This paper re-focuses the Silk Road discussions from the position of contemporary art in Central Asian region. Since the late 1980s contemporary art in Central Asia boomed and it eventually became an alternative public space for the discussion of cultural transformations, social and global processes and problems that local societies faced. Initially the questions raised by many artists concerned i

The endoglycosidase EndoS and the protease IdeS from the human pathogen Streptococcus pyogenes are immunomodulating enzymes hydrolyzing human IgG. IdeS cleaves IgG in the lower hinge region, while EndoS hydrolyzes the conserved N-linked glycan in the Fc region. Both enzymes are remarkably specific for human IgG that after hydrolysis loses most of its effector functions, such as binding to leukocyt

We jointly optimize Discontinuous Reception (DRX) cycle length and LTE scheduling to minimize mobile devices' energy usage for video delivery, utilising the now well-established potential to predict future channel conditions in cellular networks. Employing in-network caching, we set a strict buffer constraint which provides zero buffer underflow to improve Quality of Experience. Our study provides

The crystal and magnetic structure of Fe5SiB2 has been studied by a combination of X-ray and neutron diffraction. Also, the magnetocrystalline anisotropy energy constant has been estimated from magnetisation measurements. High quality samples have been prepared using high temperature synthesis and subsequent heat treatment protocols. The crystal structure is tetragonal within the space group I4/mc

The selection of appropriate working media for organic Rankine cycles (ORC) is essential for the optimization of their performance. Dry fluids are widely used in existing ORC because, unlike wet fluids, they do not need to be superheated to avoid wet expansion that may cause damage to the expander. However, regeneration is sometimes needed for fluids with a highly dry behavior in order to improve

Asymptomatic bacteriuria (ABU) is a bacterial carrier state in the urinary tract that resembles commensalism at other mucosal sites. ABU strains often lack the virulence factors that characterize uropathogenic Escherichia coli (E. coli) strains and therefore elicit weak innate immune responses in the urinary tract. In addition, ABU strains are active modifiers of the host environment, which they i

Background and Purpose: Stroke is one of the dominant causes of death and adult disability in the world. There is a need for novel therapeutic approaches to improve functional recovery and outcome after stroke, and experimental studies have shown that stem cell-based therapies (SCT) hold much potential in this regard. This thesis, comprising 5 papers, aims to explore and describe clinical symptoms

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) using Photofrin IIR (PII) as a photosensitizer is currently being evaluated as a new treatment modality for superficial bladder cancer. An optimum therapeutic ratio requires uniform illumination of the whole bladder wall and accurate light dosimetry. The first clinical light dosimetry results (16 patients) are reported, obtained using a system which allows in situ measur

We give a sufficient condition for the Fourier dimension of a countable union of sets to equal the supremum of the Fourier dimensions of the sets in the union, and show by example that the Fourier dimension is not countably stable in general. A natural approach to finite stability of the Fourier dimension for sets would be to try to prove that the Fourier dimension for measures is finitely stable,