BACKGROUND: Death of smooth muscle cells in the atherosclerotic plaques makes the plaques more prone to rupture, which can initiate an acute ischemic event. The development of atherosclerosis includes the migration of immune cells e.g. monocytes/macrophages and T lymphocytes into the lesions. Immune cells can release antimicrobial peptides. One of these, human cathelicidin antimicrobial peptide hC

A molecular test for Alzheimer's disease could lead to better treatment and therapies. We found 18 signaling proteins in blood plasma that can be used to classify blinded samples from Alzheimer's and control subjects with close to 90% accuracy and to identify patients who had mild cognitive impairment that progressed to Alzheimer's disease 2-6 years later. Biological analysis of the 18 proteins po

The acoustic field generated by a lifted flame is studied by a hybrid approach. First, Large Eddy Simulations (LES) are used to compute the flow and the acoustic sources. Next, an inhomogeneous wave equation is solved to obtain the resulting acoustic field. The flow computations show good agreement with experimental data. The dominant acoustic sources are found to be located in the ignition region

Goblet cells produce mainly MUC5AC, but also MUC5B and some MUC2 in apparently 'irritated' airways. MUC513 dominates in the submucosal glands although a little MUC5AC and MUC7 are usually present. MUC4 originates from the ciliated cells. After separation into a gel and a sol phase, lysozyme and lactoferrin are enriched in the salivary gel phase suggesting that mucus may act as a matrix for 'protec

It is a popular view that practical deliberation excludes foreknowledge of one’s choice. Wolfgang Spohn and Isaac Levi have argued that not even probabilistic self-prediction is available to the deliberator, if subjective probabilities are conceptually linked to betting rates. It does not make sense to have a betting rate for an option, since one’s willingness to bet depends in this case on the op

Packaging affects the logistical and environmental efficiency of supply chains. The purpose is to increase knowledge of the current state, trade-offs and improvement potential of packaging logistics in supply chain practice. The research is based on 22 cases, each of which consists of supply chain mapping and structured interviews with three supply chain actors (manufacturer, distributor and retai

The aim was to evaluate conceptual scoring of lexical organization in bilingual children with language impairment (BLI) and to compare BLI performance with monolingual children with language impairment (MLI). Word associations were assessed in 15 BLI and 9 MLI children. BLI were assessed in Arabic and Swedish, MLI in Swedish only. A number of syntagmatic (semantic link, different word class) and p

In recent decades we have witnessed a proliferation of new kinds of retail space. Retail space has cropped up just about everywhere in the urban landscape, at libraries, workplaces, churches and museums. In short, retail is becoming a more and more manifest part of the public domain. The traditional spaces of retail such as city centres and outlying shopping malls are either increasing in size or

Considerable economic as well as environmental benefits can be achieved when appropriate industrial waste management is implemented. The objective of this study was to find a method of organizing a waste management system and of obtaining an overview of the whole system. The method proposed emphasizes the optimization of waste management with regard to energy, economy and environmental impact in s

The geologically complex Kyzylzharma groundwater field is located in the south-central part of Kazakhstan in the lower Syr Darya Basin. It supplies the 243,000 population of Kyzylorda City by drinking and agricultural water needs. Numerical modeling was used to predict the consequences of increased groundwater withdrawal for future water supply needs. The results displayed a mean squared error for

Kazakhstan is facing increasing water scarcity due to climate change and transboundary international water diversions. For this reason, low-quality water with high mineral content needs to be increasingly used in the future. A way to improve water quality for consumptive use is membrane treatment technology. In view of this, we investigated a new type of synthetic spatial-globular structure (SGS)