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Cars are nowadays being programmed to learn how to drive themselves. While autonomous cars are often portrayed as the next step in the auto-motive industry, they have already begun roaming the streets in some US cities. Building on a growing body of critical scholarship on the development of autonomous cars, we explore what machine learning is in open environments like cities by juxtaposing this t

In this paper, we empirically and theoretically present regenerative regional development in responsible value chains as an alternative to the prevailing traditional, neoliberal economic rationale of globalization. We develop the argument on the back of a longitudinal in-depth case study on actors’ engagement in the recurring crises in the maritime industry in Sunnmøre/Norway. The alternative pers

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

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

Sleep problems, in particular the difficulty in initiating and maintaining sleep are important comorbidities in children and adolescents with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), accompanied by a range of negative consequences for both patients and their caregivers. Melatonin, a naturally occurring hormone that is important for coordinating the body's sleep-wake cycle, has been used to

STUDY QUESTION: Which substances and signal transduction pathways are potentially active downstream to the effect of FSH and LH in the regulation of human oocyte maturation in vivo? SUMMARY ANSWER: The regulation of human oocyte maturation appears to be a multifactorial process in which several different signal transduction pathways are active. WHAT IS KNOWN ALREADY: Many studies in animal species

Enzymes have come into use for many new applications outside their natural biological environment, taking advantage of their high efficiency and selectivity as biocatalysts. Such new application often requires encapsulation to preserve the structure and activity of the enzyme, but also to regulate and control the activity. Here, we will discuss two types of encapsulation, soft matrices consisting

Background: Oral administration of health-promoting bacteria is increasingly used in clinical practise. These bacteria have anti-inflammatory characteristics and modulate the immune system without major reported side effects. The mechanisms of action are not yet fully defined. Our aim was to study systemic effects of probiotics by measurements of leukocytes as well as local effects on rectal mucos

The bioactivity, biological fate and cytotoxicity of nanomaterials when they come into contact with living organisms are determined by their interaction with biomacromolecules and biological barriers. In this context, the role of symmetry/shape anisotropy of both the nanomaterials and biological interfaces in their mutual interaction, is a relatively unaddressed issue. Here, we study the interacti

Polycystic ovaries (PCO) contain antral follicles that arrest growing around 3–11 mm in diameter, perturbing the dominant follicle’s selection and the subsequent ovulatory process. Proteomic alterations of PCO follicular fluid (FF) (i.e., microenvironment in which the oocyte develops until ovulation) have been studied from large follicles in connection with oocyte pickup during ovarian stimulation

Stimuli-responsive self-assembly of (an) isotropic colloids has resulted in a plethora of self-assembled structures with potential applications in fabricating smart materials. A lack of detailed understanding of the interplay between these self-assembled structures and the resulting dynamics has often impeded the exploitation of their full potential. Herein, we have unveiled the relationship betwe

Microscopy and particle-based simulations are both powerful techniques to study aggregated particulate matter such as colloidal gels. The data provided by these techniques often contains information on a wide array of length scales, but structural analysis methods typically focus on the local particle arrangement, even though the data also contains information about the particle network on the mes

STUDY QUESTION: Is it possible to identify by mass spectrometry a wider range of proteins and key proteins involved in folliculogenesis and oocyte growth and development by studying follicular fluid (FF) from human small antral follicles (hSAF)?SUMMARY ANSWER: The largest number of proteins currently reported in human FF was identified in this study analysing hSAF where several proteins showed a s

To determine the drivers of phytoplankton biomass, we collected standardized morphometric, physical, and biological data in 230 lakes across the Mediterranean, Continental, and Boreal climatic zones of the European continent. Multilinear regression models tested on this snapshot of mostly eutrophic lakes (median total phosphorus [TP] = 0.06 and total nitrogen [TN] = 0.7 mg L−1), and its subsets (2

Thermoresponsive microgels are a popular model system to study phase transitions in soft matter, because temperature directly controls their volume fraction. Ionic microgels are additionally pH-responsive and possess a rich phase diagram. Although effective interaction potentials between microgel particles have been proposed, these have never been fully tested, leading to a gap in our understandin

The mechanical response of lipid membranes to nanoscale deformations is of fundamental importance for understanding how these interfaces behave in multiple biological processes; in particular, the nanoscale mechanics of non-lamellar membranes represents a largely unexplored research field. Among these mesophases, inverse bicontinuous cubic phase QII membranes have been found to spontaneously occur

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the impact of exercise therapy on molecular biomarkers related to cartilage and inflammation in people at risk of, or with established, knee osteoarthritis by conducting a systematic review of randomized controlled trials (RCTs).METHODS: Literature search up to September 2017 in five major databases with no restriction on publication year or language. Data were extracted

Climate change increases the risks of heat stress, especially in urban areas where urban heat islands can develop. This literature review aims to describe how severe heat can occur and be identified in urban indoor environments, and what actions can be taken on the local scale. There is a connection between the outdoor and the indoor climate in buildings without air conditioning, but the pathways