Leaf-cutting ants combine large-scale herbivory with fungus farming to sustain advanced societies. Their stratified colonies are major evolutionary achievements and serious agricultural pests, but the crucial adaptations that allowed this mutualism to become the prime herbivorous component of neotropical ecosystems has remained elusive. Here we show how coevolutionary adaptation of a specific enzy

Svensson F, Fredlund C, Svedin CG, Priebe G, Wadsby M. Adolescents selling sex: Exposure to abuse, mental health, self-harm behaviour and the need for help and support-a study of a Swedish national sample. Nord J Psychiatry 2013; 67: 81-88. Background: Selling sex is not uncommon among adolescents and we need to increase our knowledge of how this affects them. Aim: The aim of this study was to inv

The exploration of animal migration has entered a new era with individual-based tracking during multiple years. Here, we investigated repeated migratory journeys of a long-distance migrating bird, the marsh harrier Circus aeruginosus, in order to analyse the variation within and between individuals with respect to routes and timing. We found that there was a stronger individual repeatability in ti

Males of all reed frog species (Anura: Hyperoliidae) have a prominent, often colourful, gular patch on their vocal sac, which is particularly conspicuous once the vocal sac is inflated. Although the presence, shape, and form of the gular patch are well-known diagnostic characters for these frogs, its function remains unknown. By integrating biochemical and histological methods, we found strong evi

NF-κB is constitutively activated in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL); however, the implicated molecular mechanisms remain largely unknown. Thus, we performed targeted deep sequencing of 18 core complex genes within the NF-κB pathway in a discovery and validation CLL cohort totaling 315 cases. The most frequently mutated gene was NFKBIE (21/315 cases; 7%), which encodes IκBε, a negative regulato

In this study, we simulated heterotrophic CO2 (Rh) fluxes at six European peatland sites using the ECOSSE model and compared them to estimates of Rh made from eddy covariance (EC) measurements. The sites are spread over four countries with different climates, vegetation and management. Annual Rh from the different sites ranged from 110 to 540 g C m(-2). The maximum annual Rh occurred when the wate

Islet-level oxidative stress has been proposed as a trigger for type 1 diabetes (T1D), and release of cytokines by infiltrating immune cells further elevates reactive oxygen species (ROS), exacerbating beta cell duress. To identify genes/mechanisms involved with diabeto-genesis at the beta cell level, gene expression profiling and targeted follow-up studies were used to investigate islet activity

We study the asymptotic behavior of posterior distributions for i.i.d. data. We present general posterior convergence rate theorems which extend several known results on rates of posterior convergence. Our main tools are the Hausdorff α-entropy introduced by Xing and Ranneby (2009) and a new notion of prior concentration. Our results are applied to several statistical models.

The Montreal Protocol is working, but it will take several decades for ozone to return to 1980 levels. The atmospheric concentrations of ozone depleting substances are decreasing, and ozone column amounts are no longer decreasing. Mid-latitude ozone is expected to return to 1980 levels before mid-century, slightly earlier than predicted previously. However, the recovery rate will be slower at high

Transforming growth factor beta 1 (TGFB1) acts as a growth inhibitor of normal colonic epithelial cells, however, as a tumor promoter of colorectal cancer (CRC) cells. To explore the association between genetic polymorphisms in the TGFB1 pathway and CRC susceptibility and clinical outcome, we carried out a case-control study on a Swedish population of 308 CRC cases and 585 age- and gender-matched

The destruction of land and forced migration during the Anfal attacks against the Kurds in Iraq in the late 1980s has been reported to have severe consequences for agricultural development. A reconstruction program to aid people in returning to their lands was launched in 1991. To assess the agricultural situation in the Duhok governorate during the pre-Anfal (A), post-Anfal (B), reconstruction (C

Yacon roots are a promising source of inulin­type fructans (35 g/100 g dry matter) with a total amount of dietary fiber of about 45 g/100 g dry matter. The polydispersity of the particle size distribution of yacon aqueous suspension was reduced with increasing the degree of homogenization due to two phenomena: aggregation of particles, and disruption of large particles. Non­homogenized yacon suspe

We consider iterated function systems on the interval with random perturbation. Let Yε be uniformly distributed in [1−ε, 1+ε] and let fi ∈ C 1+α be contractions with fixpoints ai . We consider the iterated function system {Yε fi + ai (1 − Yε )}, where each of the maps is chosen with probability pi . It is shown that the invariant density is in L2 and its L2 norm does not grow faster than 1/√ε as ε

In targeted radionuclide radiotherapy, the relationship between bone marrow (BM) toxicity and absorbed dose seems to be elusive. A compartmental model of mouse thrombopoiesis and erythropoiesis was set up to predict the depletion of hematopoietic cells as a function of the irradiation dose delivered to BM by injected radiopharmaceuticals. All simulated kinetics were compared with experimental toxi

PurposeThe aim of this study was to analyse prescription refill, re-hospitalisation, total mortality, mortality because of suicide and attempted suicide among patients who were taking various types of antipsychotics. MethodsA population-based cohort study analysed all patients (n=26046) in Sweden who had been treated for schizophrenia from 2006 to 2009 with regard to re-hospitalisation and prescri

The aqua ions of palladium(II) and platinum(II) undergo extremely slow hydrolysis in strongly acidic aqueous solution, resulting in polynuclear complexes. The size and structures of these species have been determined by EXAFS and small angle X-ray scattering, SAXS. For palladium(II), the EXAFS data show that the Pd-O and Pd center dot center dot center dot Pd distances are identical to those of cr

Studies have suggested that moderate alcohol consumption is associated with a reduced risk of CVD and premature mortality in individuals with diabetes mellitus. However, history of alcohol consumption has hardly been taken into account. We investigated the association between current alcohol consumption and mortality in men and women with diabetes mellitus accounting for past alcohol consumption.

Background and purpose - A shortened tibial stem could influence the early prosthetic fixation. We therefore compared the short stem to the standard-length stem using radiostereometric analysis (RSA) as primary outcome measure. Patients and methods - 60 patients were randomized to receive a cemented Triathlon total knee arthroplasty (TKA) with a tibial tray of either standard or short stem length.

In this paper, the problem of detecting target in system-dependent clutter (SDC) background with a single observation from the test cell is researched. Classical detectors, such as the generalized likelihood ratio detectors (GLRDs) and the adaptive matched filters (AMFs), etc., usually deal with the clutter and the noise as a whole. The low rank detectors (LRDs) make use of the low rank property o