Background: Non-medical Prescription Opioid Use (NMPOU) has increased worldwide during the last decades, and specifically, tramadol misuse may represent a novel pattern of substance use among adolescents. The present study aims to analyze characteristics distinguishing tramadol-using adolescents from other substance-using adolescents seeking out-patient treatment. Methods: This is a cross-sectiona

Purpose: In addition to a breast density category, temporal changes in breast density have gained attention as a dynamic breast cancer risk marker. This case-control study aimed to investigate a potential change in breast density preceding tumor development and the relationship of this potential change to prognostic pathological tumor variables. Method: A total of 51 consecutive, eligible-for-anal

This study investigates how ascending movement is affected by carrying load during a stair‐climbing motion. The methods adopted are based on exercise physiology and fire safety engineering. Experiments with 21 volunteers with mean (SD) age of 27 (4) have been carried out on a stair machine with or without carrying a mass of 8 kg, typical weight of a hand luggage or the average weight of an 8‐month

The human antimicrobial peptide LL-37 is produced by neutrophils and epithelial cells, and the peptide can be detected in plasma as well as saliva. LL-37 is active against both gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria including oral pathogens such as Porphyromonas gingivalis and Streptococcus mutans. Besides its antimicrobial properties, LL-37 modulates the innate immune system, and furthermore, i

Personal data is often the target of people who are not responsible for being misused. Theft is done to benefit from people who have the data. In addition to the theft of work files, theft is also carried out on video files. Theft of this file aims to find out what the contents of the video. Someone has a private recorded video that cannot be known by others. Misuse of video files will be fatal fo

Objective: To evaluate progression of individual radiographic features 5 years following exercise therapy or arthroscopic partial meniscectomy as treatment for degenerative meniscal tear. Design: Randomized controlled trial including 140 adults, aged 35–60 years, with a magnetic resonance image verified degenerative meniscal tear, and 96% without definite radiographic knee osteoarthritis. Particip

Objective: The incidence of urinary stones is increasing across the globe. Surgical treatment includes extracorporal shock-wave lithotripsy (ESWL), ureterolithotripsy (URS), percutaneous nephrolitotomy (PCNL) and rarely open surgery. This single center study describes complications to PCNL focusing on infections, bacterial growth/resistance and antibiotic prophylaxis/treatment. Materials and metho

This paper investigates the robustness of control systems when a controller is run in a Fog environment. Control systems in the Fog are introduced and a discussion regarding relevant faults is presented. A preliminary investigation of the robustness properties of a MinSeg case study is presented and commented. The discussion is then used to outline future lines of research.

Color information is an important tool for diagnosing melanoma. In this study, we used a hyper-spectral imager (HSI), which can measure color information in detail, to develop an automated melanoma diagnosis system. In recent years, the effectiveness of deep learning has become more widely accepted in the field of image recognition. We therefore integrated the deep convolutional neural network wit

Recent attempts by several big tech companies to create their own currencies, such as Facebook's Libra, have drawn attention to monetary innovations. The case offers important insights for this debate by engaging with the wave of monetary innovation and entrepreneurship triggered by the unemployment and economic distress of the Great Depression in the 1930s. Through the vantage point of one of the

The case is about today's crypto-activists' efforts to organise a cooperative global economic system that is an alternative to the State and to market capitalism. Through the vantage point of FairCoop, the reader gets an insight on the necessary elements needed to consider when organizing an economic system for the commons: a community that produces, a market in which products can be exchanged, an

The case is about the choice of governance structures for a community currency in the impoverished South of Spain that aims to alleviate the economic hardships brought by the economic crisis. The reader gets an insight into the economic contexts of these currencies, the functioning of one of its most common designs (mutual credit systems or LETS), as well as the governance structures of community

Terrestrial ecosystem gross primary productivity (GPP) is the largest land-atmosphere carbon flux and the primary mechanism of photosynthetic fixation of atmospheric CO2 into plant biomass. Anomalous rainfall events have been shown to have a great impact on the global carbon cycle. However, less is known about the impact of these events on GPP, especially in Africa, where in situ observations are

Objectives: To evaluate whether a fall prevention intervention reduces fall risk in older adults who have previously fallen. Design: Randomized controlled pilot trial. Setting: Participants’ homes. Intervention: LIVE-LiFE, adapted from Lifestyle-Intervention Functional Exercise (LiFE) integrates strength and balance training into daily habits in eight visits over 12 weeks. The adaptations to LiFE

Hip-related pain is a well-recognised complaint among active young and middle-aged active adults. People experiencing hip-related disorders commonly report pain and reduced functional capacity, including difficulties in executing activities of daily living. Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) are essential to accurately examine and compare the effects of different treatments on disability in

Objective: Detailed analysis of hematological manifestations (HM) in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) are limited and their clinical impact on disease remain obscure. Here, we aimed to decipher factors associated with different hematological abnormalities in SLE patients and to assess their impact on disease related outcomes. Methods: A dataset (GIPT) originating from SLE patients of six Europea

Limited evidence exists on the role of modifiable lifestyle factors on the risk of lymphoma. In this work, the associations between adherence to healthy lifestyles and risks of Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) and non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) were evaluated in a large-scale European prospective cohort. Within the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC), 2,999 incident lymphoma cases

Refsum disease (RD) is an inborn error of metabolism that is characterised by a defect in peroxisomal α-oxidation of the branched-chain fatty acid phytanic acid. The disorder presents with late-onset progressive retinitis pigmentosa and polyneuropathy and can be diagnosed biochemically by elevated levels of phytanate in plasma and tissues of patients. To date, no cure exists for RD, but phytanate

A pulsed millimeter wave radar operating at a frame rate of 144 Hz is utilized to record 2160 scattering signatures of 12 generic hand gestures. Gesture recognition is achieved by machine learning, utilizing transfer learning on a pretrained convolutional neural network. This yields excellent classification results with a validation accuracy of 99.5%, based on a 60% training versus 40% validation

The radiotherapy workflow for prostate cancer is associated with systematic uncertainty stemming from the registration between the computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance (MR) images. A radiotherapy workflow based solely on MR imaging (MRI), called an MRI-only workflow, has been suggested as a means of eliminating this uncer¬tainty. The aim of the work presented in this thesis was to valid