This thesis describes optical and electrical modelling of vertically oriented III-V semiconductor nanowire array solar cells (NWASCs).In the optical studies, three-dimensional electromagnetic modelling was carried out with the scattering matrix method and the finite element method. Shockley–Queisser detailed balance analysis was first applied to a dual-junction NWASC in which both junctions were w

Aims: The hypothesis of 'metabolically healthy obesity' implies that, in the absence of metabolic dysfunction, individuals with excess adiposity are not at greater cardiovascular risk We tested this hypothesis in a large pan-European prospective study. Methods and results: We conducted a case-cohort analysis in the 520 000-person European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition study (

Aims: Previous studies have shown that dipeptidyl peptidase (DPP)-4 inhibition lowers glucagon levels whereas sodium-glucose co-transporter 2 (SGLT-2) inhibition increases them. This study evaluated the extent of these opposite effects in a direct comparative head-to-head study. Methods: In a single-centre, randomized study with a cross-over design, 28 metformin-treated patients with type 2 diabet

Background: Historically, allergic contact dermatitis caused by hexavalent chromium [Cr(VI)] in cement was the most common cause of invalidity attributable to skin disease in Sweden. Since the legislation to reduce Cr(VI) in cement was introduced in 1989, we rarely see allergic contact dermatitis caused by cement. Objectives: To examine the frequency of contact allergy to Cr(VI) in southern Sweden

The Swedish study Better Diabetes Diagnosis (BDD) has now been ongoing for ten years and detailed information and blood samples have been collected from more than 8000 children and adolescents with newly diagnosed diabetes. We have been able to demonstrate that by means of HLA diabetes antibodies and C-peptide the discrimination between type one and type 2 diabetes is improved. These analyses are

Methods for absolute quantitation of SPECT images provide an estimate of the activity uptakes in various organs and tissues in units of (M)Bq or (m)Ci. However, because tomographic SPECT images generally are hampered by several physical and camera-specific effects, accurate and precise compensation methods are required. The most important effects are (1) photon attenuation in the patient resulting

Background: Although teamwork and interprofessional collaboration arecritical to patient safety, nursing, medical, and allied health graduates oftenfeel ill-prepared to confidently communicate and collaborate with other teammembers. While interprofessional education (IPE) has been advocated as a wayof addressing this issue, there are multiple barriers to its systematic and sustained integration in

Background: Patients with hallux valgus deformity may require surgery but prospective patient-reported data is scarce. Methods: We evaluated 53 patients with a mean age of 55.3 years (SD 14.1, 50 women), who underwent surgery due to hallux valgus. They completed the PROMs SEFAS, EQ-5D and SF-36 before and 6, 12 and 24 months after surgery. Results: All patient-reported outcomes improved at 6, 12 a

With an ageing population and a discourse of active ageing guiding welfare policies, initiatives to engage older people in health promoting activities have been established. One growing phenomenon is Senior Summer Camps, arranged all over Sweden in beautiful natural environments close to water. Their main purpose is to enable older people to participate in outdoor activities in an institutionalize

Aim: Physical activity (PA) has been associated with enhanced cognition, brain development and concentration. This study evaluated whether increased physical education (PE) improved academic achievement. Methods: We recruited 304 children (55% boys) from a Swedish school in Skane County in 1998-2002 when they were six to seven years of age and followed them through all nine mandatory school years.

BACKGROUND: Wrist disorders are common in force demanding industrial repetitive work. Visual assessment of force demands have a low reliability, instead surface electromyography (EMG) may be used as part of a risk assessment for work-related wrist disorders. For normalization of EMG recordings, a power grip (hand grip) is often used as maximal voluntary contraction (MVC) of the forearm extensor mu

We sought to investigate morphological and resting state functional connectivity changes to the striatal nuclei in Parkinson disease (PD) and examine whether changes were associated with measures of clinical function. Striatal nuclei were manually segmented on 3T-T1 weighted MRI scans of 74 PD participants and 27 control subjects, quantitatively analysed for volume, shape and also functional conne

This perspective covers a novel area of research describing the inadequacies of current approaches for diagnosing dysglycaemia and proposes that the 1-hour post-load glucose level during the 75-g oral glucose tolerance test may serve as a novel biomarker to detect dysglycaemia earlier than currently recommended screening criteria for glucose disorders. Considerable evidence suggests that a 1-hour

This study exploits policy reforms in Swedish primary care to examine the effect of pay-for-performance (P4P) on compliance with hypertension drug guidelines among public and private health care providers. Providers in regions with P4P are compared to providers in other regions in a difference-in-differences analysis using data from the Swedish Prescription Register for the period 2005-2013. The r

Standard signal processing techniques are implicitly based on the assumption that the signal lies on a regular, homogeneous domain. In practice, however, many signals lie on an irregular or inhomogeneous domain. An application area where data are naturally defined on an irregular or inhomogeneous domain is human brain neuroimaging. The goal in neuroimaging is to map the structure and function of t

The phase behavior in the oleic acid/sodium oleate/normal saline (0.15 M NaCl aqueous solution) system has been determined. For this purpose visual inspection of samples between crossed polarizers, and Small Angle X-ray diffraction was used to identify the various phases and their unit cell dimensions. A rich phase behavior was observed for the ternary system, featuring reverse micellar, micellar

The relatively new combustion concept known as partially premixed combustion (PPC) has high efficiency and low emissions. However, there are still challenges when it comes to fully understanding and implementing PPC. Thus a predictive combustion tool was used to gain further insight into the combustion process in late cycle mixing. The modeling tool is a stochastic reactor model (SRM) based on pro

Asylum seekers are often assigned to a locality in their host country directly upon arrival based on some type of uninformed dynamic matching system which does not take the background of the asylum seekers into consideration. This paper proposes an informed, intuitive, easy-to-implement and computationally efficient dynamic mechanism for matching asylum seekers to localities. This mechanism can be