The objective of this study was to determine the concentrations of mercury in organs of occupationally exposed workers using in vivo x-ray fluorescence analysis. Twenty mercury exposed workers and twelve occupationally unexposed referents participated in the study. Their mercury levels in kidney, liver and thyroid were measured using a technique based on excitation with partly plane polarized phot

In this paper initial experiments towards constructing simple quantum gates in a solid state material are presented. Instead of using specially tailored materials. the aim is to select a subset of randomly distributed ions in the material. which have the interaction necessary to control each other and therefore can be used to do quantum logic operations. The experimental results demonstrate that p

Hydrophobic interaction is generally considered to play an important role in the adherence of microorganisms to eukaryotic cells and also to certain inert surfaces. Using a microbe adhesion assay to hydrocarbons (n-hexadecane), 68 strains of Candida albicans and 30 non-albicans strains were studied. Influence of source of isolate, age of the culture, and percentage of germ tube formation on adhesi

A new method is described for the calculation of molecular vibrational partition functions and thermal effects on molecular properties including an explicit account of anharmonicity. The approach is based on the vibrational self-consistent-field method. Partition functions and thermal averages of the energies calculated with the new method are generally in good agreement with the result of more ac

Protein additives have a dramatic effect on the H2O2 oxidation of hyperforin, either protecting the enolized phloroglucinol core from oxidation (human albumin) or promoting (HRP and ovalbumin) reaction pathways derived from the intermediacy of the enollactone 4, a minor component of the oxidation mixture in the absence of protein additives. To rationalize the exquisite specificity of several steps

Mixtures of n-decyl beta-D-gluco-pyranoside (C(10)G(1)) and n-nonyl beta-D-gluco-pyranoside (C(9)G(1)) in water were studied to determine the location of a closed-loop liquid/liquid miscibility gap. A phase diagram including the point at which the closed loop first appeared was determined, as well as the effect of salts on the location of the consolute boundaries of the loop. The microstructure su

Members of the Rho/Rac/Cdc42 superfamily of GTPases [1,2] and their upstream activators, guanine nucleotide exchange factors (GEFs) [3], have emerged as key regulators of actin and microtubule dynamics. In their GTP bound form, these proteins interact with downstream effector molecules that alter actin and microtubule behavior. During Drosophila embryogenesis, a Galpha subunit (Concertina) and a R

In patches of co-occurring species in natural plant communities, there is a finely poised balance between species in the ways in which they respond to prevailing moisture and temperature regimes. However, environmental change scenarios, in which temperature, moisture and ultraviolet-B radiation are suggested to increase, may favour one of the species. The imbalance is likely to occur at the levels

The recently introduced Gas in Scattering Media Absorption Spectroscopy (GASMAS) technique is applied to the study of various wood samples. Molecular oxygen in the pores of the strongly scattering material is detected using diode laser spectroscopy around 760 nm. Diffuse light propagation in these media is studied by time-dispersion measurements. Furthermore, anisotropy related to the fibre struct

The related Axl, Sky and Mer receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs) are increasingly being implicated in a host of discrete cellular responses including cell survival, proliferation, migration and phagocytosis. Furthermore, their ligands Gas6 and protein S are characteristically dependent on vitamin K for expression of their functions. The Gas6/Axl system is implicated in several types of human cancer a

The work done during the past decade in order to adapt molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) to the capillary format and subsequently use these highly selective matrices for capillary electrochromatography (CEC) are reviewed in this article. MIPs are prepared utilizing a templated polymer synthesis where the template addresses the selectivity of the resulting polymer. These polymers possess bindin

Helicobacter pylori is able to utilize several lectin-like, protein-carbohydrate interactions for binding to mucins, cell surfaces, and extracellular matrix proteins. As determined by hemagglutination assays and binding of radiolabeled bacteria to glycosphingolipids on thin-layer chromatograms, strains of gastric helicobacters and enterohepatic helicobacters, including Helicobacter canis, Helicoba

Abstract is not available. Letter to the Editors

As a second major result we show how to combine the path cover technique with LCA solutions for dags with small depth [9]. Our algorithm attains the best known upper time bound for this problem of O(n 2.575). However, most notably, the algorithm performs better on a vast amount of input dags, i.e. dags that do not have an almost linear-sized subdag of extremely regular structure. Finally, we appl

At the end of the summer, drifting filamentous red algae cover shallow bottoms and accumulate in huge cast walls on the open shores of the non-tidal central Baltic Sea. The hypotheses that beach cleaning increases water clarity, decreases the organic content of the sand, and increases the species diversity in the shallow zone closest to the shore, were tested through field investigations and exper

The antral hormone gastrin is the key regulator of gastric acid secretion, mucosal growth and differentiation. Gastrin is synthesized in the endocrine G-cells in the antroduodenal mucosa. We have now examined the way in which the loss of gastrin alone or gastrin plus cholecystokinin (CCK) affects the antral G-cell. Immunohistochemistry, radioimmunoassay and quantitative real-time polymerase chain

Bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs) are pleiotropic secreted proteins, structurally related to transforming growth factor (TGF)-beta and activins. BMPs play pivotal roles in the regulation of embryonic lung development and branching of airways and have recently been considered to influence inflammatory processes in adults due to their chemotactic activity on fibroblasts, myocytes, and inflammatory

Physical, psychological, and social features were assessed with standardized methods in 84 early RA patients followed prospectively for 2 years. During this time disease activity decreased, and disability evaluated by HAQ remained small. Psychological distress measured by SCL-90 (Symptom Check List) was in general not very pronounced and fairly stable over time. A high pain level at baseline provi