AIM: To test how the quality of the outdoor environment of child day care centers (DCCs) influences children's health. METHODS: The environment was assessed using the Outdoor Play Environmental Categories (OPEC) tool; time spent outdoors, and physical activity as measured by pedometer. 172/253 (68%) of children aged 3.0-5.9 from nine DCCs participated in Southern Sweden. Health data collected were

Gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs) have a malignant potential varying from virtually no risk of recurrence (microscopic GISTs) to a high risk. Acquired secondary mutations that interfere with imatinib binding have been identified as a common mechanism for drug resistance and tumor progression in advanced GIST. Patients with advanced GIST but with a small tumor mass have the longest time to di

We report on properties of low-temperature (LT) ZnO films grown by the atomic layer deposition method with diethylzinc (DEZn) precursor. It is shown that the ZnO thin film crystallographic orientation, quality of the surface, and optical properties depend on the main growth parameters like temperature, pulsing, and purging time and thus can be varied in controllable manner. All the presented resul

Novel therapeutics to combat cancer are urgently needed. Most current pharmacological therapies have severe side effects and are seldom curative. Macromolecular drugs, and in particular nucleic acid based drugs, offer a potential remedy for this situation. Currently, the absence of efficacious and safe methods to deliver nucleic acids to intracellular sites of action is the main impediment to th

The aim of this doctoral thesis is to contribute to the debate on the importance of diet and disease in explaining the mortality decline and the general literature of the long-term effects of early life conditions. Using individual-level data from Southern Sweden for 1813 to 1968, this work measures the impacts of grain prices during the foetal stage and infant mortality rates during the year of b

In the Tunisian semiarid area, water erosion processes have led to negative economic and environmental consequences in a context of limited water resources. To characterize and predict these degradation phenomena, a comprehensive high-resolution data base on erosive rainfall, together with siltation records for 28 small reservoirs were analyzed. The studied small reservoir network displays a gener

Developing useful biological isoscapes for areas of the world is a priority. This is the case for Mexico that hosts a large percentage of North America's Neotropical migrant birds. Here we investigated the use of House Sparrow (Passer domesticus) feathers to create a spatially explicit feather deuterium isoscape for that country using samples (n=461) that were collected across Mexico. Considerable

This paper introduces a model of the atrioventricular node function during atrial fibrillation (AF), and describes the related ECG-based estimation method. The proposed model is defined by parameters that characterize the arrival rate of atrial impulses, the probability of an impulse choosing either one of the two atrioventricular nodal pathways, the refractory periods of these pathways, and the p

Oestrogen is not only a sex hormone but also an important regulator of the immune system. Expression of the heavy chain of IgM (mu) is essential for B-cell differentiation. However, a small number of IgA-positive B cells can be found in mice lacking the mu chain (mu MT-/-). The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of oestrogen on this alternative B-cell pathway in mu MT-/- mice. Our re

Samples of compositionally (highly) asymmetric diblock copolymers and, also, mixtures of diblock and triblock copolymers (the latter obtained as end-coupling products of two diblock molecules of the mixture), composed of (a) monodisperse majority block(s) of poly(styrene) (PS) and a polydisperse minority block of poly(methacrylic acid) (PMAA), microphase separate into spherical PMAA microdomains,

Abstract. We consider a of the forest fire model on graph G, where eachvertex of a graph becomes occupied with rate one. A fixed vertex v0 is hit by lightning with the same rate, and when this occurs, the whole cluster of occupied vertices containing v0 is burnt out. We show that when G = Z+, the times between consecutive burnouts at vertex n, divided by log n, converge weakly as n → ∞ to a random

Atmospheric aerosol samples from a boreal forest (Hyytiala, April 2007), a rural site in Hungary (K-puszta, summer 2008), a polluted rural area in Italy (San Pietro Capofiume, Po Valley, April 2008), a moderately polluted rural site in Germany located on a meadow (Melpitz, May 2008), a natural park in Spain (Montseny, March 2009) and two urban background locations (Zurich, December 2008, and Barce

Broad public contention against nuclear energy can be observed as a new phenomenon in Japanese society after the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident. This study aimed to identify a sufficient explanation about why the emergence of such a protest movement only occurred after the direct experience of a critical event and did not happen before. Discrediting a sole and simple grievance

Most bacteriophages are known to inject their double-stranded DNA into bacteria upon receptor binding in an essentially spontaneous way. This downhill thermodynamic process from the intact virion to the empty viral capsid plus released DNA is made possible by the energy stored during active packaging of the genome into the capsid. Only indirect measurements of this energy have been available until

This article examines how Colonialism — as a cosmologically informed process of profound existential and political implications — is understood, experienced and conceptualized by Aymara shaman activists. By contextualizing the term Colonialism this article reassesses not only the supposed postcolonial nature of the world, but also the distinctions between colonialism and coloniality.

The status of preservation of the historic brain specimen of C.H. Fuchs, C.F. Hermann, P.G. Lejeune Dirichlet, and C.F. Gauss from R. Wagner's collection from the 19th century has been investigated using modern magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques. A brief report on their properties and current status of preservation is given.