Search results for "Methods"
showing 10 items of 4526 documents
Importance of Propionibacterium acnes hemolytic activity in human intervertebral discs: A microbiological study
2018
Most patients with chronic lower back pain (CLBP) exhibit degenerative disc disease. Disc specimens obtained during initial therapeutic discectomies are often infected/colonized with Propionibacterium acnes, a Gram-positive commensal of the human skin. Although pain associated with infection is typically ascribed to the body's inflammatory response, the Gram-positive bacterium Staphylococcus aureus was recently observed to directly activate nociceptors by secreting pore-forming α-hemolysins that disrupt neuronal cell membranes. The hemolytic activity of P. acnes in cultured disc specimens obtained during routine therapeutic discectomies was assessed through incubation on sheep-blood agar. T…
Dental disease and dietary isotopes of individuals from St Gertrude Church cemetery, Riga, Latvia.
2018
This research explores oral health indicators and stable carbon and nitrogen isotope data to explore diet, and differences in diet, between people buried in the four different contexts of the St Gertrude Church cemetery (15th– 17th centuries AD): the general cemetery, two mass graves, and a collective mass burial pit within the general cemetery. The main aim is to assess whether people buried in the mass graves were rural immigrants, or if they were more likely to be the victims of plague (or another epidemic) who lived in Riga and its suburbs. The data produced (from dental disease assessments and isotope analyses) were compared within, as well as between, the contexts. Most differences em…
Bader’s topological analysis of the electron density in the pressure-induced phase transitions/amorphization in α-quartz from the catastrophe theory …
2013
In this work, the Bader's topological analysis of the electron density, coupled with Thom's catastrophe theory, was used to characterize the pressure-induced transformations in α-quartz. In particular, ab initio calculations of the α-quartz structures in the range 0-105 Gpa have been performed at the HF/DFT exchange-correlation terms level, using Hamiltonians based on a WC1LYP hybrid scheme. The electron densities calculated throughout the ab initio wave functions have been analysed by means of the Bader's theory, seeking for some catastrophic mechanism in the sense of Thom's theory. The analysis mainly showed that there is a typical fold catastrophe feature involving an O-O interaction at …
Complementary methods assessing short and long-term prey of a marine top predator ‒ Application to the grey seal-fishery conflict in the Baltic Sea.
2019
The growing grey seal (Halichoerus grypus) population in the Baltic Sea has created conflicts with local fisheries, comparable to similar emerging problems worldwide. Adequate information on the foraging habits is a requirement for responsible management of the seal population. We investigated the applicability of available dietary assessment methods by comparing morphological analysis and DNA metabarcoding of gut contents (short-term diet; n = 129/125 seals, respectively), and tissue chemical markers i.e. fatty acid (FA) profiles of blubber and stable isotopes (SIs) of liver and muscle (mid- or long-term diet; n = 108 seals for the FA and SI markers). The methods provided complementary inf…
Ab initio calculations of the atomic and electronic structure of BaZrO3 (111) surfaces
2013
Abstract The paper presents and discusses the results of calculations of surface relaxations and energetics for the polar (111) surface of BaZrO 3 using a hybrid B3LYP description of exchange and correlation. On the (111) surface, both Zr- and BaO 3 -terminations were analyzed. For both Zr and BaO 3 -terminated BaZrO 3 (111) surface upper layer atoms, with the sole exception of BaO 3 -terminated surface Ba atoms, relax inwards. The Zr-terminated BaZrO 3 (111) surface second layer Ba atoms exhibit the strongest relaxation between all Zr and BaO 3 -terminated BaZrO 3 (111) surface atoms. The calculated surface relaxation energy for Zr-terminated BaZrO 3 (111) surface is almost fifteen times l…
First principles calculations of SrZrO3 bulk and ZrO2-terminated (001) surface F centers
2016
Abstract Using a supercell model and B3PW hybrid exchange-correlation functional in the framework of the density functional theory (DFT), as it is implemented in the CRYSTAL computer code, we performed ab initio calculations for the F -center located in the SrZrO 3 bulk and on the ZrO 2 -terminated (001) surface. According to the results of performed relaxation of atoms around the defect, two nearest Zr and four Sr atoms are repulsed, but all oxygen atoms are attracted towards both, the bulk and (001) surface F -center. The displacement magnitudes of atoms surrounding the bulk F -center are smaller than around the (001) surface F -center. The B3PW calculated SrZrO 3 bulk optical band gap (5…
Electron delocalization in mixed-valence Keggin polyoxometalates. Ab initio calculation of the local effective transfer integrals and its consequence…
2002
We present a quantitative evaluation of the influence of the electron transfer on the magnetic properties of mixed-valence polyoxometalates reduced by two electrons. For that purpose, we extract from valence-spectroscopy ab initio calculations on embedded fragments the value of the transfer integrals between W nearest-neighbor atoms in a mixed-valence alphaPW(12)O(40) polyoxowolframate Keggin anion. In contradiction with what is usually assumed, we show that the electron transfer between edge-sharing and corner-sharing WO(6) octahedra have very close values. Considering fragments of various ranges, we analyze the accuracy of calculations on fragments based on only two WO(5) pyramids which s…
Analytical methods to determine cocaine contamination of banknotes from around the world
2008
Abstract The presence of cocaine in a significant number of UK pounds (Xxxx), Euros (€) and North American banknotes ($) in general circulation requires appropriate tools to do determinations. This article discusses the-state-of-the-art in the analysis of cocaine on banknotes. We summarize the usual extraction methods of currency samples and compare them, especially with respect to avoiding sample damage. We critically discuss analytical methods, namely gas chromatography (GC) and liquid chromatography (LC), capillary electrophoresis (CE), immunoassay, thermal desorption tandem mass spectrometry (TD-MS2) and ion-mobility spectrometry (IMS). We also review cocaine levels on banknotes around …
CMB Anisotropy Computations Using Hydra Gas Code
2014
From FFP6 to FFP11, we presented the advances in our Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropy computations using N-body Hydra Codes. For such computations, codes without baryons were used: First sequential versions and afterwards parallel ones. With both of them we computed the weak lensing and the Rees-Sciama contributions to the CMB angular power spectrum. Using our numerical techniques, we reported a lensing effect higher than that estimated in previous papers (for very small angular scales). Our CMB computations require less interpolations and approximations than other approaches. This could explain part of our excess of power in lensing computations. Our higher time and angular res…
Quantification of the Detrimental Effect of a Single Primer-Template Mismatch by Real-Time PCR Using the 16S rRNA Gene as an Example
2008
ABSTRACT We investigated the effects of internal primer-template mismatches on the efficiency of PCR amplification using the 16S rRNA gene as the model template DNA. We observed that the presence of a single mismatch in the second half of the primer extension sequence can result in an underestimation of up to 1,000-fold of the gene copy number, depending on the primer and position of the mismatch.