Already in 2019, WHO singled out the increase of vaccine hesitancy as one of the ten most important and urgent threats to global health. Little did people know then of the heated vaccine discussions waiting around the corner, spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic that set some countries on something reminiscent of a war footing. The mass vaccinations against the coronavirus in the early 2020s were seen

Forests are pivotal for biodiversity, food webs, and human economies, and as carbon sinks their climate change mitigation potential is undisputed. However, whether trees continue to efficiently accumulate biomass at an increasing rate with age, how growth trajectories respond to climate change, and vary with latitude at species range margins is under debate. Here, we combine tree-ring data with bi

Objective: To assess the longitudinal stability of biomarker-based molecular endotypes of knee osteoarthritis (KOA) participants from APPROACH and to evaluate the consistency of findings in an independent KOA population. Methods: Nineteen biomarkers were measured longitudinally in 295 KOA participants from the APPROACH cohort. K-means clustering was used to identify the structural damage, inflamma

The Islamic financial sector has developed its instruments rapidly since the 1960s, and a Muslim customer can get almost all financial services supplied by the conventional Western type of financial sector through so-called participation banks, which are run, it is said, in compliance with Islamic values and norms. For instance, they collect funds by special methods to finance economic activities,

Purpose: Internal corporate venturing is a vehicle for firms to realize strategic and financial goals through entrepreneurial ventures. Prior research presents a strategic process in which individual managers make rational choices based on their formal roles and top-down corporate objectives. Recent work has challenged this by adopting a relational approach using a macro-level perspective highligh

Blind or low-vision (BLV) individuals often have reduced independent mobility, yet new aids fails in increasing it, are not adopted enough, or both. A major cause is a severe deficiency in how mobility aids are assessed in the field: there are no established methods or measures and those used often have poor relevancy, insight affordances, and reproducibility; probing how actual BLV participants r

Microorganisms have unique biochemical mechanisms to inhibit the growth or kill other microorganisms in the same environment. Bacterial threat agents (BTA) are more effective than conventional weapons because of these characteristics, therefore, the development and production of biological weapons are still relevant. Early warning signals need to be obtained for fast and accurate detection of BTA

Starting from a single layer of NbS2 grown on graphene by molecular beam epitaxy, the single unit cell thick 2D materials Nb5/3S3-2D and Nb2S3-2D are created using two different pathways. Either annealing under sulfur-deficient conditions at progressively higher temperatures or deposition of increasing amounts of Nb at elevated temperature result in phase-pure Nb5/3S3-2D followed by Nb2S3-2D. The

Context: Contemporary patients with primary hyperparathyroidism are diagnosed with milder disease than previously. Clinical and biochemical factors predictors with an impact on fracture incidence and bone mineral density after surgery have not been firmly established. Objective: To investigate predictors of fracture incidence and bone mineral density preoperatively and after surgery for primary hy

In the literature, auditory attention is explored through neural speech tracking, primarily entailing modeling and analyzing electroencephalography (EEG) responses to natural speech via linear filtering. Our study takes a novel approach, introducing an enhanced coherence estimation technique to assess the strength of neural speech tracking. This enables effective discrimination between attended an

Stable isotope analysis provides valuable insights into the ecology of long-distance migratory birds during periods spent away from a specific study site. In a previous study, Swedish great reed warblers (Acrocephalus arundinaceus) infected with haemosporidian parasites differed in feather isotope ratios compared to non-infected birds, suggesting that infected and non-infected birds spent the non-

Objective: To generate a list of candidate items potentially useful for discriminating individuals with Early-stage Symptomatic Knee Osteoarthritis (EsSKOA) from those with other conditions and from established osteoarthritis (OA), and to reduce this list based on expert consensus. Design: We conducted a three-round online international modified Delphi exercise with OA clinicians and researchers (

Demand responsive transport (DRT) is an intermediate form of public transport which is provided based on users’ demand. The study explores the potential of DRT for meeting young people’s travel needs, focusing on school and leisure journeys. Our results, building on a survey study in Sweden, suggest that DRT services offering a door-to-door journey and the flexibility of pick-up times could be com

This work investigates the design of beampatterns for frequency diverse arrays-multiple-input multiple-output (FDA-MIMO) in the range-angle plane, in order to improve the approximation of a desired beampattern. Recognizing that the energy radiated by the array cannot be locked at a fixed range and angle, the beampattern is designed for the equivalent beampattern at the receiving end, differing fro

This chapter examines the phenomenon of men as victims within the context of human trafficking – a crime predominantly perpetrated by men, with women comprising the majority of identified victims. Focusing on a comparative study of Finland and Sweden, this chapter explores the processes and outcomes of men’s victimisation in human trafficking. Adopting a constructivist perspective, this study seek

This important book provides new understandings of how the politics of memory impacts peace in societies transitioning from a violent past. It does so by developing a theoretical approach focusing on the intersection of sites, agency, narratives, and events in memory-making. Drawing on rich empirical studies of mnemonic formations in Cyprus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda, South Africa and Cambodi

Purpose: There is a need for a simple, non-invasive, and easily accessible 3D imaging technique for the anophthalmic socket to create imaging data for future 3D printing of prostheses. This study aimed to investigate the feasibility of using a novel handheld tomographic ultrasound for 3D mapping of the anophthalmic socket. Methods: Ten anophthalmic sockets were scanned using a tomographic ultrasou

The Fine Resolution Explorer for Salinity, Carbon and Hydrology (FRESCH) is presented. The science case and the mission objectives are discussed before presenting the mission concept. FRESCH is an L-band antenna array operated in beamforming mode providing data at a spatial resolution of 10-15 km to study the biogeochemical and physical phenomena taking place at the interfaces of ocean, land and i