Background: To identify subjects with rupture-prone atherosclerotic plaques before thrombotic events occur is an unmet clinical need. Thus, this proof-of-concept study aims to determine which rupture-prone plaque features can be detected using clinically available photon-counting computed tomography (PCCT). Methods: In this retrospective study, advanced atherosclerotic plaques (ex vivo, paraffin-e

Background: The study of thoracic injuries and biomechanics during CPR requires detailed studies that are very scarce. The role of the heart in CPR biomechanics has not been determined. This study aimed to determine the risk factors importance for serious ribcage damage due to CPR. Methods: Data were collected from a prospective registry of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest between April 2014 and Apr

In the last decade, businesses have played an increasingly significant role in promoting stability, democracy, and human rights, particularly concerning the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which emphasize peace, justice, and strong institutions. Consequently, there has been a greater focus on corporate social responsibility and corporate citizenship. Research has explored business mo

Insect behaviours, such as host and mate selection, are often mediated by chemical cues. The chemical cuesare detected by large and rapidly evolving families of chemoreceptors which include odorant receptors (ORs),gustatory receptors (GRs) and ionotropic receptors (IRs). In this thesis, I used a model system of beetle(Coleoptera) species to study the functional evolution of insect ORs, their ligan

In this work, we present a method for acquiring, storing, and using scene data to enable realistic shading of virtual objects in an augmented reality application. Our method allows for sparse sampling of the environment’s lighting condition while still delivering a convincing shading to the rendered objects. We use common camera parameters, provided by a head-mounted camera, to get lighting inform

The goal of this thesis is to advance our understanding of introspection by studying when it fails, without us being aware of it. To do so, I have used the choice blindness paradigm. Choice blindness is a surprising phenomenon in which people fail to detect mismatches between their intention and outcome in a decision task, and then spontaneously confabulate reasons why they preferred an alternativ

Peter Strawson’s ‘Freedom and Resentment’ (1962) has reoriented the way moral philosophers think about responsibility. There is a general sense that Strawson’s approach holds the promise that we may move beyond the traditional discussion of free will in recognition of the fact that whether determinism is true is irrelevant for whether we are responsible beings. This is Strawson’s Promise. This the

Target-controlled infusion (TCI) constitutes a clinically available alternative to manually administering the infusion rate of the anesthetic drug propofol. In TCI, a drug infusion profile is optimized to track a reference trajectory of blood plasma or effect site (brain cortex) drug concentration, or a corresponding clinical effect. TCI is a pure feed-forward openloop strategy, fully reliant on a

ObjectiveTo study the cumulative live birth rate (CLBR) after the first in vitro fertilization (IVF) or intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) treatment in women with or without deep-infiltrating endometriosis (DIE) and/or endometrioma diagnosed by transvaginal ultrasonography (TVUS), using the International Deep Endometriosis Analysis (IDEA) group definitions.DesignProspective observational coho

IntroductionStudies that use standardized ultrasonographic criteria to diagnose adenomyosis in subfertile women are needed. These would improve the understanding of the disease burden and enable further studies on its impact on fertility and assisted reproductive treatment (ART) outcome. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of different features of adenomyosis in women scheduled f

Inactivation of the yeast nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD) pathway stabilizes nonsense mRNAs and promotes readthrough of premature translation termination codons. Although the latter phenotype is thought to reflect a direct role of NMD factors in translation termination, its mechanism is unknown. Here we show that the reduced termination efficiency of NMD-deficient cells is attributable to incre

The conserved pre-mRNA retention and splicing (RES) complex, which in yeast consists of Bud13p, Snu17p and Pml1p, is thought to promote nuclear retention of unspliced pre-mRNAs and enhance splicing of a subset of transcripts. Here, we find that the absence of Bud13p or Snu17p causes greatly reduced levels of the modified nucleoside N(4)-acetylcytidine (ac(4)C) in tRNA and that a lack of Pml1p redu

The translational decoding properties of tRNAs are modulated by naturally occurring modifications of their nucleosides. Uridines located at the wobble position (nucleoside 34 [U(34)]) in eukaryotic cytoplasmic tRNAs often harbor a 5-methoxycarbonylmethyl (mcm(5)) or a 5-carbamoylmethyl (ncm(5)) side chain and sometimes an additional 2-thio (s(2)) or 2'-O-methyl group. Although a variety of models

Nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD) is a surveillance mechanism that detects and degrades transcripts containing premature translation termination codons. Gene expression profiling experiments have shown that inactivation of the NMD pathway leads to the accumulation of both aberrant, nonsense-containing mRNAs, and many apparently wild-type transcripts. Such increases in transcript steady-state leve

The Saccharomyces cerevisiae Elongator complex consisting of the six Elp1-Elp6 proteins has been proposed to participate in three distinct cellular processes: transcriptional elongation, polarized exocytosis, and formation of modified wobble uridines in tRNA. Therefore it was important to clarify whether Elongator has three distinct functions or whether it regulates one key process that leads to m

Kluyveromyces lactis killer strains secrete a heterotrimeric toxin (zymocin), which causes an irreversible growth arrest of sensitive yeast cells. Despite many efforts, the target(s) of the cytotoxic gamma-subunit of zymocin has remained elusive. Here we show that three tRNA species tRNA(Glu)(mcm(5)s(2)UUC), tRNA(Lys)(mcm(5)s(2)UUU), and tRNA(Gln)(mcm(5)s(2)UUG) are the targets of gamma-toxin. The