The objective of this study was to evaluate the concentrations of nutrients in stumps and coarse roots in Norway spruce, Scots pine and silver birch in Sweden, Finland and Denmark, and to assess how nutrient concentrations vary with site characteristics, stand age and root size. Concentrations of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K), calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg) and sodium (Na) in spruce, p

Anemia because of insufficient production of and/or response to erythropoietin (Epo) is a major complication of chronic kidney disease and cancer. The mechanisms modulating the sensitivity of erythroblasts to Epo remain poorly understood. We show that, when cultured with Epo at suboptimal concentrations, the growth and clonogenic potential of erythroblasts was rescued by transferrin receptor 1 (Tf

Galectin-3, a beta-galactoside binding, endogenous lectin, takes part in various inflammatory events and is produced in substantial amounts at inflammatory foci. We investigated whether extracellular galectin-3 could participate in the phagocytic clearance of apoptotic neutrophils by macrophages, a process of crucial importance for termination of acute inflammation. Using human leukocytes, we show

The low field ESR lineshape and the electron spin-lattice relaxation correlation function are calculated using the stochastic Liouville theory for an effective electron spin quantum number S = 1. When an axially symmetric permanent zero field splitting provides the dominant relaxation mechanism, and when it is much larger than the rotational diffusion constant, it is shown that both electron spin

Employing detailed atomistic modeling we study the mechanisms behind ion binding to proteins and other biomolecules and conclude that (1) small, hard ions bind via direct ion pairing to charged surface groups and (2) large, soft ions bind to nonpolar groups via a solvent assisted attraction. Our predictions are in qualitative agreement with bulk solution data and may provide an important clue for

The blade tip region encounters high thermal loads because of the hot gas leakage flows, and it must therefore be cooled to ensure a long durability and safe operation. A common way to cool a blade tip is to design serpentine passages with a 180 deg turns under the blade tip-cap inside the turbine blade. Improved internal convective cooling is therefore required to increase blade tip lifetime. Pin

Introducing a basis for further development of a risk-security model, this article discusses how such a model could be applied in an analysis of the area of youth employment. The article explores certain aspects of recent youth employment policies as expressed in union policies and in the national labour law of a number of EU Member States. Special attention is paid to national labour law reforms

Hematopoietic stem cells (HSC), the ancestors of all blood cells, have the ability to give rise to mature effector cells through a series of developmental steps. This is a tightly regulated, though a highly dynamic process: on the one hand, dysregulation in steady-state could lead to under- or overgrowth of certain blood cell lineages, whereas, on the other hand, demands for certain mature blood c

Dendroclimatic investigations of subfossil Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) from two raised bogs in southern Sweden yielded a continuous floating 1492-year long tree-ring record. By cross-dating with bog-pine chronologies from Lower Saxony, Germany, the South Swedish record was assigned an absolute age of 5219-3728 BC. The cross-match between ring-width chronologies from these two regions, separated

The Seebeck coefficient, a key parameter describing a material's thermoelectric performance, is generally difficult to measure, and no intrinsic calibration standard exists. Quantum dots and single electron tunneling devices with sharp transmission resonances spaced by many kT have a material-independent Seebeck coefficient that depends only on the electronic charge and the average device temperat

This article discusses opportunities and challenges of physical layer security integration in MaMIMO systems. Specifically, we first show that MaMIMO itself is robust against passive eavesdropping attacks. We then review a pilot contamination scheme that actively attacks the channel estimation process. This pilot contamination attack not only dramatically reduces the achievable secrecy capacity bu

The globular protein γB-crystallin exhibits a complex phase behavior, where liquid-liquid phase separation characterized by a critical volume fraction ϕc = 0.154 and a critical temperature Tc = 291.8 K coexists with dynamical arrest on all length scales at volume fractions around ϕ ≈ 0.3-0.35, and an arrest line that extends well into the unstable region below the spinodal. However, although the s

Reading utilises at least two neural pathways. The temporal lexical route visually maps whole words to their lexical entries, whilst the nonlexical route decodes words phonologically via parietal cortex. Readers typically employ the lexical route for familiar words, but poor comprehension plus precocity at mechanically 'sounding out' words suggests that differences might exist in autism. Combined

Background: A fundamental goal in chemical biology is the elucidation of on- and off-target effects of drugs and biocides. To this aim chemogenetic screens that quantify drug induced changes in cellular fitness, typically taken as changes in composite growth, is commonly applied. Results: Using the model organism Saccharomyces cerevisiae we here report that resolving cellular growth dynamics into

A search for the production of single top-quarks via flavour-changing neutral-currents is presented. Data collected with the ATLAS detector at a centre-of-mass energy of root s = 7 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 2.05 fb(-1), are used. Candidate events with a semileptonic top-quark decay signature are classified as signal- or background-like events by using several kinematic vari

Cancer survivors are advised to follow lifestyle recommendations on diet, physical activity, and body fatness proposed by the World Cancer Research Fund/American Institute of Cancer Research (WCRF/AICR) for cancer prevention. Previous studies have demonstrated that higher concordance with these recommendations measured using an index score (the WCRF/AICR score) was associated with lower cancer inc

This study investigated the predictors of aerobic fitness (VO2PEAK) in young children on a population-base. Participants were 436 children (229 boys and 207 girls) aged 6.7 +/- 0.4 yrs. VO2PEAK was measured during a maximal treadmill exercise test. Physical activity was assessed by accelerometers. Total body fat and total fat free mass were estimated from skinfold measurements. Regression analyses