Women in leadership positions in european neurosurgery: have we broken the glass ceiling?

Introduction: The proportion of male neurosurgeons has historically been higher than of women, although at least equal numbers of women have been entering European medical schools. The Diversity Committee (DC) of the European Association of Neurosurgical Societies (EANS) was founded recently to address this phenomenon. Research question: In this cross-sectional study, we aimed to characterize the status quo of female leadership by assessing the proportion of women heading European neurosurgical departments. Material and methods: European neurosurgical departments were retrieved from the EANS repository. The gender of all department chairs was determined via departmental websites or by personal contact. The proportion of females was stratified by region and by type of hospital (university versus non-university). Results: A total of 41 (4.3%) female department chairs were identified in 961 neurosurgery departments in 41 European countries. Two thirds (68.3%) of European countries do not have a female neurosurgery chair. The highest proportion of female chairs was found in Northern Europe (11.1%), owing to four female chairs in a relatively small number of departments (n = 36). The proportions were considerably smaller in Western Europe (n = 17/312 (5.5%)), Southern Europe (n = 14/353 (4.0%)) and Central and Eastern Europe (n = 6/260 (2.3%)) (p = 0.06). The distribution of female chairs in university (n = 19 (46.3%)) versus non-university departments (n = 22 (53.7%)) was even. Discussion and Conclusion: There is a significant gender imbalance with 4% of all European neurosurgery departments headed by women. The DC intends to develop strategies to support equal chances and normalize the presence of female leaders in European neurosurgery.</p

System Level Exploration of RRAM for SRAM Replacement

Recently an effective usage of the chip area plays an essential role for System-on-Chip (SOC) designs. Nowadays on-chip memories take up more than 50%of the total die-area and are responsible for more than 40% of the total energy consumption. Cache memory alone occupies 30% of the on-chip area in the latest microprocessors. This thesis project “System Level Exploration of RRAM for SRAM Replacement” describes a Resistive Random Access Memory (RRAM) based memory organizationfor the Coarse Grained Reconfigurable Array (CGRA) processors. Thebenefit of the RRAM based memory organization, compared to the conventional Static-Random Access Memory (SRAM) based memory organization, is higher interms of energy and area requirement. Due to the ever-growing problems faced by conventional memories with Dynamic Voltage Scaling (DVS), emerging memory technologies gained more importance. RRAM is typically seen as a possible candidate to replace Non-volatilememory (NVM) as Flash approaches its scaling limits. The replacement of SRAMin the lowest layers of the memory hierarchies in embedded systems with RRAMis very attractive research topic; RRAM technology offers reduced energy and arearequirements, but it has limitations with regards to endurance and write latency. By reason of the technological limitations and restrictions to solve RRAM write related issues, it becomes beneficial to explore memory access schemes that tolerate the longer write times. Therefore, since RRAM write time cannot be reduced realistically speaking we have to derive instruction memory and data memory access schemes that tolerate the longer write times. We present an instruction memory access scheme to compromise with these problems. In addition to modified instruction memory architecture, we investigate the effect of the longer write times to the data memory. Experimental results provided show that the proposed architectural modifications can reduce read energy consumption by a significant frame without any performance penalty

UPPLEVELSER AV ARBETSMILJÖN VID HEMARBETE UNDER COVID-19

Syftet med studien har varit att undersöka hur en grupp anställda inomen statlig myndighet har upplevt sin arbetsmiljö vid hemarbete underpandemin. För att svara på syftet har vi utgått från tre frågeställningar 1) Hur har de upplevt sin psykosociala arbetsmiljö, 2) Hur har de upplevt sin fysiskaarbetsmiljö, 3) Hur har de upplevt sin organisatoriska arbetsmiljö. Vi har valt att arbeta utifrån kvalitativ metod och intervjuat respondenter utifrån en semistrukturerad intervjuguide. Resultatet av intervjuerna har analyseratsmed hjälp kvalitativ innehållsanalys. Material till bakgrunden har inhämtats från tidigare forskning, rapporter och kartläggningar. Resultatet visar på att växla från kontor till hemarbete har inneburit en stor omställning för alla arbetstagarna, erfarenheter innehåller både negativa och positiva aspekter av övergången till hemarbete. Negativa erfarenheterna har beskrivits i form av försämrat kollegialt och chefsstöd, avsaknaden av ergonomiska och tekniska förutsättningar, fysiska besvär samt känslan av ensamhet. Positiva erfarenheter har varit ökad fokus och därmed förbättrad produktion och ökad balans mellan arbetsliv och privatliv

UPPLEVELSER AV ARBETSMILJÖN VID HEMARBETE UNDER COVID-19

Syftet med studien har varit att undersöka hur en grupp anställda inomen statlig myndighet har upplevt sin arbetsmiljö vid hemarbete underpandemin. För att svara på syftet har vi utgått från tre frågeställningar 1) Hur har de upplevt sin psykosociala arbetsmiljö, 2) Hur har de upplevt sin fysiskaarbetsmiljö, 3) Hur har de upplevt sin organisatoriska arbetsmiljö. Vi har valt att arbeta utifrån kvalitativ metod och intervjuat respondenter utifrån en semistrukturerad intervjuguide. Resultatet av intervjuerna har analyseratsmed hjälp kvalitativ innehållsanalys. Material till bakgrunden har inhämtats från tidigare forskning, rapporter och kartläggningar. Resultatet visar på att växla från kontor till hemarbete har inneburit en stor omställning för alla arbetstagarna, erfarenheter innehåller både negativa och positiva aspekter av övergången till hemarbete. Negativa erfarenheterna har beskrivits i form av försämrat kollegialt och chefsstöd, avsaknaden av ergonomiska och tekniska förutsättningar, fysiska besvär samt känslan av ensamhet. Positiva erfarenheter har varit ökad fokus och därmed förbättrad produktion och ökad balans mellan arbetsliv och privatliv

Treatment modalities of non-Hodgkin lymphoma patients over 65 years of age: A two-center experience.

Objective This study was conducted with the aim of making the contribution to a decision for treatment and determination of the modalities in patients diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma which increasingly become widespread in the geriatric population. Materials and methods Ninety-one patients aged over 65 years diagnosed with lymphoma and treated in Bezmialem Vakif University Medical Faculty Hospital and Haseki Training and Research Hospital between 2008 and 2013 were retrospectively evaluated. Finally, 63 patients for whom data could be reached were included in the study. Results Examining the results, histological diagnoses of our patients were as follows: diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (50.8%), follicular lymphoma (23.8%), marginal zone lymphoma (12.7%), mantle cell lymphoma (4.8%), T-cell lymphoma (4.8%), lymphoplasmacytic lymphoma (1.6%) and small lymphocytic lymphoma (1.6%). Stages at the time of diagnosis were early stage by 33.3% and late stage by 66.7%. Of the patients, 36.5% had a low-intermediate and 63.5% a high-intermediate International Prognostic Index score. According to the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group scoring, 34.9% of the patients have an Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group score of 2-4. Activities of daily living score of 33.3% patients was under 5. Looking at the responses to treatment, the complete response was found in 50.8%, partial response in 4.8%, stable disease in 1.6% and progressive disease in 9.5% of the patients. The mean follow-up duration of patients was found as 25.2 months and disease-free survival after remission as 20.2 months. Conclusion We found that we have achieved a complete remission in more than half of our patients (50.8%). Based on this, treatment should aim remission in elderly patients

Alteration of Thiol-Disulphide Homeostasis in Fibromyalgia Syndrome

Background: Fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) is an extra-articular rheumatological disease, characterized by widespread pain and somatic symptoms. The etiology has not yet been clarified. Oxidative stress may play an important role in FMS etiology. Thiol group is a very strong antioxidant. We aimed to investigate whether thiol/disulfide homeostasis in FMS is altered or not. Material and methods: A total of 80 female FMS patients and 64 healthy female control individuals were included in this study. Thiol and disulfide values were measured by Erel’s novel methods. Results: Native thiol (330.6 ± 46.1 vs. 356.8 ± 55.5 μmol/L, p = 0.005) and native thiol/total thiol (89.4 ± 3.2 vs. 93.3 ± 4.0, p < 0.001) levels of FMS patients were significantly lower when compared to the values of control group. However, disulfide (19.4 ± 6.3 vs. 12.2 ± 6.3 μmol/L, p < 0.001) levels of FMS patients were significantly higher than healthy individuals. A negative correlation was found between the native thiol/total thiol and fibromyalgia impact questionnaire (FIQ) score among the FMS patients. A positive correlation was found between disulfide values and FIQ score among the patients. Conclusions: In FMS patients, there was a significant correlation between the decrease in the thiol levels and an increase in the disulfide levels with the FIQ scores. We determined that thiol-disulfide rate was deteriorated in FMS patients and it increases in favor of disulfide amounts

Thiol/Disulfide homeostasis in patients with rheumatoid arthritis

Background. Oxidative stress may play an important role in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) etiopathogenesis. The thiol group is a very strong antioxidant. In this study, we aimed to investigate the presence of oxidative stress in patients with RA by evaluating thiol/disulfide homeostasis