Colloidal suspensions are used to generate polymers or particles from which ceramic materials can be made by the sol-gel process. The precursors for preparation of a colloidal suspension consist of a metal element surrounded by various ligands (attached groups not including another metal). For example, common precursors for sol-gel synthesis of aluminum oxide include inorganic salts such as Al(...

We study the complexity of the problem MAX SOL which is a natural optimisation version of the graph homomorphism problem. Given a fixed target graph H with V (H) ⊆ N, and a weight function w : V (G) → Q, an instance of the problem is a graph G and the goal is to find a homomorphism f : G → H which maximises P v∈G f(v) · w(v). MAX SOL can be seen as a restriction of the MIN HOM-problem [Gutin et...

BACKGROUND Prehospital traumatic cardiopulmonary arrest is associated with dismal prognosis, and patients rarely survive to hospital discharge. Recently established guidelines do not apply to the pediatric population because of paucity of data. The study objective was to determine the survival of pediatric patients presenting in the field with no signs of life after blunt trauma. METHODS We c...

In this study, we determined the contractile properties of single chemically skinned fibers prepared from the medial gastrocnemius (MG) and soleus (Sol) muscles of adult male rhesus monkeys and assessed the effects of the spaceflight living facility known as the experiment support primate facility (ESOP). Muscle biopsies were obtained 4 wk before and immediately after an 18-day ESOP sit, and fi...

Spatial properties of field soils vary in a complex manner. Especially in arid and semiarid areas, this variability affects plant quality and crop production. An experimental field plot was extensively sampled regarding soil water (378 gravimetrical samples), soil chemical content (314 samples), and crop yield and chemical content (26 samples) at the Cherfech agricultural field research station...

Operant conditioning of the H-reflex, the electrical analog of the spinal stretch reflex (SSR), induces activity-dependent plasticity in the spinal cord and might be used to improve locomotion after spinal cord injury. To further assess the potential clinical significance of spinal reflex conditioning, this study asks whether another well-defined spinal reflex pathway, the disynaptic pathway un...

BACKGROUND Given the key role of interleukin-5 (IL-5) in eosinophil function, we investigated the regulated expression of the membrane-anchored (TM-IL-5Ralpha) isoform, or a secreted (SOL IL-5Ralpha) isoform, on both protein and transcript level in vitro and in vivo. METHODS A real-time PCR, FACS and ELISA were established to determine IL-5Ralpha isoform expression in peripheral blood and nas...

Development of optical biosensors is an active area of research in the field of medical technology. Sol-gel matrices made from alkoxide silicates, tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) appear to be suitable glassy host matrix for the sensing system. However, the major problem in the TEOS based sol-gel matrices is stability. So it is important to study dopant-matrix interaction as a function of time. ...

The expression of 4 myosin heavy chain (MHC) isoforms was analyzed in the rat soleus (SOL) and extensor digitorum longus (EDL) muscles after denervation and chronic electric stimulation. The stimulation frequencies used were 20 and 150 Hz and the amount of stimulation was either large (20 Hz), intermediate (150 Hz), or small (150 Hz). These patterns resemble some features of normal motor unit a...

Sixty-four patients with various chest diseases were divided on clinical grounds into those suffering from asthma, chronic bronchitis, and chronic bronchitis with heart failure and those with damage to the lung parenchyma. A 24-hour specimen of sputum was collected from each patient and the electrolyte, protein, and carbohydrate composition was determined on the sol phase which was separated by...