| 1. |
- Alsterholm, Mikael, 1977, et al.
(author)
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Establishment and utility of SwedAD : a nationwide Swedish registry for patients with atopic dermatitis receiving systemic pharmacotherapy
- 2023
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In: Acta Dermato-Venereologica. - : Medical Journals Sweden AB. - 0001-5555 .- 1651-2057. ; 103
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- SwedAD, a Swedish nationwide registry for patients with atopic dermatitis receiving systemic pharmacotherapy, was launched on 1 September 2019. We describe here the establishment of a user-friendly registry to the benefit of patients with atopic dermatitis. By 5 November 2022, 38 clinics had recorded 931 treatment episodes in 850 patients with an approximate national coverage rate of 40%. Characteristics at enrolment included median Eczema Area and Severity Index (EASI) 10.2 (interquartile range 4.0, 19.4), Patient-Oriented Eczema Measure (POEM) 18.0 (10.0, 24.0), Dermatology Life Quality Index (DLQI) 11.0 (5.0, 19.0) and Peak Itch Numerical Rating Scale-11 (NRS-11) 6.0 (3.0, 8.0). At 3 months, median EASI was 3.2 (1.0, 7.3) and POEM, DLQI, and NRS-11 were improved. Regional coverage varied, reflecting the distribution of dermatologists, the ratio of public to private healthcare, and difficulties in recruiting certain clinics. This study highlights the importance of a nationwide registry when managing systemic pharmacotherapy of atopic dermatitis.
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| 2. |
- Düringer, Caroline, et al.
(author)
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Agonist-specific patterns of beta(2)-adrenoceptor responses in human airway cells during prolonged exposure.
- 2009
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In: British Journal of Pharmacology. - : Wiley. - 1476-5381 .- 0007-1188. ; 158, s. 169-179
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Background and purpose: beta(2)-Adrenoceptor agonists (beta(2)-agonists) are important bronchodilators used in the treatment of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. At the molecular level, beta(2)-adrenergic agonist stimulation induces desensitization of the beta(2)-adrenoceptor. In this study, we have examined the relationships between initial effect and subsequent reduction of responsiveness to restimulation for a panel of beta(2)-agonists in cellular and in vitro tissue models. Experimental approach: beta(2)-Adrenoceptor-induced responses and subsequent loss of receptor responsiveness were studied in primary human airway smooth muscle cells and bronchial epithelial cells by measuring cAMP production. Receptor responsiveness was compared at equi-effective concentrations, either after continuous incubation for 24 h or after a 1 h pulse exposure followed by a 23 h washout. Key findings were confirmed in guinea pig tracheal preparations in vitro. Key results: There were differences in the reduction of receptor responsiveness in human airway cells and in vitro guinea pig trachea by a panel of beta(2)-agonists. When restimulation occurred immediately after continuous incubation, loss of responsiveness correlated with initial effect for all agonists. After the 1 h pulse exposure, differences between agonists emerged, for example isoprenaline and formoterol induced the least reduction of responsiveness. High lipophilicity was, to some extent, predictive of loss of responsiveness, but other factors appeared to be involved in determining the relationships between effect and subsequent loss of responsiveness for individual agonists. Conclusions and implications: There were clear differences in the ability of different beta(2) agonists to induce loss of receptor responsiveness at equi-effective concentrations.
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| 3. |
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| 4. |
- Larsson, Magnus, 1976-
(author)
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Evolutionary Materialism: Towards a Theory of Anticipatory Adaptive Assemblages
- 2020
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis is an investigation into how meta-heuristic multi-objective optimisation processes (genetic algorithms driven by evolutionary solvers) can bring about materials-related advantages in architectural performance. It redefines the architect’s and engineer’s role from being designers of a singular space or structure to being designers of entire species of spaces, and discusses a particular method – anticipatory adaptive assemblages (AAA) – that allows such processes to produce many generations of design iterations that eventually yield individuals optimised for a set of predefined objectives. This includes in particular the optimisation of building materials, with a certain focus on timber structures.The thesis provides a theoretical foundation (assemblage theory) that connects an ontology, a methodology, an epistemology, and an axiology to the computational operations used, elevating the domain beyond simplistic notions of parametricism. It leverages contemporary generative design methods to introduce a range of novel concepts and tools such as auxiliary loads, material phase transition (MPT) diagrams, generative life cycle assessments (GLCA), parametric epistemic things (PET), presilience, and postponism. Finally, it provides a case study that shows how this assortment of contrivances, and AAA theory at large, can be used not just for theoretical musings, but to produce actual architectural schemes based on more precise data analyses than is typically the case in today’s built environment.A concluding discussion establishes that the use of more advanced and complex optimisation strategies is not just a possibility but a necessary obligation for an architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry that – if the manufacturing of building materials are added to the construction and operation of buildings – is responsible for between 35% and 40% of both global final energy use and worldwide energy-related CO2 emissions. Claiming that our knowledge of materials, including the auxiliary loads that they carry (such as their global warming potential) can be used to design and engineer architectural assemblages capable of replacing energy-consuming with energy-producing buildings, it suggests that Le Corbusier’s famous dictum that buildings are ‘machines for living in’ should be replaced with the notion that all buildings are potential power plants for living in. Risks associated with the development of AAAs are discussed, and future studies proposed.
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| 5. |
- Larsson, Magnus, et al.
(author)
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Novel Processes for Architectural Optimisation of Building Materials Performance: Introducing Material Phase Transitions and Generative Life Cycle Assessments
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Conventional phase diagrams plot differences in properties (e.g. volume) of a medium generated by changes in external conditions (e.g. temperature and/or pressure). This paper discusses how the logic of such diagrams can be applied to produce a new type of surface plot, material phase transition (MPT) diagrams, that chart not the conditions for chemical equilibrium but the relative benefits of a particular material system given a set of predefined objectives and a virtual search space of design solutions. Such diagrams can form an integral part of parametric design processes that use ‘auxiliary loads’ (e.g. LCA values) as variables to generate design iterations. A Grasshopper user object is created and used to design a box beam that yields a set of auxiliary loads charts and MPT diagrams. The anatomy of MPT diagrams is described, and areas for future studies discussed.
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| 6. |
- Larsson, Magnus, et al.
(author)
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Sliding Sidewinders: Early-Stage Design of an Anticipatory Adaptive Assemblage
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This quantitative/qualitative evaluation of meta-heuristic design processes being implemented in a real-life architecture project introduces the theoretical concept of anticipatory adaptive assemblages (AAA) and reports on tactics that were used to reduce the ‘curse of dimensionality’ associated with the mechanisms that produce such assemblages. It describes strategies to adopt ‘presilient’ methods to constrain a model’s design space before any evolutionary solving occurs, leverage the advantage in fenestration performance presumed to arise from explorations of non-periodic tessellations of the plane, and use benchmark models to optimise some material aspects of wall sections. These tactics all support a materiality-based approach to designing architecture using genetic algorithms. The experiments were designed in an attempt to begin to close the knowledge gap between on the one hand the existing praxis of LCA-based analyses, on the other simulations that use material properties to directly inform geometries associated with particular combinations of (for instance) site, weather, and material data. The hypothesis is that AAA’s can become an effective framework for design-based adaptation to site conditions and mitigation of climate change. The objectives of the study are a) to implicitly and qualitatively describe the trials and tribulations a commercial adaptation of alternative design processes may cause, while b) explicitly and quantitatively report on the results of the experiments, and how they relate to AAAs. After an introduction of the AAA concept, three design experiments are described and their outcomes analysed, followed by a concluding discussion including suggestions for future studies.
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| 7. |
- Larsson, Magnus, et al.
(author)
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Teleodynamic timber façades
- 2018
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In: Frontiers in Built Environment. - : Frontiers Media S.A.. - 2297-3362. ; 4
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This paper investigates ways in which weathering-related site conditions can be allowed to inform the design process in order to improve a building's geometry and performance. Providing a building design with the capacity to remember past experiences and anticipate future events can provide substantial gains to the architectural configuration and engineering of a timber façade. A new theory of architecture is outlined based on recent “teleodynamic” theories—a hypothesis about the way far-from-equilibrium systems interact and combine to produce emergent patterns. The proposed explanation considers nested levels of thermodynamic systems applied to an architectural context: “homeodynamic” operations that involve equilibration and dissipation of constraint combine to produce self-organising “morphodynamic” procedures that amplify and regularise site-specific constraining data streams. A teleodynamic design reconstitutes itself by combining morphodynamic processes so as to optimise its relationship to the past, present, and future. A novel teleodynamic design tool called Contextual Optimisation Workspace (COW) is assembled within the Grasshopper visual programming environment. The tool is used to carry out four experiments that combine to produce the teleodynamic design of an urban wooden façade, exemplifying an alternative framework for the design of wood-based structures. The first experiment investigates a variegated grid combining two distinct subdivision methods (an orthogonal grid and a Voronoi tessellation), transmuting one system into another. The second and third experiments focus on durability aspects of a wooden façade and devise strategies for how the effects of photochemical degradation and wetting due to driving rain might be minimised using the COW tool. The fourth experiment optimises the building for daylight based on an illuminance simulation. Using simulation and anticipation to add the advantages of site- and time-specific data streams as a design strategy can effectively suspend an algorithm-driven design iteration in time and space in order to allow it to be parametrically influenced by past or future events such as unique site and project conditions. The COW tool can be used to produce such teleodynamic designs.
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| 8. |
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| 9. |
- Al-Karkhi, Isam, et al.
(author)
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Comparisons of automated blood pressures in a primary health care setting with self-measurements at the office and at home using the Omron i-C10 device
- 2015
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In: Blood Pressure Monitoring. - : Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. - 1359-5237 .- 1473-5725. ; 20:2, s. 98-103
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- OBJECTIVE: We aimed to compare blood pressure (BP) levels recorded using the semiautomatic oscillometric Omron i-C10 BP device in patients with or without hypertension in three different settings: (a) when used by a doctor or a nurse at the office (OBP); (b) when used for self-measurement by the patient at the office (SMOBP); and (c) when used for 7 consecutive days at home (HBP).MATERIALS AND METHODS: A total of 247 individuals were invited to participate, but 78 of these individuals declined and a further seven were excluded, leaving a final cohort of 162 participants.RESULTS: The mean OBP was higher than HBP (difference 8.1±14/3.1±8.8 mmHg, P<0.0001) and so was SMOBP compared with HBP (difference 7.0±13/4.2±7.3 mmHg, P<0.0001). Sixteen participants (9.9%) had at least 10 mmHg higher systolic SMOBP than OBP and 28 (17%) participants had at least 10 mmHg lower systolic SMOBP than OBP. Participants who were current smokers had a larger mean difference between systolic OBP and SMOBP than nonsmokers (OBP-SMOBP in smokers: 6.6±9.4 mmHg, OBP-SMOBP in nonsmokers: 0.5±9.2 mmHg, P=0.011 between groups).CONCLUSION: Self-measurement of BP in the office does not preclude an increase in BP when levels in the individual patients are compared with HBP using the same equipment. Thus, SMOBP with a semiautomatic device does not lead to a reduction in the white-coat effect in the same manner as fully automatic devices.This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License, where it is permissible to download and share the work provided it is properly cited. The work cannot be changed in any way or used commercially. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0.
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| 10. |
- Alling, Vanja, et al.
(author)
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Tracing terrestrial organic matter by delta S-34 and delta C-13 signatures in a subarctic estuary
- 2008
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In: Limnology and Oceanography. - 0024-3590 .- 1939-5590. ; 53:6, s. 2594-2602
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- A key issue to understanding the transformations of terrestrial organic carbon in the ocean is to disentangle the latter from marine-produced organic matter. We applied a multiple stable isotope approach using delta S-34 and delta C-13 isotope signatures from estuarine dissolved organic matter (DOM), enabling us to constrain the contribution of terrestrial-derived DOM in an estuarine gradient of the northern Baltic Sea. The stable isotope signatures for dissolved organic sulfur (delta S-34(DOS)) have twice the range between terrestrial and marine end members compared to the stable isotope signatures for dissolved organic carbon (delta C-13(DOC)); hence, the share of terrestrial DOM in the total estuarine DOM can be calculated more precisely. DOM samples from the water column were collected using ultrafiltration on board the German RV Maria S Merian during a winter cruise, in the Bothnian Bay, Bothnian Sea, and Baltic proper. We calculated the terrestrial fraction of the estuarine DOC (DOCter) from both delta C-13(DOC) and delta S-34(DOS) signatures and applying fixed C: S ratios for riverine and marine end members to convert S isotope signatures into DOC concentrations. The delta S-34(DOS) signature of the riverine end member was +7.02 parts per thousand, and the mean signatures from Bothnian Bay, Bothnian Sea, and Baltic proper were +10.27, +12.51, and +13.67 parts per thousand, respectively, showing an increasing marine signal southwards (d34SDOS marine end member = 18.1 parts per thousand). These signatures indicate that 87%, 75%, and 67%, respectively, of the water column DOC is of terrestrial origin (DOCter) in these basins. Comparing the fractions of DOCter in each basin-that are still based on few winter values only-with the annual river input of DOC, it appears that the turnover time for DOCter in the Gulf of Bothnia is much shorter than the hydraulic turnover time, suggesting that high-latitude estuaries might be efficient sinks for DOCter.
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