It is well recognized that atopic sensitization is an important risk factor for asthma, both in adults and in children. However, the role of allergy in severe asthma is still under debate. The term 'Severe Asthma' encompasses a highly heterogeneous group of patients who require treatment on steps 4-5 of GINA guidelines to prevent their asthma from becoming 'uncontrolled', or whose disease remains

Peripheral artery disease (PAD) is defined as atherosclerotic arterial occlusive disease of the lower extremities, manifesting as intermittent claudication (IC, pain induced by walking) or critical limb ischaemia (CLI, rest pain or ulcerations). PAD guidelines recommend strict control of cardiovascular risk factors, and European guidelines on hypertension recommend a blood pressure (BP) target < 1

Plant size has been hypothesized to be a major driver of biotic interactions. However, it is little understood how plant size affects plant mutualists vs. antagonists and the plant's resulting reproductive success. We established a common garden experiment covering an interspecific plant size gradient (from 10 to 130 cm height) across 21 annual Brassicaceae species, thereby standardizing features

The aim of the study was to explore and describe spouses' experiences of participating in a case management intervention during older patients' fast-track programme having total hip replacement as well as which intervention elements they found useful. Data were collected through qualitative interviews with 10 spouses from the intervention group of the SICAM-trial, directed by predetermined codes b

Background: Although routine administration of pharmacologic sedation or analgesia during mechanical ventilation in preterm neonates is not recommended, its use in clinical practice remains common. Alpha-2 agonists, mainly clonidine and dexmedetomidine, are used as adjunctive (or alternative) sedative agents alongside opioids and benzodiazepines. Clonidine has not been systematically assessed for

A search is performed for the process pp→G*→BHb-/B-Hb→Hbb-→bb-bb-, predicted in composite Higgs scenarios, where G* is a heavy colour octet vector resonance and BH a vector-like quark of charge -1/3. The data were obtained from pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 19.5 fb-1, recorded by the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The largest background,

Aim: Longitudinal ventricular contraction is a parameter of cardiac performance with predictive power. Right ventricular (RV) longitudinal function is impaired in patients with free pulmonary regurgitation (PR) following corrective surgery for Tetralogy of Fallot (TOF). It remains unclear whether this is a consequence of the surgical repair, or whether it is inherent to PR. The aim of this study w

Cancer testis antigens (CTAs) are of clinical interest as biomarkers and present valuable targets for immunotherapy. To comprehensively characterize the CTA landscape of non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC), we compared RNAseq data from 199 NSCLC tissues to the normal transcriptome of 142 samples from 32 different normal organs. Of 232 CTAs currently annotated in the Caner Testis Database (CTdatabas

We are motivated by a tantalizing open question in exact algorithms: can we detect whether an n-vertex directed graph G has a Hamiltonian cycle in time significantly less than 2^n? We present new randomized algorithms that improve upon several previous works: 1. We show that for any constant 0

Platform ecosystems are becoming the locus of innovation-driven economies as technology-based platform within the ecosystem acts as the foundation for innovative product and services developed by the networked business community around that platform. At its core, a technology platform shows architectural properties, which once emerged in an industry could play as the de facto template for defining

Electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) studies of succinate:ubiquinone oxidoreductase (SQR) from Paracoccus denitrificans have been undertaken in the purified and membrane-bound states, Spectroscopic ''signatures'' accounting for the three iron-sulfur clusters (2Fe-2S, 3Fe-4S, and 4Fe-4S), cytochrome b, flavin, and protein-bound ubisemiquinone radicals have been obtained in air-oxidized, succinate-