 men), aged 59 years, (range 28-79 years), diabetes duration 15 years, (range 2-27 years
An analytical procedure based on alkaline extraction and HPLC analysis was adapted for quantification of pyridine nucleotides in plant mitochondria. The amounts of NAD and NADP extracted from seven different species varied from 1.0 to 3.7 and 0 to 0.5 nmol (mg protein) –1 , respectively. Although NADP was found in four species, its reduced form was in all cases below the detection limit of 0.1 nmo
Increased worldwide use for paediatric anaesthesia of the volatile anaesthetic agent sevoflurane has mainly resulted from its low blood-gas partition coefficient and low airway irritability, providing smooth conditions for rapid induction of anaesthesia. Nevertheless, there are several clinical and experimental reports suggesting a correlation between exposure to sevoflurane and generalized clonic
The molecular conservation of a surface-exposed lipoprotein, protein D, of Haemophilus influenzae was studied by cloning and sequencing of the gene encoding protein D from three encapsulated type b strains and three nontypeable strains of H. influenzae. These nucleotide sequences were analyzed with previously reported sequences from one type b strain and one nontypeable strain. The nucleotide sequ
Background. Several clinical studies have suggested possible increase in cardiovascular risk during and in the first weeks after an acute inflammatory disease. Using influenza vaccine as inflammatory stimulus, we investigated whether arterial endothelial dysfunction could persist beyond the inflammatory state, and whether amplified oxidative modification of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) accompanie
Analysing the variation in flight speed among bird species is important in understanding flight. We tested if the cruising speed of different migrating bird species in flapping flight scales with body mass and wing loading according to predictions from aerodynamic theory and to what extent phylogeny provides an additional explanation for variation in speed. Flight speeds were measured by tracking
Lysosomal cysteine proteases from mammalian cells and plants are regulated by endogenous tight-binding inhibitors from the cystatin superfamily. The presence of cystatin-like inhibitors in lower eukaryotes such as protozoan parasites has not yet been demonstrated, although these cells express large quantities of cysteine proteases and may also count on endogenous inhibitors to regulate cellular pr
Wetlands can modify and control nutrient fluxes between terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, yet little is known of their potential as biological buffers and sinks in the biogeochemical silica cycle. We investigated the storage of amorphous silica (ASi) in a central-European riparian wetland. The variation in storage of ASi in the soil of an undisturbed wetland was significantly controlled by two f
