The robber crab (Birgus latro), also known as the coconut crab, is the world's largest land-living arthropod, with a weight reaching 4 kg and a length of over half a meter [1]. Apart from the marine larval stage [2, 3], this crab is fully terrestrial, and will actually drown if submerged in water [4]. A transition from sea to land raises dramatically new demands on the sensory equipment of an anim

Bacillus subtilis is an endospore-forming bacterium. There are indications that protein disulfide linkages occur in spores, but the role of thiol-disulfide chemistry in spore synthesis is not understood. Thiol-disulfide oxidoreductases catalyze formation or breakage of disulfide bonds in proteins. CcdA is the only B. subtilis thiol-disulfide oxidoreductase that has previously been shown to play so

Cytomegalovirus (CMV) has been implicated in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis. Abdominal aortic aneurysm is regarded traditionally as a consequence of atherosclerosis. Several microorganisms have been suggested as possible contributing factors for the development of abdominal aortic aneurysm. The relevance of CMV in the processes underlying the development, expansion, and rupture of abdominal a

An abnormal nevus phenotype is associated with an increased risk of melanoma. We report a pooled analysis conducted using individual nevus data from 15 case-control studies (5,421 melanoma cases and 6,966 controls). The aims were to quantify the risk better and to determine whether relative risk is varied by latitude. Bayesian unconditional logistic random coefficients models were employed to stud

Background: Little has been reported about intensive care of children in Sweden. The aims of this study are to (I) assess the number of admissions, types of diagnoses and length-of-stay (LOS) for all Swedish children admitted to intensive care during the years 1998-2001, and compare paediatric intensive care units (PICUs) with other intensive care units (adult ICUs) (II) assess immediate (ICU) and

Insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) levels were analyzed in 43 healthy, nulliparous women aged 19-25 years. Blood samples were drawn in a standardized way in follicular and luteal phases, for present users during cycle days 5-10 and 18-23, respectively. In each women, absolute levels and a difference in p-IGF-1 levels between the two menstrual cycle phases (delta IGF-1) were related to oral contr

The Euro50 is a European Extremely Large Telescope. Its enclosure will be among the largest buildings of the world. Determining the maximum wind load is crucial for the survival of the structure, and local forces have an impact on the detailed design such as cladding. Pressure variations on the primary mirror and the wind load on the telescope are important for the development of active optics and

Pole placement is a well-established design method for linear control systems. Note however that with an output feedback controller of low-order such as the PID controller one cannot achieve arbitrary pole placement for a high-order or delay system, and then partially or hopefully, dominant pole placement becomes the only choice. To the best of the authors' knowledge, no method is available in the

We present a convergence analysis for exponential splitting methods applied to linear evolution equations. Our main result states that the classical order of the splitting method is retained in a setting of unbounded operators, without requiring any additional order condition. This is achieved by basing the analysis on the abstract framework of (semi)groups. The convergence analysis also includes

Discussion of the regionalised film production setup in Sweden. Particular emphasis is on the long term possibilities of the setup.

In neural transplantation studies, there is an interest in identifying and isolating mesencephalic dopamine (mesDA) neuron precursors that have the capacity to differentiate into fully mature mesDA neurons after transplantation. We report here that in the developing ventral mesencephalon (VM) the proneural gene Neurogenin2 (Ngn2) is expressed exclusively in the part of the ventricular zone that gi

Background: In a pilot prospective consecutive series on 50 patients with recurrent breast cancer, results of sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) are reported. The interval between primary operation and recurrence was 8 years (range 1-18 years). Only three patients had not undergone dissection of the axilla (ALND). Results: In 51% of patients scintigraphy disclosed sentinel nodes (SN). At operation

We present the scattering lengths for the piK processes in the three flavour Chiral Perturbation Theory (ChPT) framework at next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO). The calculation has been performed analytically but we only include analytical results for the dependence on the low-energy constants (LECs) at NNLO due to the size of the expressions. These results, together with resonance estimates of t

Background: Microdialysis is used in many European neurointensive care units to monitor brain chemistry in patients suffering subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) or traumatic brain injury (TBI). Discussion: We present a consensus agreement achieved at a meeting in Stockholm by a group of experienced users of microdialysis in neurointensive care, defining the use of microdialysis, placement of catheters,

There is considerable enthusiasm for the prospect of using common polymorphisms (primarily single nucleotide polymorphisms; SNPs) in candidate genes to unravel the genetics of complex disease. This approach has generated a number of findings of loci which are significantly associated with sporadic Alzheimer's disease (AD). In the present study, a total of 15 genes of interest were chosen from amon

Li Z, Alam S, Wang J, Sandstrom CS, Janciauskiene S, Mahadeva R. Oxidized alpha(1)-antitrypsin stimulates the release of monocyte chemotactic protein-1 from lung epithelial cells: potential role in emphysema. Am J Physiol Lung Cell Mol Physiol 297: L388-L400, 2009. First published June 12, 2009; doi:10.1152/ajplung.90373.2008.-alpha(1)-Antitrypsin ( AT) is a major elastase inhibitor within the lun

Among the available agricultural byproducts, corn stover, with its yearly production of 10 million t (dry basis), is the most abundant promising raw material for fuel ethanol production in Hungary. In the United States, more than 216 million t of corn stover is produced annually, of which a portion also could possibly be collected for conversion to ethanol. However, a network of lignin and hemicel