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With the launch of Gaia in December 2013, Europe entered a new era of space astrometry following in the footsteps of the very successful Hipparcos mission. A weakness of Gaia is that it only operates at optical wavelengths. However, much of the Galactic centre and the spiral arm regions are obscured by interstellar extinction. An obvious improvement on Gaia is to include the Near-Infra-Red (NIR) w

We introduce and present results from the cocoa (Cluster simulatiOn Comparison with ObservAtions) code that has been developed to create idealized mock photometric observations using results from numerical simulations of star cluster evolution. cocoa is able to present the output of realistic numerical simulations of star clusters carried out using Monte Carlo or N-body codes in a way that is usef

Companies and corporate foundations have become important players in philanthropy. For many companies, philanthropy is part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) policy. They brought their entrepreneurial customs, values and expectations into the world of philanthropy. This gave rise to new forms of philanthropy next to the conventional form of donations. These developments lead to severa

How might a liberal democratic community best regulate human genetic engineering? Relevant debates widely deploy the usually undefined term “human dignity.” Its indeterminacy in meaning and use renders it useless as a guiding principle. In this article, I reject the human genome as somehow invested with a moral status, a position I call “genetic essentialism.” I explain why a critique of genetic e

Background: Studies have shown that ambient air pollution is linked to preeclampsia (PE), possibly via generation of oxidative stress in the placenta. Telomere length and mitochondrial DNA copy number (mtDNAcn) are sensitive to oxidative stress damage.Objective: To study the association between prenatal exposure to ambient nitrogen oxides (NOx, a marker for traffic-related air pollution), and PE,

Application of concurrent engineering (CE) to machinery has to consider the type of production (individual, serial), product complexity and level of design. Product development (PD) involves four characteristic levels of design that requires specific activities. The characteristic design levels require definitions of the activities for providing the necessary software and other support for all pha

The Wee1 cell cycle checkpoint kinase prevents premature mitotic entry by inhibiting cyclin-dependent kinases. Chemical inhibitors of Wee1 are currently being tested clinically as targeted anticancer drugs. Wee1 inhibition is thought to be preferentially cytotoxic in p53-defective cancer cells. However, TP53 mutant cancers do not respond consistently to Wee1 inhibitor treatment, indicating the exi

SummaryThe human pathogen Streptococcus pyogenes (GAS) causes both superficial infections, such as strep throat, and invasive infections, such as necrotizing fasciitis, and is responsible for about half a million deaths each year. The number of GAS infections have increased since the 1980’s, due to the emergence of a M1T1 strain that has become widely disseminated. Increased expression of Streptol

Due to phonemic restoration, listeners can reliably perceive words when a phoneme is replaced with noise. The cost associated with this process was investigated along with the effect of lexical uniqueness on phonemic restoration, using data from a lexical decision experiment where noise replaced phonemes that were either uniqueness points (the phoneme at which a word deviates from all nonrelated w

Refugees have moved into the spotlight of public debate in Europe and North America, where they are targeted by multiple welfare state interventions. This volume analyses the tensions that emerge within the strong welfare states of Northern Europe when faced with an increased immigration of protection-seeking people. Examining the encounter between refugees and the welfare states, this book explor

Aim: We explored preferences for prognostic test performance characteristics and error tolerance in decisions regarding withdrawal or continuation of life-sustaining therapy (LST) after cardiac arrest in a diverse cohort of medical providers. Methodology: We distributed a survey through professional societies and research networks. We asked demographic characteristics, preferences for prognostic t

The scFv antibody towards the Burkholderia pseudomallei exotoxin was previously constructed by phage display and exhibited good specificity towards the exotoxin. We report here the optimization of the scFv expression in an E. coli expression system. Four different E. coli strains (ER2537, TG1, HB2151, and XL1-Blue) were examined for optimal expression of the scFv protein. Two types of carbon sourc