Thermodynamic stability of an alkaline protease from a new alkaliphilic Nesterenkonia sp. AL-20, was investigated and compared with that of Subtilisin Carlsberg. The amount of calcium bound to the AL-20 protease was determined to be only about 0.14 mol/mol of protease. Differential scanning calorimetry scan of the enzyme at increasing temperature showed the denaturation of the enzyme to be a two-s

We present a batch method for recovering Euclidian camera motion from sparse image data. The main purpose of the algorithm is to recover the motion parameters using as much of the available information and as few computational steps as possible. The algorithm thus places itself in the gap between factorisation schemes, which make use of all available information in the initial recovery step, and s

Different bases were used for the pretreatment of Rice bran biomass. Pretreatment with bases such as NaOH, Ca(OH)(2) and Al(OH)(3) were found to improve biosorption capacity. But in Rice bran, treatment with 0.5 M NaOH increased its nickel selective adsorption ability very much. The main binding site of nickel in NaOH treated cells is assumed to be carboxylic, hydroxyl, sulphate, phosphate and ami

1 Islands representing four stage classes, dated by their height above sea level, in a Baltic land uplift area were used to study genet level dynamics during colonization of the clonal moss Hylocomium splendens. Allozyme electrophoresis involving 10 polymorphic loci enabled accurate identification of 103 haplotypes from a sample of 694 shoots collected along transects across 10 islands. 2 The popu

The aim of this study was to investigate what nurses do to improve the health of men who are receiving radiotherapy treatment due to prostate cancer. The method was a literature review using a systematic approach. The Cochrane Library, Medline and CINAHL databases were used in a search that covered the period from January 1994 to April 2006. The screening of 200 abstracts resulted in 14 articles c

Book reviews: Buzan, Barry and Richard Little, International Systems in World History: Remaking the Study of International Relations (reviewed by Martin Hall); Denemark, Robert A., Jonathan Friedman, Barry K. Gills and George Modelski (eds.), World System History: The Social Science of Long Term Change (reviewed by Martin Hall); Hobden Stephen and John Hobson(eds.), Historical Sociology of Interna

The idea of applying extracorporeal immunoadsorption (ECIA) in radioimmunodiagnosis and radioimmunotherapy has been proposed previously. The authors here report on the development of new concept using a general method for ECIA based on biotinylated MoAb adsorbed on an avidin column. Athymic rats heterotransplanted with either human melanomas or human lung carcinoma were injected with iodine-125-la

Objective. The phenotypic complexity, together with the multifarious nature of the so-called schizophrenic psychoses, limits our ability to form a simple and logical biologically based hypothesis for the disease group. Biological markers are defined as biochemical, physiological or anatomical traits that are specific to particular conditions. An important aim of biomarker discovery is the detectio

Conformational disorder of conjugated polymers is an important issue to be understood and quantified. In this paper we present a new method to assess the chain conformation of conjugated polymers based on measurements of intrachain energy transfer. The chain conformation is modeled on the basis of monomer-monomer interactions, such as torsion, bending, and stretching of the connecting bond. The la

Migratory birds use multiple sources of compass information for orientation, including the geomagnetic field, the sun, skylight polarization patterns and star patterns. In this paper we review the results of cue-conflict experiments designed to determine the relative importance of the different compass mechanisms, and how directional information from these compass mechanisms is integrated. We focu

In the spectrum of an emission-line region ejected from the massive star Eta Carinae, called the strontium filament (SrF), forbidden lines from many elements, in particular [Sr II] and [Ti II], are observed. These lines are strong in this specific region and valuable for plasma diagnostics. Forbidden lines are not easily produced in laboratory light sources and the atomic parameters for these line

Background. The prevalence of Helicobacter pylori infection is inversely associated with socioeconomic conditions in childhood. In Estonia, a high prevalence of H. pylori infection has been observed among children born in 1987 and earlier. Since 1991, after the dissolution of the USSR, profound social and economic changes have taken place in the country. The aim of the study was to evaluate change

The aim was to study if exposure to an enriched environment influenced graft-host interface and neuronal markers in neocortical grafts implanted in cortical infarct cavities 3 weeks after distal ligation of the middle cerebral artery in adult hypertensive rats. Half the rats were exposed to an enriched environment for 2 h daily 5 days a week starting 1 week after the arterial ligation. The brain w

Six tydeid mite species assigned to two genera are described and illustrated: Metalorryia anchisi n. sp. and Tydeus onestiae n. sp. from mosses, lichens and decaying wood; Tydeus belfiori n. sp. and T. armindae n. sp. from lichens and bark of old apple trees; Tydeus ramiri n. sp. from lichens and mosses of Pinus and Sphagnum moss on the ground; and Tydeus serpettae n. sp. from mosses on stones nea

Territorial animals maintain a certain distance to neighbouring conspecifics, presumably leading to a regular spatial pattern through social spacing. Nevertheless, most animal populations are assumed to show aggregation at certain distance ranges, reflecting the scale dependency of spatial patterns. Leucorchestris arenicola (Araneae: Sparassidae) is a burrow-living spider species that shows territ

This study evaluated the relationship between the activity of the inflammatory indicator adenosine deaminase (ADA) in placental tissue and maternal and fetal (umbilical cord) plasma and the severity of pre-eclampsia. Maternal and umbilical vein whole blood and placental tissue samples were collected from women with normal pregnancies (n = 33) and patients with mild (n = 12) or severe (n = 17) pre-

We report on the shear induced transition from the L-3- to the L-alpha-phase studied by means of flow birefringence using the system pentaethyleneglycol monododecylether (C12E5), decane, water. The dependence of the critical shear rate, at which the transition from the isotropic state to the anisotropic takes place, on membrane volume fraction was studied in temperature ramp experiments at differe

In this prospective, case-control study, femoral neck diameter, cross-sectional moment of inertia, or section modulus was an independent predictor of hip fracture risk after adjustment for BMD. However, the contribution of each of these indices to hip fracture prediction was modest in the presence of BMD. Introduction: The relative contribution of measures of hip strength to hip fracture predictio

Objective. To investigate the perinatal adaptive response of the adrenal blood flow/adrenal fractional moving blood volume (AFMBV) and carotid blood flow (CBF), in sheep fetuses subjected to severe acute intrauterine hypoxia/asphyxia induced by total cord occlusion.Methods. Adrenal blood flow velocity, AFMBV and CBF were measured in 13 exteriorized fetal sheep; eight of them underwent total umbili