The eyes of visually prominent animals such as vertebrates, cephalopods, and arthropods generally subserve a multitude of visual tasks. Naturally, early stages in the evolution of these complex visual organs must have been simpler, and subserved a smaller number of visual tasks. Hence, eye evolution is driven by a consecutive accumulation of visual tasks. Each task adds to the requirements on eye

Background. Describing the illness-story from a patient perspective could increase understanding of living with a chronic disease for health professionals and others, facilitate decision-making about treatment and enhance information about the outcome from a patient perspective. Aim. To illuminate patients' illness experiences of having a gastro-oesophageal reflux disease (GORD), going through sur

We analysed the relative importance of individual versus institutional factors in explaining variations in the utilisation of physician services among the 50+ in ten European countries. The importance of the latter was investigated, distinguishing between organisational (explicit) and cultural (implicit) institutional factors, by analysing the influence of supply side factors, such as physician de

Understanding individual and population responses to climate change is emerging as an important challenge. Because many phenotypic traits are sensitive to environmental conditions, directional climate change could significantly alter trait distribution within populations and may generate an evolutionary response. In species with environment-dependent sex determination, climate change may lead to

The Strategic Systemic Thinking (SST) framework is presented as a stepping stone towards enabling the refocusing of organizational analysis in Information Systems (IS). The paper introduces some of the fundamental assumptions regarding the objectives of the SST framework; such as sense making as learning processes build upon communicative actions. The main concepts of the SST framework are present

T cells obtained in a mouse model for rheumatoid arthritis are activated by a glycopeptide fragment from rat type II collagen (CII) bound to the class II major histocompatibility complex A(q) molecule. We report a comparative model of A(q) in complex with the glycopeptide CII260-267. This model was used in a structure-based design approach where the amide bond between Ala(261) and Gly(262) in the

Stiffness measurements were performed on smooth muscle preparations from guinea-pig taenia coli to obtain information on the number of attached cross bridges under varying contractile conditions. The normalized stiffness of the cross-bridge system in smooth muscle may be of a magnitude similar to that assumed in skeletal muscle. Transition from isometric contraction to unloaded shortening was asso

Previously, we found that emergence of the X4 viral phenotype in HIV-1-infected children was related to the presence of X4 in their mothers (C. H. Casper et al., J Infect Dis 2002; 186: 914-921). Here, we investigated the origin of the X4 phenotype in the child, analyzing two mother-child pairs (Ma-Ca, Mb-Cb) where the mothers carried X4 and their children developed X4 after an initial presence of

Negative potassium (K) balances have been reported from grass-dominated organic systems in several European countries, and in these systems delivery of K from soil primary minerals by weathering is probably crucial to sustained productivity. Mass balances and K budgets have been made at eight grass-dominated experimental agricultural systems, one each in Scotland and Sweden and six in Norway. Wher

Objectives: To investigate if the detection of celiac disease (CD) in children was improved by using alternative conjugates for assessment of tissue transglutaminase (tTG) autoantibodies. Methods: Serum samples from 108 biopsy confirmed CD children and 42 control subjects were investigated for the presence of autoantibodies with tTG coated microplates using protein A (PA), protein G (PG), anti-IgG

We generalize a recently developed polymer density functional theory (PDFT) for polydisperse polymer fluids to the case of semiflexible (stiff) polymers. As with our earlier work on flexible polymers, we show here that the generalization of the PDFT to polydisperse: mixtures of semiflexible chains allows us to obtain a remarkable simplification of the solution algorithm, compared to the monodisper

The evolution of reproductive isolation in the presence of gene flow is supported by theoretical models but rarely by data. Empirical support might be gained from studies of parallel hybrid zones between interbreeding taxa. We analysed gene flow over two hybrid zones separating ecotypes of Littorina saxatilis to test the expectation that neutral genetic markers will show site-specific differences

Pressurized ventilation acts to increase the oxygen supply to roots and rhizomes in some species of emergent plants. In a greenhouse experiment, we investigated how pressurized ventilation affected growth, biomass allocation and mineral content of Phragmites australis in two water depths (15 cm or 75 cm) and two substrates (organic sediment or sand). Through perforating each stem above the water s

We discuss the human impact of the forests of north-western Europe, especially changes in disturbance regimes and changes in the density of important features for biodiversity preservation. In southern Sweden, human impacts have decreased densities of old (>150 years) living trees and large (DBH>40 cm) dead trees to less than 1% of their original densities. In the same fashion, forest fires have d

Software inspections have been introduced in software engineering in order to detect faults before testing is performed. Reading techniques provide reviewers in software inspections with guidelines on how they should check the documents under inspection. Several reading techniques with different 16 purposes have been introduced and empirically evaluated. In this paper, we describe a reading techni