The aim of the present study was to identify patterns of background factors related to the early RA patients' conceptions of the cause of the disease. Conceptions from a qualitative study formed the basis for the stratification of 785 patients from the Swedish EIRA study answering a question about their own thoughts about the cause to RA. Logistic regression analyses were used to explore the assoc

Film cooling effectiveness and its distribution characteristics on the gas turbine blade surface were investigated numerically. Seven rectangular ribs were located on the internal wall, and a film cooling hole had a compound inclined angle. The case with a compound angle of 45 degrees was designed to improve the lateral film cooling effectiveness on the downstream surface. The secondary flow jet f

The removal of particulate fine fractions by a proper high-temperature cleaning device is a very important issue in the development of the biorefinery concept. Therefore, in this investigation, particles from a 100 kW(th) steam-O-2 blown circulating fluidized-bed (CFB) gasifier were sampled and characterized. The sampling was performed with a specially designed heated dilution probe downstream of

A major difference in the revised diagnostic criteria for Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the incorporation of biomarkers to support a clinical diagnosis and allow the identification of preclinical AD due to AD neuropathological processes. However, AD-specific fluid biomarkers which specifically distinguish clinical AD dementia from other dementia disorders are still missing. Here we aimed to evaluate

A model membrane system based on lipid lyotropic phases confined inside the pores of a well-defined scaffold membrane, thereby forming a double-porous membrane structure, is described. The model membrane system is characterized with regard to lipid structure, lipid location, and phase transitions, using small-angle X-ray scattering, differential scanning calorimetry, and confocal microscopy. The s

CD1d-restricted natural killer T (NKT) cells can have multiple effects on an immune response, including the activation, regulation and attraction of innate immune cells, and modulation of adaptive immunity. Recent studies reveal that there are distinct subsets of NKT cells which selectively perform some of the functions attributed to CD1d-restricted cells, but the mechanisms underlying these funct

The objective of this study was to evaluate total antioxidant capacity (TAC), total phenolic content (TPH), and the identification of anthocyanidin and polyphenolic compounds in 13 colored potatoes collected from the Andean region of Bolivia, and understand how the chemical composition correlated with the botanical classification and molecular characterization of genes, ans (anthocyanidin synthase

Most bees are diurnal, with behaviour that is largely visually mediated, but several groups have made evolutionary shifts to nocturnality, despite having apposition compound eyes unsuited to vision in dim light. We compared the anatomy and optics of the apposition eyes and the ocelli of the nocturnal carpenter bee, Xylocopa tranquebarica, with two sympatric species, the strictly diurnal X. leucoth

The salinity problem is becoming increasingly widespread in arid countries. In semiarid Tunisia about 50% of the irrigated land is considered as highly sensitive to salinization. To avoid the risk of salinization, it is important to control the soil salinity and keep it below plant salinity tolerance thresholds. The objective of the present study was to provide farmers and rural development office

The surface emissions trap, an adsorption cloth developed for reducing emissions of volatile organic compounds and particulate matter from surfaces while allowing evaporation of moisture, was used to improve the indoor air quality of a school building with elevated air concentrations of 2-ethyl-1-hexanol. An improvement of the perceived air quality was noticed a few days after the device had been

A non-equilibrium quenched plasma is prepared using a gliding-arc discharge generated between diverging electrodes and extended by a gas flow. It can be operated at atmospheric pressure and applied to plasma surface treatment to improve adhesion properties of material surfaces. In this work, glass-fibre-reinforced polyester plates were treated using an atmospheric pressure gliding-arc discharge wi

There is a general trend that parasitism risk declines as latitude increases. Host populations breeding at high latitudes should therefore invest less in costly immune defenses than populations breeding in temperate or tropical zones, although it is unknown if such an effect is mediated by environmental (photoperiodic) or genetic factors or both. Acquired immune function (humoral, cell-mediated) a

Popular Abstract in Swedish Luftföroreningar har i många studier visat sig skada vår hälsa. Även om risken för den enskilda individen kan vara relativt liten så kan omfattningen av hälsoeffekterna bli stora eftersom det är så många som exponeras. Tidigare har man huvudsakligen sett effekter på andningsorganen men under de senare åren har man även börjat se effekter som sträcker sig bortom våra andWe had in the present thesis the unique possibility to use, in a socio-economically relatively homogenous population, high quality registry information on a population-based birth cohort (84 039 births during the period 1999-2005) in Scania (Skåne), the most Southern county of Sweden. The aim of the thesis was to investigate whether exposure to air pollution, in an area of low-levels exposures, du

The main concern of this paper is to study the presence of a cascaded Butler network in diversity antenna systems. The advantages of a cascaded Butler network in 2-D multipath environments have been already shown. These advantages are limited to either correlated or nonuniform multipath environments with a line-of-sight component. In the frame of this paper, for the first time, we show a further a

The MUC1 mucin is differentially expressed and glycosylated in cancer tissue as opposed to healthy tissue. Due to these differences, MUC1 is considered a potential biomarker suitable for cancer diagnosis and therapy. In a previous study, the human MUC1-specific antibody 12ESC-6 was able to bind a sequence variant of the tandem repeat of MUC1 that is not recognized by many other MUC1-specific antib

Aims. The aim of our new laboratory measurements is to measure accurate absolute oscillator strengths for neutral manganese transitions in the infrared needed for the study of late-type stars and ultracool dwarfs. Methods. Branching fractions have been measured by high resolution Fourier transform spectroscopy and combined with radiative level lifetimes in the literature to yield oscillator streng