Purpose: To prospectively compare nephrotoxicity and radiodensity of plasma hyperosmotic gadolinium chelates (attenuation-osmotic ratio of 1: 1) with those of plasma iso-osmotic iodine-based contrast media (attenuation-osmotic ratio of 3: 1 or 6: 1) after renal arteriography in ischemic porcine kidneys. Materials and Methods: The local animal care committee approved this study. The following contr

One of the most challenging problems in medical imaging is to ``see{''} a tumour embedded into tissue, which is a turbid medium, by using fluorescent probes for tumour labeling. This problem, despite the efforts made during the last years, has not been fully encountered yet, due to the non-linear nature of the inverse problem and the convergence failures of many optimization techniques. This paper

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

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

With the proper design of semiconductor tunneling barrier structures, we can inject low-energy electrons via resonant tunneling, and take out high-energy electrons via a thermionic process. This is the operation principle of our semiconductor heterostructure refrigerator (SHR) without the need of applying a temperature gradient across the device. Even for the bad thermoelectric material AlGaAs, ou

In this paper we extend the eliminant construction of Burchnall and Chaundy for commuting differential operators in the Heisenberg algebra to the q-deformed Heisenberg algebra and show that it again provides annihilating curves for commuting elements, provided q satisfies a natural condition. As a side result we obtain estimates on the dimensions of the eigenspaces of elements of this algebra in i

tRNA is the adaptor in the translation process. The ribosome has three sites for tRNA, the: A-, P-, and E-sites. The tRNAs bridge between the ribosomal subunits with the decoding site and the mRNA on the small or 30S subunit and the peptidyl transfer site on the large or 50S subunit. The possibility that, translation release factors could mimic tRNA has been discussed for a long time, since their

This paper presents a new method of studying mould activity as a function of water activity by measuring the heat produced by the fungal metabolism. During a measurement a small sample (

A new method for identifying and ranking critical components and sets of components in technical infrastructures is presented. The criticality of a component or a set of components is defined as the vulnerability of the system to failure in a specific component, or set of components. The identification of critical components is increasingly difficult when considering multiple simultaneous failures

The pathological constriction of cerebral arteries known as cerebral vasospasm (CVS) is with a delay of 4 to 10 days linked to subarachnoid hemorrhage. Several agents have been suggested as being responsible; amongst these perhaps 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) and endothelin-1 (ET-1) are the most prominent given their ability to elicit powerful constriction of cerebral arteries. Investigating both 5-

The aim of this study was to evaluate the antibody responses to different VIsE protein IR6 peptide variants and the synthetic C6 peptide in acute and convalescent (2-3 and 6 months) serum samples from Swedish patients with clinical erythema migrans (EM). Serum samples were prospectively collected from 148 patients with EM and compared to serum samples obtained from 200 healthy blood donors. The Ig

Although phenological matching between two and three trophic interactions has received some attention, it has largely been disregarded in explaining the lack of strong cascade dynamics in terrestrial systems. We studied the response of the specialist seed predator, Paroxyna plantaginis (Tephritidae) and associated generalist parasitoids (Chalcidoidea) to controlled fertilisation of individuals of

The exact elastodynamic scattering theory is constructed to describe the spectral properties of two- and more- cylindrical cavity systems, and compared to an elastodynamic generalization of the semi-classical Gutzwiller unstable periodic orbits formulas. In contrast to quantum mechanics, complex periodic orbits associated with the surface Rayleigh waves dominate the low-frequency spectrum, and alr

Nuclear spin relaxation by intermolecular dipole–dipole interactions between macromolecular and solvent nuclear moments forms the basis of a widely used method for investigating macromolecular solvation. In particular, intermolecular cross-relaxation [or nuclear Overhauser effect (NOE)] between protein and water protons has been used to probe the mobility of water molecules interacting with the pr

Background-Myocardial scarring from infarction or nonischemic fibrosis forms arrhythmogenic substrate. The Selvester QRS score has been extensively validated for estimating myocardial infarction scar size in the absence of ECG confounders. but has not been tested to quantify scar in patients with hypertrophy, bundle branch/fascicular blocks, or nonischemic cardiomyopathy. We assessed the hypothese

Bacterial endotoxins (BEs) are integrated part of Escherichia coli, a microorganism widely used for the production of recombinant proteins. BEs should be eliminated in the course of down stream processing of target protein produced by these bacteria. Supermacroporous monolith (continuous bed) columns, so called cryogel columns, with immobilized polyethyleneimine (PEI), polymyxin B (PMB) and lysozy