Which have been the consequences of the euro for integration and economic performance in the Baltic Sea region? After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the three Baltic states and Poland have been rapidly catching-up with Western Europe. The Great Recession became a great setback for the former, while less so for Poland. A difference is the monetary policy: the Polish zloty depreciated in the crit

BACKGROUND: Several rating scales assessing stress-related symptoms of exhaustion have emerged in recent years. However, more knowledge is needed about the performance of these rating scales in patients with stress-related disorders as well as in other patient groups. With the recently developed Karolinska Exhaustion Disorder Scale (KEDS), we compared symptoms of exhaustion in different patient gr

Software engineers handle a lot of information intheir daily work. We explore how software engineers interact withinformation management systems/tools, and to what extent thesesystems expose users to increased cognitive load. We reviewed theliterature of cognitive aspects, relevant for software engineering,and performed an exploratory case study on how software engi-neers perceive information syst

Though the existence of cultural ecosystem services is dependent on people's activities and experiences, these services are still commonly assessed using top–down approaches. In this study, appraisal theory and research into human responses to natural environments formed the basis of a systematic multilevel investigation of appraisals of created wetland areas. The aim was to explore how appraisals

Background: Ovarian tumours are usually surgically removed because of the presumed risk of complications. Few large prospective studies on long-term follow-up of adnexal masses exist. We aimed to estimate the cumulative incidence of cyst complications and malignancy during the first 2 years of follow-up after adnexal masses have been classified as benign by use of ultrasonography. Methods: In the

The superfluid tunneling model is applied to the calculation of half-lives of the observed α decays in N=84 isotones. Results of our calculations are compared to experimental data on the ground-state α decays along the isotonic chain from 144Nd to 159Re. Good agreement is found. The α decays of the known high-spin isomers in 155Lu, 156Hf, 157Ta, and 158W are also well reproduced, once a reduction

The quality of visual information that is available to an animal is limited by the size of its eyes. Differences in eye size can be observed even between closely related individuals, yet we understand little about how this affects vision. Insects are good models for exploring the effects of size on visual systems because many insect species exhibit size polymorphism. Previous work has been limited

Identification of determinants of fate choices in hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) is essential to improve the clinical use of HSCs and to enhance our understanding of the biology of normal and malignant hematopoiesis. Here, we show that high-mobility group AT hook 2 (HMGA2), a nonhistone chromosomal-binding protein, is highly and preferentially expressed in HSCs and in the most immature progenitor

In diabetes mellitus (DM), the kidneys are exposed to increased levels of hyperglycemia-induced oxidative stress. Elevated amounts of reactive oxygen species (ROS) are believed to provoke ultrastructural changes in kidney tissue and can eventually result in DM late complications such as diabetic nephropathy. While it is reported that glucagon-like peptide 1 receptors (GLP-1R) are present in the ki

Planetary migration is a major challenge for planet-formation theories. The speed of type-I migration is proportional to the mass of a protoplanet, while the final decade of growth of a pebble-accreting planetary core takes place at a rate that scales with the mass to the two-thirds power. This results in planetary growth tracks (i.e., the evolution of the mass of a protoplanet versus its distanc

We present two sensitivity function trade-offs that apply to a class of networks with a string topology. In particular we show that a lower bound on the H-infinity norm and a Bode sensitivity relation hold for an entire family of sensitivity functions associated with growing the network. The trade-offs we identify are a direct consequence of growing the network, and can be used to explain why poor

We consider least-squares approximation of a function of one variable by a continuous, piecewise-linear approximand that has a small number of breakpoints. This problem was notably considered by Bellman who proposed an approximate algorithm based on dynamic programming. Many suboptimal approaches have been suggested, but so far, the only exact methods resort to mixed integer programming with super