| 1. |
- Bergström, Göran, 1964, et al.
(author)
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Prevalence of Subclinical Coronary Artery Atherosclerosis in the General Population
- 2021
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In: Circulation. - Philadelphia : American Heart Association. - 0009-7322 .- 1524-4539. ; 144:12, s. 916-929
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Background: Early detection of coronary atherosclerosis using coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA), in addition to coronary artery calcification (CAC) scoring, may help inform prevention strategies. We used CCTA to determine the prevalence, severity, and characteristics of coronary atherosclerosis and its association with CAC scores in a general population.Methods: We recruited 30 154 randomly invited individuals age 50 to 64 years to SCAPIS (the Swedish Cardiopulmonary Bioimage Study). The study includes individuals without known coronary heart disease (ie, no previous myocardial infarctions or cardiac procedures) and with high-quality results from CCTA and CAC imaging performed using dedicated dual-source CT scanners. Noncontrast images were scored for CAC. CCTA images were visually read and scored for coronary atherosclerosis per segment (defined as no atherosclerosis, 1% to 49% stenosis, or ≥50% stenosis). External validity of prevalence estimates was evaluated using inverse probability for participation weighting and Swedish register data.Results: In total, 25 182 individuals without known coronary heart disease were included (50.6% women). Any CCTA-detected atherosclerosis was found in 42.1%; any significant stenosis (≥50%) in 5.2%; left main, proximal left anterior descending artery, or 3-vessel disease in 1.9%; and any noncalcified plaques in 8.3% of this population. Onset of atherosclerosis was delayed on average by 10 years in women. Atherosclerosis was more prevalent in older individuals and predominantly found in the proximal left anterior descending artery. Prevalence of CCTA-detected atherosclerosis increased with increasing CAC scores. Among those with a CAC score >400, all had atherosclerosis and 45.7% had significant stenosis. In those with 0 CAC, 5.5% had atherosclerosis and 0.4% had significant stenosis. In participants with 0 CAC and intermediate 10-year risk of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease according to the pooled cohort equation, 9.2% had CCTA-verified atherosclerosis. Prevalence estimates had excellent external validity and changed marginally when adjusted to the age-matched Swedish background population.Conclusions: Using CCTA in a large, random sample of the general population without established disease, we showed that silent coronary atherosclerosis is common in this population. High CAC scores convey a significant probability of substantial stenosis, and 0 CAC does not exclude atherosclerosis, particularly in those at higher baseline risk.
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| 2. |
- Bergström, Göran, et al.
(author)
-
Prevalence of Subclinical Coronary Artery Atherosclerosis in the General Population
- 2021
-
In: Circulation. - : Wolters Kluwer. - 0009-7322 .- 1524-4539. ; 144:12, s. 916-929
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Background: Early detection of coronary atherosclerosis using coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA), in addition to coronary artery calcification (CAC) scoring, may help inform prevention strategies. We used CCTA to determine the prevalence, severity, and characteristics of coronary atherosclerosis and its association with CAC scores in a general population.Methods: We recruited 30 154 randomly invited individuals age 50 to 64 years to SCAPIS (the Swedish Cardiopulmonary Bioimage Study). The study includes individuals without known coronary heart disease (ie, no previous myocardial infarctions or cardiac procedures) and with high-quality results from CCTA and CAC imaging performed using dedicated dual-source CT scanners. Noncontrast images were scored for CAC. CCTA images were visually read and scored for coronary atherosclerosis per segment (defined as no atherosclerosis, 1% to 49% stenosis, or ≥50% stenosis). External validity of prevalence estimates was evaluated using inverse probability for participation weighting and Swedish register data.Results: In total, 25 182 individuals without known coronary heart disease were included (50.6% women). Any CCTA-detected atherosclerosis was found in 42.1%; any significant stenosis (≥50%) in 5.2%; left main, proximal left anterior descending artery, or 3-vessel disease in 1.9%; and any noncalcified plaques in 8.3% of this population. Onset of atherosclerosis was delayed on average by 10 years in women. Atherosclerosis was more prevalent in older individuals and predominantly found in the proximal left anterior descending artery. Prevalence of CCTA-detected atherosclerosis increased with increasing CAC scores. Among those with a CAC score >400, all had atherosclerosis and 45.7% had significant stenosis. In those with 0 CAC, 5.5% had atherosclerosis and 0.4% had significant stenosis. In participants with 0 CAC and intermediate 10-year risk of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease according to the pooled cohort equation, 9.2% had CCTA-verified atherosclerosis. Prevalence estimates had excellent external validity and changed marginally when adjusted to the age-matched Swedish background population.Conclusions: Using CCTA in a large, random sample of the general population without established disease, we showed that silent coronary atherosclerosis is common in this population. High CAC scores convey a significant probability of substantial stenosis, and 0 CAC does not exclude atherosclerosis, particularly in those at higher baseline risk.
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| 3. |
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| 4. |
- Hedström, Brita, et al.
(author)
-
Visby Innerstad : En användningsplan
- 1973
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Reports (pop. science, debate, etc.)abstract
- Sedan lång tid föreligger i stort sett enighet om att bevara innerstadens bebyggelse och att anpassa eventuella nytillskott till det redan bestående. Med den inställningen har förändringsprocessen både dämpats och mildrats men ändå inte bragts att avstanna. Förändringar sker ständigt om det också huvudsakligen i smått: de många synbart så anspråkslösa byggnadsåtgärderna adderar efterhand ihop sig till något större och mer genomgripande. Långsamt, nästan omärkligt, ändrar innerstaden sitt ansikte.Ändå är det inte själva husen som förändrats mest utan användningen av dem. Ur funktionell synpunkt har 1950 - och 60-talen har varit något av en omstörtning i innerstadens historia: den har förlorat nästan hälften av de boende, en stor del av detaljhandeln och praktiskt taget helt sin gamla roll som skolcentrum. I gengäld har ytterstaden vuxit ut till ett sammanhängande kilometerbrett bälte. Till stor del av denna funktionella förändring en följd av beslutet att bevara innerstadens bebyggelse. Vad som inte fått plats inom den gamla ramen har etablerats utandör den.Föreliggande arbete vill ge en översiktlig bild av förändringsförloppen, sedda i ett långt tidsperspektiv men med tonvikt på dagsläget. Bebyggelsen tas upp till utförlig granskning men också användningen av den. Det är just samspelet mellan husen och de funtkioner, de fyller, som kan sägas utgöra bokens huvudtema. I de flesta fall är detta sammanhang hus-användning alldeles konfliktfritt och föranleder därför inte heller någon diskussion. Vad som behandlas är de relativt få problematiska fallen, hus som borde rustas upp för att fylla sin uppgift, hus som är olämpligt nyttjade eller inte använda alls. En serie sådana fall tas upp till systematisk genomgång; samtidigt berörs också de trafik - och miljömässiga konsekvenserna. Bokens syfte är alltså klart: den ger ett underlag av fakta för arbetet med att jämka samman byggnader och användningsformer. I den meningen kan skriften kallas en anvädningsplan för Visby innanför murarna.Arkitekturskolanas arbete har bedrivitis parallellt med den kommunala Innerstadskommitténs verksamhet. Något organiserat samarbete har inte förekommit med de informella kontakterna har varit både täta och goda. Att likheterna mellan Innerstadskommittén och Arkitekturskolans slutsatser blivit så pass stora, kan tillskrivas en gemensam helhetssyn.En av Arkitekturskolans elever, arkitekt Lars-Ingvar Larsson, har tidigare självständigt genomfört en undersökning av förändringar i innerstaden 1945-70- Denna studie publicerats separat och bör uppfattas som ett komplement till den hör föreliggande.Förutom de i innehållsförteckningen nämnda har ytterligare några aktivt medverkat i arbetet. Studiet av trafikfrågorna i innerstaden, i hamnen och öster om ringmuren leddes av Åke Claesson, I fältstudier och diskussioner medverkande Göran Månsson.Arkitekturskolan har fått god hjälp av ett antal initierade personer i Visby. Särskild tacksamhet är vi skyldiga byggnadsnämnden ordförande Henning Jacobson, kommunalrådet C B Stenström, stadsarkitekten Måns Hagbergm f. länsbostadsdorektören Åke Malmberg och landsantikvarien Gunnar Svahnström. I boken publiceringskostnaderna har ekonomiskt bidrag lämnats av Gotlands kommun och Riksantikvarieämbetet.Boken har redigerats av Sture Balgård och Ann Mari Westerlind med hjälp av Henrik O Andersson, Bo Ek, Göran Lindahl, Fredrik von Platen, John Sjöström Gunnar Westerlind och Hans Wetterfors.Skeppsholmen, Stockholm, sommaren 1973.Arkitekturskolans lärare och elever.
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| 5. |
- Adrian-Kalchhauser, I., et al.
(author)
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The round goby genome provides insights into mechanisms that may facilitate biological invasions
- 2020
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In: BMC Biology. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1741-7007. ; 18:1
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Background The invasive benthic round goby (Neogobius melanostomus) is the most successful temperate invasive fish and has spread in aquatic ecosystems on both sides of the Atlantic. Invasive species constitute powerful in situ experimental systems to study fast adaptation and directional selection on short ecological timescales and present promising case studies to understand factors involved the impressive ability of some species to colonize novel environments. We seize the unique opportunity presented by the round goby invasion to study genomic substrates potentially involved in colonization success. Results We report a highly contiguous long-read-based genome and analyze gene families that we hypothesize to relate to the ability of these fish to deal with novel environments. The analyses provide novel insights from the large evolutionary scale to the small species-specific scale. We describe expansions in specific cytochrome P450 enzymes, a remarkably diverse innate immune system, an ancient duplication in red light vision accompanied by red skin fluorescence, evolutionary patterns of epigenetic regulators, and the presence of osmoregulatory genes that may have contributed to the round goby's capacity to invade cold and salty waters. A recurring theme across all analyzed gene families is gene expansions. Conclusions The expanded innate immune system of round goby may potentially contribute to its ability to colonize novel areas. Since other gene families also feature copy number expansions in the round goby, and since other Gobiidae also feature fascinating environmental adaptations and are excellent colonizers, further long-read genome approaches across the goby family may reveal whether gene copy number expansions are more generally related to the ability to conquer new habitats in Gobiidae or in fish.
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| 6. |
- Al Moubayed, Samer, et al.
(author)
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Talking with Furhat - multi-party interaction with a back-projected robot head
- 2012
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In: Proceedings of Fonetik 2012. - Gothenberg, Sweden. ; , s. 109-112
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Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This is a condensed presentation of some recent work on a back-projected robotic head for multi-party interaction in public settings. We will describe some of the design strategies and give some preliminary analysis of an interaction database collected at the Robotville exhibition at the London Science Museum
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| 7. |
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| 8. |
- Andrén, Mats, 1979-, et al.
(author)
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Children’s use of gesture and action with static and dynamic verbs
- 2018
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In: Language, Interaction and Acquisition. - : John Benjamins Publishing Company. - 1879-7865 .- 1879-7873. ; 9:1, s. 22-39
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The present study investigates the use of gestures by 18-, 24- and 30-month-old Swedish children, as well as their practical actions in coordination with verbs. Previous research on connections between children’s verbs and gestures has mainly focused only on iconic gestures and action verbs. We expand the research foci in two ways: we look both at gestures and at practical actions, examining how the two are coordinated with static verbs (e.g. sleep) and dynamic verbs (e.g. fall). Thanks to these additional distinctions, we have found that iconic gestures and iconic actions (the latter in particular) most commonly occurred with dynamic verbs. Static verbs were most commonly accompanied by deictic actions and deictic gestures (the latter in particular). At 30 months, deictic bodily expressions, including both gestures and actions, increased, whereas iconic expressions decreased. We suggest that this may reflect a transition to less redundant ways of using bodily expressions at 30 months, where bodily movement increasingly takes on the role of specifying verb arguments rather than expressing the semantics of the verb itself.
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| 9. |
- Barabash, Stas, et al.
(author)
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Mars Orbiting Plasma Surveyor (MOPS)
- 2006
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In: Proceedings of the 6th IAA International Conference on Low-Cost Planetary Missions. ; , s. 227-232
-
Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Mars Orbiting Plasma Surveyor (MOPS) is a microsatellite mission focused on studies of the near -Mars environment and the planet - solar wind interaction. The recent findings by the ESA Mars Express mission further highlighted the complexity of the processes taking place at the planet resulting from the solar wind interaction that strongly affect the planet's atmosphere. However, despite many previous Martian missions carrying different types of space plasma experiments, a comprehensive investigation including simultaneous measurements of particles, fields, and waves has never been performed. We consider a spinning spacecraft of a wet mass of 76.1 kg with a 9.7 kg payload, which can “hitchhike” on another platform until Mars orbit insertion, and then be released into a suitable orbit. The spacecraft design is based on the experience gained in very successful Swedish space plasma missions, Viking, Freja, Astrid-1, and Astrid-2. In the present mission design, the MOPS spacecraft is equipped with its own 1m high gain antenna for direct communication with the Earth. The payload includes a wave experiment with wire booms, magnetometer with a rigid boom, Langmuir probes, electron and ion energy spectrometers and an ion mass analyzer. An energetic neutral atom imager and an UV photometer may complete the core payload. One of the proposed scenarios is piggy - backing on the Russian Phobos - Grunt mission to be launched to Mars in 2011.
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| 10. |
- Batliner, A., et al.
(author)
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The PF STAR Children’s Speech Corpus
- 2005
-
In: 9th European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology. ; , s. 3761-3764
-
Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This paper describes the corpus of recordings of children's speech which was collected as part of the EU FP5 PF_STAR project. The corpus contains more than 60 hours of speech, including read and imitated native-language speech in British English, German and Swedish, read and imitated non-native-language English speech from German, Italian and Swedish children, and native-language spontaneous and emotional speech in English and German.
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| 11. |
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| 12. |
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| 13. |
- Bertenstam, J, et al.
(author)
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THE WAXHOLM APPLICATION DATABASE
- 1995
-
Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This paper describes an application database collected in Wizard-of-Oz experiments in a spoken dialogue system, WAXHOLM. The system provides information on boat traffic in the Stockholm archipelago. The database consists of utterance-length speech files, their corressonding transcriptions, and log files of the dialogue sessions. In addition to the spontaneous dialogue speech, the material also comprise recordings of phonetically balanced reference sentences uttered by all 66 subjects. In the paper the recording procedure is described as well as some characteristics of the speech data and the dialogue.
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| 14. |
- Bimbot, F, et al.
(author)
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An overview of the PICASSO project research activities in speaker verification for telephone applications
- 1999
-
Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This paper presents a general overview of the current research activities in the European PICASSO project on speaker verification for telephone applications. First, the general formalism used by the project is described. Then the scientific issues under focus are discussed in detail. Finally, the paper briefly describes the Picassoft research platform. Along the article, entry points to more specific work also published in the Eurospeech’99 proceedings are given.
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| 15. |
- Bimbot, F, et al.
(author)
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An overwiev of the CAVE project research activities in speaker verification
- 2000
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In: Speech Communication. - 0167-6393 .- 1872-7182. ; 31:2-3, s. 155-180
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This article presents an overview of the research activities carried out in the European CAVE project, which focused on text-dependent speaker verification on the telephone network using whole word Hidden Markov Models. It documents in detail various aspects of the technology and the methodology used within the project. In particular, it addresses the issue of model estimation in the context of limited enrollment data and the problem of a posteriori decision threshold setting. Experiments are carried out on the realistic telephone speech database SESP. State-of-the-art performance levels are obtained, which validates the technical approaches developed and assessed during the project as well as the working infrastructure which facilitated cooperation between the partners.
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| 16. |
- Blomberg, Helena
(author)
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Mobbning, intriger, offerskap : att tala om sig själv som mobbad i arbetslivet
- 2010
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis is a study of bullying narratives, mainly co-produced in a process of ongoing interaction. The focus is on how narrators rhetorically organize their storytelling and identity work by using discursive resources. The empirical material consists of 12 interviews with, and 12 written stories by people who have been exposed to workplace bullying plus information from three websites about bullying, and previous research. The overarching aim of the study is to identify how a bullying discourse is produced, reproduced, challenged and negotiated in bullied persons’ narratives. Specific aims are to determine how bullying is portrayed publicly, how narrators with experience of being bullied build their stories, how the narratives stand in relation to victimization, what makes it possible to talk about vulnerability and what are its limits, and finally to develop a narrative approach.Theoretically and methodologically, the study has its basis in narrative analysis, discursive psychology, conversation analysis, and metaphor analysis. The study shows how the narrators categorize themselves as active, competent, and consensus seeking. They resist being victimized, but by their use of the interpretative repertoire and a standard story of bullying, they nevertheless become indirectly victimized. What’s at stake, in the narratives, is the question of guilt, which they rhetorically evade by the use of different metaphors. These metaphors depict bullying as a mystery, a lifelong source of suffering, a transformation, a learning experience, a battle, a contagious virus, and a trap. The narrators are constrained by the narrative conditions, the interpretative repertoire, standard story, and narrative form and content – a story of good and evil when creating their own story. The narrative conditions at the same time set the limit for expressing oneself in the identity work. This also means we are part of the production and reproduction of the bullying discourse when I, as a researcher, and the narrators use the repertoire and the standard story in mutual understanding.
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| 17. |
- Blomberg, Helena, 1970-, et al.
(author)
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The chronological I The use of time as a rhetorical resource when doing identity in bullying narratives
- 2013
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In: Narrative Inquiry. - : John Benjamins Publishing Company. - 1387-6740 .- 1569-9935. ; 23:2, s. 245-261
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The aim of the article is to problematise and discuss the usefulness of the chronological I as a new analytical approach for studying the doing of identity in storytelling. The chronological I can be both a rhetorical resource for narrators and a new analytical tool for studying the process of doing identity. The article suggests that the chronological I adds a new analytical dimension to different types of narrative analysis. The article takes its point of departure in the understanding of the narrator as using time as a rhetorical resource for telling or doing identity in ongoing interactions. In this discursive narrative approach, narratives are viewed as socially situated actions in a context in which the narrator has to relate to culturally accepted agreements about responsibility and agency. The data for this article is based on interviews with twelve individuals exposed to workplace bullying. As this topic is sensitive, there is a need for narrators to manage their accountability when asked to account for their agency or non agency in the reported events.
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| 18. |
- Blomberg, Jerry, et al.
(author)
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Institutional Arrangements and Firm Behavior: The Case of Common Forests in Sweden
- 1997
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In: Journal of Economic Issues. - : Informa UK Limited. - 0021-3624 .- 1946-326X. ; 31:2, s. 401-408
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Examines the effect of property rights systems within common forests on output decisions in Sweden. History of common forests in Sweden; Structure and governance of Swedish common property forests; Behavioral assumption behind the actions of managers and co-owners of the common forests in Sweden.
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| 19. |
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| 20. |
- Blomberg, Karin, 1970-, et al.
(author)
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Fifty-year follow-up of childhood epilepsy : Social, psychometric, and occupational outcome
- 2019
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In: Epilepsy & Behavior. - : Elsevier. - 1525-5050 .- 1525-5069. ; 96, s. 224-228
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to explore and describe the experience of a childhood diagnosis of epilepsy and its consequences for the experiences of daily life over a span of 50 years.METHODS: A descriptive mixed method design was chosen. Data were collected through a survey returned by 86 persons (59% response rate) who had received diagnoses of epilepsy as children. The survey contained questions about education, vocation, family status, and included the 14-item Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HAD). Additionally, interviews (n = 11) were conducted and analyzed by interpretative description.RESULTS: Few persons reported that the childhood diagnosis of epilepsy had affected their choice of education, work, or leisure activities. However, 20% reported that the diagnosis had caused problems in school or at work and had restricted their activities of daily living. Sixty-six percent of the participants were married, and 68% had children; of those, 12 (20%) reported that one or more of the children had also had seizures. Almost all reported no anxiety (82%) and no depression (90%). The results of the interviews revealed a balancing act between 'Controlling and managing the situation' and 'Not being restricted by the condition'.SIGNIFICANCE: This long-term follow-up over a 50-year life-span of persons who received childhood diagnoses of epilepsy suggests that the consequences for education, work, and leisure activities were few. Most of the participants had developed strategies to manage their situation.
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| 21. |
- Blomberg, Karin, 1970-, et al.
(author)
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Physical touch in nursing and nursing education – an integrative review
- 2020
-
Other publication (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Physical touch is a basic need of all people, regardless of age or life situation. It can provide security, well-being and belonging. But negative perceived physical touch can generate emotions such as fear, vulnerability and perceived as violations. As a consequent of the #metoo movement in the fall of 2017, it’s a risk that physical contact and especially physical touch are avoided by professions where it’s central. For example, in the context of education, studies show that sports teachers in many countries have become more cautious and avoid having physical contact with students due not to being misinterpreted as negative touch (Fletcher, 2013; Öhman, 2016; Piper, Garratt & Taylor, 2013). In healthcare, caregivers who use physical touch in their work with disabled and elderly people have also become insecure and worried that they may be misunderstood (Bergstrand, 2018). A review shows that healthcare professionals see physical touch as part of the work but want to be the initiator of the contact, not that it should be initiated by the patients (Kelly et al. 2018).The use of physical touch in healthcare is also affected by the need to avoid contamination and widespread of infections agents, a question with extra relevance in the light of the Covid-19 pandemic.There is currently a lack of knowledge about how physical touch is experienced and used. As a first step is to increase the knowledge and understanding of how physical touch is experienced and used in healthcare by mapping studies explored physical touch both in daily care but also from the perspective of nursing students. With increased knowledge, a basis for developing interventions/teaching modules can be generated.
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| 22. |
- Blomberg, Karin, 1970-, et al.
(author)
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Quality of life and trust among young people with narcolepsy and their families, after the Pandemrix® vaccination : Protocol for a case-control study
- 2017
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In: BMC Pediatrics. - : BioMed Central. - 1471-2431. ; 17:1
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- BACKGROUND: The extensive vaccination programme against swine flu resulted in an increased incidence of narcolepsy among children and adolescents. There is a need to explore if these young persons' experiences have affected their trust in healthcare, their willingness to participate in future prevention programmes, and their contacts with the healthcare system. The overall aim is to identify factors important for the life-situation of children and adolescents with narcolepsy and their families, and factors that correlate with trust in healthcare.METHODS/DESIGN: Data will be collected via questionnaires from all available children with narcolepsy following the vaccination and their families, as well as a control group of children with diabetes and their families. Longitudinal descriptive interviews will also be conducted with a selection of 20-25 children and their families. Techniques from media research will be used for Internet-based data collection and analysis of information relating to narcolepsy from social media.DISCUSSION: This project will use the situation of young persons with narcolepsy after the swine flu vaccination as a case to build a model that can be used in situations where trust in healthcare is essential. This model will be based on findings from the included studies on how trust is influenced by support, quality of life, burden of disease, impact on family, and use of social media. The model developed in this project will be beneficial in future situations where trust in healthcare is essential, such as new pandemic outbreaks but also for "everyday" adherence to health advice.
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| 23. |
- Blomberg, Karin, 1970-, et al.
(author)
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Using a Facebook Forum to Cope With Narcolepsy After Pandemrix Vaccination : Infodemiology Study
- 2019
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In: Journal of Medical Internet Research. - : JMIR Publications. - 1438-8871. ; 21:4
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Background: In 2010, newly diagnosed narcolepsy cases among children and adolescents were seen in several European countries as a consequence of comprehensive national vaccination campaigns with Pandemrix against H1N1 influenza. Since then, a large number of people have had to live with narcolepsy and its consequences in daily life, such as effects on school life, social relationships, and activities. Initially, the adverse effects were not well understood and there was uncertainty about whether there would be any financial compensation. The situation remained unresolved until 2016, and during these years affected people sought various ways to join forces to handle the many issues involved, including setting up a social media forum.Objective: Our aim was to examine how information was shared, and how opinions and beliefs about narcolepsy as a consequence of Pandemrix vaccination were formed through discussions on social media.Methods: We used quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate a series of messages posted in a social media forum for people affected by narcolepsy after vaccination.Results: Group activity was high throughout the years 2010 to 2016, with peaks corresponding to major narcolepsy-related events, such as the appearance of the first cases in 2010, the first payment of compensation in 2011, and passage of a law on compensation in July 2016. Unusually, most (462/774, 59.7%) of the group took part in discussions and only 312 of 774 (40.3%) were lurkers (compared with the usual 90% rule of thumb for participation in an online community). The conversation in the group was largely factual and had a civil tone, even though there was a long struggle for the link between the vaccine and narcolepsy to be acknowledged and regarding the compensation issue. Radical, nonscientific views, such as those expounded by the antivaccination movement, did not shape the discussions in the group but were being actively expressed elsewhere on the internet. At the outset of the pandemic, there were 18 active Swedish discussion groups on the topic, but most dissolved quickly and only one Facebook group remained active throughout the period.Conclusions: The group studied is a good example of social media use for self-help through a difficult situation among people affected by illness and disease. This shows that social media do not by themselves induce trench warfare but, given a good group composition, can provide a necessary forum for managing an emergency situation where health care and government have failed or are mistrusted, and patients have to organize themselves so as to cope.
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| 24. |
- Blomberg, Lars, et al.
(author)
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Electric Field Diagnostics in the Jovian System : Brief Scientific Case and Instrumentation Overview
- 2006
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In: Proceedings of the 6th IAA International Conference on Low-Cost Planetary Missions. ; , s. 335-340
-
Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The Jovian plasma environment exhibits a variety of plasma flow interactions with magnetised as well as unmagnetised bodies, making it a good venue for furthering our understanding of solar wind - magnetosphere / ionosphere interactions. On an overall scale the solar wind interacts with the Jovian magnetosphere, much like at Earth but with vastly different temporal and spatial scales. Inside the Jovian magnetosphere the co-rotating plasma interacts with the inner moons. The latter interaction is slower and more stable than the corresponding interaction between the solar wind and the planets, and can thus provide additional information on the principles of the interaction mechanisms. Because of the wealth of expected low-frequency waves, as well as the predicted quasi-static electric fields and plasma drifts in the interaction regions between different parts of the Jovian system, a most valuable component in future payloads would be a double-probe electric field instrument. Recent developments in low-mass instrumentation facilitate electric field measurements on spinning planetary spacecraft, which we here exemplify.
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| 25. |
- Blomberg, Mats
(author)
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A common phone model representation for speech recognition and synthesis
- 1994
-
Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- A combined representation of context-dependent phones at the production parametric and the spectral level is described. The phones are trained in the production domain using analysis-by-synthesis and piece-wise linear approximation of parameter trajectories. For recognition, this representation is transformed to spectral subphones, using a cascade formant synthesis procedure. In a connected-digit recognition task, 99.1% average correct digit rate was achieved in a group of seven male speakers when, for each test speaker, training was done on the other six speakers. Simple rules for male-to-female transformation of the male phone library increased the performance for six female speakers from 88.9% without transformation to 96.3%. In informal listening tests of resynthesised digit strings, the speech has been judged as intelligible, however far from natural.
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| 26. |
- Blomberg, Mats, et al.
(author)
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A device for automatic speech recognition
- 1982
-
Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This paper is a translation of a paper originally published in the proceedings of the 1982 meeting of "Nordiska akustistka sällskapet" (The Nordic Acoustical Society), pp. 383-386. 2 DESCRIPTION OF THE RECOGNITION SYSTEM
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| 27. |
- Blomberg, Mats, et al.
(author)
-
An experimental dialog system: WAXHOLM
- 1993
-
Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Recently we have begun to build the basic tools for a generic speech-dialogue system, WAXHOLM. The main modules, their function and internal communication have been specified. The different components are connected through a computer network. A preliminary version of the system has been tested, using simplified versions of the modules. We will give a general overview of the system and describe some of the components in more detail. Application specific data are collected with the help of Wizard-of-Oz techniques. The dialogue system is used during the data collection and the wizard only replaces the speechrecognition module.
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| 28. |
- Blomberg, Mats, et al.
(author)
-
Auditory models and isolated word recognition
- 1983
-
In: STL-QPSR. ; 24:4, s. 1-15
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- A straightforward isolated word recognition system has been used to test different auditory models in acoustic front end processing. The models include BARK, PHON and SONE. The PHONTEMP model is based on PHON but also includes temporal forward masking. We also introduce a model, DOMIN, which is intended to measure the dominating frequency at each point along the 'basilar membrane.' All the above models were derived from an FFT-analysis, and the FFT processing is also used as a reference model. One male and one female speaker were used to test the recognition performance of the different models on a difficult vocabulary consisting of 18 Swedish consonants and 9 Swedish vowels. The results indicate that the performance of the models decreases as they become more complex. The overall recognition accuracy of FFT is 97% while it is 87% for SONE. However, the DOMIN model which is sensitive to dominant frequencies (formants) performs very well for vowels.
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| 29. |
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| 30. |
- Blomberg, Mats, et al.
(author)
-
Auditory models in isolated word recognition
- 1984
-
Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- A straightforward isolated word recognition system has been used to test different auditory models in acoustic front end processing. The models include BARK, PHON and SONE. The PHONTEMP model is based on PHON but also includes temporal forward masking. We also introduce a model, DOMIN, which is intended to measure the dominating frequency at each point along the 'basilar membrane.' All the above models were derived from an FFT-analysis, and the FFT processing is also used as a reference model. One male and one female speaker were used to test the recognition performance of the different models on a difficult vocabulary consisting of 18 Swedish consonants and 9 Swedish vowels. The results indicate that the performance of the models decreases as they become more complex. The overall recognition accuracy of FFT is 97% while it is 87% for SONE. However, the DOMIN model which is sensitive to dominant frequencies (formants) performs very well for vowels.
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| 31. |
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| 32. |
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| 33. |
- Blomberg, Mats, et al.
(author)
-
Children and adults in dialogue with the robot head Furhat - corpus collection and initial analysis
- 2012
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In: Proceedings of WOCCI. - Portland, OR : The International Society for Computers and Their Applications (ISCA).
-
Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This paper presents a large scale study in a public museum setting, where a back-projected robot head interacted with the visitors in multi-party dialogue. The exhibition was seen by almost 8000 visitors, out of which several thousand interacted with the system. A considerable portion of the visitors were children from around 4 years of age and adolescents. The collected corpus consists of about 10.000 user utterances. The head and a multi-party dialogue design allow the system to regulate the turn-taking behaviour, and help the robot to effectively obtain information from the general public. The commercial speech recognition component, supposedly designed for adult speakers, had considerably lower accuracy for the children. Methods are proposed for improving the performance for that speaker category.
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| 34. |
- Blomberg, Mats
(author)
-
Collection and recognition of children s speech in the PF-Star project
- 2003
-
Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This paper reports on the recording and planned research activities on recognition of children’s speech in the EU-project PF-Star. The task is quite more difficult than recognition of adult speech for several reasons. High fundamental frequency and formant frequencies change the spectral shape of the speech signal. Also the pronunciation and the use of language differs from adult speech. One objective in PF-Star is to collect speech data for the project partners’ languages and to detect and analyse major difficulties.Possible ways of reducing these problems will be explored.
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| 35. |
- Blomberg, Mats
(author)
-
Creating unseen triphones by phone concatenation in the spectral, cepstral and formant domains
- 1997
-
Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- A technique for predicting triphones by concatenation of diphone or monophone models is studied. The models are connected using linear interpolation between endpoints of piece-wise linear parameter trajectories. Three types of spectral representation are compared: formants, filter amplitudes and cepstmm coefficients. The proposed technique lowers the spectral distortion of the phones for all three representations when different speakers are used for training and evaluation. The average error of the created triphones is lower in the filter and cepstmm domains than for formants. This is explained to be caused by limitations in the Analysis-bySynthesis formant tracking algorithm. A small improvement with the proposed technique is achieved for all representations in the task of reordering N-best sentence recognition candidate lists.
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| 36. |
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| 37. |
- Blomberg, Mats, et al.
(author)
-
Creation of unseen triphones from diphones and monophones using a speech production approach
- 1996
-
Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- With limited training data, infrequent triphone models for speech recognition will not be observed in sufficient number. In this report, a speech production approach is used to predict the characteristics of unseen triphones by concatenating diphones and/or monophones in the parametric representation of a formant speech synthesiser. The parameter trajectories are estimated by interpolation between the endpoints of the original units. The spectral states of the created triphone are generated by the speech synthesiser. Evaluation of the proposed technique has been performed using spectral error measurements and recognition candidate rescoring of N-best lists. In both cases, the created triphones are shown to perform better than the shorter units from which they were constructed. 1. INTRODUCTION The triphone unit is the basic phone model in many current phonetic speech recognition systems. The reason for this is that triphones capture the coarticulation effect caused by the immediate pr...
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| 38. |
- Blomberg, Mats
(author)
-
Creation of unseen triphones from seen triphones, diphones and phones
- 1996
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In: TMH-QPSR. ; 37:2, s. 113-116
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- With limited training data, infrequent triphone models for speech recognition will not be observed in suficient number. In this report, a speech production approach is used to predict the characteristics of unseen triphones by using a transformation technique in the parametric representation of a formant speech synthesiser. Two techniques are currently tested. In one approach, unseen triphones are created by concatenating monophones and diphones and interpolating the parameter trajectories across the connection points. The second technique combines information from two similar triphones; one with correct context and one with correct midphone identity. Preliminary experiments are performed in the task of rescoring recognition candidates in an N-best list.
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| 39. |
- Blomberg, Mats, et al.
(author)
-
Effects of emphasizing transitional or stationary parts of the speech signal in a discrete utterance recognition system
- 1982
-
Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- A pattern matching word recognition system has been modified in order to emphasize the transient parts of speech in the similarity mesure. The technique is to weight the word distances with a normalized spectral change function. A small positive effect is measured. Emphasizing the stationary parts is shown to substantially decrease the performance. Adding the time derivative of the speech parameters to the word patterns improves performance significantly. This is probaly a consequence of an improvement in the description of the transient segments.
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| 40. |
- Blomberg, Mats, et al.
(author)
-
Estimating speaker characteristics for speech recognition
- 2009
-
In: Proceedings of Fonetik 2009. - Stockholm : Stockholm University. - 9789163348921 - 9789163348938 ; , s. 154-158
-
Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- A speaker-characteristic-based hierarchic tree of speech recognition models is designed. The leaves of the tree contain model sets, which are created by transforming a conventionally trained set using leaf-specific speaker profile vectors. The non-leaf models are formed by merging the models of their child nodes. During recognition, a maximum likelihood criterion is followed to traverse the tree from the root to a leaf. The computational load for estimating one- (vocal tract length) and fourdimensional speaker profile vectors (vocal tractlength, two spectral slope parameters andmodel variance scaling) is reduced to a fraction compared to that of an exhaustive search among all leaf nodes. Recognition experiments on children’s connected digits using adult models exhibit similar recognition performance for the exhaustive and the one-dimensional tree search. Further error reduction is achieved with the four-dimensional tree. The estimated speaker properties are analyzed and discussed.
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| 41. |
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| 42. |
- Blomberg, Mats, et al.
(author)
-
Investigating Explicit Model Transformations for Speaker Normalization
- 2008
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In: Proceedings of ISCA ITRW Speech Analysis and Processing for Knowledge Discovery. - Aalborg, Denmark : ISCA/AAU. - 9788792328007
-
Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In this work we extend the test utterance adaptation techniqueused in vocal tract length normalization to a larger number ofspeaker characteristic features. We perform partially joint estimation of four features: the VTLN warping factor, the corner position of the piece-wise linear warping function, spectral tilt in voiced segments, and model variance scaling. In experiments on the Swedish PF-Star children database, joint estimation of warping factor and variance scaling lowered the recognition error rate compared to warping factor alone.
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| 43. |
- Blomberg, Mats, et al.
(author)
-
Knowledge-Rich Model Transformations for SpeakerKnowledge-Rich Model Transformations for Speaker Normalization in Speech Recognition
- 2008
-
In: Proceedings, FONETIK 2008, Department of Linguistics, University of Gothenburg. - 9789197719605 ; , s. 37-40
-
Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- In this work we extend the test utterance adaptationtechnique used in vocal tract length normalizationto a larger number of speaker characteristicfeatures. We perform partially jointestimation of four features: the VTLN warpingfactor, the corner position of the piece-wise linearwarping function, spectral tilt in voicedsegments, and model variance scaling. In experimentson the Swedish PF-Star children database,joint estimation of warping factor andvariance scaling lowers the recognition errorrate compared to warping factor alone.
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| 44. |
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| 45. |
- Blomberg, Mats, et al.
(author)
-
Let your voice do the dialing
- 1983
-
In: Telephony. - 0040-2656 .- 2161-8690. ; , s. 68-74
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)
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| 46. |
- Blomberg, Mats
(author)
-
Model space size scaling for speaker adaptation
- 2011
-
In: Proceedings of Fonetik 2011. - Stockholm : KTH Royal Institute of Technology. ; , s. 77-80
-
Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- In the current work, instantaneous adaptation in speech recognition is performedby estimating speaker properties, which modify the original trained acousticmodels. We introduce a new property, the size of the model space, which isincluded to the previously used features, VTLN and spectral slope. These arejointly estimated for each test utterance. The new feature has shown to be effectivefor recognition of children’s speech using adult-trained models in TIDIGITS.Adding the feature lowered the error rate by around 10% relative. The overallcombination of VTLN, spectral slope and model space scaling represents asubstantial 31% relative reduction compared with single VTLN. There was noimprovement among adult speakers in TIDIGITS and in TIMIT. Improvement forthis speaker category is expected when the training and test sets are recorded indifferent conditions, such as read and spontaneous speech.
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| 47. |
- Blomberg, Mats, et al.
(author)
-
Nonlinear Frequency Warp for Speech Recognition
- 1986
-
Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- A technique of nonlinear frequency warping has been investigated for recognition of Swedish vowels. A frequency warp between two spectra is computed using a standard dynamic programming algorithm. The frequency distance, defined as the area between the obtained warping function and the diagonal, is contributing to the spectral distance. The distance between two spectra is a weighted sum of the warped amplitude distance and the frequency distance. By changing two weights, we get a gradual shift between non-warped amplitude distance, warped amplitude distance, and frequency distance. In recognition experiments on natural and synthetic vowel spectra, a metric combining the frequency and amplitude distances gave better results than using only amplitude or frequency deviation. Analysis of the results of the synthetic vowels show a reduced sensitivity to voice source and pitch variation. For the natural vowels, the recognition improvement is larger for the male and female speakers separately than for the combined groups.
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| 48. |
- Blomberg, Mats, et al.
(author)
-
Optimizing some parameters of a word recognizer used in car noise
- 1990
-
In: STL-QPSR. ; 31:4, s. 43-52
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- A speaker-dependent word recognition system has been modified to improve the performance in noise. Problems with word detection and noise compensation have been addressed by using a close-talk microphone and a "noise addition" method. The reference templates are recorded in relative silence. The additional environmental noise during the recognition phase is measured and is "added" to the reference templates before using them for template matching. The recognition performance has been tested in moving cars with references recorded in parked cars. Recordings of six male speakers have been used in this report to rest the sensitivity of the recognition system to some essential parameters. The results from six male speakers and a twenty word vocabulary show that adapting the endpoint detection threshold to the noise level is essential for good performance and that noise compensation is imponant at signal-to-noise ratios below 15 dB.
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| 49. |
- Blomberg, Mats
(author)
-
Phoneme recognition for the hearing impaired
- 2002
-
Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This paper describes an automatic speech recognition system designed to investigate the use of phoneme recognition as a hearing aid in telephone communication. The system was tested in two experiments. The first involved 19 normal hearing subjects with a simulated severe hearing impairment. The second involved 5 hearing impaired subjects. In both studies we used a procedure called Speech Tracking to measure the effective communication speed between two persons. A substantial improvement was found in both cases.
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| 50. |
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