The potential of a nucleic acid-based optical bioprobe for environmental measurements and drug monitoring is described. The sensor employs the long-wavelength intercalating fluorophore TO-PRO-3 (TP3). Compounds that interact with the TP3-DNA complex are indirectly detected by a decrease in the fluorescence intensity. We found that the configuration and length of the DNA dramatically affected the i

Organ-specific or endocrine autoimmune diseases are complex, polygenic afflictions the penetrance of which is heavily dependent on various environmental influences. Important target tissues are the thyroid, the islets of Langerhans, gastric parietal cells and steroid-producing cells in the adrenal and ovary. The etiology of these diseases remains to be clarified. The pathogenesis is strongly assoc

Highly efficient washing and extraction of microbeads to decomplex analytes ranging from small peptides to large viruses was realised in a microscaled continuous flow format. The bead washing principle reported herein is based on acoustophoresis, i.e. the primary acoustic radiation force in an ultrasonic standing wave and laminar flow properties are utilised to translate bioanalytes trapped on fun

A simple turbidimetric method was developed to measure the bulk concentration of drug in nanosuspensions. The bulk concentrations measured were in the range from 1 mu M to 1 mM. The accuracy of the method was checked by determination of the bulk concentration of crystalline nanosuspensions, i.e., the crystalline solubility, which compared favorably to solubilities measured by a conventional method

Some problems in mechanics, e.g. in bearing simulation, contain subsystems that are conservative as well as weakly dissipative subsystems. Our experience is that geometric integration methods are often superior for such systems, as long as the dissipation is weak. Here we develop adaptive methods for dissipative perturbations of Hamiltonian systems. The methods are "geometric" in the sense that th

Objective: To examine the efficacy of sibutramine together with brief lifestyle modification for weight reduction in obese women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). Design: Investigator-initiated, multicenter, double-blind, randomized, parallel-group clinical trial. Setting: Departments of Obstetrics and Gynecology in primary care, referral centers, and private practice. Patient(s): Forty-two p

We review our recent studies of cerebellar neuronal organization, emphasizing that consideration of organizational features of cerebellar circuitry represents a necessary step toward the understanding of how the cerebellum does what it does, in terms of both its internal information processing and its interaction with other motor structures.

Amplification of 11q13 DNA sequences and overexpression of CCND1 are common findings in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC), identified in about 30% of the cases. However, little is known about initiation of the amplification and the organization of the amplicon. In order to study the structure of the amplicon in more detail and to learn more about the mechanisms involved in its initiati

The effects of UV-B radiation on the gas exchange rates, chlorophyll fluorescence, pigmentation, soluble sugars, starch, soluble proteins and carboxylating enzyme activities of maize (Zea mays L.) were investigated at four levels of applied nitrogen (0, 100, 200 and 300 kg ha−1 of N) under Mediterranean field conditions. The experiment simulated a 20% stratospheric ozone depletion over Portugal. S

Background Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is a multifactorial disease in which environmental triggers interact with genetic variants in the predisposition to the disease. A number of common variants have been associated with T2D but our knowledge of their ability to predict T2D prospectively is limited. Methods and Findings By using a Cox proportional hazard model, common variants in the PPARG (P12A), CAPN

ResA is an extracytoplasmic membrane-bound thiol-disulfide oxidoreductase required for cytochrome c maturation in Bacillus subtilis. Previous biochemical and structural studies have revealed that the active-site cysteinyls cycle between oxidized and reduced states with a low reduction potential and that, upon reduction, a hydrophobic cavity forms close to the active site. Here we report in vivo st

Patients are supposed to be given care according to their needs. This concept is, however, difficult to define and patients and caregivers may have different opinions about a patient's needs. Twenty patients were interviewed and asked to give a definition of need, describe their needs while hospitalized and depict what they do to make sure their needs are fulfilled. Ten groups of needs were identi

Abstract. This paper presents an optimal predictor of level crossings, catastrophes, for autoregressive moving-average processes, and investigates the performance of the predictor. The optimal catastrophe predictor is the predictor that gives a minimal number of false alarms for a fixed detection probability. As a tool for evaluating, comparing and constructing the predictors a method using operat

Detailed mineral (rock) magnetic measurements, including high-resolution magnetic hysteresis loops, were carried out on three sediment cores recovered from the Reykjanes Ridge in the North Atlantic. Supported by physical grain-size analyses, titanomagnetite grain-size variations form a proxy of the speed of near-bottom currents and reveal a cyclic ""saw-tooth'' pattern between Dansgaard-Oeschger c

Abstract is not available. This is the final, accepted and revised manuscript of this article. Use alternative location to go to the published article. Requires subscription. The original publication is available at springerlink.com.

We propose a universal transformation from a many-boson state to a corresponding many-fermion state in the lowest-Landau-level approximation of rotating many-body systems, inspired by the Laughlin wave function and by the Jain composite-fermion construction. We employ the exact-diagonalization technique for finding the many-body states. The overlap between the transformed boson ground state and th

The chiral clusters [H4Ru4(CO)(12-n)(L)(n)] (n = 1, 2; L = NMDPP), 1,1-[H4Ru4(CO)(10)(L - L)] (L - L = DUPHOS, DIPAMP), 1,2-[H4Ru4(CO)(10)(DIOP)] and [{H4Ru4(CO)(10)(DIOP)}(2)] have been synthesized by derivatizing the parent carbonyl cluster [H4Ru4(CO)(12)] with the appropriate mono- or didentate chiral phosphine ligand. The phosphine-substituted clusters were found to be able to catalyze the ( a