Heroes and villains, idealists and mercenaries, freedom fighters and religiousfanatics. Foreign fighters tend to defy easy classification. Good andbad images of the foreign combatant epitomize different conceptions offreedom and are used to characterize the rightness or wrongness of thisactor in civil wars. This book traces the history of these figures and theirafterlife. It does so through an int

Leadership is as an integral part of organisational practice that relates to individual or collectivistic forms of decision-making and action that include strategic decision-making, such as how issues are communicated or ‘framed’, and how risk is managed. This article applies a systematic scoping review approach to understand the scope of scholarly literature on human rights leadership and assess

Kallikreins are a family of serine proteases with a range of tissue-specific and essential proteolytic functions. Among the best studied are the prostate tissue-specific KLK2 and KLK3 genes and their secreted protease products, human kallikrein 2, hk2, and prostate-specific antigen (PSA). Members of the so-called classic kallikreins, these highly active trypsin-like serine proteases play establish

Objective: Asthma is divided into various distinct phenotypes on the basis of clinical characteristics, physiological findings, and triggers, and phenotyping is usually performed in a hypothesis-driven univariate manner. However, phenotyping can also be performed using computer algorithms to evaluate hypotheses-free relationships among many clinical and biological characteristics. We aimed to iden

Background: Quality control materials with minimal inter-assay differences and clinically relevant proportions of different molecular forms of the analyte are needed to optimize intra- and inter-laboratory accuracy and precision. Methods: We assessed if clinically relevant total prostate- specific antigen (tPSA) levels were present in seven commercially available Multi Constituent Tumor Marker Con

This work aims to make three-dimensional (3D) tomographic techniques more flexible and accessible to in-situ measurements in practical apparatus by allowing arbitrary camera placements that benefit applications with more restrictive optical access. A highly customizable, in-house developed tomographic method is presented, applying smoothness priors through Laplacian matrices and hull constraints b

Large-scale high-quality van der Waals CoPS3single crystals are synthesized using a chemical vapor transport (CVT) method. The crystallographic structure and electronic properties of this layered material are systematically studied using different spectroscopic methods (XPS, NEXAFS, and resonant photoelectron spectroscopy) accompanied by density functional theory (DFT) calculations. All experiment

Denna avhandling riktar sig mot tre viktiga problem inom kognitiv sjukdom:1) Vi saknar idag kliniska verktyg för att med säkerhet kunna ge en korrekt demensdiagnos. Det enda sättet man med 100 % säkerhet kan avgöra vilken specifik kognitiv sjukdom en person lidit av är genom obduktion och efterföljande undersökning av hjärnan. Endast en liten andel av forskningen inom detta fält rör individer som The first aim of this thesis was to evaluate the prevalence of cardiovascular disease (CaVD), hypertension (HT), and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) in the neurodegenerative disorders Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Lewy body disease (LBD). These conditions are considered modifiable risk factors for vascular dementia (VaD), and recent research has proposed its association with AD. The field is consid

Background: Abiraterone acetate (AA) is an androgen biosynthesis inhibitor shown to prolong life in patients with castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) already treated with chemotherapy. AA treatment results in dramatic declines in prostate-specific antigen (PSA) in some patients and no declines in others, suggesting the presence of molecular determinants of sensitivity in tumors. Objective:

Cyclopropane, c-C3H6, the simplest cycloalkane, is seldom included in detailed kinetic mechanisms for hydrocarbons, though it may exhibit unusual kinetic features yet to be analysed due to a lack of studies of its combustion characteristics. In this work, laminar burning velocities of cyclopropane flames have been determined using the heat flux method at atmospheric pressure and an initial gas mix

Perceiving humans is an important and complex problem within computervision. Its significance is derived from its numerous applications, suchas human-robot interaction, virtual reality, markerless motion capture,and human tracking for autonomous driving. The difficulty lies in thevariability in human appearance, physique, and plausible body poses. Inreal-world scenes, this is further exacerbated b

This paper considers the problem of jointly designing the transmit waveforms and weights for a frequency diverse array (FDA) in a spectrally congested environment in which unintentional spectral interferences exist. Exploiting the properties of the interference signal induced by the processing of the multi-channel mixing and low-pass filtering FDA receiver, the interference covariance matrix struc

On the surface, Abel Ferrara’s cult classic The Addiction (1995) about a New York grad student-turned-vampire appears to be a metaphor for drug addiction. Yet this cinematic nightmare, in which various characters gradually sink into the perils of evil, hides deeper metaphors still. What lies beneath this story of urban vampirism? Why is it staged in an academic environment? International law const

The tools for spectrally analyzing heart rate variability (HRV) has in recent years grown considerably, with emphasis on the handling of time-varying conditions and confounding factors. Time–frequency analysis holds since long an important position in HRV analysis, however, this technique cannot alone handle a mean heart rate or a respiratory frequency which vary over time. Overlapping

The self-assembly of an arylazopyrazole-based photosurfactant (PS), based on cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB), and its mixed micelle formation with CTAB in aqueous solution was investigated by small angle neutron and X-ray scattering (SANS/SAXS) and UV-vis absorption spectroscopy. Upon UV light exposure, PS photoisomerizes from E-PS (trans) to Z-PS (cis), which transforms oblate ellipsoidal m

Electrodeposition of metals in templates of nano-porous anodic aluminum oxide (NP-AAO) is a versatile way of fabricating ordered arrays of metal nanowires. Thanks to the self-arranged long-range hexagonal order of the pores, electrodeposition in NP-AAO is an easily scalable bottom-up synthesis route and an attractive alternative to traditional top-down fabrication methods such as electron beam lit

Rationale: Long-term oxygen therapy (LTOT) is prescribed for at least 15 hours per day and often used by patients for several years, but knowledge is limited regarding adverse effects, risk exposures, and health-related quality of life (HrQoL) among those treated. Objectives: To determine the prevalence of adverse effects, smoking, and alcohol consumption and their relations to HrQoL among patient

Objectives: To evaluate the discrimination, calibration, and net benefit performance of the Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial Risk Calculator (PCPTRC) across five European randomized study of screening for prostate cancer (ERSPC), 1 United Kingdom, 1 Austrian, and 3 US biopsy cohorts. Methods: PCPTRC risks were calculated for 25,733 biopsies using prostate-specific antigen (PSA), digital rectal exa

Objectives: To compare the predictive performance and potential clinical usefulness of risk calculators of the European Randomized Study of Screening for Prostate Cancer (ERSPC RC) with and without information on prostate volume. Methods: We studied 6 cohorts (5 European and 1 US) with a total of 15,300 men, all biopsied and with pre-biopsy TRUS measurements of prostate volume. Volume was categori

A ruptured arterial aneurysm, especially in the aorta, represents one of the most acute and mortal conditions encountered in clinical medicine. Population-based screening in elderly men, treatment of risk factors, such as hypertension, and endovascular or open repair of rupture-prone lesions, represent cornerstones in management. Surgical repair has a sizeable effect on life-expectancy, but medica