Summary Standard sperm parameters have a limited power for prediction of the chance of natural conception. Recent studies have indicated that the sperm chromatin structure assay (SCSA) DNA fragmentation index (DFI), a measure for the fraction of sperms with DNA damage, is associated with fertility in vivo. The aim of this study was to evaluate the value of this parameter for prediction of infertil

Electric and magnetic currents are essential to describe electromagnetic-stored energy, and the associated antenna Q and the partial directivity to antenna Q-ratio, D/Q, for arbitrarily shaped structures. The upper bound of previous D/Q results for antennas modelled by electric currents is accurate enough to be predictive. This motivates us to develop the analysis required to determine upper and/o

Popular Abstract in Swedish Varför är arbetslösheten bland ungdomar i Sverige tre gånger högre än arbetslösheten bland 25-64 åringar? Har kontakter och nätverk betydelse för ungdomsarbetslösheten? Den tes som drivs i denna avhandling menar att kontakter i form av överbryggande socialt kapital har betydelse för ungdomars möjlighet att få jobb och att ungdomars brist på socialt kapital leder till atYouth unemployment in Sweden has reached record levels during the first decade of the 21st century. In 1970, the unemployment rate for 20-24 year olds was approximately 2%. Now, forty years later, this rate has risen to 20%. Relative youth unemployment (youth unemployment in relation to unemployment for the 25-64 year olds) has also risen. Today, the unem¬ployment rate for 20-24 year olds is three

We compared the differences in median age at spermarche among 11 ethnic minorities in 2010, estimated the trends regarding age at spermarche in different ethnic minorities from 1995 to 2010, and explored the association of spermarche with body mass index (BMI).

Basal-like breast cancer (BBC) is a subtype of breast cancer with poor prognosis1, 2, 3. Inherited mutations of BRCA1, a cancer susceptibility gene involved in double-strand DNA break (DSB) repair, lead to breast cancers that are nearly always of the BBC subtype3, 4, 5; however, the precise molecular lesions and oncogenic consequences of BRCA1 dysfunction are poorly understood. Here we show that h

It is well known that user proximity introduces absorption and impedance mismatch losses that severely degrade multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) performance of handset antennas. In this work, we experimentally verified the potential of adaptive impedance matching (AIM) to mitigate user interaction effects and identified the main AIM gain mechanism in realistic systems. A practical setup includ

The finite element method is used to analyze the stability of a cantilever column resting on elastic foundation and subjected to an eccentric slave load at its free end. The analysis has been conducted according to Bernoulli-Euler and Timoshenko beam theories. Effects of the mass offset, coupling effects and damping has been taken into account.

BACKGROUND: There is a growing awareness of the importance of intracellular events in determining the outcome of infectious disease. To improve the understanding of such events, like phagosome maturation, we set out to develop a versatile technique for phagosome isolation that is rapid and widely applicable to different pathogens. RESULTS: We developed two different protocols to isolate phagosomes