Effect of prolactin on nitric oxide and interleukin-1 production of murine peritoneal macrophages: role of Ca2+ and protein kinase C

The Psychiatric Hospital at the Municipal (General) Hospital in G?rlitz, Germany, was the only Department of Psychiatry in a non-University (general) hospital in the newly integrated German provinces who were originally part of the so-called "German Democratic Republic" before the re-unification of Germany, to participate in the German collective study on "Psychiatric and Psychosomatic Consultation and Liaison Service in German General Hospitals-A Multicentre Empirical Study to Assess and Evaluate Existing Structures and Services". This study is an independent part project that includes specific questions forming part of the European collective study on "Effectiveness of Mental Health Consultation and Liaison Service Delivery in the General Hospital".     

Nest site selection of the house crow (Corvus splendens), an urban invasive bird species in Singapore and implications for its management

The house crow (Corvus splendens) has reached pest proportions in Singapore and requires an integrated system of population control measures. One such crucial component, possibly reducing its breeding success, was the focus of our study. We compared the nest sites (n=30) of the house crow with randomly selected sites (n=30) to determine which environmental variables, if any, are indicative of preferred nest sites. The chi-squared test revealed the yellow flame tree (Peltophorum pterocarpum) to be the preferred tree species used for nesting. We formulated our model based on 11 preselected variables using binary logistic regression and evaluated the strength of support for each model (relative to all other models) using the second order model selection criterion AIC_c. The results indicate that house crows selected nests in areas that were more urbanised and open, with higher disturbance, nearer bin centres and food centres, and nested in trees that had larger crown volume, density and diameter. Based on these results, we suggest that urban managers can alter the landscape characteristics to make them less conducive for nesting crows. Such measures might include minor adjustments to the design of existing bin centres to prevent crows from entering, planting alternative, less suitable tree species in future, and regular pruning of trees with larger and denser crowns.     

Optimal PMU placement method for complete topological and numerical observability of power system

This paper presents a new method of optimal PMU placement (OPP) for complete power system observability. A two-stage PMU placement method is proposed, where stage-1 finds out the minimum number of PMUs required to make the power system topologically observable and stage-2 is proposed to check if the resulted PMU placement (from stage-1) leads to a full ranked measurement Jacobian. In case the PMUs placed, ensuring topological observability in stage-1, do not lead to the Jacobian of full rank, a sequential elimination algorithm (SEA) is proposed in stage-2 to find the optimal locations of additional PMUs, required to be placed to make the system numerically observable as well. The proposed method is tested on three systems and the results are compared with three other topological observability based PMU placement methods. The simulation results ensure the complete system observability and also demonstrate the need of using stage-2 analysis along with the topological observability based PMU placement methods.     

集成肖特基二极管的沟槽功率MOSFET和DC-DC转换器的性能优势

发展单片集成MOSFET和肖特基二级管器件来减小Qrr和在DC-DC同步降压转换中的死区时间损耗。这篇文章报道了一种新的器件。这种器件在没有妥协MOSFET优点的同时，它可以降低超过29％的反向恢复电荷，和降低24％的正向电压降。在1MHZ，集成单片FET做同步整流，其电路效率提高1.1％。随着开关频率和电流的增加性能也得到改善。     

Effect of acid–methanol treatment on the molecular structure and physicochemical properties of lentil (Lens culinaris Medik) starch

The effect of acid–methanol treatment using 0.36% HCl in methanol at 25 °C for 4–216 h on molecular structure and physicochemical properties of lentil starch was investigated. The recoveries for modified starch granules were quite high (91.9–95.6%). Upon modification, the starch granules showed formation of cavities, surface roughness and development of protuberances. The solubility of lentil starch increased, while swelling power, pasting viscosity and gel strength decreased with increase in treatment duration. These changes were found to be due to preferential degradation of amylose and amylopectin long chains in acid–alcohol treatment, which was confirmed by studies conducted on high-performance size-exclusion chromatography (HPSEC). Data obtained from HPSEC was also used to develop an exponential model to illustrate the degradation kinetics of acid–methanol-treated lentil starch.