Information on past land cover in terms of absolute areas of different landscape units (forest, open land, pasture land, cultivated land, etc.) at local to regional scales is needed to test hypotheses and answer questions related to climate change (e.g. feedbacks effects of land-cover change), archaeological research, and nature conservancy (e.g. management strategy). The palaeoecological techniqu

Optimal migration theory predicts that birds minimizing the overall time of migration should adjust stopover duration with respect to the rate of fuel accumulation. Recent theoretical developments also take into account the wind situation and predict that there is a time window (a set of days) during which birds should depart when assisted by winds but will not do so if there are head winds. There

Background: The tuberculin skin test is used for tracing of tuberculosis transmission and identifying individuals in need of prophylactic treatment. Methods: Using a case-control study design, we recruited 220 smear-positive tuberculosis cases and 223 randomly selected healthy community controls in Bissau, Guinea-Bissau, during 1999-2000. Tuberculin skin tests were performed on family members of c

Objective: To compare the colloids 5% albumin, 4% gelatin, and 6% HES 130/0.4 with one another and with normal saline regarding their plasma expanding effects at increased permeability and to compare the results with those from a previous study at normal permeability. Design and setting: Prospective controlled randomized laboratory study in a university research laboratory. Subjects: 48 adult male

This paper aims to make a systematic study of human dura to establish the presence of fluid transport channels and their relationship to age. Samples of parasagittal dura from autopsy cases from mid-gestation to the ninth decade were examined by light microscopy. We have demonstrated the presence of unlined rounded spaces, uncommon in the fetus and neonate but increasingly evident after 30 weeks o

Changes in agricultural land-use have been suggested to contribute to the decline of several bird species through negative effects on their food supply during breeding. One important change in land-Use has been loss of pastures, especially permanent pastures. In this study we investigated how different forms of agricultural land-use affected foraging success or a declining bird species, the Europe

The effect of elevated UV-B radiation on CO2 exchange of a natural flark fen was studied in open-field conditions during 2003-2005. The experimental site was located in SodankylA in northern Finland (67 degrees 22'N, 26 degrees 38'E, 179 m a.s.l.). Altogether 30 study plots, each 120 cm x 120 cm in size, were randomly distributed between three treatments (n=10): ambient control, UV-A control and U

A high-resolution, well-dated dinoflagellate cyst record from a lagoon of the southeastern Swedish Baltic Sea reveals climate and hydrological changes during the Holocene. Marine dinoflagellate cysts occurred initially at about 8600 cal yr BP, indicating the onset of the Littorina transgression in the southeastern Swedish lowland associated with global sea level rise, and thus the opening of the D

Sucrose synthase (SuSy) is a key enzyme in the development of storage root of radish. Clarification of its spatial and temporal expression during the thickening growth of radish hypocotyl, which later develops into storage root, was carried out immunologically using light microscopy. Sequential harvests at 3, 7, 11 and 13 d after sowing (DAS) were performed on two radish cultivars having different

The study focuses on the rapid geometry change in ethyne, excited near the carbon 1s edge. Core excitation and ionization leads to population of dicationic states in ethyne. We study three competing dissociation pathways associated with deprotonation in the linear ethyne molecule, and two cases of rapid proton migration. We investigate the alignment of the molecule in the excited state, and find s

A metainformatics symposium provides an excellent opportunity to explore, discuss and investigate how configuration management techniques and principles can be expanded into new fields and how it itself can incorporate techniques from other fields

There has been little interest in the longitudinal movement of the arterial wall. It has been assumed that this movement is negligible compared with the diameter change. Using a new high-resolution noninvasive ultrasonic method, we measured longitudinal movements and diameter change of the common carotid artery of 10 healthy humans. During the cardiac cycle, a distinct bidirectional longitudinal m

Neuroblastoma, the most common extracranial tumor of childhood, is derived from neural crest progenitor cells that fail to differentiate along their predefined route to sympathetic neurons or sympatho-adrenergic adrenal cells. Although expression of the high-affinity neurotrophin receptors, TrkA and TrkB, is of major importance in neuroblastoma, the significance of the expression of the low-affini

Jurassic strata are extensively distributed in offshore areas of Scandinavia, but onshore exposures are mostly restricted to southern Sweden (Skane), the Danish island of Bornholm, East Greenland, northern Norway (Andoya) and Svalbard. The latest Triassic and Jurassic saw active tectonism in Scandinavia associated with the break-up of Pangaea and rifting in the North Atlantic region and the North

This paper compares conditions and costs for RES-E grid connection in selected European countries. These are Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Austria, Lithuania and Slovenia. Country specific case studies are presented for wind onshore and offshore, biomass and photovoltaic power systems, as based on literature reviews and stakeholder interviews. It is shown that, especially f

In order to explore the possible role of E-cadherin in familial cancer, 19 familial breast cancer patients, whose tumours demonstrated loss of heterozygosity (LOH) at the E-cadherin locus, were screened for germline mutations. No pathogenic germline alterations were detected in these individuals. However, a somatic mutation was found (49-2A-->C) in one of the tumours. This tumour showed a pattern

Based on a known observation that symplecticity is preserved under certain Sundman time transformations, adaptive symplectic integrators of an arbitrary order are constructed for separable Hamiltonian systems, for two classes of scaling functions. Due to symplecticity, these adaptive integrators have excellent long-time energy behaviour, which is theoretically explained using standard results on t

An integrated stratigraphic, paleoecological, and geochronological study of lake and fen sediments just beyond the terminus of Berendon Glacier provides insights into late Holocene climate, vegetation, and glacier change in the northern Coast Mountains of British Columbia. Cores collected from two small lakes in the foreland of Berendon Glacier and pits dug in a nearby fen record Little lee Age an