The demand for highly purified plasmids in gene therapy and plasmid-based vaccines requires large-scale production of pharmaceutical-grade plasmid. Plasmid DNA was selectively precipitated from a clarified alkaline lysate using the polycation poly(N,N'-dimethyldiallylammonium) chloride which formed insoluble polyelectrolyte complex (PEC) with the plasmid DNA. Soluble PECs of DNA with polycations h

Reduced fetal growth has been suggested as a possible risk factor for diabetic nephropathy. The aim of the present study was to examine whether there could be an association also with rapidly progressing severe retinopathy in younger type 1 diabetic patients. Maternal pregnancy, as well as birth parameters of 27 type 1 diabetic patients with severe retinopathy diagnosis at a median age of 25 years

Newly emerged females of the European pine sawfly, Neodiprion sertifer Geoffroy (Hymenoptera: Diprionidae), were placed on pine twigs in the field and their behavior was recorded. Twenty to 25% of the females attracted wild males and mated on the day of release. One-third to one-half of these females remained and oviposited, while the rest disappeared from their twigs after mating. The mating freq

BACKGROUND Autoinflammatory diseases manifest inflammation without evidence of infection, high-titer autoantibodies, or autoreactive T cells. We report a disorder caused by mutations of IL1RN, which encodes the interleukin-1-receptor antagonist, with prominent involvement of skin and bone. METHODS We studied nine children from six families who had neonatal onset of sterile multifocal osteomyelitis

A method of removing radiolabeled monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) from blood using a device external to the body, termed extracorporeal affinity-adsorption (EAA), is being evaluated as a means of decreasing irradiation of noncancerous tissues in therapy protocols. The EAA device uses an avidin column to capture biotinylated-radiolabeled mAbs from circulated blood. In this investigation, three trifunc

A comparison was made on the use of two spectrophotometric methods, the ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP) method and the 2,2 '-azinobis-3-ethylbenzotiazoline-6-sulfonic acid (ABTS) method, for the measurement of the total antioxidant capacity (TAC) of plant foods. The correlations of TAC measured by the two methods were highly significant in both water-soluble (r(2) = 0.90) and water-insolu

To successfully interact with a dynamic world, our actions must be guided by a continuously changing anticipated future. Such anticipations must be tuned to the processing delays in the nervous system as well as to the slowness of the body, something that requires constant adaptation of the predictive mechanisms, which in turn require that sensory information be processed at different time-scales.

The phosphorous (P) uptake efficiency, reduction of the soil extractable P, and the root morphology was determined for the four common grassland species Rumex acetosella, Viscaria vulgaris, Plantago lanceolata and Achillea millefolium in one pot cultivation and one microcosm experiment. Rumex acetosella produced more than tree times as much biomass as each of V. vulgaris, P. lanceolata and A. mill

Background The mechanism underlying the association between urban birth/upbringing and increased schizophrenia risk is unknown. This study explored whether an urban effect might be present in a low-income country setting, where the 'urban' environment may have radically different components, for example urban architecture, pollution levels or social cohesion. Aims To investigate the potential asso

During the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), ice thickened considerably and expanded toward the outer continental shelf around the Antarctic Peninsula. Deglaciation occurred between >14 ka BP and ca. 6 ka BP, when interglacial climate was established in the region. Deglaciation of some local sites was as recent as 4-3 ka BP. After a climate optimum, peaking ca. 4-3 ka BP, a distinct climate cooling occu

This paper addresses whether or not there is a relationship between a young science-based firm's patterns of connections and the associated resource flows, and its performance. Hypotheses derived from the literature are tested in relation to three performance indicators: inventiveness, innovativeness and employment. Analyzing a set of firms in Sweden, Ohio and Massachusetts, working with biocompat

Purpose-The paper seeks to describe the state-of-the-art, reasons for selecting various material planning methods, and modes of applying methods for initiating inventory replenishment of purchased items. It also identifies trends from 1993 to 2005. Design/methodology/approach-Empirical survey data are collected from Swedish manufacturing companies in 1993, 1999 and 2005. The MRP, re-order point, f

Body size is an important determinant of resource use, fecundity and mortality risk. Evolution of maturation size in response to size-dependent selection is thus a fundamental part of life-history theory. Increased mortality among small individuals has previously been predicted to cause larger maturation size, whereas increased mortality among large individuals is expected to have the opposite eff

Fatigue crack growth experiments in Inconel 718 subjected to high strain amplitudes at 650 degrees C have been conducted. In the study the effects of load amplitude, ratio and frequency have been investigated. It was found that crack growth is a mixture of cyclic and time dependent mechanisms, depending on the load frequency. The load frequency was also found to have a strong influence on the crac

Capsazepine as well as its derivatives and analogues are general inhibitors of constriction of human small airways. From a systematic variation of the capsazepine structure, divided into four regions, SARs were established. This part concerns the catechol moiety of the A-ring as well as the 2,3,4,5-tetrahydro-1H-2-azepine moiety (the B-ring) of capsazepine. It is revealed that a conformational con

A number of human-centred methodologies-subjective, objective, and combined-are used for slipperiness measurement. They comprise a variety of approaches from biomechanically-oriented experiments to psychophysical tests and subjective evaluations. The objective of this paper is to review some of the research done in the field, including such topics as awareness and perception of slipperiness, postu