The spread of invasive pests is increasing due to greater global transportation and climate change-mediated range shifts. In a new community, these invasive species provide a novel resource that native predators or parasitoids can evolve to utilise. For invasive agricultural pests, this could provide top-down control; however, initial attack rates on invasive species in the wild are generally low.

Background: Patients with chest pain may have normal coronary arteries and suffer from microvascular angina (MVA). The aim of this study was to determine if patients with suspected MVA have lower global myocardial perfusion (global MP) during adenosine stress compared with healthy controls and coronary artery disease (CAD) patients and to determine if there are sex differences in global MP. Method

Protein scaffolds direct the organization of amorphous precursors that transform into mineralized tissues, but the templating mechanism remains elusive. Motivated by models for the biomineralization of tooth enamel, wherein amyloid-like amelogenin nanoribbons guide the mineralization of apatite filaments, we investigated the impact of nanoribbon structure, sequence, and chemistry on amorphous calc

This thesis ponders the participation of municipal authorities amidst processes of sociolegal change. Such interest originated from acknowledging the limited autonomy that municipalities have in the nested scalar jurisdictional order of most contemporary states, the relevance of municipalities as spaces of local democracy, the social movements’ advocacy for social change at local levels, and the i

The complex pseudodielectric function of Ge and Si from femtosecond pump-probe spectroscopic ellipsometry with 267, 400, and 800 nm pump-pulse wavelengths is analyzed by fitting analytical lineshapes to the second derivatives of the pseudodielectric function with respect to energy. This yields the critical point parameters (threshold energy, lifetime broadening, amplitude, and excitonic phase angl

Therapy is the often-used treatment for cancer patients, even those that undergo resection surgery. While milestones have been surpassed throughout the decades for a number of cancer types, there are those that comprise of characteristics limiting effectiveness of treatments. For these, such as some breast and pancreatic cancers, other pursuits must be explored to identify avenues for beneficial t

Environmental exposure of people plays an important role in assessing the quality of human life. The most existing methods that estimate the environmental exposure either focus on the individual level or do not consider human mobility. This paper adopts a vector field generated from the observed locations of human activities to model the environmental exposure at the population level. An improved

Recent theories on the growth of continental crust stress its formation in pre-Archean and Archean times with minor additions at later times. The Earth has gone through a unidirectional evolution including surface changes, the genesis of life and an important loss of energy. The energy loss drives tectonic processes, but at a rate declining with available energy and thus with time. Semiquantitativ

Bio-separation plays a crucial role in many areas. Different polymers are suitable for bio-separation and are useful for applications in applications in both science and technology. Besides biopolymers, there are a broad spectrum of synthetic polymers with tailor-made properties. The synthetic polymers are characterized by their charges, solubility, hydrophilicity/hydrophobicity, sensitivity to en

Dying in older persons precedes often by a prolonged period of frailty and multimorbidity. The global increase in the aged population means more death at an older age and highlights the need to integrate palliative care in elderly care. Knowledge-based palliative care is lacking outside the specialist units, for which reason there is insufficient access to palliative care for older persons. Thus t

We demonstrate how to compute radome reference cases for benchmarkingradome codes. Radomes are electrically large structures, and to facilitate thecomputations a rotationally symmetric structure is assumed. We show howto implement this in the commercial software Comsol Multiphysics, and howto extract the relevant data for comparison. Two example geometries areanalyzed: a spherical shell radome, an

Background: Lead (Pb), cadmium (Cd) and mercury (Hg) are all nephrotoxic metals, and a large part of the body burden of Cd and Hg is found in the kidneys. There are, however, few studies on associations between exposure to these toxic metals and renal biopsy findings, and none at low-level exposure. Aim: To examine the hypothesis that low-level concentration of Pb, Cd or Hg in the kidneys is assoc

The best exposures of mafic cumulate (gabbros and gabbronorites) rocks of Naga Ophiolite Complex (NOC) occur north-east of Moki village, east of Wazeho in the Indian State of Nagaland. Gabbro comprises predominantly of clinopyroxene (40–50 vol%) and plagioclase (40–50 vol%), while gabbronorite mainly consist of plagioclase (40–50 vol%), clinopyroxene (30–40 vol%) and orthopyroxene (~ 10 vol%) with

Convenience food products tend to alter their quality and texture while stored. Texture-giving food components are often starch-rich ingredients, such as pasta or rice. Starch transforms depending on time, temperature and water content, which alters the properties of products. Monitoring these transformations, which are associated with a change in mobility of the starch chain segments, could optim

Smoking is a well-known risk factor for Graves' ophthalmopathy (GO) in patients suffering from Graves' disease (GD). Cysteine-rich angiogenic inducer 61 (CYR61), which has multiple physiological functions, has been shown to be associated with GD and GO. In this study, we aimed to investigate the association between smoking and CYR61 concentrations in GD patients with and without GO. Serum CYR61 wa

The flexibility of β hairpin structure known as the flap plays a key role in catalytic activity and substrate intake in pepsin-like aspartic proteases. Most of these enzymes share structural and sequential similarity. In this study, we have used apo Plm-II and BACE-1 as model systems. In the apo form of the proteases, a conserved tyrosine residue in the flap region remains in a dynamic equilibrium