BACKGROUND The non-invasive assessment of airway inflammation is potentially advantageous in asthma management. Exhaled carbon monoxide (eCO) measurement is cheap and has been proposed to reflect airway inflammation and oxidative stress but current data are conflicting. The purpose of this meta-analysis is to determine whether eCO is elevated in asthmatics, is regulated by steroid treatment and...

Pyrosequencing analysis of 16S rRNA genes was used to examine impacts of elevated CO(2) (eCO(2)) on soil microbial communities from 12 replicates each from ambient CO(2) (aCO(2)) and eCO(2) settings. The results suggest that the soil microbial community composition and structure significantly altered under conditions of eCO(2), which was closely associated with soil and plant properties.

Rural tourism or tourism in rural areas is a new form of activity that can bring economic and social benefits to the society. It will not only generate employment for the people but it can also develop social, cultural and educational values; therefore, rural tourism has attracted increasing attention from governments, NGOs and other organizations. Economic regime change from Fordism to post-Fo...

This article explores informal environmental education (EE) experiences at eco-attractions. A consortium of three UK-based environmental charities designed an eco-attraction-based EE program aiming to inspire responses to environmental change. Over six months, educators at six eco-attractions delivered this two-day program to 430 young people. This article conveys qualitative insights into lear...

Eco-environmental stress refers to the pressure borne by the environment in sustaining the pre-existing non-industrialized state and/or in counteracting adverse impacts caused by natural and human factors. The present article introduces the concept, research progress, and method for assessing eco-environmental stress. An eco-environmental stress index (ESI) is established to assess the eco-envi...

Metastatic breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancerrelated deaths among women. Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a highly aggressive subcategory of breast cancer and currently lacks well-defined molecular targets for effective targeted therapies. Disease relapse, metastasis, and drug resistance render standard chemotherapy ineffective in the treatment of TNBC. Because previous ...

In this article, we consider houses belonging to an eco-neighborhood in which inhabitants have the capacity to optimize dynamically the energy demand and the energy storage level so as to maximize their utility. The inhabitants’ preferences are characterized by their sensitivity toward comfort versus price, the optimal expected temperature in the house, thermal loss and heating efficiency of th...

BACKGROUND Cigarette smoking causes cardiovascular disease and activates markers of endothelial dysfunction or injury. We investigated the nailfold capillary blood velocity (NCV) in cigarette smokers compared to non-smokers. METHODS Forty-eight men (eighteen non-smokers and thirty smokers) were recruited. We measured NCV using nailfold capillary microscopy and exhaled carbon monoxide (ECO) co...

Eco-P colonies are constructed as natural extension of P colonies with dynamical evolution of environment. P colonies are one of the kind of computational models based on independent autonomous agents represented by membrane systems working and evolving in a shared environment. These acts are based on the set of program associated with every agent. There are two types of agents in eco-P colonie...

We compared growth, leaf gas exchange characteristics, water relations, chlorophyll fluorescence, and Na(+) and Cl(-) concentration of two cultivars ('Koroneiki' and 'Picual') of olive (Olea europaea L.) trees in response to high salinity (NaCl 100mM) and elevated CO(2) (eCO(2)) concentration (700microLL(-1)). The cultivar 'Koroneiki' is considered to be more salt sensitive than the relatively ...