This thesis is the result of a bit more than four years of work, which I performed as a PhD-student in the group of Polymer Chemistry and Biomaterials of the University of Twente in Enschede, The Netherlands. When I decided to accept this position on a late summer's day in 2005, I knew it was a bit of a gamble. I was unfamiliar with the city, the university, and the group with its focus on mate...

Research is driven as much by new technology as by new ideas. Just think of the way biology has changed out of all recognition during the last 35 years as a result of, amongst other things, DNA cloning, Southern blotting, microarrays, mass spectroscopy, and high throughput DNA sequencing. The pace of change shows no sign of slackening as we are promised the ability to sequence a mammalian genom...

Whether or not other animal species can appreciate human music is an issue that intrigues thinkers, scientists and artists (as well as pet owners). Yet, to date, despite a rather conspicuous corpus of studies using different investigating strategies with different animal species, no univocal answer does exist. There is contrasting evidence on the effects of music listening on animals' physiolog...

The motion of the striking point on the piano hammer was measured before and during string contact by means of an optical equipment. The measurements resolved the motion in two perpendicular components; in the striking direction (vertical), and in the string direction (horizontal). The influence of dynamic level and touch on the hammer motion was studied. Three different types of touch were eva...

Our first encounter with Antonio García-Bellido was around 1974, when we had just begun our postdoctoral studies in Seymour Benzer's lab. Antonio was spending some time then as a visiting Professor at Ed Lewis' Lab in Caltech. Even for novices like ourselves, we were aware that Antonio had already done important things in Developmental Biology. Just a year earlier, he had published the classic ...

First, we hear a rustle in the shrubs, and then a bird whose call sounds like “where are you?” From a short distance away, another bird gives a slightly different call: “oh, where are you?” For simplicity, we will call these WAY calls. In answer, several small gray and white wrens fly toward the first caller, giving WAY calls that sound virtually identical to the first caller’s. At the same tim...

Hospitals are instititions; they are also agglomerations of dispersed buildings. At any given time, all of these will be variously declared inadequate, under construction, having something tacked on, or altered to some different, generally lowlier, purpose. Plans are commissioned, and the money runs out; new plans are drawn up. The constant to-ing and fro-ing of the builders is difficult to con...

Copyright © 2011 Frederick Furness Publishing 18 The route of administration is critical for any medicine. For decades, the most common dosage forms were either oral or for injection. Patients generally preferred oral therapies over injected medications because oral delivery is non-invasive and convenient. Based on this preference and advances in drug delivery technologies, several other non-in...

LITERATURE REVIEW The differential diagnosis for CC in children is quite extensive. In general, specific CC has a known etiology, whereas nonspecific CC has no clear identifiable etiology. Treatment of specific cough can be tailored to the diagnosis; however, management becomes increasingly challenging when there is nonspecific cough. An algorithm has been proposed for management of CC in child...