Economic evaluation in health care is still an evolving discipline. One of the current controversies in cost-effectiveness analysis regards the inclusion or exclusion of future non-medical costs (i.e. consumption net of production) due to increased survival. This paper examines the implications of a symmetry rule stating that there should be consistency between costs included in the numerator and

Transverse single-spin asymmetries to probe the transverse-spin structure of the proton have been measured for neutral pions and nonidentified charged hadrons from polarized proton-proton collisions at midrapidity and root s = 200 GeV. The data cover a transverse momentum (pT) range 1.0-5.0 GeV/c for neutral pions and 0.5-5.0 GeV/c for charged hadrons, at a Feynman-x value of approximately zero. T

In order to understand the state of test process practices in the software industry, we have conducted a qualitative survey, covering software development departments at 11 companies in Sweden of different sizes and application domains. The companies develop products in an evolutionary manner, which means either new versions are released regularly, or new product variants under new names are relea

Decadal hindcast simulations of Arctic Ocean sea ice thickness made by a modern dynamic-thermodynamic sea ice model and forced independently by both the ERA-40 and NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data sets are compared for the first time. Using comprehensive data sets of observations made between 1979 and 2001 of sea ice thickness, draft, extent, and speeds, we find that it is possible to tune model paramete

A new species of Pegomya Robineau-Desvoidy is described from Europe ( Sweden, Denmark and Finland) by the name of P. curviphallis. It belongs, together with the Holarctic P. flavoscutellata (Zetterstedt) and the Nearctic P. flaviantennata Griffiths, in a species group defined by a sickle-shaped distiphallus. Differential descriptions are given for the two European species of the P. flavoscutellata

Earlier work in northeast Greenland has suggested a limited advance of the Greenland Ice Sheet during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). However, this concept has recently been challenged by marine geological studies, indicating grounded ice on the continental shelf at this time. New Be-10-ages from the Store Koldewey island, northeast Greenland, suggest that unscoured mountain plateaus at the outer

Spontaneous electrical and mechanical activity was abolished in isolated preparations of rat portal vein by exposure to K+-free Krebs solution. This procedure probably also increased the intracellular [Na+] owing to interference with the active transmembrane Na+-K+ transport. Contractures could be induced under these conditions by lowering extracellular [Na+] from the control level of 144 to 17 mM

Softwood constitutes the main source of lignocellulosic material in Sweden which can be used for ethanol production from renewable resources. To make the biomass-to-ethanol process more economically feasible, it is preferable to include the sugar-rich prehydrolysate, i.e. the liquid obtained after the pretreatment step, in the enzymatic hydrolysis of the solid fraction. This study shows that the p

Hashing or encrypting a key or a password is a vital part in most network security protocols. The most practical generic attack on such schemes is a time memory trade-off attack. Such an attack inverts any one-way function using a trade-off between memory and execution time. Existing techniques include the Hellman attack and the rainbow attack, where the latter uses different reduction functions (

The molecular interaction of secreted granzyme B-serglycin complexes with target cells remains undefined. Targets exposed to double-labeled granzyme B-serglycin complexes show solely the uptake of granzyme B. An in vitro model demonstrates the exchange of the granzyme from serglycin to immobilized, sulfated glycosaminoglycans. Using a combination of cell binding and internalization assays, granzym

Dodecin from Halobacterium salinarum is a dodecameric, hollow-spherical protein, which unspecifically adopts flavin molecules. Reduction of flavin dodecin holocomplexes induces dissociation into apododecin and free flavin. Unspecific binding and dissociation upon reduction were used as key properties to construct an electrochemically switchable surface, which was able to bind and release dodecin a

The present study demonstrates that the secretion of azurophilic granules occurring during Fc receptor-mediated attachment and spreading of neutrophils is highly localized to the adhering region of the cell. In contrast, the secretion of specific granules occurs in a nonpolarized way. This implies that unique signals are involved in the regulation of azurophilic degranulation. Assembly of actin fi

Historical sediment nutrient concentrations and heavy metal distributions were studied in four estuaries in the Gulf of Finland, Baltic Sea to examine the response of these estuaries to temporal changes in human activities. Cores were collected using a 1-m Mackereth corer and dated using Pb-210 and (CS)-C-137. The cores were analyzed for total carbon (TC), total nitrogen (TN), total phosphorus (TP

Bilateral clinical breast carcinoma has been reported to appear in up to approximately 10% of patients with breast carcinoma. Increasing diagnostic activity has raised figures of bilaterality, mainly due to detection of lesions of the in situ type. Knowledge of the natural history of carcinoma in situ is incomplete and clinical implications are uncertain. In the present study bilateral lesions wer

Immunomodulatory effects of various factor VIII and factor IX clotting factor concentrates (CFCs) and of albumin were evaluated by a sensitive assay measuring the incorporation of 3H-thymidine in phytohaemagglutinin-stimulated lymphocytes in the presence of monodansylthiacadaverine. In contrast to previous findings by others, we found lymphocyte transformation to be inhibited by all plasma-derived

We examine pair correlation functions resulting from self-consistent and non self-consistent implementations of the GW approximation for the electron gas. Having obtained these, we can shed more light on the fact that the self-consistent scheme generates good ground state energies but unphysical spectral properties.

Antibody microarray is a rapidly emerging, powerful approach with great promise within high-throughput proteomics. However, before a truly proteome-wide analysis can be performed, the antibody array format needs to be miniaturized even further in order to enable ultradense arrays to be fabricated. To this end, we have designed and generated proof-of-concept for the first generation of an atto-vial