Omega-3 fatty acids (omega-3 FA) are constituents of the membranes of all cells in the body and are precursors of locally produced hormones, eicosanoids, which are important in the prevention and treatment of various diseases, especially in women. Omega-3 FA are of interest in some of the most common conditions affecting women. One mechanism underlying dysmenorrhea is a disturbed balance between a

For recombinant xylose-utilizing Saccharomyces cerevisiae, ethanol yield and productivity is substantially lower on xylose than on glucose. In contrast to glucose, xylose is a novel substrate for S. cerevisiae and it is not known how this substrate is recognized on a molecular level. Failure to activate appropriate genes during xylose-utilization has the potential to result in sub-optimal metaboli

Polycythaemia vera (PV) and primary myelofibrosis (MF) show concordant familial clustering but limited population level data are available on the aggregation of other discordant neoplasms in these families. We used the Swedish Family-Cancer Database to assess risks for VP and MF in families of cancer patients. A total of 3530 first PV and 1606 MF patients were identified, with high concordant fami

Objective. To investigate the relative importance of shared etiologies for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and ischemic heart disease (IHD) in terms of the well-known increased risk of HID in patients with RA, by assessing the occurrence of IHD up until the time of the onset of the first symptoms of RA. Methods. We assessed the prevalence of a history of IHD, myocardial infarction (MI), and angina pecto

Very large collisions in the asteroid belt could lead temporarily to a substantial increase in the rate of impacts of meteorites on Earth. Orbital simulations predict that fragments from such events may arrive considerably faster than the typical transit times of meteorites falling today, because in some large impacts part of the debris is transferred directly into a resonant orbit with Jupiter(1,

We study a class of model prototype hybrid systems comprised of a microscopic Arrhenius surface process describing adsorption/desorption and/or surface diffusion of particles coupled to an ordinary differential equation displaying bifurcations triggered by the microscopic process. The models proposed here are caricatures of realistic systems arising in diverse applications ranging from surface pro

Atypical lipomatous tumor (ALT) is an intermediate malignant mesenchymal tumor that is characterized by supernumerary ring chromosomes and/or giant rod-shaped marker chromosomes (RGMC). Fluorescence in situ hybridization ( FISH) and molecular genetic analyses have disclosed that the RGMCs always contain amplified sequences from the long arm of chromosome 12. Typically, RGMCs are the sole clonal ch

Phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase mediates several actions of insulin including its antilipolytic effect. This effect is elicited by the insulin-stimulated serine phosphorylation and activation of cGMP-inhibited phosphodiesterase (PDE3B). In human adipocytes, we found that insulin differentially stimulated phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase activity; the lipid kinase activity was associated with IRS-1, whe

The major myeloid blood cell lineages are generated from hematopoietic stem cells by differentiation through a series of increasingly committed progenitor cells. Precise characterization of intermediate progenitors is important for understanding fundamental differentiation processes and a variety of disease states, including leukemia. Here, we evaluated the functional in vitro and in vivo potentia

In a retrospective survey of 450 patients with rheumatoid arthritis on whom cervical spine radiography was performed, one patient was found with a backward tilting of the posterior arch of the atlas. With preserved relations anteriorly, the posterior arch was rotated downward in front of the spinous process of the axis, encroaching on the space of the spinal canal.

The variation of hole population in the resonant states of B-doped Si excited by sequences of short electric-field pulses has been investigated by the technique of time-resolved step-scan far-infrared spectroscopy. From the variation of the p(3/2) absorptions, we find that the hole population in the ground state decreases continuously with the sequential electric pulses, as a result of the breakdo

The secretion of proteins labelled by incorporation of radioactive amino acids was studied in innervated and 10 to 13-day-denervated mouse skeletal muscle. The secretion of 3H-leucine-labelled proteins, expressed per mg muscle wet weight, increased after denervation, and the kinetics of the secretory process was also altered in denervated muscle. Separation of secreted 35S-methionine-labelled prot

Calretinin, a neuronal protein with well-defined calcium-binding properties, has a poorly defined function. The pH dependent properties of calretinin (CR), the N-terminal (CR I-II), and C-terminal (CR III-VI) domains were investigated. A drop in pH within the intracellular range (from pH 7.5 to pH 6.5) leads to an increased hydrophobicity of calcium-bound CR and its domains as reported by fluoresc

It is well known that the interaction of polyelectrolytes with oppositely charged surfactants leads to an associative phase separation; however, the phase behavior of DNA and oppositely charged surfactants is more strongly associative than observed in other systems. A precipitate is formed with very low amounts of surfactant and DNA. DNA compaction is a general phenomenon in the presence of multiv

The amyloid-like fibril is a biomolecular nanowire template of very high stability. Here we describe the coordination of a conjugated polyelectrolyte, poly(thiophene acetic acid) (PTAA), to bovine insulin fibrils with widths of < 10 nm and lengths of up to more than 10 mu m. Fibrils complexed with PTAA are aligned on surfaces through molecular combing and transfer printing. Single-molecule spectro

The phase behavior of water/n-octane/n-octyl-beta-D-glucopyranoside (C(8)G(1))/1-octanol (C8E0) permits formulating temperature-insensitive microemulsions spanning the whole water-oil composition range. The types of microstructures formed along the trajectory of the middle-phase microemulsion are examined by NMR diffusometry, yielding the respective diffusion coefficients of all the components. Th

We discuss partially quenched chiral perturbation theory (PQ chi PT) and possible fitting strategies to lattice QCD data at next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) in the mesonic sector. We also present a complete calculation of the masses of the charged pseudoscalar mesons, in the supersymmetric formulation of PQ chi PT. Explicit analytical results are given for up to three nondegenerate sea-quark f

Sulfonated polysulfone (sPSU) membranes were analysed by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) cryoporometry, conventional gravimetric water uptake measurements as well as by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). NMR cryoporometry is based on the relation between the pore size and the melting point depression of the pore-filling liquid, i.e. water in fuel cell membranes; thus providing a relation be

The aim of this study was to examine if endothelin ETB receptor-mediated contraction occurred in isolated segments of rat coronary arteries during organ culture. Presence of contractile endothelin ETB receptors was studied by measuring the change in isometric tension in rings of left anterior descending coronary arteries isolated from hearts of rats as response to application of the selective endo