In recent years, pioneering work carried out by Sauvage, Stoddart and co-workers [1], , has focused on the development of synthetic methodologies and the characterization of catenanes and rotaxanes. Catenanes and rotaxanes are examples of interlocked molecule. Unlike classical molecular structures, they consist of two or more separate components which are mechanically connected. Catenanes consi...

We investigate a number of potential foregrounds for an ambitious goal of future radio telescopes such as the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) and Low Frequency Array (LOFAR): spatial tomography of neutral gas at high redshift in 21cm emission. While the expected temperature fluctuations due to unresolved radio point sources is highly uncertain, we point out that free-free emission from the ionizin...

Improper design or use of blood collection devices can adversely affect the accuracy of laboratory test results. Vascular access devices, such as catheters and needles, exert shear forces during blood flow, which creates a predisposition to cell lysis. Components from blood collection tubes, such as stoppers, lubricants, surfactants, and separator gels, can leach into specimens and/or adsorb an...

Routing wires are dominant performance stoppers in deep sub-micron technologies, and there is an urgent need to take them into account already at higher levels of abstraction. However, the normal design flow gives the designer only limited control over the details of the lower levels, risking the quality of the final result. We propose a language, called Wired, which lets the designer express c...

As technology scales up, the design productivity slows down and new approaches must be sought after to reach the design productivity (or bridge the gap) that is nowadays common for general-purpose processor design. New tools, technologies, languages, operating systems, and design approaches are likely to be needed. Nowadays, extra transistors are utilized for acceleration purposes (next to prot...

The continuous production and harvest of uncontaminated cells for periods of several months are a major requirement inthe design of a suitable culture system. Many continuous-culture units have been reported previously (1, 2), and some units are now commercially available. However, in these units, rubber, metals, and other sources of potentially toxic extractives are not prevented from direct c...

Intertidal organisms are subjected to intense hydrodynamic forces as waves break on the shore. These repeated insults can cause a plant or animal's structural materials to fatigue and fail, even though no single force would be sufficient to break the organism. Indeed, the survivorship and maximum size of at least one species of seaweed is set by the accumulated effects of small forces rather th...

Human recombinant erythropoietin (epoetin) is a very effective and safe biopharmaceutical. However, in 1998 the incidence of pure red cell aplasia (PRCA) induced by antierythropoietin (anti-EPO) antibodies in patients treated with epoetin started to increase. PRCA is a rare condition of non-regenerative anemia which can be associated with a variety of diseases and is in some cases of immunologi...

Abstract. Atmospheric trace gases such as dihydrogen (H2), carbon monoxide (CO) and methane (CH4) play important roles in microbial metabolism biogeochemical cycles. Analysis of these at levels requires reliable storage discrete samples low volume. While commercial sampling vials Exetainers® have been tested for CH4 other greenhouse gases, no information on is available H2 CO. We show that seal...

BACKGROUND Hypertension remains a major public health problem whose management is hampered by poor persistence with pharmacological therapy. The aim of this study was to evaluate the association between discontinuing antihypertensive drugs (AHDs) and the risk of cardiovascular mortality in the elderly. METHODS A population-based prospective cohort study of all of the ≥ 60-year-old residents i...