Background The general lack of clear associations between diet and breast cancer in epidemiological studies may partly be explained by the fact that breast cancer is a heterogeneous disease that may have disparate genetic associations and different aetiological bases. Method A total of 346 incident breast cancers in a prospective cohort of 17,035 women enrolled in the Malmo Diet and Cancer study (

In the bioconversion of lignocellulosic materials to ethanol, the cost of the raw material and the cost of the enzymes have been identified as the major costs for the product. In addition, many lignocellulosic materials contain considerable amounts of five-carbon sugars which are not easily fermented to ethanol. The possibility of improving the cost-intensive steps was investigated. The steam pre

Individual attitudes to distributions of life years between two groups in a society are explored by means of an experiment. Subjects are asked to place themselves behind a veil of ignorance which is specified in terms of risk (known probabilities) for some subjects and in terms of uncertainty (unknown probabilities) for some subjects. The latter is argued to be the appropriate interpretation of Ra

Modern industrial customers, such as pulp and paper industries, have increased the vulnerability to power quality problems. A voltage source converter based high-voltage direct current (VSC-HVDC) transmission has the potential to offer high power quality when transmitting large amount of power. Therefore, in this paper, a VSC-HVDC transmission is proposed to supply such industrial plants in order

In conjugated polymers the optical excitation energy transfer is usually described as Forster-type hopping between so-called spectroscopic units. In the simplest approach using the point-dipole approximation the transfer rate is calculated based on the interaction between the transition dipoles of two spectroscopic units. In the present work we compare this approach with three others: The line-dip

We investigated the protection from photoinhibition by different developmental stages of Haematococcus lacustris [Girod] Rostafinski using chlorophyll fluorescence measurements of single cells and suspensions. An overall correlation between higher cellular content of secondary carotenoids and the capacity to withstand excessive irradiation was observed in flagellated cells and aplanospores of H. l

The incorporation of caproic acid in the sn-1 position of phosphatidylcholine (PC) catalyzed by lipase from Rhizopus oryzae was investigated in a water activity-controlled organic medium. The reaction was carried out either as esterification or transesterification. A comparison between these two reaction modes was made with regard to product yield, product purity, reaction time, and byproduct form

Background: The rd1 mouse retina displays fast degeneration of photoreceptors resulting in a depletion of almost all rod photoreceptors by postnatal day 21 (PN21). To evaluate the role of proteinases in the pathophysiology of this animal model of retinitis pigmentosa, C3H rd1 and congenic wild-type (wt) mice retinas were analyzed. Material and Methods: The cellular localization and levels of prote

Objectives: To describe the patient-reported impact of urinary incontinence (UI) in treatment-seeking women in Europe. Design: PURE was a non-interventional, observational study, which aimed to describe the direct costs of treatment for European women seeking treatment for UI. A secondary Study objective was to describe the impact of UI on health-related quality of life (HRQoL) by UI subtype and s

The aim of this study was to illuminate the pattern of confusional episodes with regard to the content of elderly patients' actions and speech. Fifty-one (11.2%) out of 457 people admitted to an orthopaedic clinic developed acute confusional state. Non-participant direct observations and daily clinical bedside follow-up observations were made during the confusional episodes, focusing on the patien

The timing of the commencement of photosynthesis (P-*) in spring is an important determinant of growing-season length and thus of the productivity of boreal forests. Although controlled experiments have shed light on environmental mechanisms triggering release from photoinhibition after winter, quantitative research for trees growing naturally in the field is scarce. In this study, we investigated

This study shows signicant effects of protein surface charges on stability and these effects are not eliminated by salt screening. The stability for a variant of protein G B1 domain was studied in the pH-range of 1.5-11 at low, 0.15 M, and 2 M salt. The variant has three mutations, T2Q, N8D, and N37D, to guarantee an intact covalent chain at all pH values. The stability of the protein shows distin

Promoter methylation is a common phenomenon in tumours, including haematological malignancies. In the present study, we investigated 36 cases of high hyperdiploid (> 50 chromosomes) acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) with methylation-specific multiplex ligase-dependent probe amplification to determine the extent of aberrant methylation in this subgroup. The analysis, which comprised the promoters

Lakes and ponds are habitats of great human importance as they provide water for domestic, industrial and agricultural use as well as providing food. In spite of their fundamental importance to humans, freshwater systems have been severely affected by a multitude of anthropogenic disturbances, which have led to serious negative effects on the structure and function of these ecosystems. The aim of

The karyotypes (number, morphology and size of the chromosomes) of two algae species of Scenedesmus genus, S. incrassatulus and S. antennatus, were studied. The karyotype of S. incrassatulus (n=4) was asymmetric, characterized by two large metacentric, one large submetacentric and one small metacentric chromosomes. The karyotype assembly of S. antennatus (n=6) reveals two metacentrics and four sub