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Climate change and disaster pose a serious and growing risk to sustainable urban development planning, with disasters having quadrupled in the last three decades. The extent of the changing climatic conditions, in combination with growing urbanisation, is making both Southern and Northern institutions and associated social security and governance systems increasingly inadequate in dealing with ext
Ten countries have established quotas for female representation on publicly traded corporate and/or state-owned enterprise boards of directors, ranging from 33 to 50 %, with various sanctions. Fifteen other countries have introduced non-binding gender quotas in their corporate governance codes enforcing a "comply or explain" principle. Countless other countries' leaders and policy groups are in th
Result: for Pb extraction experiments from a contaminated soil performed with citric acid and ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid disodium salt (Na(2)EDTA) indicate that Na(2)EDTA is much more efficient. The Pb removal after 5 successive extractions using 24 mL of 0.1 M Na(2)EDTA solutions and 8 g of soil is close to 100%. Other non-toxic metals such as Ca and Mg, that are present in important concent
BACKGROUND: The authors developed a framework for estimating and comparing the risks of various long-term complications on a common scale and applied it to 3 different techniques for craniospinal irradiation in patients with pediatric medulloblastoma. METHODS: Radiation dose-response parameters related to excess hazard ratios for secondary breast, lung, stomach, and thyroid cancer; heart failure,
There is consensus that young patients with mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) should receive intensive immunochemotherapy regimens, but optimal treatment of elderly patients as well for as patients with limited or indolent disease is not defined. Our aim was to evaluate and compare outcome in relation to prognostic factors and first-line treatment in patients with MCL in a population-based data set. Data
Changes in pollen and spore assemblages across the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary elucidate the vegetation response to a global environmental crisis triggered by an asteroid impact in Mexico 66 Ma. The Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary clay, associated with the Chicxulub asteroid impact event, constitutes a unique, global marker bed enabling comparison of the world-wide palynological signal span
Vitellogenin (VTG) is a well-known biomarker for endocrine disruption and the measurement of alkali-labile protein bound phosphate (ALP) has been used as an indirect quantification method for VTG in fish, clam and mussel. One limitation of the ALP method has been the insufficient detection limit but with the method presented here this obstacle has been overcome, enabling measurement in fish specie
We propose a novel Bayesian network tool to model the probabilistic relations between a set of type 2 diabetes risk factors. The tool can be used for probabilistic reasoning and for imputation of missing values among risk factors. The Bayesian network is learnt from a joint training set of three European population studies. Tested on an independent patient set, the network is shown to be competiti
Surrogate markers for reverse cholesterol transport (RCT) efficiency such as HDL cholesterol and immune methods for apolipoprotein A-I (ApoA-I) may not fully reflect the actual efficiency of the RCT pathway. Several genetic variants and different posttranslational proteoforms of ApoA-I may unevenly affect the functionality of the HDL particle to efflux cholesterol. A method employing top-down immu
Vertebral fractures are often painful and lead to reduced quality of life and disability. We compared the efficacy and safety of balloon kyphoplasty to nonsurgical therapy over 24 months in patients with acute painful fractures. Adults with one to three vertebral fractures were randomized within 3 months from onset of pain to undergo kyphoplasty (n = 149) or nonsurgical therapy (n = 151). Quality
The aim of this paper is to make it credible that there are feminist reasons for being a republican about freedom. In focus is Quentin Skinner’s conception of republican, or “neo-Roman”, freedom. Republican theory in history has not excelled in making poverty, gender hierarchy, and racism within the republic into main sources of concern. So can there be a radical republican theory of liberty fit f
Pseudagnostus rugosus Ergaliev, 1980 is described from the Furongian Ctenopyge tumida Zone at Gislovshammar, Scania, southern Sweden. This is the first record of this distinctive agnostoid in Scandinavia. The species is known previously from Malyi Karatau, Kazakhstan, and northwestern Hunan and western Zhejiang, South China, and provides a newly recognized link between middle-upper Furongian succe
CONTEXT: Prior research suggests that drug abuse (DA) is strongly influenced by both genetic and familial environmental factors. No large-scale adoption study has previously attempted to verify and integrate these findings. OBJECTIVE: To determine how genetic and environmental factors contribute to the risk for DA. DESIGN: Follow-up in 9 public databases (1961-2009) of adopted children and their
Patients with depression and suicidality suffer from low-grade neuroinflammation. Pro-inflammatory cytokines activate indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase, an initial enzyme of the kynurenine pathway. This pathway produces neuroactive metabolites, including quinolinic- and kynurenic acid, binding to the glutamate N-methyl-d-aspartate-receptor, which is hypothesized to be part of the neural mechanisms under
Evaluating the usefulness and the reliability of retrofitted buildings for future climate can be a challenging task, while different scenarios and uncertainties exist both for retrofitting buildings and future climate. This paper presents a method to assess and quantify the relative robustness of retrofitting measures on long term, while climate variations in different time scales, extreme conditi
Two series of oligomers TQ and rhodanine end-capped TQ-DR were synthesized using a facile one-step method. Their optical, electrical, and thermal properties and photovoltaic performances were systematically investigated and compared. The TQ series of oligomers were found to be amorphous, whereas the TQ-DR series are semicrystalline. For the TQ oligomers, the results obtained in solar cells show th
Covered nitinol alloy self-expandable metal stents (SEMSs) have been developed to overcome the shortcomings of steel SEMS in patients with malignant biliary obstruction. In a randomized, multicenter trial, we compared stent patency, patient survival, and adverse events in patients with partly covered stents made from steel or nitinol.
Various healthcare interventions have been launched targeting the growing population of older people. The objective of this study was to investigate the of a case management intervention for frail old people (aged 65+ years) effects on healthcare utilization.
Objective: To compare long-term patient outcome in a prospective randomized controlled trial between unilateral and bilateral neck exploration for primary hyperparathyroidism (pHPT). Summary Background Data: Minimal invasive and/or focused parathyroidectomy has challenged the traditional bilateral neck exploration for pHPT. Between 1997 and 2001, we conducted the first unselected randomized contro
