During the last decade several long term studies of interventions in patients with COPD have been published. This review analyses the potential of these interventions to alter the progression of the condition. The only treatment that has unequivocally been shown to reduce the rate of decline in FEV(1) is smoking cessation. Active psychological intervention in combination with pharmacotherapy is re

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Eight secondary metabolites were isolated from submerged cultures of the ascomycete A111-95 during a search for new nematicidal metabolites. (-)-Galiellalactone (7) and compound 2 are metabolites previously obtained from cultures of Galiella rufa while the compounds 1, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 8 (3 and 4 were obtained as an unseparable mixture), were isolated as natural products for the first time. Compound

PURPOSE: The aim of this study was to evaluate any possible effects of brain motion, CSF pulsations and other possible sources of physiological motion in electrocardiographic (ECG) triggered and non-triggered single-shot echo-planar imaging (EPI) measurements of diffusion. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Three different triggering protocols were evaluated in 6 healthy volunteers: 1) ECG triggering with time

On the basis of cross-sectional studies in elite athletes and longitudinal studies, physical activity in growing children has been suggested to enhance bone mineral acquisition and prevent osteoporosis later in life. The level of exercise in most of these studies is not applicable in a population on a day-to-day basis. The aim of this study was to determine whether moderate increased exercise with

Twenty-six patients were operated because of osteo-arthritis of the trapeziometacarpal joint. After excision of the trapezium, they were randomized to receive either a Swanson silicone trapezium implant or a tendon interposition arthroplasty using a strip of the abductor pollicis longus tendon (APL). No infection or clinical silicone synovitis occurred and no major radiographic cyst formation was

HYPOTHESIS: A decrease in the intraoperative parathyroid hormone (PTH) level predicts long-term operative success. DESIGN: A case series of consecutive patients undergoing parathyroidectomy with intraoperative PTH measurement. SETTING: A university hospital. PATIENTS AND INTERVENTION: One hundred two patients with sporadic primary hyperparathyroidism underwent parathyroidectomy according to the pr

The planar Hall effect was used for investigation of magnetic anisotropy in short period (Ca,Mn)As/CaAs superlattices epitaxially grown on (001) oriented GaAs substrate. The results confirmed the existence of low-temperature magneto crystalline anisotropy in the superlattices with the easy magnetic axes directed along the two in-plane (100) directions. Attention is paid to the two-state behaviour

We have investigated the poorly-understood origin of nitrogen in the early Galaxy by determining N abundances from the NH band at 336 nm in 35 extremely metal-poor halo giants, with carbon and oxygen abundances from Cayrel et al. (2004, A&A, 416, 1117), using high-quality ESO VLT/UVES spectra (30 of our 35 stars are in the range -4.1

Essän handlar om dagens Libanon och berör de kraftmätningar och konfliktlinjer som skakar landet såväl inifrån som utifrån (regionala och globala intressen). Den är ett slags fortsättning på en artikel om Beiruts förhistoria som tidigare publicerats i Ord & Bild (nr 6/2004) – och kommer att utgöra en del av ett större arbete som publiceras i bokform i början av 2007 på Glänta förlag.

This report investigates how the ability of a concrete to withstand frost attack depends not only of the concrete itself but also on the internal and external climatic factors. All those internal and external factors and their interaction are discussed.

A positive and innovative organizational climate is of great importance in order to manage and adapt to change. Such a climate seldom evolves in organizations closely governed by rules and regulations. Because of ongoing organizational and technical changes within the Swedish Air Navigation Services Provider, a study concerning the organizational climate for changes and innovations was conducted t

Responding of individuals outside the conspecific range has been largely explained by biases in sensory or cognitive systems toward particular traits or trait values. More recently, it has been shown that such responses might occur if individuals still respond to signal traits that have been lost over time. However, empirical evidence remains scarce. We report a case supporting the latter mechanis

In this paper we propose a framework for the testing of system-on-chip (SOC), which includes a set of design algorithms to deal with test scheduling, test access mechanism design, test sets selection, test parallelization, and test resource placement. The approach minimizes the test application time and the cost of the test access mechanism while considering constraints on tests, power consumption