Both insulin resistance and insulin concentrations correlate with blood pressure in nondiabetic subjects, but there is no consensus on these relations in subjects with non-insulin-dependent diabetes, perhaps because of the use of nonspecific insulin assays and clinic blood pressure measurement. Therefore, we have investigated the relation between ambulatory blood pressure, insulin sensitivity (...

Genetic Algorithm Combining Operation Tree (GAOT) was constructed to estimate the slump flow of high-performance concrete (HPC) by using seven concrete ingredients. HPC is a highly complex material; because modeling its behavior is extremely difficult, robust optimization techniques are required. GAOT is a type of evolutionary algorithm that simultaneously optimizes functions and their associat...

Objective—To assess from oYcial statistics whether there is evidence that the careers of women doctors in hospitals do not progress in the same way as those of men. Design—The proportions of female hospital doctors overall (1963–96), and in the specialties of medicine, surgery, obstetrics and gynaecology, pathology, radiology/ radiotherapy, anaesthetics and psychiatry (1974–1996) were examined....

In this issue’s Editors choice, Aoife Moran, Anne Scott and Philip Darbyshire (see page 70) argue that the process of living on haemodialysis, while waiting for a kidney transplant, is one in which time is both killed and wasted. Rather like the lives of the protagonists in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, the lives of people on dialysis are ones characterised by existential boredom. Moreover, thei...

Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), including urethritis caused by gonococcus and Chlamydia trachomatis, are of increasing public health importance (1, 3, 6, 7, 9). The common occurrence of coinfections and the emergence of antimicrobial resistance of both pathogens emphasize the need for a single broadly active drug for management of these STDs (2, 3, 7, 9, 11–13). Penicillins and other beta...

Suffering, grief, and marginalisation are just a few of the human experiences closely observed by authors in this issue of Medical Humanities. None of these are easy to endure or to witness, and yet the latter is exactly what these scholars have chosen to do. Using, among others, the prisms of literary studies, social history, and film and television studies, they ponder the role of healthcare ...

21 In our study, we report the identification, characterization, and gene cloning of a novel 22 protein elicitor (PeBL1) secreted from Brevibacillus laterosporus strain A60. Through a 23 purification process consisting of ion exchange chromatography and HPLC, we isolated a 24 protein that was identified by ESI-QTOF-MS/MS. The 351-bp PeBL1 gene produces a 25 12833 Da protein with 116 amino acids...

Twelve species of Neogene decapod crustaceans are described from late Miocene and early Pliocene deposits in the Valdivia, Osorno-Llanquihue, and Chiloé basins as well as from Mocha Island, offshore from the Temuco Basin, southern Chile. New species of thalassinideans include Ctenocheles notialis and Axianassa? chilensis. Axianassa Schmitt, 1924, has not been reported previously in the fossil r...