Objectives: The aims of this study were to quantify salivary concentrations of bisphenol A (BPA) and to assess if presence of dental composite fillings is associated with higher BPA levels in saliva. Materials and methods: Twenty individuals with six or more tooth surfaces filled with polymer-based dental materials (composite group) and 20 individuals without any polymer-based materials (control g

The behavioral response of the larval parasitoid Spintherus dubius (Hymenoptera: Pteromalidae) to volatile compounds derived from its Apion weevil hosts was investigated in two-choice bioassays. Odor source candidates were the larval and adult stages of weevils, clover flowers, and feces from adult weevils. Despite S. dubius being a larval parasitoid, the odor of weevil larvae isolated from the cl

Although zinc-blende (ZB) and wurtzite (WZ) structures differ only in the atomic stacking sequence, mixing of crystal phases can strongly affect the electronic properties, a problem particularly common to bottom up-grown nanostructures. A lack of understanding of the nature of electronic transport at crystal phase junctions thus severely limits our ability to develop functional nanowire devices. I

Electrical characterization of nanowires is a time-consuming and challenging task due to the complexity of single nanowire device fabrication and the difficulty in interpreting the measurements. We present a method to measure Hall effect in nanowires using a three-probe device that is simpler to fabricate than previous four-probe nanowire Hall devices and allows characterization of nanowires with

Semiconductor nanowires are versatile building blocks for optoelectronic devices, in part because nanowires offer an increased freedom in material design due to relaxed constraints on lattice matching during the epitaxial growth. This enables the growth of ternary alloy nanowires in which the bandgap is tunable over a large energy range, desirable for optoelectronic devices. However, little is kno

Cocoa and cocoa products have broad and well-proven health benefits, most of which are associated with the high antioxidant capacity of cocoa flavonoids. Most extraction methods for flavonoids in cocoa products use several steps including a defatting step and large amount of organic solvents. Moreover, they are labor-intensive and time-consuming. In this work, a pressurized hot water extraction (P

Atomistic molecular dynamics simulations have been performed to study microscopic the interfacial ionic structures, molecular arrangements, and orientational preferences of trihexyltetradecylphosphonium-bis(mandelato)borate ([P6,6,6,14][BMB]) ionic liquid confined between neutral and charged gold electrodes. It was found that both [P6,6,6,14] cations and [BMB] anions are coabsorbed onto neutral el

Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia in the western world, however there is no cure available for this devastating neurodegenerative disorder. Despite clinical and experimental evidence implicating the intestinal microbiota in a number of brain disorders, its impact on Alzheimer's disease is not known. To this end we sequenced bacterial 16S rRNA from fecal samples of Aβ precurso

A key task in the emerging field of bioelectronics is the transduction between ionic/protonic and electronic signals at high fidelity. This is a considerable challenge since the two carrier types exhibit intrinsically different physics and are best supported by very different materials types - electronic signals in inorganic semiconductors and ionic/protonic signals in organic or bio-organic polym

Finding ways to create and control the spin-dependent properties of two-dimensional electron states (2DESs) is a major challenge for the elaboration of novel spin-based devices. Spin-orbit and exchange-magnetic interactions (SOI and EMI) are two fundamental mechanisms that enable access to the tunability of spin-dependent properties of carriers. The silicon surface of HoRh2Si2 appears to be a uniq

The topic of ICT-enabled organizational change has been a focus of attention in information systems (IS) research for decades. Besson and Rowe (J Strateg Inf Syst 21:103-124, 2012 [17]), however, have identified a lack of description and conceptualization of the transformation process in the main stream of IS research. This paper discusses key IS paradigms in some of the content of commonly and av

Central Skåne (Scania) in southern Sweden hosts evidence of extensive Jurassic volcanism in the form of mafic volcanic plugs and associated volcaniclastic deposits that entomb wellpreserved macro-plant and spore-pollen assemblages. Palynological assemblages recovered from the Höör Sandstone are of Hettangian-Pliensbachian age and those from the overlying lahar deposits are dated as Pliensbachian-e

In robotics research with language-based interaction, simplifications are made, such that a given event can be described in a unique manner, where there is a direct mapping between event representations and sentences that can describe these events. However, common experience tells us that the same physical event can be described in multiple ways, depending on the perspective of the speaker. The cu

BACKGROUND: Psychosocial factors are important for patients undergoing heart (HTx) or lung (LTx) transplantation and for their next of kin (NoK).AIM: To describe health-related quality of life (HRQoL; patients only), anxiety, depression, stress, coping ability, and burden (NoK only) for patients and their NoK before and up to 2 years after HTx or LTx.DESIGN: Adult patients (28 hearts and 26 lungs)

Soil organisms have an important role in aboveground community dynamics and ecosystem functioning in terrestrial ecosystems. However, most studies have considered soil biota as a black box or focussed on specific groups, whereas little is known about entire soil networks. Here we show that during the course of nature restoration on abandoned arable land a compositional shift in soil biota, precede

This Brief addresses the phenomena of heat transfer enhancement. A companion edition in the SpringerBrief Subseries on Thermal Engineering and Applied Science to three other monographs including “Critical Heat Flux in Flow Boiling in Microchannels,” this volume is idea for professionals, researchers, and graduate students concerned with electronic cooling.

Existing knowledge of the cerebellar microcircuitry structure and physiology allows a rather detailed description of what it in itself can and cannot do. Combined with a known mapping of different cerebellar regions to afferent systems and motor output target structures, there are several constraints that can be used to describe how specific components of the cerebellar microcircuitry may work dur

Neutral particle oscillations have proven to be extremely valuable probes of fundamental physics. For instance, kaon oscillations provided us with our first insight into CP-violation, B oscillations form the most fertile ground for the continued study of CP-violation, and neutrino oscillations suggest the existence of a new, important energy scale well below the GUT scale. Neutrons oscillating int

This paper presents a new black-box algorithm for identification of a nonlinear autonomous system in stable periodic motion. The particle filtering based algorithm models the signal as the output of a continuous-time second order ordinary differential equation (ODE). The model is selected based on previous work which proves that a second order ODE is sufficient to model a wide class of nonlinear s

On the whole, the euro has, thus far, gone much better than many U.S. economists had predicted. We survey how U.S. economists viewed European monetary unification from the publication of the Delors Report in 1989 to the introduction of euro notes and coins in January 2002. U.S. academic economists concentrated on whether a single currency was a good or bad thing, usually using the theory of optimu