Harbour seals (Phoca vitulina) and harbour porpoises (Phocoena phocoena) are top predators in the North Sea and consequently accumulate a variety of pollutants in their tissues. Concentrations of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) and their hydroxylated metabolites (HO-PCBs and HO-PBDEs) were measured in serum of wild harbour seals (n=47) and captive harbou...

PURPOSE To determine normative reference ranges for higher-order wavefront error (HO-WFE), compare these values with those in common ocular pathologies, and evaluate treatments. METHODS A review of 17 major studies on HO-WFE was made, involving data for a total of 31,605 subjects. The upper limit of the 95% confidence interval (CI) for HO-WFE was calculated from the most comprehensive of thes...

I N T R O D U C T I O N T h e m a m m a l i a n ant id iure t ic ho rmone , vasopressin, modif ies the p e r m e a b i l i t y to wa t e r of the distal n e p h r o n and t he r eby accelera tes osmotic equ i l ib ra t ion of the fo rming ur ine wi th the renal interst i t ial fluid (4). Similar ly , neu ro hypophysea l pept ides increase the ra te of wa t e r m o v e m e n t a long an osmot ic...

The extracellular medium-chain-length polyhydroxyalkanoate (MCL-PHA) depolymerase of Pseudomonas fluorescens GK13 catalyzes the hydrolysis of poly(3-hydroxyoctanoic acid) [P(3HO)]. Based on the strong tendency of the enzyme to interact with hydrophobic materials, a low-cost method which allows the rapid and easy purification and immobilization of the enzyme has been developed. Thus, the extrace...

Although many effective chiral bisphosphines have been developed, there is no general solution in dealing with the many challenging transition metal-catalyzed asymmetric transformations since enantioselectivities are often substrate-dependent. Subtle changes in geometric, steric, and/or electronic properties of chiral ligands can lead to dramatic variations of reactivity and enantioselectivity....

Polychlorobiphenyls (PCBs), polybromodiphenylethers (PBDEs) and organochlorine pesticides (OCPs), such as dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) and hexachlorobenzene (HCB), are considered as endocrine disruptors in laboratory and wild animals. This study investigated whether these compounds and their hydroxylated metabolites (HO-PCBs and HO-PBDEs) may affect the homoeostasis of vitamin A, a die...

BACKGROUND Heterotopic ossification (HO) is a frequent complication after central nervous system (CNS) damage but has seldom been studied. We aimed to investigate features of HO for the first time in a large sample and the rate of early recurrence of HO in terms of the time of surgery. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS We retrospectively analyzed data from an anonymous prospective survey of pati...

Brønsted acidic ionic liquids (BAILs) can play a dual role, as a solvent and as a catalyst, in many reactions. However, molecular details of the catalytic mechanism are poorly understood. We present here a density functional theory (DFT) study for the catalytic mechanism of the transesterification of methyl ester (ME) with trimethylolpropane (TMP), in the presence of three representative BAILs,...

Descriptions are given of 18 species of copepods that live in symbiotic association with polychaete worms in European Seas. Three new genera and six new species of the family Clausiidae Giesbrecht, 1895 are described: Boreoclausia rectan. gen. et n. sp. is described from Galathowenia fragilis (Nilson & Holthe, 1985), Boreoclausia holmesi n. gen. et n. sp.is described from Myriochele danielsseni...