The risk of superinfection following routine abdominal drainage after major surgery is debated. Especially in patients with malignant diseases and a compromised host defense, this might be a factor increasing morbidity and mortality. During a 3-year period (1986-1988) 41 patients operated on for malignant abdominal conditions received a peritoneal catheter connected to a subcutaneous portal insert

Aims: The aims were to estimate the diagnostic sensitivity and specificity of autoantibodies to tissue transglutaminase (IgA- and IgG-tTG), gliadin (AGA) and endomysium (EMA) in relation to human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-DQB1 alleles to identify silent celiac disease at diagnosis of type 1 diabetes. Methods: IgA- and IgG-tTG were measured in radioligand binding assays in 165 type 1 diabetic patien

Prey densities often show fluctuating patterns over various timescales. Focusing on short-term, within-generation fluctuating patterns of local prey availability, we suggest that prey that show synchronized and high-amplitude fluctuations in availability experience decreased risks of predation, but also enhance the maintenance of predator interference hierarchies by affecting the relative foraging

Helicobacter pylori can transform, in vivo as well as in vitro, from dividing spiral-shaped forms into nonculturable coccoids, with intermediate forms called U forms. The importance of nonculturable coccoid forms of H. pylori in disease transmission and antibiotic treatment failures is unclear. Metabolic activities of actively growing as well as nonculturable H. pylori were investigated by compari

Sphingolipids are degraded by sphingomyelinase and ceramidase in the gut to ceramide and sphingosine, which may inhibit cell proliferation and induce apoptosis, and thus have anti-tumour effects in the gut. Although previous rodent studies including experiments on knockout mice indicate a role of neutral ceramidase in ceramide digestion, the human enzyme has never been purified and characterized i

Background: The relationship between plasma markers of inflammation and the incidence of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is still unclear. This population-based study explored whether raised levels of five inflammation-sensitive plasma proteins (ISPs) predicted hospital admissions for COPD during 25 years of follow-up. Methods: Spirometric tests and measurements of five ISPs (fibrinog

Nanomechanical resonators have been monolithically integrated on preprocessed complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) chips. Fabricated resonator systems have been designed to have resonance frequencies up to 1.5 MHz. The systems have been characterized in ambient air and vacuum conditions and display ultrasensitive mass detection in air. A mass sensitivity of 4 ag/Hz has been determined in

The structure of a stationary Gaussian process near a local maximum with a prescribed heightu has been explored in several papers by the present author, see [5]–[7], which include results for moderateu as well as foru→±∞. In this paper we generalize these results to a homogeneous Gaussian field {ξ(t) t ∈ R n}, with mean zero and the covariance functionr(t). The local structure of a Gaussian field

During the 1990s three new techniques to reduce spasticity and dystonia in children with cerebral palsy (CP) were introduced in southern Sweden: selective dorsal rhizotomy, continuous intrathecal baclofen infusion and botulinum toxin treatment. In 1994 a CID register and a health care programme, aimed to prevent hip dislocation and severe contractures, were initiated in the area. The total populat

Previous studies have suggested that the bacille Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine may have a non-specific beneficial effect on childhood survival in areas with high mortality. We examined whether BCG-vaccinated children with a BCG scar or a positive tuberculin reaction had better survival than children without such reactions. As part of an ongoing two-dose measles vaccine trial for which children wer

Absorption and fluorescence emission spectra were measured at room temperature (ca. 22.degree.C) for solutions of phycocyanin-1, phycocyanin-2, and allophycocyanin from Phormidium luridum, and also for phycobilisome preparations from various blue-green algae (Anabaena variabilis, Nostoc muscorum strain A, Nostoc sp. strain Mac. Phormidium luridum). Kennard-Stepanov (KS) temperatures (T) were compu

Caloplaca sorediella Arup is described as a new species. It is so far known only from extreme maritime situations on seashore rocks in western England, Scotland and Wales.

Background Chitosans of high molecular weights have emerged as efficient. nonviral gene delivery systems, but the properties and efficiency of well-defined low molecular weight chitosans ((.) 5 kDa) have not been studied. We therefore characterized DNA complexes Of Such low molecular weight chitosans and related their physical shape and stability to their efficiency as gene delivery systems in vit

A new approach to the production and detection of bound neutron clusters is presented. The technique is based on the breakup of beams of very neutron-rich nuclei and the subsequent detection of the recoiling proton in a liquid scintillator. The method has been tested in the breakup of intermediate energy (30–50 MeV/nucleon) 11Li, 14Be, and 15B beams. Some six events were observed that exhibit the

Apolipoprotein M (apoM) is a plasma protein associated mainly with HDL. ApoM is suggested to be important for the formation of pre beta-HDL, but its mechanism of action is unknown. Homology modeling has suggested apoM to be a lipocalin. Lipocalins share a structurally conserved beta-barrel, which in many lipocalins bind hydrophobic ligands. The aim of this study was to test the ability of apoM to

Proteomic screening of strawberry (Fragaria ananassa) yielded a 58% success rate in protein identification in spite of the fact that no genomic sequence is available for this species. This was achieved by a combination of MALDI-MS/MS de novo sequencing of double-derivatized peptides and indel-tolerant searching against local protein databases built on both EST and full-length nucleotide sequences.

Study objective: Most studies of place effects on health have followed the multilevel analytical approach that investigates geographical variations of health phenomena by fragmenting space into arbitrary areas. This study examined whether analysing geographical variations across continuous space with spatial modelling techniques and contextual indicators that capture space as a continuous dimensio

Adaptive time-stepping is central to the efficient solution of initial value problems in ODEs and DAEs. The error committed in the discretization method primarily depends on the time-step size h, which is varied along the solution in order to minimize the computational effort subject to a prescribed accuracy requirement. This paper reviews the recent advances in developing local adaptivity algorit

The unique role of weakly-bound low-angular-momentum neutrons in the structure of neutron-drip-line nuclei is presented, studying both the many-body pair-correlation in spherical nuclei and the one-particle orbits in the deformed Woods-Saxon potential. Both the HFB equations in the former case and the Schrodinger equation in the latter are solved in coordinate space with correct asymptotic boundar