Amyloids are implicated in many diseases, and disruption of lipid membrane structures is considered as one possible mechanism of pathology. In this paper we investigate interactions between an aggregating peptide and phospholipid membranes, focusing on the nanometer-scale structures of the aggregates formed, as well as on the effect on the aggregation process. As a model system, we use the small a

Aims: The aim of the present study was to explore patients' experiences of diabetes self-management and views on a digital lifestyle intervention using self-affirmation to motivate lifestyle changes.Methods: Semi-structured interviews focusing on needs, attitudes, and barriers to diabetes self-management were conducted with 22 individuals with type 2 diabetes recruited from the All New Diabetics i

Background and aim: Generic drugs contain the same active ingredients as brand- name drugs, with the advantage of much lower costs. The aim of this thesis was to contribute new knowledge to the ongoing debate on the safety of generic antiseizure drug (ASD) substitutions. There was a particular emphasis on the pharmacokinetic and clinical outcomes.Methods: In papers I and II, a prospective naturali

Accessibility is increasingly recognised as a key purpose of transport policies. Most of the common practices found both in academic studies and policy planning draw on relatively simple accessibility measures taken as ‘objective’ indicators that only focus on the interaction between land use and transport. Relatively little attention has been paid to heterogeneity in individual characteristics an

The velocity of the COVID-19 pandemic spread and the variable severity of the disease course has forced scientists to search for potential predictors of the disease outcome. We examined various immune parameters including the markers of immune cells exhaustion and activation in 21 patients with COVID-19 disease hospitalised in our hospital during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Slovakia

Graves’ disease (GD) is an autoimmune disease characterized by hyperthyroidism and is caused by an interplayof genetic and environmental factors. One-third of patients with GD develop Graves’ ophthalmopathy (GO). Keyprocesses in the pathogenesis of GO are inflammation and adipogenesis in orbital tissue. Strong risk factorsassociated with the development of GO are smoking and radioiodine treatment

Default is as old as sovereign debt. Since 1820, countries that issued sovereign debt have spent 18% of time in a state of default. Despite the scale of the problem, the causes and consequences of defaults are still imperfectly understood. In this paper we quantify the aggregate cost of defaults, based on a large panel of 50 sovereigns between 1870 and 2010. Since defaults are endogenous to the bu

Since 2017 the international Chinese Studies community has been shocked to discover that many of the major commercial academic publishers have been actively working with the Chinese censors to limit access to ‘politically sensitive’ books and articles within the country in order to maintain access to the lucrative Chinese market. This essay examines these incidents and the responses of the publish

III-V semiconductor nanowires are high aspect ratio nanostructures with superior properties that can potentially enhance the functionality of next-generation opto-electronic devices. At present, the most reliable method for fabricating III-V semiconductor nanowires is the particle-assisted vapor-liquid-solid growth using a substrate-based growth process. However, a substrate-based process limits t

Background: Current clinical decision rules to exclude deep vein thrombosis (DVT) are underused partly because of their complexity. A simplified rule that can be easily applied would be more appealing to use in clinical practice. Methods: We used individual patient data from prospective diagnostic studies of patients suspected of DVT to develop a new clinical decision rule. The primary outcome was

Monitoring pollution of PM2.5 on walkable roads is important for resident health in high-density cities. Due to the spatiotemporal resolution limitations of Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) observation, fixed-point monitoring, or traditional mobile measurement instruments, the microscale PM2.5 distribution in the walking environment cannot be fully estimated at the fine scale. In this study, by the int

Foot measurement is necessary for personalized customization. Nowadays, people usually obtain their foot size by using a ruler or foot scanner. However, there are some disadvantages to this, namely, large measurement error and variance when using rulers, and high price and poor convenience when using a foot scanner. To tackle these problems, we obtain foot parameters by 3D foot reconstruction base

Increasingly fine-grained cloud billing creates incentives to review the software execution footprint in virtual environments. For example, virtual execution environments move towards lower overhead: from virtual machines to containers, unikernels, and serverless cloud computing. However, the execution footprint of security components in virtualized environments has either remained the same or eve

Background: After decades of ubiquitous oxygen therapy in all patients with acute myocardial infarction (MI), recent guidelines are more restrictive based on lack of efficacy in contemporary trials evaluating hard clinical outcomes in patients without hypoxemia at baseline. However, no evidence regarding treatment effects on health-related quality of life (HRQoL) exists. In this study, we investig

Non-responders to checkpoint inhibitors generally have low tumor T cell infiltration and could benefit from immunotherapy that activates dendritic cells, with priming of tumor-reactive T cells as a result. Such therapies may be augmented by providing tumor antigen in the form of cancer vaccines. Our aim was to study the effects of mitazalimab (ADC-1013; JNJ-64457107), a human anti-CD40 agonist IgG