OBJECTIVE Interleukin-6 (IL-6) is a pro-inflammatory cytokine which is a prognostic marker associated with left ventricular contractile dysfunction and heart failure. On the other hand, IL-6 activates signalling pathways which mediate delayed ischemic preconditioning. We have therefore studied the cellular mechanisms of IL-6-induced cardioprotection. METHODS Inducible nitric oxide synthase (i...

An investigation of the size of S + S for a finite Beatty sequence S = (si) = (biα + γc), where b c denotes “floor”, α, γ are real with α ≥ 1, and 0 ≤ i ≤ k − 1 and k ≥ 3. For α > 2, it is shown that |S+S| depends on the number of “centres” of the Sturmian word ∆S = (si−si−1), and hence that 3(k−1) ≤ |S +S| ≤ 4k−6 if S is not an arithmetic progression. A formula is obtained for the number of ce...

After first investigations on the room temperature photoluminescence (PL) signal of porous Si [1,2], interest in the optical properties of semiconductor nanoparticles, especially porous Si and Si nanoparticles, has grown over the last decade [3,4]. Different processes for the synthesis of nanocrystalline Si (nc-Si) like Si ion implantation into high quality oxides [3], sputtering of Si-rich oxi...

BACKGROUND It is unclear how well a C-reactive protein (CRP) value predicts a serious infection (SI) in young febrile children in general practice. METHODS This prospective cohort study with 1-week follow-up included children, aged 3 months to 6 years, presenting with fever to a general practitioner out-of-hours service. We evaluate whether CRP level has predictive value for diagnosing a chil...

The molecular structure of the bulky primary silane, (Me(3)Si)(3)CSiH(3), in the gas phase has been determined by electron diffraction. Photolysis of (Me(3)Si)(3)CSiH(3) affords a convenient route to the bulky dialkyl disilane, [(Me(3)Si)(3)CSiH(2)](2), which is the first 1,2-dialkyldisilane to be structurally characterised by single-crystal X-ray diffraction. The disilane has an unusually larg...

The lasers on both Si and InP substrates were tested under an RT pulsed condition (300111 kHr). Fig. 3 shows the typical current/light (UL) characteristics ( 3 3 0 ~ cavity length) of a laser on Si. The threshold current density is estimated to be as low as 1.7 kAIcm’. Furthermore, dependence of the threshold current density (J,,,) on the reciprocal of cavity length (IIL) was investigated and p...

We consider two problems. First, sorting of n integer keys from the [0, 2 − 1] range, stored in p stations of a single-hop and single channel radio network. Second problem is routing of the packets between the stations of the network. We introduce counting-sort algorithm which has 3mri + si + di + 3 energetic cost and nm + n + p time cost, where station ai stores si keys (ri distinct keys) and ...