With the elimination of Soviet state communism in the early 1990s, the ideational foundation of politics in the five Central Asian former Soviet republics had to undergo fundamental rebuilding. Instead of the defunct basis of Soviet-style Marxism-Leninism, the rulers of the suddenly independent Central Asian states urgently had to identify other ways and means of legitimizing their hold on power.

Background Breathlessness is prevalent in the general population and may be associated with adverse health outcomes. This study aimed to evaluate the association of breathlessness with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) events, cardiac events and all-cause mortality from middle-age throughout life. Methods Breathlessness was measured in 699, 55-year old men residing in Malmö, Sweden usin

Arabidopsis thaliana L. is a small flowering plant that is widely used as a model organism in plant biology. In the present study, we study the peripheral membrane protein ATEXPA23 from Arabidopsis thaliana L. using homology modelling and molecular docking. The microarray analysis shows expression of ATEXPA23 (AT5G39280) protein, which leads to loosening and extension of plant cell walls. This pro

This paper explores the urban form, demographic and socio-economic dependencies of walking, cycling and e-biking in Beijing based on a survey (N = 1427) of daily travel among residents in eight neighborhoods, enriched with urban form variables. The results show that walking is most frequently used, followed by cycling, which in turn is more frequent than e-biking. Walking and cycling are preferred

On the evening of 6 December 1933, members of the National Socialist Party of Sweden (SNSP, Sveriges Nationalsocialistiska Parti), at this time the most aggressive Nazi organisation in the country, violently attacked a lecture at Stockholm University. This gave rise to an extensive press debate; newspapers from left to right condemned the attack, which ended up being a propaganda fiasco for SNSP.

Objectives: Peripartum cardiomyopathy (PPCM) is a rare disease carrying a risk of death and chronic heart failure.It is unknown if women with PPCM have a family history of heart failure. We investigated the prevalence of heart failure and hypertension in first-degree relatives to women with PPCM. Methods: A cohort of 61 women with PPCM was identified through the nationwide Danish registers from 20

Several invertebrate and vertebrate species have been shown to align their body relative to the geomagnetic field. Many hypotheses have been proposed to explain the adaptive significance of magnetic body alignment outside the context of navigation. However, experimental evidence to investigate alternative hypotheses is still limited. We present a new setup to track the preferential body alignment

BACKGROUND: Hyperthyroidism is known to have a significant impact on quality of life (QoL), at least in the short term. The purpose of the present study was to assess QoL in patients 6-10 years after treatment for Graves' disease (GD) with radioiodine (RAI) compared to those treated with thyroidectomy or antithyroid drugs (ATD) as assessed with both thyroid-specific Thyroid-Related Patient-Reporte

Lysozyme is known to form equilibrium clusters at pH ≈ 7.8 and at low ionic strength as a result of a mixed potential. While this cluster formation and the related dynamic and static structure factors have been extensively investigated, its consequences on the macroscopic dynamic behavior expressed by the zero shear viscosity η 0 remain controversial. Here we present results from a systematic in

The ability to repair or promote regeneration within the adult human brain has been envisioned for decades. Until recently, such efforts mainly involved delivery of growth factors and cell transplants designed to rescue or replace a specific population of neurons, and the results have largely been disappointing. New approaches using stem-cell-derived cell products and direct cell reprogramming hav

Många medarbetare och chefer i offentlig sektor vittnar om hur detaljstyrning, överdriven formbundenhet och felriktad mätning hindrar dem från att göra ett gott arbete. De upplever att verksamheten styrs och leds med fjärrkontroll och med bristande lyhördhet för behoven längst ut i styrkedjan. Forskningen pekar i samma riktning. Det här leder inte bara till minskad motivation och arbetsglädje, uta

Controlled experiments on software variants enable e-commerce companies to increase sales by providing user-adapted functionality. Our goal is to understand how the context of experimentation influences tool support. We performed a case study at Apptus that develops algorithms for e-commerce. We investigated how the case company uses experiments through five semi-structured interviews. We identifi

Gravitational instabilities play an important role in galaxy evolution and in shaping the interstellar medium (ISM). The ISM is observed to be highly turbulent, meaning that observables like the gas surface density and velocity dispersion depend on the size of the region over which they are measured. In this work, we investigate, using simulations of Milky Way-like disc galaxies with a resolution