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The rising trend in the prevalence of obesity has become a major public health concern in many countries during the past decades, partly because being obese is associated with comorbidities and death. The cost of treatment for obesity related diseases has become a heavy burden on the national health care budget in many countries. The treatment options for obesity are mainly weight management thera
General expressions for the quality factor (Q) of antennas are minimized to obtain lower-bound formulas for the Q of electrically small, lossy or lossless, combined electric and magnetic dipole antennas confined to an arbitrarily shaped volume. The lower-bound formulas for Q are derived for the dipole antennas excited by both electric and magnetic surface currents as well as by electric surface cu
Background. Allergy nurses are exposed to allergens and respiratory irritants, and there are no national guidelines addressing personnel safety when working with these agents. Objective. To investigate the prevalence of allergies, asthma, and hypersensitivity symptoms among allergy nurses and the use of protective equipment and measures when working with allergen concentrates and respiratory irrit
We have designed a new class of microdevices composed of a supporting plastic (polyvinyl chloride, PVC) plate integrated with a groove for a piece of fused silica capillary (the separation channel), a slit for on-tube detection, an “islet” for the application of sample, electrode vessels and platinum electrodes. The design permits electrophoretic, electrochromatographic and chromatographic separat
OBJECTIVE: To compare robot-assisted laparoscopy and laparotomy for radical hysterectomy and pelvic lymphadenectomy in terms of hospital costs. METHODS: Consecutive women undergoing radical hysterectomy and pelvic lymphadenectomy as a sole procedure between January 2001 and February 2012 were included. We compared OR times, hospital stay, procedure specific costs, blood transfusions and cost for r
Slepian models are derived for a stochastic process observed at level crossings of a moving average driven by a gaussian or Laplace noise. In particular, a Slepian model for the noise – the Slepian noise – is developed. For Laplace moving average process a method of sampling from the Slepian noise is also obtained by a Gibbs sampler. This facilitates comparison of behavior at crossing of a level b
Ultraviolet radiation (UVR) exposure is the main risk factor for cutaneous malignant melanoma (CMM), but its specific effect in infancy is unknown. We examined whether season of birth, a proxy for solar UVR exposure in the first few months of life, is associated with CMM in childhood through young adulthood.
Background: Activity performance is marked by the degenerative nature of Parkinson's disease (PD), but few qualitative studies have focused on how people with PD perceive participation in life situations. Objective: To identify and describe barriers and facilitators for participation from the perspective of people with PD. Methods: Qualitative data was obtained by the focus group method using a se
Let R denote a connected region inside a simple polygon, P. By building 1-dimensional barriers in P ∖ R, we want to separate from Rpart(s) of P of maximum area. In this paper we introduce two versions of this problem. In the budget fence version the region R is static, and there is an upper bound on the total length of barriers we may build. In the basic geometric firefighter version we assume tha
Increased recirculation of process water has given rise to problems with formation of calcium oxalate incrusts (scaling) in the pulp and paper industry and in forest biorefineries. The potential in using oxalate decarboxylase from Aspergillus niger for oxalic acid removal in industrial bleaching plant filtrates containing oxalic acid was examined and compared with barley oxalate oxidase. Ten diffe
We describe the development of a novel versatile optical platform for active and passive remote sensing of environmental parameters. Applications include assessment of vegetation status and water quality. The system is also adapted for ecological studies, such as identification of flying insects including agricultural pests. The system is based on two mid-size amateur astronomy telescopes, continu
We prove an operator identity for the shift operator in the scale of standard weighted Bergman spaces in the unit disc. This operator identity is then applied in the context of functional calculus for the shift operator and a characterization of harmonic symbol Bergman space Toeplitz operators is obtained generalizing an earlier result by Louhichi and Olofsson. Duality arguments lead to operator i
Treatment guidelines for abdominal wound dehiscence (WD) are lacking. The primary aim of the study was to compare suture to mesh repair in WD patients concerning incisional hernia incidence. Secondary aims were to compare recurrent WD, morbidity, mortality and long-term abdominal wall complaints. A retrospective chart review of 46 consecutive patients operated for WD between January 2010 and Augus
OBJECTIVE: Our objective was to investigate what impact 1 year of effective nocturnal continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) treatment had on general and functional aspects of sexuality in male patients with a confirmed diagnosis of obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA). METHODS: Before and after 1 year of CPAP treatment, a total of 207 CPAP-compliant male patients (age 26-77) received a survey w
Present work aims at evaluation of contemporary comprehensive detailed kinetic mechanisms for ethylene combustion, including the Konnov mechanism, LLNL nButane mechanism, San Diego (UCSD) mechanism and USC mechanism. These models have been validated by extensive comparison with available experimental data on ethylene ignition and flame propagation. The experimental data from the literature have be
