| 1. |
- Ademuyiwa, Adesoji O., et al.
(författare)
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Determinants of morbidity and mortality following emergency abdominal surgery in children in low-income and middle-income countries
- 2016
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Ingår i: BMJ Global Health. - : BMJ Publishing Group Ltd. - 2059-7908. ; 1:4
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: Child health is a key priority on the global health agenda, yet the provision of essential and emergency surgery in children is patchy in resource-poor regions. This study was aimed to determine the mortality risk for emergency abdominal paediatric surgery in low-income countries globally.Methods: Multicentre, international, prospective, cohort study. Self-selected surgical units performing emergency abdominal surgery submitted prespecified data for consecutive children aged <16 years during a 2-week period between July and December 2014. The United Nation's Human Development Index (HDI) was used to stratify countries. The main outcome measure was 30-day postoperative mortality, analysed by multilevel logistic regression.Results: This study included 1409 patients from 253 centres in 43 countries; 282 children were under 2 years of age. Among them, 265 (18.8%) were from low-HDI, 450 (31.9%) from middle-HDI and 694 (49.3%) from high-HDI countries. The most common operations performed were appendectomy, small bowel resection, pyloromyotomy and correction of intussusception. After adjustment for patient and hospital risk factors, child mortality at 30 days was significantly higher in low-HDI (adjusted OR 7.14 (95% CI 2.52 to 20.23), p<0.001) and middle-HDI (4.42 (1.44 to 13.56), p=0.009) countries compared with high-HDI countries, translating to 40 excess deaths per 1000 procedures performed.Conclusions: Adjusted mortality in children following emergency abdominal surgery may be as high as 7 times greater in low-HDI and middle-HDI countries compared with high-HDI countries. Effective provision of emergency essential surgery should be a key priority for global child health agendas.
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| 2. |
- Öwall, Viktor
(författare)
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Synthesis of Controllers from a Range of Controller Architectures
- 1994
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- An algorithm specific digital signal processor is a powerful alternative to a general purpose signal processor for demanding specifications such as high throughput, low power, small size, etc. These properties are achieved as the processor architecture is tailored to the algorithm as opposed to the general purpose architecture which must suit a wide range of algorithms. The increased performance is traded for reduced flexibility of the final circuit and an increased design effort. Consequently powerful CAD-tools are needed to decrease the design effort. This thesis presents COMA, a CAD-tool for synthesis of controllers suitable for a wide range of digital signal processing algorithms and application fields. COMA synthesizes a complete controller with all modules and interconnection specifications. COMA has been developed with the intention of being used by an active designer where his knowledge, skills, and experience is best utilized. An automated synthesis process can be performed but is preferably refined to a competitive solution using designer interaction before a circuit is fabricated. The main reason for designing an algorithm specific digital signal processors is the possibility to use an architecture dedicated to the algorithm. Consequently, COMA supports arbitrary datapath architectures and does not impose any restrictions. This is crucial in order to fully exploit the advantages of an algorithm specific design. Results presented in this thesis and the discussion regarding controller architectures show that different controller architectures are suitable for different algorithms and different implementation techniques of the fabricated circuit. Thus, COMA can synthesize a range of controller architectures suitable for these different needs. This approach, I believe, is unique for COMA. Standard controller architectures have been modified to suit application specific digital signal processing design and new solutions have been developed. Using COMA complex algorithm specific digital signals processors for a wide range of applications can be designed with a considerable reduction in design effort compared to a hand made design.
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| 3. |
- Bhandari, Amit Kumar, et al.
(författare)
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Wage Inequality and Job Insecurity Among Permanent and Contract Workers in India: Evidence from Organized Manufacturing Industries
- 2008
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Ingår i: The ICFAI Journal of Applied Economics. - 0972-6861. ; 7:1, s. 80-111
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Since the early 1990s, the employment structure of organized manufacturing industries in India has undergone substantial changes with steep rise in the use of contract workers in place of permanent workers. This process has led to increased wage inequality, discrimination as well as concern of job insecurity in the labor market. The paper focuses on wage inequality between permanent and contract workers, since contract workers earn substantially lower wages than their counterparts. The study uses data at the individual level from a recent labor survey of organized manufacturing industries in the India. The lower wage earned by contract workers is largely due to cost cutting, rather than differences in labor productivity. The issue of job insecurity has been modeled in the form of a binary logistic model. The factors affecting job security are divided into productivity-related attributes such as level of education and skill, and institutional attributes such as labor market rules and regulations and union membership. Contrary to the general expectation, the study finds that permanent workers are more concerned regarding job insecurity than the contract workers.
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| 4. |
- Surakka, Ida, et al.
(författare)
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A Genome-Wide Screen for Interactions Reveals a New Locus on 4p15 Modifying the Effect of Waist-to-Hip Ratio on Total Cholesterol
- 2011
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Ingår i: PLoS Genetics. - : Public Library of Science (PLoS). - 1553-7390 .- 1553-7404. ; 7:10, s. e1002333-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Recent genome-wide association (GWA) studies described 95 loci controlling serum lipid levels. These common variants explain similar to 25% of the heritability of the phenotypes. To date, no unbiased screen for gene-environment interactions for circulating lipids has been reported. We screened for variants that modify the relationship between known epidemiological risk factors and circulating lipid levels in a meta-analysis of genome-wide association (GWA) data from 18 population-based cohorts with European ancestry (maximum N = 32,225). We collected 8 further cohorts (N = 17,102) for replication, and rs6448771 on 4p15 demonstrated genome-wide significant interaction with waist-to-hip-ratio (WHR) on total cholesterol (TC) with a combined P-value of 4.79 x 10(-9). There were two potential candidate genes in the region, PCDH7 and CCKAR, with differential expression levels for rs6448771 genotypes in adipose tissue. The effect of WHR on TC was strongest for individuals carrying two copies of G allele, for whom a one standard deviation (sd) difference in WHR corresponds to 0.19 sd difference in TC concentration, while for A allele homozygous the difference was 0.12 sd. Our findings may open up possibilities for targeted intervention strategies for people characterized by specific genomic profiles. However, more refined measures of both body-fat distribution and metabolic measures are needed to understand how their joint dynamics are modified by the newly found locus.
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| 5. |
- Trotzig, Charlotte
(författare)
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Water diffusion and free volume in hydrophilic polymers
- 2006
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- During moisture uptake in polymers, the diffusion of the water molecules is believed to occur via unoccupied voids. These voids are called free volume cavities and their sizes are continuously altered when the moisture content in the polymer is enhanced. Not only the free volume cavity sizes, but also other polymer properties such as the degree of crystallinity, are changed as a consequence of moisture uptake. By modifying the polymer properties, the conditions for water diffusion are altered, which is the issue at stake in this thesis. A study of the coupling between the self-diffusion coefficients of water and the free volume hole sizes in polymer-water systems based on poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) and hydroxypropyl methylcellulose (HPMC) has been performed by means of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and positron annihilation lifetime spectroscopy (PALS). Moreover, the change in the tensile storage modulus upon adding water and a model drug to HPMC as well as the change in the degree of crystallinity and the glass transition temperature upon adding water and a nano-sized clay filler to PEO was studied by means of dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). In the HPMC-water system, an increase in the free volume hole size seemed to be associated with an increase in the self-diffusion coefficient. In contrast, the water self-diffusion in PEO seemed not to be controlled by the free volume hole size, at least not in the water weight fraction range where more than 50 % of the sample still was crystalline. The reduction of the crystalline phase in the PEO as a function of water weight fraction seemed to result in a relaxation of a strained amorphous phase. Strong indications of water clustering in the measured water weight fraction region were observed in the HPMC, but not in the PEO. Addition of triacetin to the HPMC resulted in a reduction of the amount of water absorbed by the HPMC. On a molar basis, the triacetin decreased the tensile storage modulus to a higher extent than water did. At constant water weight fractions, the self-diffusion coefficient of water and the free volume hole size increased upon addition of triacetin. The self-diffusion coefficient of water in the HPMC-water system was more influenced by an increasing amount of water than by an increasing amount of triacetin, whereas the opposite effect was observed for the free volume hole size. The presence of a nano-sized clay filler in PEO resulted in less water absorbed by the PEO and seemed to slightly increase the influence of water on the glass transition temperature and the free volume hole size.
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