Continuous dopaminergic stimulation (CDS) has become one of the main concepts in present Parkinson's disease (PD) research. This is based on the assumption that CDS, or rather near CDS, is the normal striatal setting in a healthy individual. In PD, the degeneration of dopaminergic neurons leads to a reduced capacity to buffer dopamine, which could increase the vulnerability to a pulsatile administ

Purpose: We wanted to compare optic nerve head topography measurements and discrimination between normal and glaucomatous eyes with two entirely different three-dimensional optic disc imaging techniques, confocal scanning laser tomography (Heidelberg Retina Tomograph, Heidelberg Engineering) and raster tomography (Glaucoma-Scope, Ophthalmic Imaging Systems). Methods: Both eyes of 225 normal subjec

Silks spun by spiders and insects are independently evolved proteinaceous biomaterials with fascinating physical properties attracting scientists from a wide range of disciplines using a wide range of analytical tools. Here we demonstrate the suitability of neutron small angle scattering (SANS) to investigate the morphology and structure of native silk fibroin at near in vivo conditions. Comparing

Spider silks combine basic amino acids into strong and versatile fibers where the quality of the elastomer is attributed to the interaction of highly adapted protein motifs with a complex spinning process. The evaluation, however, of the interaction has remained elusive. Here, we present a novel analysis to study silk formation by examining the secondary structures of silk proteins in solution. Us

Spidroins, the major silk proteins making up the spider's dragline silk, originate in two distinct tissue layers (A and B) in the spider's major ampullate gland. Formation of the complex thread from spidroins occurs in the lumen of the duct connected to the gland. Using pH-sensitive microelectrode probes, we showed that the spidroins traveling through the gland and duct experience a monotonic decr

The laccase producing fungus HC1 was isolated from a sample collected in the Bolivian Amazon region. Analysis of 5.8S and 28S rDNA, and internal transcribed spacer 1 and 2 sequences revealed that isolate HC1 belongs to genus Galerina. High production of laccase was achieved in basal salt medium supplemented with 30 g L-1 glucose, 10 g L-1 yeast extract and 0.01 g L-1 copper sulphate. The enzyme pr

In robotics, there has been a growing interest in expressing actions as a combination of meaningful subparts commonly called motion primitives. Primitives are analogous to words in a language. Similar to words put together according to the rules of language in a sentence, primitives arranged with certain rules make an action. In this paper we investigate modeling and recognition of arm manipulatio

We address the problem of unsupervised discovery of action classes in video data. Different from all existing methods thus far proposed for this task, we present a space-time link analysis approach which consistently matches or exceeds the performance of traditional unsupervised action categorization methods in various datasets. Our method is inspired by the recent success of link analysis techniq

The representation of human movements for recognition and synthesis is important in many application fields such as: surveillance, human-computer interaction, motion capture, and humanoid robots. Hidden Markov models (HMMs) are a common statistical framework in this context, since they are generative and are able to deal with the intrinsic dynamic variation of movements performed by humans. In thi

Thermal performance curves (TPCs) are intended to approximate the relationship between temperature and fitness, and are commonly integrated into species distributional models for understanding climate change responses. However, TPCs may vary across traits because selection and environmental sensitivity (plasticity) differ across traits or because the timing and duration of the temperature exposure

Despite the enormous amount of attention CH 3 NH 3 PbI 3 has received, we are still lacking an in-depth understanding of its basic properties. In particular, the directional mechanical and structural characteristics of this material have remained elusive. Here, we investigate these properties by monitoring the propagation of longitudinal and shear phonons following the absorption of a femtosecond

Denne teksten presenterer en side av Marx' filosofi som ikke har fått like mye oppmerksomhet som hans kapitalismekritikk, nemlig hans kritikk av menneskerettighetene. FNs menneskerettighetserklæring regnes i dag som det viktigste dokumentet for internasjonalt samarbeid. Til sammenligning er Marx' syn at menneskerettighetene skaper egoisme og svekker kollektivets samhold. Teksten presenterer dette

The concept of coordination sphere (CS) is central to the rational development of hierarchical molecular assemblies in modern chemistry. Manipulating the organization around transition metal ions with covalent and supramolecular interactions is a general strategy that underlies most synthetic protocols. Achieving similar control for photoexcited molecular complexes is necessary to advance the des

A method is presented for assessing daylighting quality based on metrics related to illuminance, distribution, glare and directivity. The calculations are done using the programs RADIANCE and DAYSIM for a south-west and a north-west oriented offices in the CDP building in Montreal (latitude 45° 30'N). The results indicate that the following set of metrics is the most useful for assessing the dayli

Aims: A single cryoballoon (CB) application per vein for pulmonary vein isolation (PVI) in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) could save time and was therefore compared to the standard approach of two consecutive CB applications for acute and long-term efficacy and safety.Methods and results: Patients with symptomatic AF were randomized to a single CB application per vein guided by an Achieve®

The pandemic of chronic non-communicable diseases (NCDs) poses substantial challenges to the health financing sustainability in high-income and low/middle income countries (LMICs). The aim of this review is to identify the bottle neck inefficiencies in NCDs attributable spending and propose sustainable health financing solutions. The World Health Organization (WHO) introduced the "best buy" concep