Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is a clinically heterogeneous disease with no known single predisposing genetic factor shown in all cases. Recently, a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) T393C in the GNAS1 gene has been reported to have a clinical impact on CLL progression and overall survival. In order to further investigate the T393C SNP in CLL, we have genotyped 279 CLL cases and correlated

This conceptual paper investigates the way in which some Swiss watch firms respond to innovativeness, their capacity to innovate, and their engagement in the innovation process. A purposeful (judgmental) stratified sampling method was employed, where in-depth interviews with thirteen marketing managers and owners, was carried out over a three-month period. Meaning units (MUs) were abstracted, to c

TBX22 belongs to the T-box family of transcription factors and was originally found in an in silico approach designed to identify new genes on the human Xq12-q21 region. Mutations in TBX22 have been reported in families with X-linked cleft palate and ankyloglossia (CPX), but the underlying pathogenetic mechanism remained unknown. We have identified mouse Tbx22 and analyzed its expression during em

In a naturalistic newspaper reading study, two pairs of information graphics have been designed to study the effects of a) the spatial contiguity principle and b) the dual scripting principle by means of eye tracking measurements. Our data clearly show that different spatial layouts have a significant effect on readers’ eye movement behaviour. An integrated format with spatial contiguity between t

This paper discusses a general class of ladder resummation inspired hadronic approximations. It is found that this approach naturally reproduces many successes of single meson per channel saturation models (e.g. VMD) and NJL based models. In particular the existence of a constituent quark mass and a gap equation follows naturally. We construct an approximation that satisfies a large set of QCD sho

Results on the global existence of classical solutions for quasilinear parabolic equations in bounded domains with homogeneous Dirichlet or Neumann boundary conditions are presented. Besides quasilinear parabolic equations, the method is also applicable to some weakly-coupled reaction-diffusion systems and to elliptic equations with nonlinear dynamic boundary conditions.

In many cases it is desired to have both high capacity and small antennas in wireless communication systems. Unfortunately, the antenna performance deteriorate when the antennas get electrically small. In this paper fundamental limitations from antenna theory and broadband matching are used to analyze the spectral efficiency of an arbitrary antenna inserted inside a sphere.

Diabetes frequently develops in Huntington's disease (HD) patients and in transgenic mouse models of HD such as the R6/2 mouse. The underlying mechanisms have not been clarified. Elucidating the pathogenesis of diabetes in HD would improve our understanding of the molecular mechanisms involved in HD neuropathology. With this aim, we examined our colony of R6/2 mice with respect to glucose homeosta

We have previously demonstrated intracellular degradation of the heparan sulfate side-chains in recycling glypican-1 by heparanase and by deaminative cleavage at N-unsubstituted glucosamine with nitric oxide derived from intrinsic nitrosothiols [see Ding, K., Mani, K., Cheng, F., Belting, M. and Fransson, L.-. (2002) J. Biol. Chem., 277, xxx-xxx; prepub M203383200]. To determine where and in what

We have earlier shown that galectin-3, a lactose-binding mammalian lectin that is secreted from activated macrophages, basophils, and mast cells, induces activation of the NADPH oxidase in exudated but not in peripheral blood neutrophils (A. Karlsson, P. Follin, H. Leffler, and C. Dahlgren, Blood 91:3430-3438, 1998). The alteration in responsiveness occurring during extravasation correlated with m

Background: Previous literature has shown that neighborhood socioeconomic position influences the risk of ischemic heart disease, but little is known about the mechanisms linking the residential context to ischemic heart disease incidence and mortality. We examined whether neighborhood socioeconomic position and neighborhood residential stability (as a determinant of social interaction patterns) h

Here we examine the efficiency of different immobilized cell gradients applied to immobilized Saccharomyces cerevisiae fermenting glucose to ethanol. We developed a simulation model to fully study the competing effects of mass transfer hindrance and kinetics. It is based on a diffusion-reaction model and can be used to analyze the different cell concentration profiles inside an immobilized gel bea

An increasing body of evidence suggests that a low-glycaemic-index (GI) diet has a therapeutic as well as a preventive potential in relation to the insulin resistance syndrome. The implementation of a low-GI diet, however, will require an extended list of low-GI foods to be available on the market. The tailoring of low-GI bread products offers a particular challenge due to their generally high GI

High hypoxia-inducible factor-2 alpha (HIF-2 alpha) protein levels predict poor outcome in neuroblastoma, and hypoxia dedifferentiates cultured neuroblastoma cells toward a neural crest-like phenotype. Here, we identify HIF-2 alpha as a marker of normoxic neural crest-like neuroblastoma tumor-initiating/stem cells (TICs) isolated from patient bone marrows. Knockdown of HIF-2 alpha reduced VEGF exp

The phagocytosis of apoptotic cells is a complex process involving numerous interactions between the target cell and the macrophage. We have examined a role of the major soluble inhibitor of the classic and lectin complement pathways, C4b-binding protein (C4BP), in the clearance of apoptotic cells. The major form of C4BP present in blood is composed of seven alpha-chains and one beta-chain, which

The numerical treatment of two-dimensional scattering in inhomogeneous media is considered. A novel approach in treating convolution operators with low regularity is used to construct an iterative solver for the Lippmann-Schwinger integral equation. In this way, accurate approximations within a choice of bandwidth can be obtained in a rapid manner. The performance of the method is tested on a disc

This pilot study describes nurses' experiences of the effects of clinical supervision on psychiatric health care, their views on their working milieu and duties, and the relationship between the nurses' experiences and perceptions. The sample consisted of 26 trained nurses (nine registered nurses and 17 licensed mental nurses) who took part in a clinical supervision intervention programme pursued