In recent years, human embryonic stem cells have been established, and somatic stem cells derived from various adult organs have been identified and characterized to differentiate into various kinds of functional cells. There have been attempts to use functional cells induced from such stem cells for tissue regeneration and cell therapy. The method is expected to become an important treatment for

We hypothesised that pieces of nerve that are normally trimmed away during graft repair could be a source of Schwann cells and used to create an autologous cell-containing nerve graft. To test the idea a transsection injury was made on the rat sciatic nerve. Seven days later, pieces from the proximal and distal stumps were used for the immediate isolation of its non-neuronal cells. These cells, of

Romania has for a long time been lacking good palaeoenvironmental records, particularly for the Late Quaternary. A chronological framework had been nearly absent and the vegetation development had been reconstructed entirely from pollen data. Data sets from this part of Europe are important for assessing the spatial variability of past vegetation and climatic changes and to reconstruct tree migrat

Objectives: Randomized controlled trials are currently conducted to assess whether the mortality from prostate cancer is reduced by early detection with the use of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) measurements in serum. To be effective, such a program should be able to reduce the absolute number of men diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer (for which no cure is available). The aim of the presen

In this report we present an extension of the pooled analysis of the prognostic impact of urokinase-type plasminogen activator (uPA) and its inhibitor PAI-I in breast cancer patients. We analyzed a different endpoint, metastasis-free survival (MFS). We checked the consistency of the estimates for uPA and PAI-I for relapse-free survival (RFS) and MFS exploring possible sources of heterogeneity. Nod

Recently, there has been increasing evidence of species' range shifts due to changes in climate. Whereas most of these shifts relate ground truth biogeographic data to a general warming trend in regional or global climate data, we here present a reanalysis of both biogeographic and bioclimatic data of equal spatio-temporal resolution, covering a time span of more than 50 years. Our results reveal

We investigated the relation between cobalamin deficiency, clinical changes and brain function in dementia patients. On admittance to the clinic, 24 patients had cobalamin deficiency, and dementia with additional symptoms of delirium. During cobalamin supplementation, the patients underwent repeated regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) studies, psychiatric evaluations, and in some cases assessment

Palaeoecological methods were applied to peat and sediment cores recovered from one bog (Bråtamossen) and two lakes (Avegöl and Femtingagölen) in the Småland Uplands, southern Sweden. The general aim was to reconstruct the landuse and vegetation history for the last 6000 years in this agriculturally marginal region. The main technique was pollen analysis, which was complemented by mineral magnetic

Object. With increasing use of endovascular procedures, the number of aneurysms treated surgically will decline. in this study the authors review complications related to the surgical treatment of aneurysms and address the issue of maintaining quality standards on a national level. Methods. A prospective, nonselected amalgamation of every aneurysm case treated in five of six neurosurgical centers

Liver plays a key role in the metabolism of plasma apolipoproteins, endogenous lipids and lipoproteins. Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common fatal malignant tumors in China and in other Southeast Asian countries. This has been attributed to the high incidence of hepatitis B infection. Hepatitis B proteins, such as the hepatitis B X protein (HBx) that is large hepatitis B surfac

We have re-refined the X-ray structure of the heme site in cytochrome c553, supplementing the crystallographic data with quantum chemical geometry optimizations, instead of the molecular mechanics force field used in standard crystallographic refinement. By comparing the resulting structure, obtained using medium-resolution data (170 pm), with an atomic-resolution structure (95 pm) of the same pro

Studies using selective agonists have suggested that the contractile effect of extracellular nucleotides, such as ATP and UTP, in blood vessels is mediated mainly by P2X1 receptors with a smaller contribution of P2Y receptors while the mitogenic effect is mediated by P2Y (P2Y1, P2Y2, P2Y4, and P2Y6) receptors with no effect of P2X1 receptors. This indicates a difference in P2 receptor expression b

The purpose of this study was to investigate the reliability of repeated measurements and a possible learning or tiring process in single-limb stabilometry and one-leg hop test. An additional purpose was to study the correlation between different stabilometric variables. Seventy-five healthy subjects were examined twice with a median interval of 7 d, and with three consecutive measurements on each

The mass production of integrated circuits for digital electronics has made CMOS technology the most frequently used IC process today. Thanks to the large production volume, CMOS has increasingly become the most cost efficient technology of choice, and the fast development of small, high speed CMOS devices has made the technology feasible for many RF applications. However, as the transistor featur

In his fetishist argument, Michael Smith raises an important question: What is the content of the motivational states that constitute moral motivation? Although the argument has been widely discussed, this question has not received the attention it deserves. In the present paper, I use Smith's argument as a point of departure for a discussion of how advocates of externalism as regards moral judgem