Polymer materials have wide applications in many industries, such as the food, pharmacy, construction, textile, and cosmetics industries. For the past few years, polymer materials have drawn the attention of scientists and engineers as a good disinfectant due to their advanced manufacturing methods, large surface areas, good stability, and lowcost. More importantly, polymer materials can be functi

Background Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) and chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH) require lifelong treatment. The aim of the present study was to investigate adherence to disease-specific treatment in patients with PAH or CTEPH.Methods The study comprised an adult population diagnosed with PAH (n=384) or CTEPH (n=187) alive in 2016–2017. The study utilised three registries

Motion-event typology has moved into a “post-Talmian” terrain of approaches focusing on an open-ended number of patterns across languages and construc- tions. Following a proposal to distinguish between four typological clusters, we systematically compared the motion event descriptions in four languages suggested to exemplify these clusters: Swedish, French, Thai and Telugu, with the help of an el

Background: Evidence suggests that sleep deprivation associated with night-time working may adversely affect performance resulting in a reduction in the safety of surgery and anaesthesia.Objective: Our primary objective was to evaluate an association between nonelective night-time surgery and in-hospital mortality. We hypothesised that urgent surgery performed during the night was associated with

Objective:The European Surgical Outcomes Study described mortality following in-patient surgery. Several factors were identified that were able to predict poor outcomes in a multivariate analysis. These included age, procedure urgency, severity and type and the American Association of Anaesthesia score. This study describes in greater detail the relationship between the American Association of Ana

Behavioural change is expected to play a significant role in the transformation to a more energy efficient built environment. Despite this, current evaluation practice of interventions often overlook behavioural aspects in their ambition of advancing our knowledge on transformative change. Moreover, little attention is paid to how different research perspectives on human behaviour can complement e

Background. The incidence and impact of postoperative complications are poorly described. Failure-to-rescue, the rate ofdeath following complications, is an important quality measure for perioperative care but has not been investigated acrossmultiple health care systems.Methods. We analysed data collected during the International Surgical Outcomes Study, an international 7-day cohort studyof adult

BACKGROUND Currently used pre-operative prediction scores for postoperative pulmonary complications (PPCs) use patient data and expected surgery characteristics exclusively. However, intra-operative events are also associated with the development of PPCs. OBJECTIVE We aimed to develop a new prediction score for PPCs that uses both pre-operative and intra-operative data. DESIGN This is a secon

In this paper, we develop a new extension of the singular spectrum analysis (SSA) called functional SSA to analyze functional time series. The new methodology is constructed by integrating ideas from functional data analysis and univariate SSA. Specifically, we introduce a trajectory operator in the functional world, which is equivalent to the trajectory matrix in the regular SSA. In the regular S

Ammonia (NH3) is regarded as an important nitrogen oxides (NOx) precursor and also as an effective reductant for NOx removal in energy utilization through combustion, and it has recently become an attractive non-carbon alternative fuel. To have a better understanding of thermochemical properties of NH3, accurate in situ detection of NH3 in high temperature environments is desirable. Ultraviolet (U

Apolipoprotein A-I (ApoA-I) of high density lipoproteins (HDLs) is essential for the transportation of cholesterol between peripheral tissues and the liver. However, specific mutations in ApoA-I of HDLs are responsible for a late-onset systemic amyloidosis, the pathological accumulation of protein fibrils in tissues and organs. Carriers of these mutations do not exhibit increased cardiovascular di

Background. Solid organ transplants (SOTs) are life-saving interventions, recently challenged by coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). SOTs require a multistep process, which can be affected by COVID-19 at several phases.Methods. SOT-specialists, COVID-19-specialists, and medical ethicists designed an international survey according to CHERRIES guidelines. Personal opinions about continuing SOTs, sa