Background: Asthmatic patients have higher microbiome diversity and an altered composition, with more Proteobacteria and less Bacteroidetes compared with healthy control subjects. Studies comparing airway inflammation and the airway microbiome are sparse, especially in subjects not receiving anti-inflammatory treatment. Objective: We sought to describe the relationship between the airway microbiom

The human-environment connection in the mostly rural drylands of sub-Saharan Africa forms a complex, interlinked system that provides ecosystem services. This system is susceptible to climatic variability that impacts the supply of its products, and high population growth, which impacts the demand for these products. When plants remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through the process of phot

In 2009 the Democratic Party of Japan came to power with a new foreign policy tailored to the regional and global power shift from the United States to China: a more equal relationship with the United States and improved relations with Japan’s Asian neighbours. Within nine months the new Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio resigned and the foreign policy shift was jettisoned by his successors. Conventio

China uses half the world’s annual coal consumption, since coal is the primary energy source for heating in urban areas, particularly in northern China. This entails significant challenges for urban air quality in China and for the global climate. Unlike the electricity and transportation sectors, the heating sector has received little attention from policy and research actors in China, despite ve

Through new tracking techniques, data on timing and routes of migration in long-distance migrant birds are accumulating. However, studies of the consistency of migration of the same individuals between years are still rare in small-sized passerine birds. This type of information is important to understand decisions and migration abilities at the individual level, but also for life history theory,

This paper is based on an ethnographic study conducted in Sweden and focuses on the emotional aspect, both its rhetoric and interaction, of the victim offender mediation process. The emotion culture is examined, as well as the basic feeling rules that tell victims and offenders how to feel, value, and manage their own, and the other party's feelings in the mediation process. If mediation is done '

Increased interest in hemicelluloses as a renewable source of biopolymers has resulted in an interest in hemicelluloses in process streams in pulp mills. The aim of this study was to compare potential positions for the withdrawal of hemicelluloses from mechanical pulp mills. Samples were withdrawn at a total of fourteen positions from two thermomechanical and two chemi-thermomechanical pulp mills.

BACKGROUND: Elevated plasma levels of heparin-binding protein (HBP) are associated with risk of organ dysfunction and mortality in sepsis, but little is known about causality and mechanisms of action of HBP. The objective of the present study was to test the hypothesis that HBP is a key mediator of the increased endothelial permeability observed in sepsis and to test potential treatments that inhi

Accurate predictions of net ecosystem productivity (NEPc) of forest ecosystems are essential for climate change decisions and requirements in the context of national forest growth and greenhouse gas inventories. However, drivers and underlying mechanisms determining NEPc (e.g., climate and nutrients) are not entirely understood yet, particularly when considering the influence of past periods. Here

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to explore the causes of variations in financial accounting and disclosure practices in a municipal setting highly influenced by governance reforms - the Swedish municipal waste management sector. This focus is motivated by the claim that recent governance reforms have made the organization of public services delivery more diversified and fragmented, which may hav

The signal crayfish (Pacifastacus leniusculus) was introduced to Sweden in 1960, and it has a high commercial and recreational value, but it may also have negative effects on native ecosystems. To better predict how climate warming will affect population dynamics of this cool-water crayfish, we explored the role of temperature and density dependence as explanatory factors of the subsequent years’

T cell receptor crossreactivity with different peptide ligands and biased recognition of MHC are coupled features of antigen recognition that are necessary for the T cell's diverse functional repertoire. In the crystal structure between an autoreactive, EAE T cell clone 172.10 and myelin basic protein (1-11) presented by class II MHC I-Au, recognition of the MHC is dominated by the Vβ domain of th

Recent literature stresses the increasing importance of global innovation networks as a new mechanism to organize innovation across geographical space. This paper investigates if institutional diversity, defined at the level of the firm, influences firms’ engagement in GINs. Institutional diversity provides knowledge about the institutional context of other countries, increased capabilities to dea

The currently available data on the distribution of C2 fracture subtypes is sparse. This study was designed to identify the proportions of the second cervical vertebra (C2) fracture subtypes and to present age and gender specific incidences of subgroups. A dataset of all patients treated between 2002 and 2014 for C2 fractures was extracted from the regional hospital information system. C2 fracture