Manuls or Pallas' cats (Felis manul, syn. Otocolobus manul) are endangered wild cats from Central Asia kept and bred in many zoos. Despite good breeding success young cats frequently die from acute toxoplasmosis. From 1998 to 2002, a breeding pair in the Schönbrunn Zoo in Vienna, Austria, gave birth to 24 kittens; 58 % of kittens died between the 2nd and the 14th week of life, mostly due to acu...

The phase transition of an ion beam into its crystalline state has long been expected to dramatically influence beam dynamics beyond the limitations of standard accelerator physics. Yet, although considerable improvement in beam cooling techniques has been made, strong heating mechanisms inherent to existing high-energy storage rings have prohibited the formation of the crystalline state in the...

C-type lectin-like proteins (CTLPs) isolated from snake venoms are the largest and most complex non-mammalian vertebrate C-type lectin-like domain family. In the present study, we simultaneously amplified four cDNAs encoding different types of CTLP subunits from the venoms of two different species of snakes by RT-PCR with a single sense primer and a nested universal primer - two CTLP subunit-en...

Barley powdery mildew, caused by the pathogen Blumeria graminis f. sp. hordei is an important disease of barley (Hordeum vulgare L.). The random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) method was used to detect DNA polymorphism among 7 Pallas near-isogenic lines (NILs) carrying Mla3, Mla12, Mlk, Mlp, Mlat, Mlg and MlLa genes for resistance to B. graminis f. sp. hordei. From among 500 random 10-mer pri...

A new species of Paracooperia Travassos, 1935 was found in the small intestines of 4 bushbuck, Tragelaphus scriptus (Pallas, 1766), and 3 greater kudu, Tragelaphus strepsiceros (Pallas, 1766), all culled in the Kruger National Park. The nematodes appear to be widespread in the Park, since the bushbuck originated from Skukuza in the central part of the Park, 2 of the 3 kudu from near Malelane in...

In the Permanent Atrial Fibrillation Outcome Study Using Dronedarone on Top of Standard Therapy (PALLAS) study, dronedarone use was associated with an excess risk of stroke, cardiovascular death and hospitalizations. However, an increased level in the serum digoxin level was observed in the dronedarone arm, as it is a potent inhibitor of the P-glycoprotein transport system. The PALLAS subanalys...

Several forms of collaborative and networked organisations have emerged due to increased alliances, outsourcing, globalisation and improvements in distributed information systems. Interoperability demands and challenges are rising. There is a need to meet these interoperability challenges. This paper proposes a framework to assess how well a networked organisation supports interoperability. The...

This note describes the performance of the calorimeter clustering algorithms used for ATLAS, and which provide inputs for particle identification. ATLAS uses two principal algorithms. The first is the “sliding-window” algorithm, which clusters calorimeter cells within fixed-size rectangles; results from this are used for electron, photon, and tau lepton identification. The second is the “topolo...

We present an encoding of a sequent calculus for a multiagent epistemic logic in Athena, an interactive theorem proving system for many-sorted first-order logic. We then use Athena as a metalanguage in order to reason about the multi-agent logic an as object language. This facilitates theorem proving in the multi-agent logic in several ways. First, it lets us marshal the highly efficient theore...