The aim was to describe milk feeding patterns and first weaning foods during the first year of life in a large prospective birth cohort of infants with increased genetic risk for Type 1 diabetes (T1D) recruited in 4 different countries: the United States, Finland, Germany, and Sweden. All enrolled children with dietary information (n = 8,673) were included in the analyses; 1,307 (15%) children who

B-cell translocation gene 2 (BTG2) is a tumour suppressor protein known to be downregulated in several types of cancer. In this study, we investigated a potential role for BTG2 in early-stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) survival. We analysed BTG2 methylation data from 1230 early-stage NSCLC patients from five international cohorts, as well as gene expression data from 3038 lung cancer cases

Summary: The Fracture Liaison Service (FLS) Consensus Meeting endorsed by the International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF), Asian Federation of Osteoporosis Societies (AFOS), and Asia Pacific Osteoporosis Foundation (APOF) was hosted by the Taiwanese Osteoporosis Association on October 14, 2017. International and domestic experts reviewed the 13 Best Practice Framework (BPF) standards and concluded

Sugar sweetened beverages (SSB), artificially sweetened beverages (ASB), juice, coffee and tea has been associated with risk of metabolic disease. High consumption of these beverages may be associated with certain characteristics of the overall diet that would be important to take into account when analysing beverage-disease associations. Here, we investigate five beverages and their association w

In order to study longitudinal movement and intramural shearing of the arterial wall with a Lagrangian viewpoint using ultrafast ultrasound imaging, a new tracking scheme is required. We propose the use of an iterative tracking scheme based on temporary down-sampling of the frame-rate, anteroposterior tracking, and unbiased block-matching using two kernels per position estimate. The tracking schem

Time-dependent ensemble averages, i.e., trajectory-based averages of some observable, are of importance in many fields of science. A crucial objective when interpreting such data is to fit these averages (for instance, squared displacements) with a function and extract parameters (such as diffusion constants). A commonly overlooked challenge in such function fitting procedures is that fluctuations

Most of the care in nursing homes is palliative in nature, as it is the oldest and the frailest people who live in nursing homes. The aim of this study was to explore next of kin’s experiences of participating in the care of older persons at nursing homes. A qualitative design was used, based on semi-structured interviews with 40 next of kin, and analyzed using qualitative content analysis. An oveMost of the care in nursing homes is palliative in nature, as it is the oldest and the frailest people who live in nursing homes. The aim of this study was to explore next of kin's experiences of participating in the care of older persons at nursing homes. A qualitative design was used, based on semi-structured interviews with 40 next of kin, and analyzed using qualitative content analysis. An ove

Background: The Bone Scan Index (BSI) is used to quantitatively assess the total tumour burden in bone scans of patients with metastatic prostate cancer. The clinical utility of BSI has recently been validated as a prognostic imaging biomarker. However, the clinical utility of the on-treatment change in BSI is dependent on the reproducibility of bone scans. The objective of this prospective study

Natural gas has been traditionally applied in spark-ignited combustion engines due to similar combustion characteristics for methane gas and gasoline. However, spark ignition requires a low compression ratio to avoid knock problems and therefore, gas engines have lower efficiency than diesel engines. A combustion concept that has been successfully applied on large stationary engines and to some ex

Diagonally implicit Runge–Kutta methods (DIRK) are evaluated and compared to standard solution procedures for finite strain crystal plasticity boundary value problems. The structure of the DIRK implementation is similar to that of a conventional implicit backward Euler scheme. It is shown that only very small modifications are required in order to transform the numerical scheme from one into the o

Due to critical impacts of air pollution, prediction and monitoring of air quality in urban areas are important tasks. However, because of the dynamic nature and high spatio-temporal variability, prediction of the air pollutant concentrations is a complex spatio-temporal problem. Distribution of pollutant concentration is influenced by various factors such as the historical pollution data and weat

A major goal in evolutionary biology is to understand the genetic basis of adaptive traits. In migratory birds, wing morphology is such a trait. Our previous work on the great reed warbler (Acrocephalus arundinaceus) shows that wing length is highly heritable and under sexually antagonistic selection. Moreover, a quantitative trait locus (QTL) mapping analysis detected a pronounced QTL for wing le

Fluoroscopic examinations of the upper gastro-intestinal tract and, especially, barium meal examinations, are commonly performed in a majority of hospitals. These examinations are associated both with substantial individual patient doses and contribution to the collective dose from medical exposure. Effective dose estimation for this type of examinations is complicated due to: 1) the necessity to