OBJECTIVE: The importance of human host defense peptide LL-37 in vascular innate immunity is not understood. Here, we assess the impact of LL-37 on double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) signaling in human vascular smooth muscle cells.MATERIALS AND METHODS: Cellular import of LL-37 and synthetic dsRNA (poly I:C) were investigated by immunocytochemistry and fluorescence imaging. Transcript and protein express

The present invention relates to a non-fermented composition having the ability to increase the formation of butyric acid in the colon and comprising at least one cereal based fraction and at least one isolated probiotic strain of Lactobacillus as well as the use of said non-fermented composition as a synbiotic and for treatment of the metabolic syndrome, ulcerative colitis, Crohns disease, Irrita

This open access book seeks to understand how politics is being made in a pluralistic sense, and explores how these political struggles are challenging and transforming gender, sexuality, and colonial norms. As researchers located in Sweden, a nation often cited as one of the most gender-equal and LGBTQ-tolerant nations, the contributions investigate political processes, decolonial struggles, and

This article contends that cultural, political and historical factors create a local political environment where de facto discrimination against women is the norm. Without thoroughly addressing and altering the underlying issues causing discrimination against women in politics, a weak quota system will not immediately lead to increased women's participation in Bali. This paper argues that the lead

The fate options of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) include self-renewal, differentiation, migration, and apoptosis. HSCs self-renewal divisions in stem cells are required for rapid regeneration during tissue damage and stress, but how precisely intracellular calcium signals are regulated to maintain fate options in normal hematopoiesis is unclear. S100A6 knockout (KO) HSCs have reduced total cell

The Common European Framework of Reference has stimulated research on the relation between linguistic competence and communicative competence. Such studies have often used linguistic measures from the Complexity-Accuracy-Fluency (CAF) paradigm to objectively tap into the linguistic competence of language learners; others have used Processability Theory. This study contributes to this research by m

An increased focus on sustainability and initiatives towards green supply chains raises new challenges for efficient inventory control. This doctoral thesis addresses the consequences some of these initiatives have on the modelling of inventory systems and the resulting policy variables. The overall research objective for the doctoral thesis can be stated as:To design mathematical models for evalu

In 2015, LIBER commissioned the “Working group on Research and Education”. The goal was to collect best practices in library support to both education and research, in part by examining user survey data. As a first step the group started a European LibQUAL consortium, which was evaluated in 2016. As a second step, a survey sent to all 301 European LIBER university libraries asking questions pertai

High-speed imaging of fuel sprays and combustion is conducted on a light-duty optical engine to investigate the effects of injector aging, with a focus on soot. The spray behaviors of one new and one aged injector are compared using Mie-scattering. In addition to this, the combustion process of a baseline diesel fuel and a blend with TPGME (tripropylene glycol monomethyl ether) are compared using

In this paper I want to examine some consequences that archival strategies of mass digitized environments might have on people’s relations to the history of recorded music. Archival strategies can make user-listeners connect tracks in surprising ways due to recommendation systems; they can make user-listeners get lost in the abundance of music; they can give user-listeners the impression that ther

An established MP2RAGE protocol for semi-quantitative structural brain MRI was transferred from one 7T MR scanner to that of another vendor featuring comparable hardware, but opposite polarity. On this system, the scan time could be reduced from 11 to 8 minutes, mainly by elliptical k-space sampling. Three configurations of radio-frequency (RF) transmission were compared (single channel with quadr