Background: Heparin-binding protein is released by neutrophils during inflammation and disrupts the integrity of the alveolar and capillary endothelial barrier implicated in the development of acute lung injury and systemic organ failure. We sought to investigate whether oral administration of simvastatin to patients with acute lung injury reduces plasma heparin-binding protein levels and improves

Vision plays a paramount role in some spider families such as the Salticidae, Lycosidae and Thomisidae, as it is involved in prey hunting, orientation or choice of substrate. In the thomisid Misumena vatia, for which the substrate colour affects the body colour, vision seems to mediate morphological colour changes. However, nothing is known about which component of visual signals from the substrat

Most existing differential phase-contrast computed tomography (DPC-CT) approaches are based on three kinds of scanning geometries, described by parallel-beam, fan-beam and cone-beam. Due to the potential of compact imaging systems with magnified spatial resolution, cone-beam DPC-CT has attracted significant interest. In this paper, we report a reconstruction method based on a back-projection filtr

Background: Pro-inflammatory cytokines can affect intracellular lipid metabolism. A variety of effects have been described for different cell types; hepatocyte lipid turnover pathways are inhibited during inflammation, whereas interleukin-1 beta (IL-1 beta) reduces intracellular cholesterol levels in fibroblasts. Levels of the pro-inflammatory cytokines IL-1 beta and tumour necrosis factor-alpha (

InAs/GaSb nanowire heterostructures with thin GaInAs inserts were grown by MOVPE and characterized by electrical measurements and transmission electron microscopy. Down-scaling of the insert thickness was limited because of an observed sensitivity of GaSb nanowire growth to the presence of In. By employing growth interrupts in between the InAs and GaInAs growth steps it was possible to reach an in

A new method for calibrating the hadron response of a segmented calorimeter is developed and successfully applied to beam test data. It is based on a principal component analysis of energy deposits in the calorimeter layers, exploiting longitudinal shower development information to improve the measured energy resolution. Corrections for invisible hadronic energy and energy lost in dead material in

Damping off and chronic root rot of sugar beet caused by Aphanomyces cochlioides is a major constraint in cultivation of sugar beet, with occurrence of the disease in Sweden being concentrated to specific areas. This study examined soil factors that can be used for risk assessment of Aphanomyces root rot. Soils from 134 field plots were assessed over three years for Aphanomyces root rot potential

This paper explores a global trend where universities are collaborating with local government, industry and civic organisations to advance the sustainable transformation of a specific town, city or region. With empirical evidence, we argue that this function of ‘cocreation for sustainability’ could be interpreted as the seeds of an emerging, new mission for the university. We demonstrate that this

The forms of water and their thermal stability in bedded salt are crucial in determining the material's suitability for heat-generating nuclear waste storage. Here we show first-of-its-kind incoherent inelastic neutron scattering (IINS) results of bedded salts to distinguish three water environments: intergranular water molecules confined to grain boundaries, water trapped as brine in fluid inclus

A recursion for sequences of spectra of truncated as well as tailbitten convolutional codes and their duals is derived. The order of this recursion is shown to be less than or equal to the rank of the weight adjacency matrix (WAM) for the minimal encoder of the convolutional code. It is sufficient to know finitely many spectra of these terminated convolutional codes in order to obtain an infinitel

To investigate the reproducibility of thermal thresholds, as measured by repeated quantitative sensory testing (QST) in healthy controls, and to asses if temperature sensitivity differs between healthy controls and a cohort of patients with persistent pain.

Mazo, in 1975, showed that the signaling rate of a linear modulation can be significantly higher than the maximum rate for orthogonal signaling without any loss of minimum square Euclidean distance. In subsequent literature the highest such rate is referred to as the Mazo-limit. In this letter we ask whether there exists a Mazo-limit also on MIMO channels. The answer is yes, but it applies to the

Colour polymorphic species with extensive ranges often exhibit large-scale geographic patterns of morph frequency variation. Because colour polymorphism is associated with correlated differences in multiple traits, such as thermal performance, a likely proximate explanation for such patterns is morph-specific responses to temperature variation. The colour polymorphic Blue-tailed damselfly Ischnura

Nitrous oxide (N2O) is a potent greenhouse gas and of special concern in wastewater treatment. It is formed in biological wastewater treatment under both aerobic and anaerobic conditions. A major reason for high N2O emissions is low oxygen concentration during nitrification. In this full-scale study of N2O emissions from a sequencing batch reactor for treating digester supernatant, the oxygen conc

The aim of this study was to explore how acid deposition may affect the concentration and quality of dissolved organic matter (DOM) in soil-water. This was done by a small-scale acidification experiment during two years where 0.5 × 0.5 m(2) plots were artificially irrigated with water with different sulfuric acid content, and soil-water was sampled using zero-tension lysimeters under the O-horizon