Background: Steroid nasal irrigation for chronic rhinosinusitis patients following endoscopic sinus surgery reduces symptom recurrence. There are minimal safety data to recommend this treatment. This study evaluated the safety of betamethasone nasal irrigation by measuring its impact on endogenous cortisol levels. Methods: Participants performed daily betamethasone nasal irrigation for six weeks.

One of the most widely used tools for assessing and communicating scienti c uncertainty is Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE), a system for rating the quality of evidence and grading strength of recommendations in healthcare. More than 100 organisations around the world—WHO included1— are using GRADE or have endorsed it.In GRADE, a quantitative assessment of

Among adults, acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is the second most frequent type of leukemia. In spite of recent improvements in the treatment of this disease, a majority of patients develop drug resistance, leading to poor overall survival. One of the factors behind this is mutations in the tyrosine kinase receptor (FLT3). It is one of the most commonly mutated genes and is present in almost 40% of th

The impedance matching concept is employed in this paper to select the optimum gain of a VSC-HVDC damping controller. The damping controller of the DC link is based on control of active power in proportion to the difference in local frequency at the VSC-HVDC converter stations. To explain impedance matching, the small-disturbance electro-mechanical dynamics of a power system is transformed to an e

Den 14 januari började det nya året enligt den rysk-ortodoxa julianska kalendern. Vad kan man då anta att år 2013 kommer innebära för Ryssland och ryssarna? Spekulerande är en vansklig syssla, men jag ska ändå försöka skissa ett tänkbart scenario. Texten nedan är alltså en personlig reflektion över de tendenser man kan se i Ryssland just nu, och vad dessa skulle kunna innebära för utvecklingen und

Public sector organisations and voluntary sector organisations represent different organisational archetypes. All the same, they share two fundamental characteristics. However, in practice interaction seems to be coupled with several problems but the organisations favour interaction as a way of attaining mutual benefits. The aim of this paper is to introduce some hypotheses on factors that influen

This paper highlights recent development of fuel cell hybrid vehicle (FCHV) models using the Fuel Cell Library (FCL), the Vehicle Dynamics Library (VDL), and Electrification Library (EL) from Modelon. A flexible model architecture is implemented to support physical modeling of such large scale, multi-domain vehicle system. The top-level model consists of a hydrogen fuel cell subsystem with detaile

Aims: Exposure to infection is a risk for all healthcare workers. This risk acquires another dimension in an outbreak of highly contagious, lethal disease, such as the Ebola epidemic in West Africa in 2014. Healthcare workers are usually well and correctly informed about the risks from such diseases, but family, neighbours, friends, or colleagues may react strongly to the risk that staff might bri

Interleukin-1β (IL-1β) is a potent mediator of innate immunity commonly up-regulated in a broad spectrum of inflammatory diseases. When bound to its cell surface receptor, IL-1β initiates a signalling cascade that cooperatively induces the expression of canonical IL-1 target genes such as IL-8 and IL-6. Here, we present galectin-3 as a novel regulator of IL-1β responses in corneal keratinocytes. U

Biodeterioration challenges range from poor indoor air quality and exterior marble defacing to more dangerous building degradation. People often change the look of degraded walls by painting over them, removing carpets as well as replacing damaged wood and papers to improve their aesthetic value. Due to a lack of public awareness and health care infrastructure, the degradation rate is increasing i

In this letter, the high-order mode and ground-edge diffraction of a slot antenna are used to achieve a high gain. To inhibit the multilobes at the high-order mode, ground-edge diffraction is utilized to form a single main lobe by changing the size of the ground plane of the slot radiator. Then, this slot antenna is employed to construct a windmill-shaped array antenna for circular polarization. A

In the field of applied animal behaviour, video recordings of a scene of interest are often made and then evaluated by experts. This evaluation is based on different criteria (number of animals present, an occurrence of certain interactions, the proximity between animals and so forth) and aims to filter out video sequences that contain irrelevant information. However, such task requires a tremendo

BACKGROUND: The normal body exists in mutualistic balance with a large range of microbiota. The primary goal of this study was to establish whether there is an imbalance in the oropharyngeal flora early after hospital or ICU admittance, and whether flora differs between control, ward and critically ill patients. The secondary goal was to explore whether there are patient characteristics that can b