The conventional treatment for Dupuytren's disease is surgery. The introduction of alternative treatment strategies creates a need to track outcomes and costs relating to surgical treatment and risk factors, such as smoking and diabetes. This was the aim of the present study.

Many extensions of the Standard Model posit the existence of heavy particles with long lifetimes. In this Letter, results are presented of a search for events containing one or more such particles, which decay at a significant distance from their production point, using a final state containing charged hadrons and an associated muon. This analysis uses a data sample of proton-proton collisions at

We quantified the utilization of terrestrial organic matter (OM) in the food web of a humic lake by analyzing the metabolism and the consumers' stable isotopic (C, H, N) composition in benthic and pelagic habitats. Terrestrial OM inputs (3 g C m(-2) d(-1)) to the lake greatly exceeded autochthonous OM production (3 mg C m(-2) d(-1)) in the lake. Heterotrophic bacterial growth (19 mg C m(-2) d(-1))

Context Adjuvant imatinib administered for 12 months after surgery has improved recurrence-free survival (RFS) of patients with operable gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST) compared with placebo. Objective To investigate the role of imatinib administration duration as adjuvant treatment of patients who have a high estimated risk for GIST recurrence after surgery. Design, Setting, and Patients Pa

Local agricultural emissions contribute significantly to the atmospheric reactive nitrogen loads of Danish terrestrial ecosystems. In the vicinity of the sources this may be up to 6-8 kg N ha(-1) yr(-1) depending on location and ecosystem type. This contribution arises from dry deposition of gas phase ammonia derived from local livestock production. Long-range transport, however, often constitutes

A set of B(E2) values for the low-lying excited states in the radioactive isotope Sn-109 were deduced from a Coulomb excitation experiment. The 2.87-MeV/u radioactive beam was produced at the REX-ISOLDE facility at CERN and was incident on a secondary Ni-58 target. The B(E2) values were determined using the known 2(+) -> 0(+) reduced transition probability in Ni-58 as normalization with the semicl

This paper presents the development of a character activation time prediction model for tongue-typing. This model is based on a modification of Fitts's law that is more suitable for tip-of-tongue selectivity tasks around the palatal area. The model was trained and evaluated with data from tongue-selectivity experiments using an inductive tongue-computer interface. It takes into account the movemen

Differences in the expression of non-motor symptoms (NMS) by Parkinson's disease (PD) patients may have important implications for their management and prognosis. Gender is a basic epidemiological variable that could influence such expression. The present study evaluated the prevalence and severity of NMS by gender in an international sample of 951 PD patients, 62.63% males, using the non-motor sy

We review some recent results on the exact asymptotics of the components in the inhomogeneous random graph models of rank 1. We discuss the relevance of these results to the analysis of random walk on random graphs.

Climate change and disasters pose a serious risk to sustainable development. In the South local coping strategies are an important element of adaptation to climate and disaster risk. Such strategies have arisen because of the limited assistance provided by urban actors and associated social security and governance systems. In contrast, in the North local coping strategies are comparatively poorly

This paper investigates linear precoding over nonsingular linear channels with additive white Gaussian noise, with lattice-type inputs. The aim is to maximize the minimum distance of the received lattice points, where the precoder is subject to an energy constraint. It is shown that the optimal precoder only produces a finite number of different lattices, namely perfect lattices, at the receiver.

This article discusses the potential for soft-governance instruments and processes such as the National Gender Equality Strategy to implement a strategy aiming at improved competiveness through gender equality. A central question addressed is how to create a women entrepreneurial identity within the framework of the dominant gender order in the forest sector? The literature review and policy analy

Non-marine Late Cretaceous sediments from the Vilui Basin, Siberia, yield a diverse palynoflora of over 180 taxa, a third of which had a circum-polar distribution. The Vilui palynoflora belongs generally to the northerly Aquilapollenites Province admixed with minute Normapolles types, and comprises about 36-70% angiosperm pollen forms, indicating a late Campanian/early Maastrichtian age. Using a c

Organisms employ one of several different enzyme systems to mature cytochromes c. The biosynthetic process involves the periplasmic reduction of cysteine residues in the heme c attachment motif of the apocytochrome, transmembrane transport of heme b and stereospecific covalent heme attachment via thioether bonds. The biogenesis System II (or Ccs system) is employed by β-, δ- and ε-proteobacteria,

Background:The digestion of sphingolipids (SL) is slow and is catalyzed by mucosal enzymes. Dietary SL was shown to inhibit cholesterol absorption and to lower plasma cholesterol, triglycerides (TG) and hepatic fat accumulation in animal models.Aim:A dairy formulation based on fractionation of buttermilk, which is enriched in milk polar lipids of which SL account for a large part is now available.

This paper explores the interaction between brand orientation and market orientation. Brand orientation is an inside-out, identity-driven approach that sees brands as a hub for an organization and its strategy. Similarly, market orientation is an outside-in, image-driven approach. Initially, brand orientation and market orientation appear to be two different strategic options. Though synergistic c

We propose two fundamental principles of epistemological accountability with critical methodological implications for studies designed to measure, assess, and/or profile human psychosocial resilience. Firstly, researchers involved in human psychosocial resilience studies owe it to the individuals and communities that they engage to disclose their motives and possible misreadings of the situations