Animal or Plant: Which Is the Better Fog Water Collector?

Occasional fog is a critical water source utilised by plants and animals in the Namib Desert. Fog basking beetles (Onymacris unguicularis, Tenebrionidae) and Namib dune bushman grass (Stipagrostris sabulicola, Poaceae) collect water directly from the fog. While the beetles position themselves optimally for fog water collection on dune ridges, the grass occurs predominantly at the dune base where less fog water is available. Differences in the fog-water collecting abilities in animals and plants have never been addressed. Here we place beetles and grass side-by-side in a fog chamber and measure the amount of water they collect over time. Based on the accumulated amount of water over a two hour period, grass is the better fog collector. However, in contrast to the episodic cascading water run-off from the grass, the beetles obtain water in a steady flow from their elytra. This steady trickle from the beetles' elytra to their mouth could ensure that even short periods of fog basking – while exposed to predators – will yield water. Up to now there is no indication of specialised surface properties on the grass leafs, but the steady run-off from the beetles could point to specific property adaptations of their elytra surface

Interaction between sodium chloride and texture in semi-hard Danish cheese as affected by brining time, dl -starter culture, chymosin type and cheese ripening

Reduced NaCl in semi-hard cheeses greatly affects textural and sensory properties. The interaction between cheese NaCl concentration and texture was affected by brining time (0–28 h), dl-starter cultures (C1, C2, and C3), chymosin type (bovine or camel), and ripening time (1–12 weeks). Cheese NaCl levels ranged from <0.15 to 1.90% (w/w). NaCl distribution changed during ripening; migration from cheese edge to core led to a more homogeneous NaCl distribution after 12 weeks. As ripening time increased, cheese firmness decreased. Cheeses with reduced NaCl were less firm and more compressible. Cheeses produced with C2 were significantly firmer than those produced with C1; cheeses produced with C3 had higher firmness and compressibility. In NaCl reduced cheese, use of camel chymosin as coagulant resulted in significantly higher firmness than that given using bovine chymosin. Overall, cheese NaCl content is reducible without significant textural impact using well-defined starter cultures and camel chymosin

Inactivation of the transforming growth factor β type II receptor in human small cell lung cancer cell lines

Transforming growth factor β (TGF-β) exerts a growth inhibitory effect on many cell types through binding to two types of receptors, the type I and II receptors. Resistance to TGF-β due to lack of type II receptor (RII) has been described in some cancer types including small cell lung cancer (SCLC). The purpose of this study was to examine the cause of absent RII expression in SCLC cell lines. Northern blot analysis showed that RII RNA expression was very weak in 16 of 21 cell lines. To investigate if the absence of RII transcript was due to mutations, we screened the poly-A tract for mutations, but no mutations were detected. Additional screening for mutations of the RII gene revealed a GG to TT base substitution in one cell line, which did not express RII. This mutation generates a stop codon resulting in predicted synthesis of a truncated RII of 219 amino acids. The nature of the mutation, which has not previously been observed in RII, has been linked to exposure to benzo[a]-pyrene, a component of cigarette smoke. Since RII has been mapped to chromosome 3p22 and nearby loci are often hypermethylated in SCLC, it was examined whether the lack of RII expression was due to hypermethylation. Southern blot analysis of the RII promoter did not show altered methylation patterns. The restriction endonuclease pattern of the RII gene was altered in two SCLC cell lines when digested with Sma 1. However, treatment with 5-aza-2′-deoxycytidine did not induce expression of RII mRNA. Our results indicate that in SCLC lack of RII mRNA is not commonly due to mutations and inactivation of RII transcription was not due to hypermethylation of the RII promoter or gene. Thus, these data show that in most cases of the SCLC cell lines, the RII gene and promoter is intact in spite of absent RII expression. However, the nature of the mutation found could suggest that it was caused by cigarette smoking. © 1999 Cancer Research Campaig

The Cosmological Constant

This is a review of the physics and cosmology of the cosmological constant. Focusing on recent developments, I present a pedagogical overview of cosmology in the presence of a cosmological constant, observational constraints on its magnitude, and the physics of a small (and potentially nonzero) vacuum energy.Comment: 50 pages. Submitted to Living Reviews in Relativity (http://www.livingreviews.org/), December 199

Patient characteristics associated with differences in patients' evaluation of their general practitioner

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Knowledge of the extent to which patient characteristics are systematically associated with variation in patient evaluations will enable us to adjust for differences between practice populations and thereby compare GPs. Whether this is appropriate depends on the purpose for which the patient evaluation was conducted. Associations between evaluations and patient characteristics may reflect gaps in the quality of care or may be due to inherent characteristics of the patients. This study aimed to determine such associations in a setting with a comprehensive list system and gate-keeping.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A nationwide Danish patient evaluation survey among voluntarily participating GPs using the EUROPEP questionnaire, which produced 28,260 patient evaluations (response rate 77.3%) of 365 GPs. In our analyses we compared the prevalence of positive evaluations in groups of patients.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We found a positive GP assessment to be strongly associated with increasing patient age and increasing frequency of attendance. Patients reporting a chronic condition were more positive, whereas a low self-rated health was strongly associated with less positive scores also after adjustment. The association between patient gender and assessment was weak and inconsistent and depended on the focus. We found no association either with the patients' educational level or with the duration of listing with the GP even after adjusting for patient characteristics.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Adjustment for patient differences may produce a more fair comparison between GPs, but may also blur the assessment of GPs' ability to meet the needs of the populations actually served. On the other hand, adjusted results will enable us to describe the significance of specific patient characteristics to patients' experience of care.</p

Use of postmenopausal hormone replacement therapy and risk of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma: a Danish Population-based Cohort Study

Use of postmenopausal hormone replacement therapy (HRT) has been hypothesised to be associated with a reduced risk of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL), but the epidemiologic evidence is conflicting. To examine the risk of NHL in HRT users aged 40 and older, we conducted a cohort study in the County of North Jutland, Denmark (population 0.5 million) using data from population-based health registries for the period 1989–2002. We computed age-standardised NHL incidence rates and used Cox regression analysis to compute the relative risk (RR) and corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CI) of NHL among HRT users compared with non-users, adjusting for age and calendar period. The number of prescriptions redeemed (1, 2–4, 5–9, 10–19, or 20 or more prescriptions) was used as a proxy for duration of HRT. We identified 40 NHL cases among HRT users during 179 838 person-years of follow-up and 310 NHL cases among non-users during 1 247 302 person-years of follow-up. The age-standardised incidence rates of NHL were 25.7 per 100 000 among HRT users and 24.2 per 100 000 among non-users, yielding an adjusted RR of 0.99 (95% CI: 0.71–1.39). Our data did not support an association between HRT use and risk of NHL

Simple de Sitter Solutions

We present a framework for de Sitter model building in type IIA string theory, illustrated with specific examples. We find metastable dS minima of the potential for moduli obtained from a compactification on a product of two Nil three-manifolds (which have negative scalar curvature) combined with orientifolds, branes, fractional Chern-Simons forms, and fluxes. As a discrete quantum number is taken large, the curvature, field strengths, inverse volume, and four dimensional string coupling become parametrically small, and the de Sitter Hubble scale can be tuned parametrically smaller than the scales of the moduli, KK, and winding mode masses. A subtle point in the construction is that although the curvature remains consistently weak, the circle fibers of the nilmanifolds become very small in this limit (though this is avoided in illustrative solutions at modest values of the parameters). In the simplest version of the construction, the heaviest moduli masses are parametrically of the same order as the lightest KK and winding masses. However, we provide a method for separating these marginally overlapping scales, and more generally the underlying supersymmetry of the model protects against large corrections to the low-energy moduli potential.Comment: 37 pages, harvmac big, 4 figures. v3: small correction

Cancer risk among users of neuroleptic medication: a population-based cohort study

It has been suggested that neuroleptic medication may decrease cancer risk. We compared cancer risks in a population-based cohort study of 25 264 users (⩾2 prescriptions) of neuroleptic medications in the county of North Jutland, Denmark, during 1989–2002, with that of county residents who did not receive such prescriptions. Statistical analyses were based on age-standardisation and Poisson regression analysis, adjusting for age, calendar period, COPD, liver cirrhosis or alcoholism, use of NSAID, and, for breast cancer, additionally for use of hormone therapy, age at first birth, and number of children. Use of neuroleptic medications was associated with a decreased risk for rectal cancer in both women and men (adjusted IRRs of 0.61 (95% confidence interval, 0.41–0.91) and 0.82 (0.56–1.19), respectively) and for colon cancer in female users (0.78; 0.62–0.98). Some risk reduction was seen for prostate cancer (0.87; 0.69–1.08), but breast cancer risk was close to unity (0.93; 0.74–1.17). Overall, treatment with neuroleptic medications was not related to a reduced risk of cancer, but for cancers of the rectum, colon and prostate there were suggestive decreases in risk