Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay for urinary albumin at low concentrations

We describe an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) for urinary albumin. It requires only commercially available reagents, can detect as little as 16 micrograms of albumin per liter, and analytical recovery ranges from 92 to 116%. The assay is simple, rapid, and inexpensive. Albumin excretion was 6.2 (SD 4.1) mg/24 h in healthy subjects (n = 40), 14.7 (SD 7.2) mg/24 h in albumin-test-strip-negative Type I diabetics (n = 11), and 19.7 (SD 16.2) mg/24 h in patients with essential hypertension (n = 12)

The Influence of Large-Scale Airborne Particle Decline and Traffic-Related Exposure on Children’s Lung Function

Between 1991 and 2000, ambient air pollution in East Germany changed to resemble West German pollution levels: The concentration of total suspended particles (TSPs) decreased on a broad scale while traffic increased. During that time, we analyzed total lung capacity (TLC) and airway resistance (R(aw)) of East and West German children. We tested children 5–7 years of age (n = 2,574) with cooperation-independent body plethysmography in repeated cross sections. We used random-effect models to determine the mutually adjusted association between lung function and short-term and chronic particle exposure and its interaction with living near a busy road. Annual averages of TSPs declined from 77 to 44 μg/m(3); averages on the day of investigation declined from 133 to 30 μg/m(3). Differences in lung function between East and West German children vanished during the investigation time. The association of TSPs with R(aw) and TLC was stronger in children living > 50 m away from busy roads. East German children from this group had an R(aw) 2.5% higher [95% confidence interval (CI), 0.0–5.1%] per 40-μg/m(3) increase of daily TSP averages. TLC decreased by 6.2% (95% CI, 0.04–11.6%) per 40-μg/m(3) increase in annual mean TSPs, and this effect was equally pronounced in East and West Germany. TSP exposure decreased on a broad scale between 1991 and 2000. Lower concentrations of TSPs were associated with better measures of lung function in 6-year-old children. For children living near busy roads, this effect was diminished

Demonstration of a beam loaded nanocoulomb-class laser wakefield accelerator.

Laser-plasma wakefield accelerators have seen tremendous progress, now capable of producing quasi-monoenergetic electron beams in the GeV energy range with few-femtoseconds bunch duration. Scaling these accelerators to the nanocoulomb range would yield hundreds of kiloamperes peak current and stimulate the next generation of radiation sources covering high-field THz, high-brightness X-ray and γ-ray sources, compact free-electron lasers and laboratory-size beam-driven plasma accelerators. However, accelerators generating such currents operate in the beam loading regime where the accelerating field is strongly modified by the self-fields of the injected bunch, potentially deteriorating key beam parameters. Here we demonstrate that, if appropriately controlled, the beam loading effect can be employed to improve the accelerator's performance. Self-truncated ionization injection enables loading of unprecedented charges of ∼0.5 nC within a mono-energetic peak. As the energy balance is reached, we show that the accelerator operates at the theoretically predicted optimal loading condition and the final energy spread is minimized.Higher beam quality and stability are desired in laser-plasma accelerators for their applications in compact light sources. Here the authors demonstrate in laser plasma wakefield electron acceleration that the beam loading effect can be employed to improve beam quality by controlling the beam charge

Huge Transverse Magnetization in the Field-Induced Phase of the Antiferromagnetic Molecular Wheel CsFe8

The 1H-NMR spectrum and nuclear relaxation rate 1/T_1 in the antiferromagnetic wheel CsFe8 were measured to characterize the previously observed magnetic field-induced low-temperature phase around the level crossing at 8 T. The data show that the phase is characterized by a huge staggered transverse polarization of the electronic Fe spins, and the opening of a gap, providing microscopic evidence for the interpretation of the phase as a field-induced magneto-elastic instability.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, REVTEX4, to appear in PR

Preschool children's health and its association with parental education and individual living conditions in East and West Germany

BACKGROUND: Social inequalities in health exist globally and are a major public health concern. This study focus on a systematic investigation into the associations between health indicators, living conditions and parental educational level as indicator of the social status of 6-year-old children living in West and East Germany in the decade after re-unification. Explanations of observed associations between parental education and health indicators were examined. METHODS: All boys and girls entering elementary school and living in predefined areas of East and West Germany were invited to participate in a series of cross-sectional surveys conducted between 1991 and 2000. Data of 28,888 German children with information on parental education were included in the analysis. Information about educational level of the parents, individual living conditions, symptoms and diagnoses of infectious diseases and allergies were taken from questionnaire. At the day of investigation, atopic eczema was diagnosed by dermatologists, blood was taken for the determination of allergen-specific immuno-globulin E, height and weight was measured and lung function tests were done in subgroups. Regression analysis was applied to investigate the associations between the health indicators and parental educational level as well as the child's living conditions. Gender, urban/rural residency and year of survey were used to control for confounding. RESULTS: Average response was 83% in East Germany and 71% in West Germany. Strong associations between health indicators and parental education were observed. Higher educated parents reported more diagnoses and symptoms than less educated. Children of higher educated parents were also more often sensitized against grass pollen or house dust mites, but had higher birth weights, lower airway resistance and were less overweight at the age of six. Furthermore, most of the health indicators were significantly associated with one or more living conditions such as living as a single child, unfavourable indoor air, damp housing condition, maternal smoking during pregnancy or living near a busy road. The total lung capacity and the prevalence of an atopic eczema at the day of investigation were the only health indicators those did not show associations with any of the predictor variables. CONCLUSION: Despite large differences in living conditions and evidence that some poor health outcomes were directly associated with poor living conditions, only few indicators demonstrated poorer health in social disadvantaged children. These were in both parts of Germany increased levels of overweight, higher airway resistance and, in East Germany only, reduced height in children with lower educated parents compared to those of higher education. In both East and West Germany, higher prevalence of airway symptoms was associated with a damp housing condition, and lower birth weight, reduced height and increased airway resistance at the age of six were associated with maternal smoking during pregnancy. The latter explained to a large extent the difference in birth weight and airway resistance between the educational groups

Restoring betatron phase coherence in a beam-loaded laser-wakefield accelerator

Matched beam loading in laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA), characterizing the state of flattening of the acceleration electric field along the bunch, leads to the minimization of energy spread at high bunch charges. Here, we demonstrate by independently controlling injected charge and acceleration gradients, using the self-truncated ionization injection scheme, that minimal energy spread coincides with a reduction of the normalized beam divergence. With the simultaneous confirmation of a constant beam radius at the plasma exit, deduced from betatron radiation spectroscopy, we attribute this effect to the reduction of chromatic betatron decoherence. Thus, beam loaded LWFA enables highest longitudinal and transverse phase space densities

Neural basis of shame and guilt experience in women with borderline personality disorder.

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is characterized by instability of affect, emotion dysregulation, and interpersonal dysfunction. Especially shame and guilt, so-called self-conscious emotions, are of central clinical relevance to BPD. However, only few experimental studies have focused on shame or guilt in BPD and none investigated their neurobiological underpinnings. In the present functional magnetic resonance imaging study, we took a scenario-based approach to experimentally induce feelings of shame, guilt, and disgust with neutral scenarios as control condition. We included 19 women with BPD (age 26.4 ± 5.8 years; DSM-IV diagnosed; medicated) and 22 healthy female control subjects (age 26.4 ± 4.6 years; matched for age and verbal IQ). Compared to controls, women with BPD reported more intense feelings when being confronted with affective scenarios, especially higher levels of shame, guilt, and fear. We found increased amygdala reactivity in BPD compared to controls for shame and guilt, but not for disgust scenarios (p = 0.05 FWE corrected at the cluster level; p < 0.0001 cluster defining threshold). Exploratory analyses showed that this was caused by a diminished habituation in women with BPD relative to control participants. This effect was specific to guilt and shame scenarios as both groups showed amygdala habituation to disgust scenarios. Our work suggests that heightened shame and guilt experience in BPD is not related to increased amygdala activity per se, but rather to decreased habituation to self-conscious emotions. This provides an explanation for the inconsistencies in previous imaging work on amygdala involvement in BPD as well as the typically slow progress in the psychotherapy of dysfunctional self-conscious emotions in this patient group

Free-electron Model for Mesoscopic Force Fluctuations in Nanowires

When two metal electrodes are separated, a nanometer sized wire (nanowire) is formed just before the contact breaks. The electrical conduction measured during this retraction process shows signs of quantized conductance in units of G_0=2e^2/h. Recent experiments show that the force acting on the wire during separation fluctuates, which has been interpreted as being due to atomic rearrangements. In this report we use a simple free electron model, for two simple geometries, and show that the electronic contribution to the force fluctuations is comparable to the experimentally found values, about 2 nN.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, reference correcte