BACKGROUND: The use of viscoelastic tests is becoming increasingly popular. There is a paucity of validation of the reproducibility of varying coagulation states. Therefore, we aimed to study the coefficient of variation (CV) for the ROTEM EXTEM parameters clotting time (CT), clot formation time (CFT), alpha-angle and maximum clot firmness (MCF) in blood with varying degrees of coagulation strengt

Research on long-term historical inequality has expanded to include previously neglected periods and societies, particularly in the global South. This is partly due to the resurgence of the social tables method in economic history, an approach which uses archival records to reconstruct income and wealth distributions in contexts where micro data is unavailable. This methodcan cause a downward bias

Following a landmark court ruling in 2005, more than half of Germany's universities started charging tuition fees, which were later abolished in a staggered manner. We exploit the fact that even students who were already enrolled had to start paying fees. We show that fees increase study effort and degree completion among these students. However, fees also decrease first-time university enrollment

Within international investment law scholarship, increased attention has been devoted to the capacity of international investment law, which includes investment treaty arbitration, to facilitate sustainable development. Scholars increasingly agree that issues of sustainable development permeate throughout the international investment law system and thus cannot be viewed as beyond its scope and jur

When designing a hardware architecture, a designer needs to be confident that their design will meet performance requirements before moving on to the next stage in the design process. The mapping between application and architecture can have a large impact on the system performance. In this work we target early-stage system design of hardware architectures required to run a streaming application.

Huntington’s disease is a fatal neurodegenerative disorder caused by an expanded CAG triplet repeat in the huntingtin (HTT) gene. Previous research focused on neuropathology in the striatum and its association with a typical movement disorder. Direct effects of mutant HTT (mHTT) in the striatum may cause neuropathology, although non-cell autonomous effects have also been suggested. Important non-m

Aims: In the present study, we aimed to evaluate the performance of machine learning (ML) models for identification of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) or death within 30 days among emergency department (ED) chest pain patients. Methods and results: Using data from 9519 consecutive ED chest pain patients, we created ML models based on logistic regression or artificial neural networks. Model input

In the present paper, strategies for reduced order modeling of geometrically nonlinear finite element models are investigated. Simulation-free, non-intrusive approaches are considered, which do not require access to the source code of a finite element program (e.g., proprietary knowledge). Our study focus on but is not restricted to flat structures. Reduction bases are generated using bending mode

Rare-earth doped nanoparticles can exhibit narrow optical and spin linewidths at low temperatures. These outstanding properties for nanomaterials make them attractive for quantum technologies based on optically addressable spins such as quantum memories and computers. Although accurate linewidth measurements have been reported using, for example, spectral hole burning or photon echo techniques, so

Digitalisation has developed over half a century and is one of the global trends defining society of today and future. Digitalisation is envisioned to help water utilities to become: i) community orientated and digitally integrated with customers and society; ii) digitally transformed end-to-end throughout the value-chain and interconnected between business units; iii) predictive & proactive,

Material interfaces can occur at different material length scales. Understanding the properties and the behaviour of interfaces is of utmost importance because interfaces can significantly influence the effective constitutive response of the material under consideration. Based on the fundamentals of electro-mechanically coupled cohesive zone formulations for electrical conductors and on the associ

The TACSI trial (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT03560310) tests the hypothesis that 1-year treatment with dual antiplatelet therapy with acetylsalicylic acid (ASA) and ticagrelor is superior to only ASA after isolated coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) in patients with acute coronary syndrome. The TACSI trial is an investor-initiated pragmatic, prospective, multinational, multicenter, open-

Mito-nuclear insertions, or NUMTs, relate to genetic material of mitochondrial origin that have been transferred to the nuclear DNA molecule. The increasing amounts of genomic data currently being produced presents an opportunity to investigate this type of patterns in genome evolution of non-model organisms. Identifying NUMTs across a range of closely related taxa allows one to generalize pattern

Regulatory T cells (T(reg)) are currently being tested in clinical trials as a potential therapy in cell and solid organ transplantation. The immunosuppressive drug rapamycin has been shown to preferentially promote T(reg) expansion. Here, we hypothesized that adjunctive rapamycin therapy might potentiate the ability of ex vivo expanded human T(reg) to inhibit vascular allograft rejection in a hum

Regulatory T cells (T(regs)) manipulated ex vivo have potential as cellular therapeutics in autoimmunity and transplantation. Although it is possible to expand naturally occurring T(regs), an attractive alternative possibility, particularly suited to solid organ and bone marrow transplantation, is the stimulation of total T cell populations with defined allogeneic antigen-presenting cells (APCs) u

Transplant arteriosclerosis is the hallmark of chronic allograft dysfunction (CAD) affecting transplanted organs in the long term. These fibroproliferative lesions lead to neointimal thickening of arteries in all transplanted allografts. Luminal narrowing then leads to graft ischemia and organ demise. To date, there are no known tolerance induction strategies that prevent transplant arterioscleros

Transplantation is the most effective treatment for end-stage organ failure, but organ survival is limited by immune rejection and the side effects of immunosuppressive regimens. T cells are central to the process of transplant rejection through allorecognition of foreign antigens leading to their activation, and the orchestration of an effector response that results in organ damage. Long-term tra