Background The mechanism underlying the association between urban birth/upbringing and increased schizophrenia risk is unknown. This study explored whether an urban effect might be present in a low-income country setting, where the 'urban' environment may have radically different components, for example urban architecture, pollution levels or social cohesion. Aims To investigate the potential asso

During the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), ice thickened considerably and expanded toward the outer continental shelf around the Antarctic Peninsula. Deglaciation occurred between >14 ka BP and ca. 6 ka BP, when interglacial climate was established in the region. Deglaciation of some local sites was as recent as 4-3 ka BP. After a climate optimum, peaking ca. 4-3 ka BP, a distinct climate cooling occu

This paper addresses whether or not there is a relationship between a young science-based firm's patterns of connections and the associated resource flows, and its performance. Hypotheses derived from the literature are tested in relation to three performance indicators: inventiveness, innovativeness and employment. Analyzing a set of firms in Sweden, Ohio and Massachusetts, working with biocompat

Purpose-The paper seeks to describe the state-of-the-art, reasons for selecting various material planning methods, and modes of applying methods for initiating inventory replenishment of purchased items. It also identifies trends from 1993 to 2005. Design/methodology/approach-Empirical survey data are collected from Swedish manufacturing companies in 1993, 1999 and 2005. The MRP, re-order point, f

Body size is an important determinant of resource use, fecundity and mortality risk. Evolution of maturation size in response to size-dependent selection is thus a fundamental part of life-history theory. Increased mortality among small individuals has previously been predicted to cause larger maturation size, whereas increased mortality among large individuals is expected to have the opposite eff

Fatigue crack growth experiments in Inconel 718 subjected to high strain amplitudes at 650 degrees C have been conducted. In the study the effects of load amplitude, ratio and frequency have been investigated. It was found that crack growth is a mixture of cyclic and time dependent mechanisms, depending on the load frequency. The load frequency was also found to have a strong influence on the crac

Capsazepine as well as its derivatives and analogues are general inhibitors of constriction of human small airways. From a systematic variation of the capsazepine structure, divided into four regions, SARs were established. This part concerns the catechol moiety of the A-ring as well as the 2,3,4,5-tetrahydro-1H-2-azepine moiety (the B-ring) of capsazepine. It is revealed that a conformational con

A number of human-centred methodologies-subjective, objective, and combined-are used for slipperiness measurement. They comprise a variety of approaches from biomechanically-oriented experiments to psychophysical tests and subjective evaluations. The objective of this paper is to review some of the research done in the field, including such topics as awareness and perception of slipperiness, postu

Sera from 62 hepatitis C virus (HCV)-infected Swedish blood donors were tested by a nested polymerase chain reaction using primers targeting the 5'-noncoding region of the GB virus-C/hepatitis G (GBV-C/HGV) genome and an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay that detects antibodies to the envelope protein E2 of GBV-C/HGV (anti-E2). Fourteen (22%) and 21 (34%) of the 62 blood donors were found to be GB

The objective of this study was to examine the effects of heparan sulfate (HS) on factors involved in the remodeling of connective tissue observed in patients with fibrotic respiratory disorders such as asthma. A suitable working model is to stimulate human fetal lung fibroblasts in vitro with structurally different forms of HS. Highly sulfated and iduronic acid (IdoUA)-rich HS specifically decrea

The dendritic morphology in neocortical grafts was studied with three-dimensional confocal laser scanning microscopy after microinjection of Lucifer Yellow into individual cells. The grafts had been implanted into infarct cavities in the neocortex of hypertensive rats 46 weeks earlier. The carbocyanine dye method was used to identify afferent (host to transplant) and efferent (transplant to host)

A gas-phase method has been developed for producing size-controlled nanoparticles by thermal cracking of iron pentacarbonyl. The method includes the formation of iron particles from vapor emanating from the cracking of the volatile compound and subsequent compacting of the selected particles. Different temperature steps were involved in the process, and their effects on the particle production wer

The water–hydroxyl radical complex was prepared by irradiating peroxy radicals in hydrogen-doped argon matrices. The low water content of the matrices made it possible to observe the fundamental bands of the complexed water molecule. The experimental results are compared with the results from ab initio calculations. The complex rotates around the O–O axis in the matrix. ©2003 American Institute of

Addition of chemicals during the extraction of cassava starch for enhancing the settling rate, whiteness and compactness of the settled starch is an accepted commercial practice. The effect of addition of selected chemicals such as acids (sulphuric and hydrochloric acids), bleaching and oxidising agents (sodium metabisulphite and sodium hypochlorite) and alum during settling on the thermal and pas

Four -1,4-glucanases (cellulases) of the cellulolytic bacterium Cellulomonas fimi were purified from Escherichia coli cells transformed with recombinant plasmids. Previous analyses using soluble substrates had suggested that CenA and CenC were endoglucanases while CbhA and CbhB resembled the exo-acting cellobiohydrolases produced by cellulolytic fungi. Analysis of molecular size distributions duri

Job rotation has been widely recommended as an administrative control to reduce the risk of developing work-related musculoskeletal disorders. However, evidence of its benefits are hard to find in the literature. The effect of job rotation on predictions for the risk of reporting low back pain was estimated using Low Back Pain Reporting (LBPR) and Time Weighted Average (TWA) approaches. Index scor