PURPOSE: Cadmium in urine is positively associated with urinary 8-oxo-7,8-dihydro-2'-deoxyguanosine (8-oxodG) concentrations, a sensitive marker of oxidative DNA damage. We determined whether kidney concentrations of cadmium, mercury, and lead, which may generate oxidative DNA damage, were associated with urinary 8-oxodG or not. METHODS: 8-OxodG was measured in separate 24 h and overnight urine sa

The purpose of this article is to compare within-family successions and external-party takeovers in family-owned manufacturing SMEs to determine potential differences in how they are perceived and managed. This paper focuses on two long-term aspects of family businesses – their succession and their ability to innovate – defining innovativeness as an aspect of organisational culture. Based on ten c

The majority of prospective studies on alcohol use and mortality risk indicate that non-drinkers are at increased risk of death compared to moderate drinkers. This article investigates the association between middle-aged women's alcohol use and mortality, controlling for socio-demographic and health variables. An association between alcohol use and hospital in-patient care is also analysed. Method

This review will discuss methodologies and applicability of key inflammatory models of respiratory disease in proof of concept or proof of efficacy clinical studies. In close relationship with these models, induced sputum and inflammatory cell counts will be addressed for phenotype-directed drug development. Additionally, important regulatory aspects regarding noninvestigational medicinal products

Lipid nanoparticles of reversed internal phase structures, such as cubic micellar (I2) structure show good drug loading ability of peptides and proteins as well as some small molecules. Due to their controllable small size and inner morphology, such nanoparticles are suitable for drug delivery using several different administration routes, including intravenous, intramuscular and subcutaneous inje

Purpose: To compare clinicians and a trained artificial neural network (ANN) regarding accuracy and certainty of assessment of visual fields for the diagnosis of glaucoma. Methods: Thirty physicians with different levels of knowledge and experience in glaucoma management assessed 30-2 SITA Standard visual field printouts that included full Statpac information from 99 patients with glaucomatous

In this study, several electrocardiogram (ECG)-derived indices corresponding to both ventricular depolarization and repolarization were evaluated during acute myocardial ischemia in an experimental model of myocardial infarction produced by 40 min coronary balloon inflation in 13 pigs. Significant changes were rapidly observed from minute 4 after the start of coronary occlusion, achieving their ma

Dispersal limitation and long-term persistence are known to delay plant species’ responses to habitat fragmentation, but it is still unclear to what extent landscape history may explain the distribution of dispersal traits in present-day plant communities. We used quantitative data on long-distance seed dispersal potential by wind and grazing cattle (epi- and endozoochory), and on persistence (adu

There is a growing gap between tourism's rapidly growing greenhouse gas emissions and the sector's 'aspirational' emission reduction targets as well as the international policy consensus to reduce emissions from this and all other sectors of the economy. The transport component is the largest GHG contributor to the global tourism system. In the absence of supranational policy agreements to curb em

SU-8 is the preferred photoresist for development and fabrication of high aspect ratio (HAR) three dimensional patterns. However, processing of SU-8 is a challenging task, especially when the film thickness as well as the aspect ratio is increasing and the size of the features is close to the resolution limit of photolithography. This paper describes process optimization for the fabrication of den

We present the first measurement of elliptic (v(2)) and triangular (v(3)) flow in high-multiplicity He-3 + Au collisions at root s(NN) = 200 GeV. Two-particle correlations, where the particles have a large separation in pseudorapidity, are compared in He-3 + Au and in p + p collisions and indicate that collective effects dominate the second and third Fourier components for the correlations observe

Despite the popularity of the social investment approach, there remain ambiguities regarding how to design an effective social investment policy. We review evaluations of conditional cash transfers (CCTs) in Latin America in order to draw out lessons for how to improve the effectiveness of social investment. CCTs share many of the objectives of the social investment approach and are targeted at po

This paper follows directly from an earlier paper where we discussed the requirements for an artifact to be a moral agent and concluded that the artifactual question is ultimately a red herring. As before, we take moral agency to be that condition in which an agent can appropriately be held responsible for her actions and their consequences. We set a number of stringent conditions on moral agency.

To review and update the evidence on predictors of poor outcome (death, persistent vegetative state or severe neurological disability) in adult comatose survivors of cardiac arrest, either treated or not treated with controlled temperature, to identify knowledge gaps and to suggest a reliable prognostication strategy. GRADE-based systematic review followed by expert consensus achieved using Web-ba

The roof dual bound for quadratic unconstrained binary optimization is the basis for several methods for efficiently computing the solution to many hard combinatorial problems. It works by constructing the tightest possible lower-bounding submodular function, and instead of minimizing the original objective function, the relaxation is minimized. However, for higher-order problems the technique has

We show that if R is a, not necessarily unital, ring graded by a semigroup G equipped with an idempotent e such that G is cancellative at e, the nonzero elements of eGe form a hypercentral group and R-e has a nonzero idempotent f, then R is simple if and only if it is graded simple and the center of the corner subring fR(eGe)f is a field. This is a generalization of a result of Jespers' on the sim

The genus Apleurotropis Girault is here reported for the first time from tropical America. The genus is diagnosed and compared to Achrysocharoides Girault with which it shares important characters. Changes are suggested in two existing keys to Neotropical/Nearctic genera of Eulophidae to include Apleurotropis. Included in Apleurotropis are also six newly described species: A. albicaulis, A. albisc

BACKGROUND: Few large-scale studies have examined the association between sociodemographic factors and the probability of reaching the recommended levels of HbA1c and blood lipids in patients with type 2 diabetes. The aim was to investigate whether sociodemographic characteristics of type 2 diabetes patients affected the odds that they would reach recommended levels of blood lipids and HbA1c. METH

AIMS: Atrial fibrillatory rate (AFR) is considered a non-invasive index of atrial remodelling. Low AFR has been associated with favourable outcome of interventions in patients with persistent atrial fibrillation (AF). However, AFR has never been studied in unselected patients with short duration of AF, prone to regain sinus rhythm (SR) spontaneously. The aim of the study was to assess if AFR can p