OBJECTIVE Data on the prevalence of emerging bacterial pathogens like extended-spectrum-lactamase-building (ESBL) Gram negative organisms, multiresistant Pseudomonas and Acinetobacter species or toxin-building Clostridium difficile in German hospitals are sparse. To provide data for different regions in Germany, a one-day point prevalence study with five tertiary care hospitals and four seconda...

The product of the KiSS-1 gene is absent or expressed at low level in metastatic melanoma and breast cancer compared with their nonmetastatic counterparts. A polypeptide derived from the KiSS-1 product, designated kisspeptin-10 (Kp-10), activates a receptor coupled to Galphaq subunits (GPR54 or KiSS-1R). To study the mechanism by which Kp-10 antagonizes metastatic spread, the effect on CXCR4-me...

We study BIC-like model selection criteria. In particular, we approximate the lower-order terms, which typically include the constant log ∫ √ det I(θ) dθ, where I(θ) is the Fisher information at parameter value θ. We observe that the constant can sometimes be a huge negative number that dominates the other terms in the criterion for moderate sample sizes. At least in the case of Markov sources,...

We used event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate the neurocognitive mechanisms associated with processing light verb constructions such as "give a kiss". These constructions consist of a semantically underspecified light verb ("give") and an event nominal that contributes most of the meaning and also activates an argument structure of its own ("kiss"). This creates a mismatch between the ...

Kisspeptins, the peptide products of the KiSS-1 gene, were identified in 2001 as natural ligands of the previously orphan G protein-coupled receptor, GPR54. They include, among others, metastin and kisspeptin-10. The known biological functions of kisspeptins were initially restricted to their ability to suppress tumour metastasis, hence the name of metastin. However, in late 2003, two groups in...