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Background: Upper esophageal sphincter resting tone is reduced during partial neuromuscular block, whereas contraction of the pharyngeal constrictor muscle is only slightly affected. We hypothesized that this difference may arise from differential nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) density, the density supposedly being lower in the more sensitive cricopharyngeal muscle than in the resistant

Software release planning takes place on strategic and operational levels. Strategic release planning aims at assigning features to subsequent releases such that technical, resource, risk and budget constraints are met. Operational release planning focuses on the realization of a single software release. Its purpose is to assign resources to feature development tasks such that total release durati

OBJECTIVES This study was designed to investigate the loss of well-being, in terms of lift-years, overall and in patients randomized to metoprolol versus carvedilol in the Carvcdilol Or Metoprolol European Trial (COMET). BACKGROUND The ultimate objectives of treating patients with heart failure are to relieve suffering and prolong life. Although the effect of treatment on mortality is usually desc

We investigated the influence of changes in external phosphorus (P) concentration on the proportion of phosphatase-active structures of the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus Gigaspora margarita associated with Allium cepa. The P treatment was started when mycorrhizal colonisation had been established, and plant systems were harvested three times after the start of the P treatment. Higher shoot dry wei

Following a brief review of the development of medical ultrasonics from the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s, the collaboration between Edler and Hertz that began in Lund in 1953 is described. Using an industrial ultrasonic flaw detector, they obtained time-varying echoes transcutaneously from within the heart. The first clinical applications of M-mode echocardiography were concerned with the assessment

The Ulysses spacecraft is orbiting the Sun on a highly inclined ellipse (i = 79°). After its Jupiter flyby in 1992 at a heliocentric distance of 5.4 AU, the spacecraftreapproached the inner solar system, flew over the Suns south polar region in September 1994,crossed the ecliptic plane at a distance of 1.3 AU in March 1995, and flew over the Suns northpolar region in July 1995. We report on dust i

AiM To describe factors associated with an increased chance of survival among patients suffering from an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in Sweden. Patients and Methods All patients suffering from an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, which were not crew witnessed, in Sweden and in,whom cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) was attempted and who were registered in the Swedish Cardiac Arrest Registry. Th

Endothelins (ETs) are a family of novel regulatory peptides and various lines of evidence suggest an important role for ETs in regulating pulmonary function. Two receptors for endothelin, ETA and ETB, have been found in the human lung, and according to recent studies a non-ETA receptor seems to mediate the contraction of large sized human bronchi. Several studies have emphasized the importance of

CDK8 (cyclin-dependent kinase 8), along with CycC, Med12, and Med13, form a repressive module (the Cdk8 module) that prevents RNA polymerase II (pol II) interactions with Mediator. Here, we report that the ability of the Cdk8 module to prevent pol II interactions is independent of the Cdk8-dependent kinase activity. We use electron microscopy and single-particle reconstruction to demonstrate that

Proteorhodopsins are bacterial light-dependent proton pumps. Their discovery within genomic material from uncultivated marine bacterioplankton caused considerable excitement because it indicated a potential phototrophic function within these organisms, which had previously been considered strictly chemotrophic(1). Subsequent studies established that sequences encoding proteorhodopsin are broadly d

The effects of low-level ozone exposure and suppression of natural mycorrhizas on the above-ground chemical quality of Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) needles and insect herbivore performance were studied in a two-year field experiment. Seedlings were fumigated with the ozone doses 1.5–1.7 times the ambient, and natural mycorrhizal infection level was about 35% reduced in roots with fungicide pro

We have analyzed the content of N-unsubstituted glucosamine in heparan sulfate from glypican-1 synthesized by endothelial cells during inhibition of (a) intracellular progression by brefeldin A, (b) heparan sulfate degradation by suramin, and/or (c) endogenous nitrite formation. Glypican-1 from brefeldin A-treated cells carried heparan sulfate chains that were extensively degraded by nitrous acid

It is known that pentoxifylline inhibits platelet aggregation in vitro, but the effects from pentoxifylline and its main metabolites: 3,7-dimetyl-1(5 hydroxyhexyl)xanthine (R-M1 and S-M1), 3,7-dimetyl -1(4-carboxybutyl)xanthine (M4), 3,7-dimetyl -1(3-carboxypropyl)xanthine (M5), on platelet aggregation in whole blood in vitro and in vivo have not been studied. We found that pentoxifylline, rac-M1,

Previous studies have suggested that the early-B-cell-specific mb-1(Ig{alpha}) promoter is regulated by EBF and Pax-5. Here, we used in vivo footprinting assays to detect occupation of binding sites in endogenous mb-1 promoters at various stages of B-cell differentiation. In addition to EBF and Pax-5 binding sites, we detected occupancy of a consensus binding site for E2A proteins (E box) in pre-B

This study deals with the acquisition of Functional Categories in the French Determiner Phrase. The development of determiners and prenominal adjectives in three bilingual Swedish–French children is compared with that of four Swedish second language learners of French. It is argued that acquisition is crucially different in these two cases. The bilingual children initially have restrictions on phr

The proton-translocating NADH-ubiquinone oxidoreductase (complex I) is the largest and least understood respiratory complex. The intrinsic redox components (FMN and iron-sulfur clusters) reside in the promontory part of the complex. Ubiquinone is the most possible key player in proton-pumping reactions in the membrane part. Here we report the presence of three distinct semiquinone species in compl

Antinuclear antibodies are commonly found in patients with Sjogren's syndrome. It has been suggested that the development of antinuclear antibodies depends on the activation of the spliceosome and other transcription-related subcellular particles, some of which have recently been shown also to function in DNA-modifying processes, such as DNA repair and V(D)J recombination. These observations add w

We present guidelines on how the solution structure of pi-conjugated hairy-rod polyfluorenes is controlled by the side-chain length and branching. First, the semiquantitative mean-field theory is formulated to predict the phase behavior of the system as a function of side-chain beads (N). The phase transition at N=N* separates a lyotropic phase with solvent coexistence (N < N*) and a metastable me