Measuring lupus disease activity accurately remains a challenging and demanding task given the complex multi-system nature of lupus, an illness known for its variability between patients and within the same patient over time. Many have attempted to define what disease activity means and how it should be measured, and several instruments were devised for a standardized assessment of disease activit

European labour markets are often described as rigid with comparatively high levels of job protection that do not allow for the flexible adjustment of employment to economic fluctuations. This interpretation overlooks important sources of flexibility, however. Research has shown that recent labour market policy reforms have allowed for the creation of two-tier labour markets consisting of insiders

-Epigenetic alterations may contribute to the development of atherosclerosis. In particular, DNA methylation, a reversible and highly regulated DNA modification, could influence disease onset and progression since it functions as an effector for environmental influences, including diet and lifestyle, both of which are risk factors for cardiovascular diseases.

We develop an approximate field theory for particles interacting with a generalized Yukawa potential. This theory improves and extends a previous splitting field theory, originally developed for counterions around a fixed charge distribution. The resulting theory bridges between the second virial approximation, which is accurate at low particle densities, and the mean-field approximation, accurate

This paper analyzes a genre of hotels that has grown substantially the latest decades: namely one that includes hotels that go under names such as design hotels, boutique hotels, or "contemporary" hotels. It presents elements of the transnational discourse of this genre and shows how these are translated, materialized and localized. Individual hotels are used as illustrative examples of how discur

The association between breast cancer and warfarin is inconclusive as most previous studies examined their association using patients with thromboembolism, whereas thromboembolism itself is a risk factor for cancer. We explored this issue using patients received mechanical heart valves replacement as a proxy for warfarin exposure as these patients need a lifelong warfarin treatment, and compared t

Pheromone-based behaviours are crucial in animals from insects to mammals, and reproductive isolation is often based on pheromone differences. However, the genetic mechanisms by which pheromone signals change during the evolution of new species are largely unknown. In the sexual communication system of moths (Insecta: Lepidoptera), females emit a species-specific pheromone blend that attracts male

Little is known of the population dynamics of long-range insect migrants, and it has been suggested that the annual journeys of billions of nonhardy insects to exploit temperate zones during summer represent a sink from which future generations seldom return (the “Pied Piper” effect). We combine data from entomological radars and ground-based light traps to show that annual migrations are highly a

An explorative study of factors affecting implementation and use of finance information systems (FISs) in developing countries is presented. The result is based on a field study investigating implementation of a finance information system at Makerere University, Uganda. Current literature suggests that how to implement information Systems (ISs) successfully is challenging, especially in developing

Ice in atmospheric clouds undergoes complex physical processes, interacting especially with radiation, which leads to serious impacts on global climate. After their primary production, atmospheric ice crystals multiply extensively by secondary processes. Here, it is shown that a mostly overlooked process of mechanical breakup of ice particles by ice-ice collisions contributes to such observed mult

We isolated and characterised 12 polymorphic microsatellite loci for the blue-tailed damselfly Ischnura elegans by screening a genomic library enriched for microsatellite motifs. The loci showed high variability for the number of alleles, and the expected and observed heterozygosities, and thus will be useful for future molecular studies. Cross-amplification in I. graellsii, I. ramburii and I. pum

The complement system is regulated by inhibitors such as factor I (FI), a serine protease that degrades activated complement factors C4b and C3b in the presence of specific cofactors. Mutations and polymorphisms in FI and its cofactors are associated with atypical hemolytic uremic syndrome (aHUS). All 14 complement factor I mutations associated with aHUS analyzed in this study were heterozygous an

Objective To explore whether a panel of kallikrein markers in blood: total, free and intact prostate-specific antigen (PSA) and kallikrein-related peptidase 2, could be used as a non-invasive alternative for predicting prostate cancer on biopsy in a screening setting. Subjects and Methods The study cohort comprised previously unscreened men who underwent sextant biopsy owing to elevated PSA (3 ng/

It is well-known that clay can form lamellar structures i.e. tactoids, and recently it has been shown that the tactoid formation is dependent on the platelet diameter. To the authors knowledge, no tactoid formation has been observed for montmorillonite platelets with a diameter less than 60nm. In this study, small angle X-ray scattering in combination with coarse-grained modeling and molecular dyn

Establishing a tractable yet complete reaction coordinate for the spin-state interconversion in d(4)-d(7) transition metal complexes is an integral aspect of controlling the dynamics that govern their functionality. For spin crossover phenomena, the limitations of a single-mode approximation that solely accounts for an isotropic increase in the metal-ligand bond length have long been recognized fo

Purpose The aim of this study was to find clinically relevant MIBG-avid metastatic patterns in patients with newly diagnosed stage 4 neuroblastoma. Methods Diagnostic I-123-MIBG scans from 249 patients (123 from a European and 126 from the COG cohort) were assessed for metastatic spread in 14 body segments and the form of the lesions: "focal" (clear margins distinguishable from adjacent background