The article explores on the basis of several definitions of environmental impact assessment, strategic environmental assessment and sustainability impact assessment the needs to develop a new sustainability impact assessment of policies as a framework to focus on the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainability. By using the example of rural development, indicator lists are d...

We recently demonstrated that hypocretin/orexin (Hcrt) and nociceptin/orphanin FQ (N/OFQ) systems coordinately regulate nociception in a mouse model of stress-induced analgesia (SIA). However, the site of N/OFQ action on modulation of SIA was elusive, since N/OFQ was administered via intracerebroventricular (i.c.v.) injection acting on widely distributed N/OFQ receptors (NOP) in the brain. In t...

The sleeping rat cycles between two well-characterized physiological states, slow-wave sleep (SWS) and rapid-eye-movement sleep (REM), often identified by the presence of large-amplitude irregular activity (LIA) and theta activity, respectively, in the hippocampal EEG. Inspection of the activity of ensembles of hippocampal CA1 complex-spike cells along with the EEG reveals the presence of a thi...

UNLABELLED As a genus, the dependoviruses use a diverse group of cell surface carbohydrates for attachment and entry. Despite the fact that a majority of adeno-associated viruses (AAVs) utilize sialic acid (SIA) for binding and transduction, this virus-carbohydrate interaction is poorly understood. Utilizing X-ray crystallography, two SIA binding regions were mapped for AAV5. The first site map...

BACKGROUND A previous study examined the relationship between the sacral inclination angle (SIA), lumbosacral angle (LSA) and sacral horizontal angle (SHA) and spinal mobility in acute low back pain and chronic low back pain patients. We chose to investigate the lumbar lordosis angle, segmental lumbar lordosis angle, SIA, LSA and SHA in acute and chronic low back pain (LBP) patients as well as ...

Sialic acids (Sia) form the nonreducing end of the bulk of cell surface-expressed glycoconjugates. They are, therefore, major elements in intercellular communication processes. The addition of Sia to glycoconjugates requires metabolic activation to CMP-Sia, catalyzed by CMP-Sia synthetase (CMAS). This highly conserved enzyme is located in the cell nucleus in all vertebrates investigated to date...

The specificity of influenza for a particular host is mediated by the interaction of haemagglutinin (HA), a viral cell surface glycoprotein with host glycoconjugate receptors that contain terminal sialic acid (Sia) residues. The HA of influenza A strains that infect humans attaches preferentially to cells with Sia linked α2-6 residues to galactose, whereas avian strains preferentially bind Sia ...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Most people use the Internet in a functional way to achieve certain goals and needs. However, there is an increasing number of people who experience negative consequences like loss of control and distress based on an excessive use of the Internet and its specific online applications. Some approaches postulate similarities with behavioral addictions as well as substance depen...

Tissue-specific autoimmune diseases such as type 1 diabetes (T1D) are characterized by T cell-driven pathology. Administration of autoantigenic peptides provides a strategy to selectively target the pathogenic T cell response. Indeed, treatment with beta cell peptides effectively prevents T1D in NOD mice. However, the efficacy of peptide immunotherapy generally wanes as beta cell autoimmunity p...

The Japanese Orthopaedic Association has proposed the term locomotive syndrome (LS) to designate a condition of individuals in high-risk groups with musculoskeletal disease who are highly likely to require nursing care. This study investigates the influence of spinal factors on LS in Japanese females. A total of 187 women > or =50 years old were enrolled in the study. Those answering yes to lea...