Introduction: Coagulation activation may be related to complications during surgery for abdominal aortic aneurysm. The complex formed between activated protein C (APC) and the serpin, protein C inhibitor (PCI), is a sensitive indicator of the activation of blood coagulation. The purpose of the study was to establish whether the APC-PCI complex can provide information useful for the assessment of o

In this paper we are focusing on the practical, engineering way of evaluating and characterizing the multi-channel antenna solutions on the mobile terminal. Two methods of calculating the parameters, describing the diversity performance, are described and the practical use of the methods in simulations and measurements are presented and evaluated. The time saving aspect of using the scattering par

We use the assignment technique and a new approach, the 'novel allele technique', to detect sex-biased dispersal in great reed warblers Acrocephalus arundinaceus . The data set consisted of immigrants and philopatric birds in a semi-isolated population in Sweden scored at 21 microsatellite loci. Fourteen cohorts were represented of which the four earliest were used to define a reference population

Some groups have to face threats and dangers professionally with maintained cognitive functioning, which implies a need to know both the extent to which maladaptive reactions occur and the factors that may affect it. This study examines self-reported reactions and performance when facing risks and dangers on peacekeeping observer missions. The sample consisted of 154 military observers.,A self-mad

n order to make attribute grammars useful for complicated analysis tasks, a number of extensions to the original Knuth formalism have been suggested. One such extension is the collection attribute mechanism, which allows the value of an attribute to be defined as a combination of contributions from distant nodes in the abstract syntax tree. Another extension that has proven useful is circular attr

Interaction between cultural development and the natural environment is generally accepted. Holocene climate change is described as one of the main environmental factors behind a step-wise development of the cultural landscape in Northwest Europe. Seven periods of human impact changes-5900, 5500, 4500, 3800, 3000-2800, 1500 and 1100 cal. BP-are defined and compared with reconstructed climatic scen

Sixty-five patients who were primary or secondary refractory to melphalan/prednisone or other type of chemotherapy, or relapsed within 6 months after high dose chemotherapy with stem cell support, were given thalidomide at a dose of 200 mg/d escalating to 800 mg. The patients were followed for a median of 2 years and 22 weeks. Response was evaluated according to M-protein reduction combined with i

Post-translational modifications are associated with certain autoimmune diseases. For example, in the initial steps of coeliac disease (CD), transglutaminase type 2 (TG2) catalyzes a post-translational deamidation of specific glutamine residues in dietary gluten, resulting in antibodies against both modified gliadin and against TG2. Anti-TG2 has become a specific biomarker for CD. In rheumatoid ar

Acknowledging the social constructivist turn in the study of norms, this article offers to demonstrate that the notion of norms is useful as an analytical tool and likely to become a lasting element in international relations theory. Ideational causality and the independent explanatory power of norms are methodological issues that have been debated widely. Despite arguing that norms matter, social

Recently, a polymorphism in the complement regulator factor H (FH) gene has been associated with age-related macular degeneration. When histidine instead of tyrosine is present at position 384 in the seventh complement control protein (CCP) domain of FH, the risk for age-related macular degeneration is increased. It was recently shown that these allotypic variants of FH, in the context of a recomb

The objective of this study was to compare subjects who sustained an ACL injury during soccer 16 years ago with a control group with regard to knee kinematics and kinetics of gait, step activity and cross over hop. Secondly, in the injured subjects, the purpose was to study the impact on kinematics and kinetics of characteristics such as operative status, meniscal resection, being symptomatic, hav

Despite their apparent simplicity, random Boolean networks display a rich variety of dynamical behaviors. Much work has been focused on the properties and abundance of attractors. The topologies of random Boolean networks with one input per node can be seen as graphs of random maps. We introduce an approach to investigating random maps and finding analytical results for attractors in random Boolea

Abstract in UndeterminedOne sediment core from the Jarnavik bay in Blekinge archipelago has been investigated for its content of pollen and diatoms and its chemical properties. Two levels were also dated by radiocarbon. Based on the results the sediment sequence analysed has been divided into three environmental units largely corresponding to the lithology of the sequence. A lowermost unit consist

Agile methods have evolved as a bottom-up approach to software development. However, as the software in embedded products is only one part of development projects, agile methods must coexist with project management models typically of the stage-gate type. This paper presents a qualitative case study of two large independent software system projects that have used eXtreme Programming (XP) for softw

Within the nuclear Fermi-liquid approach, the memory effect on the Landau-Vlasov-Langevin dynamics is considered. The basic collisional kinetic equation for the Wigner distribution function is reduced to a macroscopic equation of motion for the shape variables of the nucleus. Parametrizing the potential energy of the nucleus at descent from the fission barrier by the inverted oscillator potential,

Osteoporosis has been recognized as a major public health problem for less than two decades. The increasing incidence of fragility fractures, such as vertebral, hip, and wrist fractures, first became apparent from epidemiological studies in the early and mid-1980s, when effective treatment was virtually unavailable. Pharmacological therapies that effectively reduce the number of fractures by impro

We studied the functional role of two mutations, Pro55Ser and Pro55Leu, located in the N-terminal Epidermal Growth Factor-like domain (EGF1) of coagulation factor (F) IX. Both mutations cause mild hemophilia B with habitual FIX coagulant activities of 10-12% and FIX antigen levels of 50%. We found that activation by FVIIa/TF and FXIa was normal for FIXPro55Ser, but resulted in proteolysis of FIXPr