BACKGROUND Few studies have examined which lifestyle factors relate to the development of fat distribution. Therefore, the identification of the determinants of changes in fat deposition is highly relevant. METHODS The association between the change in physical activity (PA) and the subsequent changes in regional body fat distributions was examined. In total, 1,236 men and 1,201 women were in...

Hox genes have large expression domains yet control the formation of fine pattern elements at specific locations. We have examined the mechanism underlying subdivision of the abdominal-A (abdA) Hox domain in the visceral mesoderm. AbdA directs formation of an embryonic midgut constriction at a precise location within the broad and uniform abdA expression domain. The constriction divides the abd...

Classical target detection can suffer large error probabilities in noisy and lossy environments when noise photons are mistaken for signal photons reflected from an object. It has been shown theoretically that the correlation between entangled photons can be used to better discriminate between the signal photons reflected by an object and noise photons, thus reducing the probability of error [1...

We introduce a general method in order to construct the non-chiral fusion rules which determine the operator content of the operator product algebra for rational conformal field theories. We are particularly interested in the models of the complementary D−like solutions of the modular invariant partition functions with cyclic center ZN . We find that the non-chiral fusion rules have a ZN−gradin...

Future wireless communications technology should fulfill the demands of multimedia applications, interactive internet service, high data rates and power efficiency. However, wireless channel is affected by multipath fading that can degrade the system performance. To overcome the problem, cooperative communication has been introduced to be an efficient diversity technique to combat the multipath...

Bordetella pertussis is the causative agent of pertussis (whooping cough). Despite high vaccination coverage, pertussis remains a significant disease in many countries. Besides vaccination, transient carriage of Bordetella spp. or other cross-reacting organisms adds to the immunity against pertussis. However, the various immunological mechanisms conferring protection remain largely unknown. In ...

In a randomized double-blind trial in healthy Israeli infants in Israel who received the 13-valent or 7-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV13 or PCV7, respectively) at 2, 4, 6, and 12 months, PCV13 significantly reduced nasopharyngeal (NP) colonization of serotypes 1, 6A, 7F, 19A, cross-reacting 6C, and the common PCV7 serotype 19F, from ages 7 to 24 months. No differences were observed ...

BACKGROUND To evaluate the ocular pulse amplitude (OPA), the posterior pole asymmetry analysis (PPAA), the peripapillary retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) thickness, the ganglion cell layer (GCL) thickness, macular thickness and visual field testing in migraine patients without aura. METHODS In this prospective, cross-sectional and comparative study 38 migraine patients and 44 age and sex matc...

A fluorimetric method was used to determine the o-phthaldialdehyde (OPA) reactivity of amino groups for the assessment of non-enzymatic browning reactions in products with a prolonged shelf-life. The studies were conducted in four commercial infant cereals: wheat-based '7-cereals' and '8-cereals', and gluten-free 'rice cereal' and 'rice-corn cereal'. The cereals were monitored at 28 degrees C f...

INTRODUCTION Alendronate sodium enhances bone formation and increases osteoblast proliferation and maturation and leads to the inhibition of osteoblast apoptosis. Therefore, a rapid and simple spectrofluorometric method has been developed and validated for the quantitative determination of it. METHODS The procedure is based on the reaction of primary amino group of alendronate with o-phthalal...