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BACKGROUND: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic inflammatory autoimmune disease of the central nervous system (CNS). One potential therapeutic strategy for MS is to induce regulatory cells that mediate immunological tolerance. Probiotics, including lactobacilli, are known to induce immunomodulatory activity with promising effects in inflammatory diseases. We tested the potential of various strain

A real-time map must not contain too much information. Therefore, we need measures of map information that could guideline the selection of data layers and the real-time generalisation process. In this paper we evaluate measures of amount of information and distribution of information. The evaluation is performed by (1) defining measures, (2) implementing the measures, (3) computing the measures f

This paper begins with describing a case study of using the standard Web Map Services (WMS; from Open Geospatial Consortium) for mobile applications. There are two experiences from this case study that are interesting for the generalisation community: the amount of map information on the screen and the map file size. In this paper a usability study of the amount of map information is presented. Th

The amount of volunteered geographic information (VGI) has increased over the past decade, and several studies have been conducted to evaluate the quality of VGI data. In this study, we evaluate the completeness of the road network in the VGI data set OpenStreetMap (OSM). The evaluation is based on an accurate and efficient network-matching algorithm. The study begins with a comparison of the two

OBJECTIVES: Health utilities derived from answers to generic health-related quality of life (HRQoL) questionnaires such as the EuroQol 5-Dimensions (EQ-5D) are often used in cost-utility analyses (CUAs) of new and expensive treatments. Different preference sets (tariffs) used in the computation of utility values and quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) from questionnaire responses (health states) y

HUmic-LIke Substances (HULIS) have been identified as major contributors to the organic carbon in atmospheric aerosol. The term "HULIS" is used to describe the organic material found in aerosol particles that resembles the humic organic material in rivers and sea water and in soils. In this study, two sets of filter samples from atmospheric aerosols were collected at different sites. One set of sa

The SBP values to be achieved by antihypertensive therapy in order to maximize reduction of cardiovascular outcomes are unknown; neither is it clear whether in patients with a previous cardiovascular event, the optimal values are lower than in the low-to-moderate risk hypertensive patients, or a more cautious blood pressure (BP) reduction should be obtained. Because of the uncertainty whether 'the

To provide practical guidelines for the cytopathologic diagnosis of malignant mesothelioma.

Empirical findings indicate a need of support for environmental management within the manufacturing industry for improving the environmental performance of their production systems. This paper elaborates on a generic, three step visualization tool, here called Green Performance Map (GPM). The GPM adds to the framework of ISO 14001, providing the user with a systematic procedure to visualize enviro

Atmospheric aerosol samples from a boreal forest (Hyytiala, April 2007), a rural site in Hungary (K-puszta, summer 2008), a polluted rural area in Italy (San Pietro Capofiume, Po Valley, April 2008), a moderately polluted rural site in Germany located on a meadow (Melpitz, May 2008), a natural park in Spain (Montseny, March 2009) and two urban background locations (Zurich, December 2008, and Barce

In soil, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) meet the roots of both host and presumed nonhost plants, but the interactional mechanisms of AMF with and functional relevance for nonhost plants is little known. Here we show AMF can colonize an individually grown nonhost plant, Arabidopsis thaliana, and suppress the growth of Arabidopsis and two nonhost Brassica crops. This inhibitory effect increased

Policy-makers are starting to acknowledge the urgent need for policy-intervention to achieve sustainable consumption. However, it is difficult to achieve policy-making that leads to impactful consumption interventions. Generally speaking, sustainable consumption can be achieved in three ways; to reduce consumption, to change consumption, and to improve consumption. These strategies all have their

Guidelines identifying appropriate DNA extraction methods for both museum and modern biological samples are scarce or non-existent for mammalian species. Yet, obtaining large-scale genetic material collections are vital for conservation and management purposes. In this study, we evaluated five protocols making use of either spin-column, organic solvents, or magnetic bead-based methods for DNA extr

Cartographic mashup is a powerful tool for users to visualize thematic data together with base maps, and it is increasingly popular due to the better availability of geodata. In current typical mashups, thematic data and base mapscome from different providers without any connection between the data sets, and their scales are not synchronized. In this paper, we firstly explore the problems in such