BACKGROUND: Recent reports suggest the presence of conduction delay in the posterior septal region during sinus rhythm in patients with lone paroxysmal atrial fibrillation (AF). OBJECTIVE: To explore the location of intra-atrial conduction delay associated with initiation of AF. DESIGN: In 8 lone AF patients (51 +/- 10 years), 20 AF paroxysms were induced during electrophysiological examination. B

The effects of authentic nitric oxide (NO, 10(-6) M) and NO-donors such as sodium nitroprusside (SNP, 10(-5) M) and glyceryl trinitrate (GTN, 10(-4) M) on contractile force and free intracellular calcium level ([Ca2+],) were studied on precontracted with high potassium chloride (KCI, 70 mM) isolated rings of rat tail artery. The sensitivity of contractile myofilaments to Ca2+ was measured using ch

The spen-nine analogue N-1,N-11-diethylnorspermine (DENSPM) efficiently depletes the cellular pools of putrescine, spermidine and spermine by down-regulating the activity of the polyamine biosynthetic enzymes and up-regulating the activity of the catabolic enzyme spermidine/spermine N-1-acetyltransferase (SSAT). In the breast cancer cell line L56Br-Cl. treatment with 10 muM DENSPM induced SSAT act

A kinematic hardening plasticity model valid for finite strains is presented. The model is based on the well-known multiplicative split of the deformation gradient into an elastic and a plastic part. The basic ingredient in the formulation is the introduction of locally defined configurations center configurations- which are associated with deformation gradients that are used to characterize the k

We summarise the findings of arthropods collected by fogging the canopy of 24 pine trees in two sites in Eastern and Western Norway. From the samples, taken in 1998 and in 1999, almost 30,000 specimens were determined to 512 species, with Diptera being most species rich (210 species), followed by Coleoptera (76 species) and Araneae (49 species). Of the 96 new species records, nine were new to scie

Mild heat treatment of carrot slices as a pre-treatment for frozen storage was accomplished by exposure of slices to radiant heat to maximise thermal exposure of the cells at the surface while preserving the integrity of cells within the slices. Cell damage as a consequence of this treatment on texture was evaluated. Carrot slices treated for 7 s with radiant energy in the far-infrared region from

Since conflict prevention is a visionary strategy it has beer difficult to put it into practice. This article explores conflict prevention in practice as well as in theory. There have been several attempts by the international community to take a proactive rather than a reactive approach to conflict management. One case often held up as a model for post Cold War prevention is the preventive missio

We establish the local well-posedness for a recently derived model that combines the linear dispersion of Korteweg-de Veris equation with the nonlinear/nonlocal dispersion of the Camassa-Holm equation, and we prove that the equation has solutions that exist for indefinite times as well as solutions that blow up in finite time. We also derive an explosion criterion for the equation, and we give a s

In this article we report Si 2p core-level spectroscopy results from the alkali (Li, Na, and K) induced Si(111)-3 x 1 reconstructions. The experimental results are compared to the theoretical honeycomb-chain channel (HCC) model for,the 3 x 1 reconstruction using density functional theory (DFT) to calculate core-level shifts using both initial and final-state calculation schemes. Si 2p core-level s

Urinary hexahydrophthalic acid (HHP acid) levels were determined in 20 workers occupationally exposed to hexahydrophthalic anhydride (HHPA) air levels of 11-220 micrograms/m3. The levels of HHP acid in urine increased rapidly during exposure and the decreases were also rapid after the end of exposure. The elimination half-time of HHP acid was 5 h, which was significantly longer than in experimenta