During the fertilisation process in plants, pollen tube growth rate may be selected as a trait important in male to male competition. Since female morphology provides the necessary selective arena for such competition. we investigate if sexual selection theory can be used to explain the evolution of pistil length as a female choice mechanism. This choice is performed by direct interference with ma

During ultrafiltration (UF), the driving force along the membrane is diminished due to concentration increase and frictional pressure drop. In most applications of ultrafiltration the influence of the frictional pressure drop is negligible. However, when treating concentrated, viscous liquids the frictional pressure drop can reduce the transmembrane pressure (TMP) significantly. The influence of c

We studied the effects of dominance rank on fat deposition and hoarding behaviour in Willow Tits Parus montanus . Dominant individuals can displace subordinates which gives them priority to new food sources; they can also pilfer stored food from subordinates. This gives subordinates less certain access than dominants both to their own caches and to new food sources. Theory predicts that subordinat

This paper treats implementation of on-line procedures forautomatic performance monitoring. Two on-line detectionprocedures, one that detects oscillations in control loopsand one that detects sluggish control loops, are first summarized.The implementation aspects of these procedures are then discussedand experiences of their use in various industrial products aredemonstrated.

An insight into the latest developments in drug discovery through brief synopses of recent publications, summarizing the chemistry, pharmacological significance and biological relevance of new molecules.

The paper presents a novel method for detecting abrupt changes in mixture viscosities. This problem arises in numerous industrial applications and different solutions are suggested in the literature. An approach of using non-linear filtering for detection-an adaptive filter combined with a change detector-is outlined in this paper. As a case study, we present an ash stabilization batch mixing proc

Background. Previous studies have shown high rates of psychosis among Afro-Caribbean immigrants to the UK and immigrants to the Netherlands. Rates of schizophrenia-like psychoses (SLP), i.e. schizophrenia or other non-affective psychosis, among the native-born and immigrant populations were assessed in Malm, the city in Sweden with the highest proportion of immigrants.Methods. All adult patients a

Ultracentrifugation has been used as a tool for separating dough into different phases and as dough can be described as a bicontinuous system, gluten forms one phase, and starch another. The aim of this study is to investigate the possibility of using ultracentrifugation to extract gluten from dough. By using this method disadvantages such as excess washing, drying and reconstitution of dried glut

Background The Project on Research and Intervention in Monotonous work (PRIM) studied Danish workers for 3-4years to determine the effects of monotonous work. The present study is a subset of that cohort and compares prevalence and incidence differences of carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) between workers with highly repetitive work tasks and workers with varied work tasks. Methods The baseline study i

Emissions of biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOC) are a chief uncertainty in calculating the burdens of important atmospheric compounds like tropospheric ozone or secondary organic aerosol, reflecting either imperfect chemical oxidation mechanisms or unreliable emission estimates, or both. To provide a starting point for a more systematic discussion we review here global isoprene and monoter

Objective: Several studies have shown an increased risk of congenital foot derformities after early amniocentesis. These studies have comprised amniocenteses performed before 13 completed gestational weeks. In this study, the risk of foot deformities after amniocentesis performed at 12-14 completed gestational weeks was determined. Methods: 3,469 genetic amniocenteses in singleton pregnancies perf

Writers typically spend a certain proportion of time looking back over the text that they have written. This is likely to serve a number of different functions, which are currently poorly understood. In this article, we present two systems, ScriptLog+ TimeLine and EyeWrite, that adopt different and complementary approaches to exploring this activity by collecting and analyzing combined eye movemen

Background: Blunted nocturnal blood pressure dipping (NBPD) as well as high variability in blood pressure (BPV) and low variability in heart rate (HRV), are associated with increased cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. The aim of this study was to determine whether these traits are heritable. Methods: We studied 260 healthy siblings without antihypertensive drugs from 118 Swedish families. The

Traffic flow states are described as resulting from a stochastically driven system. Vehicles advance based on the energy profile of their surrounding traffic. We create a stochastic process generated from an ergodicity satisfying Markov chain whose system dynamics sample from the Gibbs distribution. Specifically, we employ Arrhenius microscopic dynamics in order to also capture non-equilibrium be

The timing of reproduction in birds varies considerably within populations and is often under strong natural selection. Individual timing within years is dependent on a range of environmental factors in addition to having an additive genetic basis. In vertebrates, an increasing amount is known about the molecular basis for variation in biological timing. The Clock gene includes a variable poly-glu

Antibody-based microarrays is a novel technology with great promise for high-throughput proteomics. The process of designing high-performing arrays has, however, turned out to be challenging. Here, we have designed the next generation of a human recombinant scFv antibody microarray platform for protein expression profiling of nonfractionated biotinylated human plasma and serum proteomes. The setup

A study in cats has shown that intracameral injection of calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) increases the outflow facility by four- to fivefold concomitant with a decrease in intra-ocular pressure (IOP). Since there are great differences in the anatomy of the aqueous outflow routes between cats and primates, we have examined the effects of CGRP in the cynomolgus monkey. The possible influence

Although randomized controlled trials (RCT) are the gold standard for establishing causation in clinical research, their aggregated results can be misleading when applied to individual patients. A treatment may be beneficial in some patients, but its harms may outweigh benefits in others. While conventional one-variable-at-a-time subgroup analyses have well-known limitations, multivariable risk-ba

Natural environments are usually composed of multiple sources for sounds. The sounds might physically differ from one another only as feature conjunctions, and several of them might occur repeatedly in the short term. Nevertheless, the detection of rare sounds requires the identification of the repeated ones. Adults have some limited ability to effortlessly identify repeated sounds in such acousti