OBJECTIVE: The primary aim was to explore patients' knowledge of heart failure and their attitudes toward medical information (prognostic information in particular) and to assess different patient-related factors that might hamper the improvement of patients' knowledge. Moreover, taking the data obtained into account, we analyzed ethical aspects of information disclosure to patients with heart fai

This paper describes a named entity recognition (NER) system for short text messages (SMS) running on a mobile platform. Most NER systems deal with text that is structured, formal, well written, with a good grammatical structure, and few spelling errors. SMS text messages lack these qualities and have instead a short-handed and mixed language studded with emoticons, which makes NER a challenge on

Calcicole plant species are vulnerable to acidification and fertilization, caused by deposition and changes in land use, since they are adapted to nutrient-poor calcareous conditions. In this study we used vegetation data (vascular plants, bryophytes and lichens) from 1964 and 1985 and stored soil samples from 1966 to investigate long-term soil chemistry and vegetation changes in a semi-natural, s

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Computed tomography (CT) is used to study coronary artery plaques, but little is known about its potential to characterize plaque composition. This study assesses the relation between carotid calcium score (CCS) by CT and plaque composition, namely extracellular matrix, inflammatory mediators, and calcium metabolites. METHODS: Thirty patients with significant carotid sten

In foster care research the focus is generally placed on the children, not on the parents who perform the foster care. In this article the focus is on foster parents of 10-11 year-old children. They were interviewed about their motives for becoming foster parents, which were linked to their family and work circumstances. Among the 21 foster families in the study, four different but equally frequen

The effect of using different binding agents in combination with hemp shives and fibres in Lime-Hemp Concrete (LHC) building material was examined. LHC is a light composite building material with building lime as binding agents and hemp (Cannabis sativa) as a renewable raw material from agriculture. Contemporary LHC only uses the woody core part of the hemp, the shive. However, using both hemp shi

The logistic regression model is frequently used in epidemiologic studies, yielding odds ratio or relative risk interpretations. Inspired by the theory of linear normal models, the logistic regression model has been extended to allow for correlated responses by introducing random effects. However, the model does not inherit the interpretational features of the normal model. In this paper, the auth

The emotional aspects of the care-giving relationship in home-care services are studied, starting from the home-care recipients' and the home-care workers' perception of the emotional climate. Their experiences of the care-giving relationship and the influence from different aspects of the care-giving situation and social processes in the work organisation are explored. Two hundred and twenty-two

This article addresses the predominant degradation modes and life prediction of a plasma-sprayed thermal barrier coating (TBC). The studied TBC system consists of an air-plasm a-sprayed bond coat and an air-plasma-sprayed, yttria partially stabilized zirconia top layer on a conventional Hastelloy X substrate. Thermal shock tests of air-sprayed TBC and pre-oxidized TBC specimens were conducted unde