BACKGROUND In recent years, by tremendous use of mobile phone telecommunication, a growing concern about the possible health hazards has increased greatly among public and scientists. The mobile phone exposure has been shown to have many effects upon the immune functions, stimulating hormones, mammalian brain, sperm motility and morphology, and neurological pathologies syndrome. The aim of this...

The Asian corn borer (ACB), Ostrinia furnacalis (Guenée), can develop strong resistance to Cry1Ab, the most widely commercialized Cry toxin for Bt maize worldwide. It is essential to understand the mechanism of resistance for management of this species, but information on the post-transcriptional regulation of Bt resistance in this target insect is limited. In the present study, RNA was extract...

BACKGROUND The key guidelines in the management of primary spontaneous pneumothorax (PSP) include the 2010 British Thoracic Society (BTS) Pleural Disease guideline and 2001 American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP) Consensus Statement. Current recommendations are dependent on radiographic measures which differ between these two guidelines. The aim of this study is to compare size classificati...

Compound-specific analyses of the S/S isotope ratios of individual organosulfur compounds in Upper Jurassic oil and condensate samples from the Smackover Fm. reveal differences of up to 50& between compounds. There is a clear distinction between oils altered by thermochemical sulfate reduction (TSR) versus those that are not. Oils that did experience TSR exhibit significant S enrichment of benz...

INTRODUCTION Surgical resection of a malignant bone tumor (BT) or soft tissue tumor (STT), with or without prosthetic replacement, carries a high risk of developing postoperative infections. There is limited knowledge on the bacteriological spectrum of these postsurgical infections that necessitate empirical antibiotic therapy. The aim of this study was to analyze the incidence and microbiologi...

Mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs), in particular p38 MAPK, are phosphorylated in response to contractile activity, yet the mechanism for this is not understood. We tested the hypothesis that the force of contraction is responsible for p38 MAPK phosphorylation in skeletal muscle. Extensor digitorum longus (EDL) muscles isolated from adult male Swiss Webster mice were stimulated at fixed ...

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to evaluate the association between health-related quality of life (HRQL) and disease severity using lung function measures. METHODS A survey was performed in subjects with COPD in Sweden. 168 subjects (70 women, mean age 64.3 years) completed the generic HRQL questionnaire, the Short Form 36 (SF-36), the disease-specific HRQL questionnaire; the St George'...

It is generally believed that cross bridges account for >50% of the total ATP consumed by skeletal muscle during contraction. We investigated the effect of N-benzyl-p-toluene sulfonamide (BTS), an inhibitor of myosin ATPase, on muscle force production and energy metabolism under near-physiological conditions (50-Hz stimulation frequency at 30 degrees C results in 35% of maximal force). Extensor...

BACKGROUND Secondary care physicians caring for people with long-term conditions (LTCs) are under increasing pressure to discharge long-term follow-up patients to primary care. In respiratory medicine, the 2008 British Thoracic Society (BTS) statement on criteria for specialist referral, admission, discharge, and follow-up for adults with respiratory disease remains the only available basis for...

The empirical harmonic potential function of elastic network models (ENMs) is augmented by three- and four-body interactions as well as by a parameter-free connection rule. In the new bend-twist-stretch (BTS) model the complexity of the parametrization is shifted from the spatial level of detail to the potential function, enabling an arbitrary coarse graining of the network. Compared to distanc...