The British Columbia Provincial Hand Hygiene Working Group was formed in September 2010 and tasked with the development and implementation of a provincial hand hygiene (HH) program for health care.

PURPOSE: To investigate the association between varus alignment and post-traumatic osteoarthritis (OA) after an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury. METHODS: One hundred subjects with an acute complete ACL tear were followed for 15 years. Anterior-posterior radiographs of the tibiofemoral joint were obtained with a knee flexion of 20°, and the patellofemoral joint was examined with skyline vie

To meet urgent needs for solving serious worldwide drug-resistance problems, a sensitive label-free capacitive sensor developed in our group was investigated as a tool to be applied in the field of antibiotic resistance genotyping, for instance the detection of ampicillin resistance gene (ampR). Proof-of-concept data demonstrated its detection sensitivity of pico-molar without any signal amplifica

The assembly of nucleic acid nanostructures with controlled size and shape has large impact in the fields of nanotechnology, nanomedicine and synthetic biology. The directed arrangement of nano-structures at interfaces is important for many applications. In spite of this, the use of laterally mobile lipid bilayers to control RNA three-dimensional nanostructure formation on surfaces remains largely

An optical sensor based on differential absorption spectroscopy for real-time monitoring of industrial nitric oxide (NO) gas emission is described. The influence of gas absorption interference from sulfur dioxide (SO2) in the environment was considered and a spectral separation technique was developed in order to eliminate this interference effect. The absorption spectrum of SO2 around 226 nm was

Green neighbourhood environments have been associated with physical and psychological wellbeing in adults. Access to greenness is potentially more important in vulnerable subgroups. In this study based on longitudinal survey data from southern Sweden the cohort was divided into prognostic groups for good self-reported general (n=8891) and mental (n=9444) health. We used independent survey data to

Activation of microglia and inflammation-mediated neurotoxicity are suggested to have key roles in the pathogenesis of several neurodegenerative disorders. We recently published an article in Nature revealing an unexpected role for executioner caspases in the microglia activation process. We showed that caspases 8 and 3/7, commonly known to have executioner roles for apoptosis, can promote microgl

An important new development within the European ENSEMBLES project has been to explore performance-based weighting of regional climate models (RCMs). Until now, although no weighting has been applied in multi-RCM analyses, one could claim that an assumption of ‘equal weight’ was implicitly adopted. At the same time, different RCMs generate different results, e.g. for various types of extremes, and

In this retrospective epidemiologic study, we present pneumococcal carriage data from 109 Swedish day care centers over a period of 10 years. Aspects of season, age, personnel and group size were studied. We found a significant seasonal variation in pneumococcal carriage. Group size was a significant risk factor for pneumococcal carriage. Pneumococcal carriage was 4.5 % in personnel.

We present the calculation of the self-energy of the isolated hydrogen atom within the GW approximation starting from the noninteracting Green's function constructed from the exact wave functions of the hydrogen atom. The error in the electron removal energy of the 1s state is found to be about 0.02 eV, which is much smaller than what one would expect. This small error is explained by the cancella

In an effort to identify neuronal repair mechanisms of the major pelvic ganglion (MPG), we evaluated changes in the expression of nestin, an intermediate filament protein and neural stem cell marker following cavernous nerve crush injury (CNI). We utilized two groups of Sprague Dawley rats: (i) sham and (ii) bilateral CNI. Erectile responses to cavernous nerve stimulation (CNS) were determined at

The study investigates teratogenic risks with ondansetron (Zofran(®)). Data from the Swedish Medical Birth Register combined with the Swedish Register of Prescribed Drugs were used to identify 1349 infants born of women who had taken ondansetron in early pregnancy, 1998-2012. Presence of congenital malformations in the offspring was identified with three national health registers. In a Mantel-Haen

Abstract Objective. Most previous studies have failed to demonstrate any effect of maternal use of 5-aminosalicylates (5-ASA) on malformation risk, but the number of infants studied have, in most cases, been low. The objective of the study was to get data from a large study with prospectively ascertained exposure information. Material and methods. The study was based on data in the Swedish Medical

We have studied the convergence of QM/MM calculations with respect to the size of the QM system. We study a proton transfer between a first-sphere cysteine ligand and a second-sphere histidine group in [Ni,Fe] hydrogenase and use a 446-atom model of the protein, treated purely with QM methods as a reference. We have tested 12 different ways to redistribute charges close to the junctions (to avoid

BK virus associated nephropathy occurs in approximately 5% of renal transplant recipients. Quantitation of BKV DNA in serum/plasma early in the course of disease has been suggested to be an important diagnostic tool for polymavirus-associated nephropathy (PVAN). The aim of this study was to develop a BKV real-time PCR (qPCR), which could be included in a diagnostic qPCR platform. Additionally, the

OBJECTIVE: The concordance index (c-index) is the standard way of evaluating the performance of prognostic models in the presence of censored data. Constructing prognostic models using artificial neural networks (ANNs) is commonly done by training on error functions which are modified versions of the c-index. Our objective was to demonstrate the capability of training directly on the c-index and t

Invasive species and bottom-water hypoxia both constitute major global threats to the diversity and integrity of marine ecosystems. These stressors may interact with unexpected consequences, as invasive species that require an initial environmental disturbance to become established can subsequently become important drivers of ecological change. There is recent evidence that improved bottom-water o