OBJECTIVE. To ascertain whether carotid intraplaque haemorrhage (IH) in patients undergoing carotid artery surgery is a predictor of increased cardiac mortality over a 5.5 year follow-up. DESIGN AND SUBJECTS. Carotid artery plaques were obtained at surgery from 47 consecutive patients (41 men, six women), median age 67 (range 48-81) years, with symptoms of carotid transient ischaemic attacks (TIAs

Streptococcus pyogenes, the most significant streptococcal species in clinical medicine, expresses surface proteins with affinity for several human plasma proteins. Here we report that kininogens, the precursors to the vasoactive kinins, bind to the surface of S. pyogenes. M protein, a surface molecule and a major virulence factor-in these bacteria, occurs in > 80 different serotypes. Among 49 str

BACKGROUND: Bilharzia-associated bladder cancer (BAC) is a major health problem in countries where urinary schistosomiasis is endemic. Characterization of the genetic alterations in this cancer might enhance our understanding of the pathogenic mechanisms of the disease but, in contrast to nonbilharzia bladder cancer, BAC has rarely been the object of such scrutiny. In the present study, we aimed t

Intellectual capital has gained increasing attention concerning both research and more practically oriented applications during the past five years. Intellectual Capital and other knowledge management tools are topics that have emerged in the light of a broader trend of redirecting the foundation of competitive advantage from the company’s tangible assets to its intangibles such as knowledge base,

A disaccharide scaffold based on galabiose (Gal1–4Gal) was synthesized. Four different acceptors were evaluated in the -galactosylation and a relationship between the nucleophilicity, yield, and /-selectivity was found. The scaffold contains two orthogonal derivatisation sites, i.e. at O-2′ and the anomeric position, and as proof of concept, one derivatised galabioside was synthesized. Compounds b

Allochthonous substances, i.e. produced in terrestrial ecosystems, are known to fuel bacterial production in humic lakes. I observed that allochthonous carbon subsidizes bacteria even at high levels of phytoplankton biomass. In line with that, my results also show that dissolved organic carbon is largely constituted of terrestrial substances irrespective of lake characteristics. Since bacteria co

Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) is a world-wide spread technique and nearly 50 AMS laboratories exist today. The most widely spread application of AMS is for radiocarbon dating and an estimated total of nearly 100000 14C samples are measured per year. Other isotopes used are 10Be, 26Al, 36Cl, 41Ca, 129I. The number of these measured per year is estimated to be 10% of the number of 14C samples

We describe two new variants of the recently identified hexa-EF-hand calcium binding protein secretagogin. The first variant (secretagogin-R22) is characterized by one single amino acid exchange (Q/R) at codon 22, most likely due to RNA editing. The second variant of secretagogin (setagin) consists of 49 amino acids. Due to a frame shift, only the first 27 amino acids are identical to secretagogin

Factors Affecting Coronary Flow in Children Elhadi H. Aburawi, MD, MSc, FRCPI, FRCPCH Division of Paediatric Cardiology, Department of Paediatrics, Lund University, Sweden Abstract Background: A number of inborn and exogenous factors influence the flow and function of the coronary arteries with possible consequences on the cardiovascular risk. The regulation of the coronary flow is partly dep

An algorithm for decoding Turbo codes that combines conventional Turbo decoding and list sequence maximum a posteriori probability decoding is presented and evaluated. Compared to previous results on this theme, performance improvements in the order of 0.7 dB are obtained for Turbo codes with 514-b pseudo-random interleaving at a frame error rate of 10(-4) on the additive white Gaussian noise chan

The introduction of avian malaria (Plasmodium relictum) to Hawaii has provided a model system for studying the influence of exotic disease on naive host populations. Little is known, however, about the origin or the genetic variation of Hawaii's malaria and traditional classification methods have confounded attempts to place the parasite within a global ecological and evolutionary context. Using f

OBJECTIVE: To analyse the frequency of some extrahepatic manifestations of chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection in northern European patients, including a postulated association between HCV and primary Sjogren's syndrome (SS). DESIGN: Cohort study. SETTING: Department of Medicine, Malmo University Hospital, Sweden. PATIENTS: Twenty-one patients with HCV infection and 53 with primary SS (accor

Popular Abstract in Swedish Stamceller i benmärgen reglerar balansen mellan att upprätthålla populationen av stamceller (självförnyelse) samt att producera mogna blodceller. Det finns flera studier om förmågan hos benmärgsderiverade stamceller att ge upphov till andra celltyper än blodceller, såsom hjärnceller, leverceller, muskel, hjärta, blodkärl, lungceller, tarm, hud och insulin-producerande Several studies have reported that bone marrow (BM)-derived stem cells have the capacity to give rise to cells of different type of tissue; an ability termed stem cell plasticity or transdifferentiation. Controversies exist as to how frequent this phenomenon is, or if it may be explained by alternative mechanisms. Here we have used different mouse models to study the potential plasticity of BM-der

Popular Abstract in Swedish Vad har den slaviskt inspirerade östersjökeramiken som arkeologer finner i Skandinavien med slaver att göra? Levde de som gäster i huset? Vikingen och hanseaten har sedan länge sina platser inbokade på den historiska scenen. Under äldre medeltid rörde sig även andra aktörer över Östersjöns vatten. Främmande gäster besökte och bosatte sig i Skandinavien. Bland dem fanns Scholarly texts on Slavic-Scandinavian relations have concentrated on two main areas of interest. During the Viking Age the economic and social contacts between the lake Mälaren district and Rus’ were extensive. However, at the beginning of the Middle Ages, political antagonism between the two expanding realms of the Svear and the Novgorodians is noticeable. In southern Scandinavia, the hostility

SNARE-proteins (soluble NSF-attachment protein receptor) are important for Ca2+-dependent exocytosis. We have used capacitance measurements and confocal imaging to dissect the role of synaptosomal protein of 25 kDa (SNAP-25) and syntaxin 1 in rapid exocytosis in insulin-secreting pancreatic ß-cells. Following immunoneutralization of syntaxin 1 and SNAP-25, exocytosis was strongly reduced and assoc