Background Plasma endothelin concentrations are increased in the acute phase of myocardial infarction and in chronic heart failure. Since endothelin may contribute to hemodynamic deterioration by potent vasoconstrictory and cardiotoxic actions, increased plasma levels may be associated with an unfavorable prognosis after myocardial infarction. Methods and Results We tested the hypothesis that p...

This paper uses the latest data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to compare the health systems of the thirty member countries in 2000. Total health spending—the distribution of public and private health spending in the OECD countries—is presented and discussed. U.S. public spending as a percentage of GDP (5.8 percent) is virtually identical to public spendin...

Minimizing the risks associated with manure-borne pathogenic microorganisms requires an understanding of microbial survival under realistic field conditions. The objective of this 3-year study was to assess the fate of Salmonella (SALM) and fecal indicator bacteria (FIB), E. coli (EC) and enterococci (ENT), in glacial tillderived soils, after application of poultry manure (PM) to cornfields und...

ABSTRM@T Decreased levels of the cell-cell adhesion molecule E-cadherin are as sociated with loss of differentiation in a number of human carcinomas. However, the value of E-cadherin as a prognostic marker in these cancers is largely undetermined. A previous study of E-cadherin levels in prostate cancer revealed that almost 50% of tumors examined had reduced or absent levels of this protein (Um...

In this paper, a novel membrane triiodide sensor based on a charge-transfer complex of (1,3-diphenyldihydro-1H-imidazole-4,5-dionedioxime) with iodine (CTCI) as a membrane carrier is introduced. The best performance was obtained with a membrane containing 30% polyvinylchloride (PVC), 63% dibutylphthalate (DBP), 5% CTCI and 2% hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide (HTAB). The electrode shows a Nern...

The frrst part of this paper presents carbon dioxide air conditioning units which were installed in two city buses. The two buses were tested "on-the-road" during summer 1997 in Bad Hersfeld, Germany. By the end of 1997, the air condition systems of the two buses had been running together for more than 860 hours proving that C02 systems fulfill important on-the-road requirements. In the second ...

Because, each electrode response depends upon its material nature as well as its surface properties, gold (Au) and glassy carbon (GC) electrodes were investigated as inert indicator electrodes (IIE) in addition to platinum (Pt). Indeed, platinum differs from gold as it has the higher exchange current density (10 mA/cm2 for Pt, against 0.3 mA/cm2 for Au). However, gold is known as a more inert m...

T his p a p e r considers th e vario u s ty p es of co n tro llab ility of lin e a r in fin ite-dim ensional d ynam ical system s defined in a B an ach space, w ith m u ltip le tim e-v ary in g delays in control. N ecessary an d su fficien t conditions fo r ap p ro x im a ­ te co n tro llab ility , ap p ro x im ate re la tiv e co n tro llab ility an d ap p ro x im ate absolute-co n tro llab ili...

Mapping of groundwater level observations often makes very little use of auxiliary data and is often undertaken simply by manual interpolation or ordinary kriging of the heads. Recently, a number of geostatistical methods have emerged that significantly improve estimates by incorporating the land surface elevation and groundwater flow or drawdown equations. However, at the regional scale heads ...

The historiography of science is now unthinkable without a keen awareness of the interactions between science and religion. Shelves of books and countless articles have been and continue to be written about the relationship between these two great pretenders to supreme knowledge. In general, earlier suggestions that science and religion were completely inimical to one another, irreconcilable ri...