In 2010, the Lithuanian Association of Arhtroplasty was established and on January 1, 2011, initiated a national study of all reoperations after total knee (TKR) and total hip replacement (THR) in Lithuania. The aim of the study was to investigate the revision rates after TKR and THR at two years follow-up.

Multiblock copoly(arylene ether sulfone)s with different block lengths and ionic contents are tailored for highly stable and proton conducting electrolyte membranes. Two series of fully aromatic copolymers are prepared by coupling reactions between non-sulfonated hydrophobic precursor blocks and highly sulfonated hydrophilic precursor blocks containing either fully disulfonated diarylsulfone or fu

Soil functions can be classified as supporting (nutrient cycling) and provisioning (crop production) ecosystem services (ES). These services consist of multiple and dynamic functions and are typically assessed using indicators, e.g. microbial biomass as an indicator of supporting services. Agricultural intensification negatively affects indicators of soil functions and is therefore considered to d

We developed an analytical theory for the many-body potential of mean force (POMF) between N spheres immersed in a continuum chain fluid. The theory is almost exact for a T polymer solution in the protein limit (small particles, long polymers), where N-body effects are important. Polydispersity in polymer length according to a SchulzFlory distribution emerges naturally from our analysis, as does t

Based on the philosophical notion that language embodies thought we investigated whether a habitual tendency for intrusive thought that younger and older participants report over a period of 100 sessions, spread out over about 6 months, is associated with brain regions related to language production. In favour of this hypothesis, we found that individual differences in habitual intrusive thoughts

The present paper reviews the theory of bounded Jacobi matrices whose essential spectrum is a finite gap set, and it explains how the theory can be extended to also cover a large number of infinite gap sets. Two of the central results are generalizations of Denisov–Rakhmanov’s theorem and Szegő’s theorem, including asymptotics of the associated orthogonal polynomials. When the essential spectrum i

Skipping breakfast has been consistently associated with high HbA1c and postprandial hyperglycemia (PPHG) in patients with type 2 diabetes. Our aim was to explore the effect of skipping breakfast on glycemia after a subsequent isocaloric (700 kcal) lunch and dinner.

In this paper, we present a novel neural network for classification of short-duration heart sounds: the time growing neural network (TGNN). The input to the network is the spectral power in adjacent frequency bands as computed in time windows of growing length. Children with heart systolic ejection click (SEC) and normal children are the two groups subjected to analysis. The performance of the TGN

Aims The Environmental Determinants of Diabetes in the Young planned biomarker discovery studies on longitudinal samples for persistent confirmed islet cell autoantibodies and type 1 diabetes using dietary biomarkers, metabolomics, microbiome/viral metagenomics and gene expression. Methods This article describes the details of planning The Environmental Determinants of Diabetes in the Young biomar

Allocation of donors with regard to human leukocyte antigen (HLA) is controversial in heart transplantation. This paper is a systematic review and meta-analysis of the available evidence. PubMed, Embase, and the Cochrane Library were searched systematically for studies that addressed the effects of HLA matching on outcome after heart transplantation. Fifty-seven studies met the eligibility criteri

Aims/hypothesis: Children participating in longitudinal type 1 diabetes prediction studies were reported to have less severe disease at diabetes diagnosis. Our aim was to investigate children who from birth participated in the Diabetes Prediction in Skane (DiPiS) study for metabolic status at diagnosis and then continued to be followed for 2 yr of regular clinical care. Methods: Children, followed

Objectives: To translate the visual analogue scales (VAS) in the Scleroderma Health Assessment Questionnaire (SSc HAQ) and the Cochin Hand Function Scale (CHFS) and to examine the reliability and validity of the Swedish versions of the instruments. Method: The reproducibility, internal consistency, acceptability, and validity of the instruments were evaluated. Eighty-three consecutive patients par

The erectoides-m anthocyanin-less 1 (ert-m ant1) double mutants are among the very few examples of induced double mutants in barley. From phenotypic observations of mutant plants it is known that the Ert-m gene product regulates plant architecture whereas the Ant1 gene product is involved in anthocyanin biosynthesis. We used a near-isogenic line of the cultivar Bowman, BW316 (ert-m.34), to create

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is a major cause of sudden cardiac death in the young. Based on previous reports of functional abnormalities in not only coronary but also peripheral vessels in adults with HCM, we aimed to assess both peripheral vascular and myocardial diastolic function in young individuals with early stage of HCM and in individuals at risk for HCM. Children, adolescents and you

The interaction of C-60 with the Au(111) surface has been investigated using synchrotron radiation-based electron spectroscopy. Resonant photoelectron spectroscopy and autoionization spectroscopy have been used to probe the coupling between the molecule and the substrate. Three distinct high energy spectator Auger features were observed that are only evident for a monolayer of C-60 chemisorbed to

Objective: To investigate whether increased knee joint loading due to improved ambulatory function and walking speed following weight loss achieved over 16 weeks accelerates symptomatic and structural disease progression over a subsequent 1 year weight maintenance period in an obese population with knee osteoarthritis (OA). Methods: Data from a prospective study of weight loss in obese patients wi

The aim of this study was to assess the reproducibility of isokinetic and isometric ankle dorsiflexor strength measurements in individuals with post-polio syndrome (PPS). Thirty-one men and women (mean age 63 +/- 7.0 years) with verified PPS, participated in an intra-rater test-retest reproducibility study. Strength of the ankle dorsiflexor muscles in both lower limbs were measured twice, seven da

Influence of hydrogen content on the impact toughness of Zr-2.5% Nb alloy was examined by carrying out instrumented drop weight tests in the temperature range of 25-250 degrees C using curved Charpy specimens fabricated from unirradiated pressure tubes of Indian Pressurized Heavy Water Reactor (IPHWR). Hydrogen content of the samples was between 10 and 170 ppm by weight (wppm). Sharp ductile-to-br