Objectives To study the prevalence and incidence of elevated liver enzymes and their relationship with body weight, metabolic factors and other diseases in Turner syndrome (TS). Design Five-year follow-up. Patients Women with TS (n = 218, mean age 33 +/- 13, range 16-71 years) from outpatient clinics at university hospitals in Sweden. Measurements Fasting blood samples for aspartate (AST) and alan

In this article we describe simulations of the hadronic decay of Higgs bosons produced in association with vector bosons at linear and hadronic colliders. We use the Monte Carlo at next-to-leading-order (MC@NLO) matching prescription with the Herwig++ event generator to predict various spectra of the resulting b (b) over bar pairs and compare our results with leading order and matrix element corre

In this work we present a comprehensive study of analytical electric field gradients in hydrogen halides calculated within the high-order Douglas-Kroll-Hess (DKH) scalar-relativistic approach taking picture-change effects analytically into account. We demonstrate the technical feasibility and reliability of a high-order DKH unitary transformation for the property integrals. The convergence behavio

Background: Electrocardiogram-derived grades of ischemia at the time of patient presentation with acute myocardial infarction have proved useful in predicting the salvageability by reperfusion therapy, final infarct size, severity of left ventricular dysfunction, and short- and long-term prognosis. Subjects and Methods: The Sclarovsky-Birnbaum Ischemia Grading System based on the relation between

The spermine analogue N(1),N(11)-diethylnorspermine (DENSPM) efficiently depletes the polyamine pools in the breast cancer cell line L56Br-C1 and induces apoptotic cell death via the mitochondrial pathway. In this study, we have over-expressed the anti-apoptotic protein Bcl-2 in L56Br-C1 cells and investigated the effect of DENSPM treatment. DENSPM-induced cell death was significantly reduced in B

Life-history theory predicts that increased current reproductive effort should lead to a fitness cost. This cost of reproduction may be observed as reduced survival or future reproduction, and may be caused by temporal suppression of immune function in stressed or hard-working individuals. In birds, consideration of the costs of incubating eggs has largely been neglected in favour of the costs of

Background: The electrocardiographic (ECG) diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction (MI) should be improved. This might be done either by regarding all 24 aspects (both positive and negative leads), or a subset hereof (e.g. 19-lead ECG), of the conventional 12-lead ECG or by using additional electrodes. The purpose of this study was to investigate the accuracy of the different ECG methods in diagn

Hesitation disfluencies after phonetically prominent stranded function words are thought to reflect the cognitive coding of complex structures. Speech fragments following the Swedish function word att ‘that’ were analyzed syntactically, and divided into two groups: one with att in disfluent contexts, and the other with att in fluent contexts. Complexity was calculated in terms of a number of measu

Neuroblastoma and ganglioneuroma are neuroblastic tumors originating from the developing sympathetic peripheral nervous system. Ganglioneuromas are usually benign, while neuroblastomas have a variable prognosis and include very aggressive tumors. Examples exist of neuroblastomas regressing to ganglioneuromas and ganglioneuromas progressing to neuroblastomas. Little is known of the molecular differ

We have investigated the crystallization of amorphous oxides that are considered likely candidates to replace amorphous SiO2 as the gate dielectric in advanced field-effect transistors. To avoid crystallization, the mole fraction of main-group oxide in the Zr–Si–O, Zr–Al–O, and Hf–Si–O systems must be greater than 83%, 65%, and 78%, respectively, leading to a maximum useful dielectric constant of

Malonate oligomers were synthesized as plasticizers for poly(lactic acid) (PLA). Esterification reactions were performed between diethyl bishydroxymethyl malonate (DBM) and either adipoyl dichloride or succinyl dichloride. Two molar masses were obtained within each series. Blending was carried out with PLA and the four oligomers as well as the monomeric unit from the syntheses (DBM). Dynamic mecha

Annual recurrent blooms of the toxic dinoflagellates Alexandrium catenella and Alexandrium minutum were detected from 2000 to 2003 in harbours along the Catalan coast. The interrelation study between the occurrence of the blooms and specific external conditions at the study sites demonstrated that different factors are required for the bloom of each Alexandrium species. Concentrations higher than

In polymorphic male painted dragon lizards (Ctenophorus pictus), red males win staged contests for females over yellow males, and yellow males have greater success in staged sperm competition trials than red males. This predicts different reproductive strategies in the wild with red males being more coercive or better mate guarders than yellow males. Yellow males would be expected to sire more off

Background Quadrivalent human papillomavirus (HPV types 6/11/16/18) L1 VLP vaccine is highly effective in preventing HPV 6/11/16/18-related cervical and external genital disease. Herein, we evaluated the impact of the quadrivalent HPV 6/11/16/18 L1 VLP vaccine on prevention of HPV-associated cervico-genital lesions in a broad population of sexually active European women. Methods Female subjects (N

The etiologic role of physical activity in endometrial cancer risk remains unclear given the few epidemiologic studies that have been conducted. To investigate this relation more fully, an analysis was,undertaken in the European prospective investigation into cancer and nutrition (EPIC). During an average 6.6 years of follow-up, 689 incident endometrial cancer cases were identified from an analyti

Activated coagulation factor V (FVa) is a cofactor of activated factor X (FXa) in prothrombin activation. FVa is composed of a light chain (LC) and a heavy chain (HC) that are noncovalently associated in a calcium-dependent manner. We constructed a recombinant FV Asp111Asn/Asp112Asn mutant (rFV-NN) to abolish calcium binding to a potential calcium-binding site in FVa in order to study the specific