It has been proposed that vascular progenitor cells play an important role in vascular repair, but their possible clinical importance in cardiovascular disease has not been fully characterized. Vascular endothelial growth factor A, placental growth factor and stem cell factor (SCF) are three growth factors that are important in recruiting vascular progenitor cells. In this study, we investigated t

Ground-source heat pump systems use borehole heat exchangers to transfer heat to and from the ground. An important feature is the local thermal resistances between the heat carrier flow channels in the borehole and the surrounding ground. The counter-flow heat exchange between the pipes is also important, particularly for the axial temperature variation. These resistances can be represented by a t

Events with high energy isolated electrons, muons or tau leptons and missing transverse momentum are studied using the full e(+/-)p data sample collected by the H1 experiment at HERA, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 474 pb(-1). Within the Standard Model, events with isolated leptons and missing transverse momentum mainly originate from the production of single W bosons. The total sing

While each new generation of processors gets larger caches and more compute power, external memory bandwidth capabilities increase at a much lower pace. Additionally, processors are equipped with wide vector units that require low instruction level divergence to be efficiently utilized. In order to exploit these trends in ray tracing, we present an alternative to traditional depth-first ray traver

It is recognized that cooling methods incorporating micro-channel heat sinks with high capacities of heat removal are necessary for cooling of electronic devices. In this paper, based on a water-cooled smooth micro-channel heat sink, a series of rectangular-shaped flow obstructions are designed into a heat sink, and then the corresponding laminar flow and heat transfer have been analyzed numerical

In November 2011, the Third European Consensus Conference on Diagnosis and Treatment of Germ-Cell Cancer (GCC) was held in Berlin, Germany. This third conference followed similar meetings in 2003 (Essen, Germany) and 2006 (Amsterdam, The Netherlands) [Schmoll H-J, Souchon R, Krege S et al. European consensus on diagnosis and treatment of germ-cell cancer: a report of the European Germ-Cell Cancer

Background: Standardized techniques to detect HIV-neutralizing antibody responses are of great importance in the search for an HIV vaccine. Methods: Here, we present a high-throughput, high-content automated plaque reduction (APR) assay based on automated microscopy and image analysis that allows evaluation of neutralization and inhibition of cell-cell fusion within the same assay. Neutralization

Ett bråk passerar sällan obemärkt, tvärtom väcker det människors intresse och engagemang. Men vad innebär uppmärksamheten för bråkets utveckling? Hur hanteras en mellanmänsklig konflikt? Denna rapport berättar om bråkets betydelse, varierande förlopp och hantering i ungdomsvården utifrån etnografiskt material (observationer och intervjuer) från framför allt en institution, här kallad Silverbäcken.

Although patients undergoing hemodialysis treatment often suffer from cardiovascular disease, monitoring of cardiac rhythm is not performed on a routine basis. Without requiring any extra sensor, this study proposes a method for extracting a cardiac signal from the built-in extracorporeal venous pressure sensor of the hemodialysis machine. The extraction is challenged by the fact that the cardiac

ABSTRACT: Genetically engineered Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains are able to ferment xylose present in lignocellulosic biomass. However, better xylose fermenting strains are required to reach complete xylose uptake in simultaneous saccharification and co-fermentation (SSCF) of lignocellulosic hydrolyzates. In the current study, haploid Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains expressing a heterologous xy

The phenotype of smooth muscle cells is regulated by multiple environmental factors including mechanical forces. Mechanical stretch of mouse portal veins ex vivo has been shown to promote contractile differentiation by activation of the Rho-pathway, an effect that is dependent on the influx of calcium via L-type calcium channels. MicroRNAs have recently been demonstrated to play a significant role

We present a new class of iteratively decodable turbo-like codes, called braided convolutional codes. Constructions and encoding procedures for tightly and sparsely braided convolutional codes are introduced. Sparsely braided codes exhibit good convergence behavior with iterative decoding, and a statistical analysis using Markov permutors shows that the free distance of these codes grows linearly

Background: It has been suggested that changes in prostate-specific antigen (PSA) over time (ie, PSA velocity [PSAV]) aid prostate cancer detection. Some guidelines do incorporate PSAV cut points as an indication for biopsy. Objective: To evaluate whether PSAV enhances prediction of biopsy outcome in a large, representative, population-based cohort. Design, setting, and participants: There were 27