Background: People with disabilities have the right to personal mobility and available and affordable assistive technology, according to the Convention of Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The aims were to investigate similarities and differences between Sierra Leone and Malawi concerning participants’ mobility and satisfaction with their lower-limb prosthetic or orthotic device and related ser

The objective is to provide an overview of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). Focus will be on the history of the ENP and its goals, the institutional structure of the ENP, and the policy measures that have been carried out through the ENP. The evolution of the ENP is traced from its origins in a 2003 European Commission communication to the broad and multifaceted policy that it is nowadays.

We consider a type of optimal switching problems with non-uniform execution delays and ramping. Such problems frequently occur in the operation of economical and engineering systems. We first provide a solution to the problem by applying a probabilistic method. The main contribution is, however, a scheme for approximating the optimal control by limiting the information in the state-feedback. In a

Introduction: The pulsatility indices of the umbilical and uterine arteries are used as the surrogate measures of utero-placental perfusion. Combining the two might simplify the evaluation of total placental vascular impedance, possibly improve prediction of adverse outcomes, and help identify pregnancies with suspected fetal growth restriction that need more intense surveillance. Material and met

In the day-to-day operation of a power system, the system operator repeatedly solves short-term generation planning problems. When formulating these problems the operators have to weigh the risk of costly failures against increased production costs. The resulting problems are often high-dimensional and various approximations have been suggested in the literature. In this article we formulate the

Abstract: The diagnostic work up of dementia may benefit from structured reporting of CT and/or MRI and the use of standardised visual rating scales. We advocate a more widespread use of standardised scales as part of the workflow in clinical and research evaluation of dementia. We propose routine clinical use of rating scales for medial temporal atrophy (MTA), global cortical atrophy (GCA) and wh

Objective: To estimate the lifetime risk of knee osteoarthritis (OA) and total knee replacement (TKR) in persons sustaining anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tear by age 25 years. Methods: We used the Osteoarthritis Policy Model to project the cumulative incidence of symptomatic knee OA requiring TKR in varying situations: no prevalent or incident injury; isolated ACL tear, surgically treated; isol

This paper contributes to understanding national variations in using low-carbon electricity sources by comparing the evolution of nuclear, wind and solar power in Germany and Japan. It develops and applies a framework for analyzing low-carbon electricity transitions based on interplay of techno-economic, political and socio-technical processes. We explain why in the 1970s–1980s, the energy paths o

Despite the evidence of unmet support needs among young people who have lost a parent to cancer, only a few support group initiatives have been reported. This observational prospective study explored the psychosocial well-being of young people who participated in support groups at a Swedish specialist palliative care setting. On three occasions, 29 participants, aged 16–28 years, answered question

This paper addresses reduction of test cost for core-based non-stacked integrated circuits (ICs) and stacked integrated circuits (SICs) by test planning, under power constraint. Test planning involves co-optimization of cost associated with test time and test hardware. Test architecture is considered compliant with IEEE 1149.1 standard. A cost model is presented for calculating the cost of any tes

PURPOSE:: To investigate how patients with neovascular age-related macular degeneration treated with ranibizumab or bevacizumab respond to treatment in daily clinical practice. METHODS:: Data from the Swedish Macula Register on the treatment received by 3,912 patients during 2011 to 2014 is reported. Patientsʼ characteristics at the first visit, visual acuity, number of injections, and reason for

Background: Accurate assessment of myocardium at risk (MaR) after acute myocardial infarction (AMI) is necessary when assessing myocardial salvage. Contrast-enhanced steady-state free precession (CE-SSFP) is a recently developed cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) method for assessment of MaR up to 1 week after AMI. Our aim was to validate CE-SSFP for determination of MaR in an experimental po

The aim of this paper is to investigate the challenges associated with the industrial implementation of generative design systems. Though many studies have been aimed at validating either the technical feasibility or the usefulness of generative design systems, there is, however, a lack of research on the practical implementation and adaptation in industry. To that end, this paper presents two cas

OBJECTIVES:: To study the prognostic value of fever in the emergency department in septic patients subsequently admitted to the ICU. DESIGN:: Observational cohort study from the Swedish national quality register for sepsis. SETTING:: Thirty ICU’s in Sweden. PATIENTS:: Two thousand two hundred twenty-five adults who were admitted to an ICU within 24 hours of hospital arrival with a diagnosis of sev

Finding new efficient connectors or improving existing ones are important issues in timber construction. This research investigates an innovative large-diameter dowel-type connection by using a finite elements model calibrated with experimental results. This connection is made of a large-diameter single dowel reinforced by means of a steel plate with a vulcanised rubber layer. The steel plate shap

Objectives: To analyze a cohort of 745 consecutive patients referred to a regional specialist clinic for evaluation of post-traumatic neck pain during a five-year period. Methods: A cross-sectional observational study of baseline assessments performed by multi-professional rehabilitation teams according to a standardized checklist. Results: The cohort contained nearly twice as many females as male

Human actions have led to loss and degradation of wetlands, impairing their suitability as habitat especially for waterbirds. Such negative effects may be mitigated through habitat management. To date scientific evidence regarding the impacts of these actions remains scarce. We studied guild specific abundances of breeding and staging birds in response to habitat management on 15 Finnish wetlands.

Employing fault tolerance often introduces a time overhead, which may cause a deadline violation in real-time systems (RTS). Therefore, for RTS it is important to optimize the fault tolerance techniques such that the probability to meet the deadlines, i.e. the Level of Confidence (LoC), is maximized. Previous studies have focused on evaluating the LoC for equidistant checkpointing. However, no stu

Performance of cutting tool in hard turning is significantly influenced by its microgeometry, such as edge radius. This study presents an experimental exploration to understand the effect of cutting edge radius on machining performance in terms of surface roughness and tool wear. The cutting tools (CBN) with three groups of nominal edge radius, 20, 30, and 40 μm, were used in the study. The cuttin