Diabetic nephropathy is a common complication in diabetes mellitus. In addition to the risk of renal failure, patients with established nephropathy are at increased risk of proliferative retinopathy and cardiovascular disease. As the earliest prodrome of nephropathy is microalbuminuria, albumin excretion needs to be monitored with a reliable method in all diabetics. In the event of microalbuminuri

We consider an exhaustive polling system with three nodes in its transient regime under a switching rule of generalized greedy type. We show that, for the system with Poisson arrivals and service times with finite second moment, the sequence of nodes visited by the server is eventually periodic almost surely. To do this, we construct a dynamical system, the triangle process, which we show has even

Popular Abstract in Swedish Modellering och simulering är etablerade tekniker för att lösa designproblem inom många olika ingenjörsdiscipliner idag. Dedicerade språk, såsom Modelica, och effektiva mjukvaror finns också tillgängliga. I denna avhandling presenteras en språklig utvidgning av Modelica, Optimica, som är avsedd för formulering av dynamiska optimeringsproblem. För att demonstrera användnModeling and simulation are established techniques for solving design problems in a wide range of engineering disciplines today. Dedicated computer languages, such as Modelica, and efficient software tools are available. In this thesis, an extension of Modelica, Optimica, targeted at dynamic optimization of Modelica models is proposed. In order to demonstrate the Optimica extension, supporting sof

It is of increasing importance to develop efficient purification methods for recombinant proteins where the number of steps can be minimised. The aim has been to establish a method for predicting the partitioning of the wild-type target protein in an aqueous two-phase system, and with this as basis, develop fusion tags and optimise the phase system for enhanced partitioning of the target protein.

Spatial heterogeneity of hydraulic and sorptive processes may have a strong impact on the mobility of bacteria in porous soils. Whereas heterogeneity at the microscopic solid particle/interstitial pore scale has been conceptually addressed by dividing the porous material into two or more coexisting sorbing fractions, field-scale spatial variability has been approached by developing stochastic meth

Drawing on T. H. Marshall, the notion of social citizenship is applied in this article to the development of public care for the elderly in Sweden. Initially a historical résumé clarifi es the change of elder care in Sweden as a move from a residual arrangement with its roots in the poor laws of the nineteenth century to become, during the 1960s and 1970s, an institutionalized public s ervice c om

Byggnadsrelaterade faktorer påverkar innemiljön och brukarens upplevelse av innemiljön i form av hälso- och komfortbesvär. De viktigaste innemiljöområdena är enligt tidigare gjord kunskapssammanställning är termiskt klimat, luftkvalitet samt ljud- och ljusmiljön. Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka följande hypotes i en fallstudie: ”Brukare av kvalitetsmärkta nya byggnader upplever sin innemilThe purpose of this licentiate thesis is to investigate the following hypothesis in a case study: “Occupants of buildings with a quality labeled indoor Environment experience a better indoor environment than occupants of buildings with normal planning and construction.” The aim of the case study is to compare the outcome of using a quality system for indoor environment with a normal quality system

Popular Abstract in Swedish I avhandlingen utvecklas en begreppsapparat som syftar till att utvidga vetenskapens möjligheter att studera människors formaliserade praktik i såväl religiösa som profana sammanhang. Begreppet ritual blir en term att se och tänka med. Författaren applicerar sin begreppsapparat på de medeltida isländska släktsagorna där skapandet av allianser mellan personer är ett viktTo make it possible to classify an action as a ritual act we need to know exactly what constitutes it. In this thesis I try, with the aid from literature of the field called ritual studies and the sagas of Icelanders, to sort out what these constituent elements best should consist of if we want to use the term ritual as an analytical tool in the production of knowledge with scientific criteria. Ri

The performance of a turbo code can be severely degraded if no trellis termination is employed. This paper investigates the implications of the choice of trellis termination method for turbo codes, and explains the origin of the performance degradation often experienced without trellis termination. An efficient method to derive the distance spectrum of turbo codes for different trellis termination

The forward-backward asymmetries of the processes e(+) e(-) --> Z --> b (b) over bar and e(+)e(-) --> Z --> c (c) over bar were measured from a sample of hadronic Z decays collected by the DELPHI experiment between 1993 and 1995. Enriched samples of b (b) over bar and c (c) over bar events were obtained using lifetime information. The tagging of b and c quarks in these samples was based on the sem

BACKGROUND: Myofilament Ca(2+) sensitizers enhance contractility but can adversely alter diastolic function through sensitization to low intracellular Ca(2+) concentration. Concomitant phosphodiesterase III inhibition (PDE3I) may offset diastolic changes but limit the mechanoenergetic benefits. We tested whether selective Ca(2+) sensitization in vivo with the use of EMD-57033 enhances both systoli

A Hilbert space of Dirichlet series is obtained by considering the Dirichlet series f(s) = Sigma(n=1)(infinity) a(n)n(-s) that satisfy Sigma(n=0)(infinity) a(n)(2) < +&INFIN;. These series converge in the half plane Re s > 1/2 and define a functions that are locally L-2 on the boundary Re s > 1/2. An analog of Carleson's celebrated convergence theorem is obtained: Each such Dirichlet series co

BACKGROUND: Epithelial shedding processes in airway inflammation and defence may produce damaged areas where basal cells are the main remaining epithelial cell type. The present study examines the capacity of basal cells to form an epithelial barrier structure after loss of columnar epithelial cells. METHODS: A technique was developed which allows selective removal of columnar epithelial cells fro