Epidemiological aspects of type 1 diabetes : early life origins, childhood comorbidities, and adult outcomes

Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease, often with onset during childhood, that requires lifelong insulin therapy due to the loss of pancreatic beta-cells. Several aspects of type 1 diabetes epidemiology remained to be explored and were the focus of this thesis. To begin, environmental risk factors in childhood play an important role in triggering the onset of disease, especially in genetically high-risk individuals but less was known of the early life origins related to maternal stress during pregnancy. Next, the comorbidity between type 1 diabetes and asthma or allergic diseases had long been debated but evidence stood inconclusive. Lastly, while many long-term outcomes of type 1 diabetes in adulthood had been demonstrated, the effect of glycaemic control on final adult height was not yet known. The aim of this thesis was therefore to address these knowledge gaps regarding epidemiological aspects of type 1 diabetes by investigating maternal depression or anxiety during pregnancy as a risk factor, furthering the understanding of the comorbidity with asthma or other allergic diseases, and examining the effect of glycaemic control on adult height. To study these associations on a population-based scale, linkages of healthcare and sociodemographic data from nationwide registers in Sweden were utilised alongside genetic information from the Swedish Twin Registry and clinical measurements from the National Diabetes Register. Paper I identified maternal depression or anxiety during pregnancy as a risk factor for offspring type 1 diabetes. The findings did not seem to be entirely explained by familial confounding from shared genes or environment. Paper II demonstrated the co-occurrence of asthma and type 1 diabetes in individuals, the importance of the sequential appearance of the diseases with previous asthma increasing the risk of subsequent type 1 diabetes, and the familial co-aggregation among full siblings and cousins pointing to the importance of shared familial factors. Paper III expanded on these findings by also displaying associations between type 1 diabetes and other allergic diseases (allergic rhinitis or eczema). Familial co-aggregation of allergic rhinitis and type 1 diabetes suggested a shared liability, in contrast to the lack of such associations for eczema. No signs of a large genetic overlap between type 1 diabetes and asthma or any other allergic disease were found. Paper IV uncovered differences in final adult height depending on glycaemic control in children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes. Having poor glycaemic control with a mean haemoglobin A1c >75 mmol/mol was associated with lower adult height in both males and females and an increased risk of short stature (adult height below -2 standard deviations) in males

First Law, Counterterms and Kerr-AdS_5 Black Holes

We apply the counterterm subtraction technique to calculate the action and other quantities for the Kerr--AdS black hole in five dimensions using two boundary metrics; the Einstein universe and rotating Einstein universe with arbitrary angular velocity. In both cases, the resulting thermodynamic quantities satisfy the first law of thermodynamics. We point out that the reason for the violation of the first law in previous calculations is that the rotating Einstein universe, used as a boundary metric, was rotating with an angular velocity that depends on the black hole rotation parameter. Using a new coordinate system with a boundary metric that has an arbitrary angular velocity, one can show that the resulting physical quantities satisfy the first law.Comment: 19 pages, 1 figur

Cultural Diversity in the News Media: A Democratic or a Commercial Need?

This paper distinguishes between laissez-faire and interventionist models used to justify and implement cultural diversity initiatives in the news media. The laissez-faire model is characteristic of U.S journalism. However, due to the convergence of media systems and the widespread adoption of diversity management, the laissez-fair model may also become the prevalent model throughout other Western democracies, in Europe and elsewhere. The paper argues that the problem with the laissez-fair approach to cultural diversity in the media is that it relies on commercial instea

Critical multiculturalism and deliberative democracy: Opening spaces for more inclusive communication

The discredit of multiculturalism in contemporary discussions about cultural diversity and democracy is problematic since allegations of multiculturalism’s failure and undemocratic consequences are used to justify a (re)turn to assimilation throughout Western societies. Rejecting assimilationism as either desirable or inevitable, this article challenges the alleged incompatibility between multiculturalism and democracy. It makes the case for a (re)conceptualisation of both multiculturalism and democracy in ways that can provide the foundations for inclusive communication. To this end, the article endorse

Journalism, Poverty, and the Marketing of Misery: News From Chile's “Largest Ghetto"

__Abstract__ Research on the news coverage of poverty has largely overlooked the agency of the actors involved. This study addressed this gap by combining ethnographic fieldwork in a poor neighborhood with an analysis of television news about the neighborhood and interviews with the journalists who produced this news. The analysis shows a relationship between journalists and poor people significantly more complex than the relationship described in previous research: Journalists and poor people marketed the neighborhood's misery collaboratively. They shaped news in ways that could be stigmatizing, but that served their converging interests. By acknowledging that structure and agency presuppose each other, this paper contributes to a more nuanced understanding of journalism, as well as to efforts to address poverty's symbolic injustice

A Web-Based Interface For A High Performance Computing System

High performance computing systems (HPCS) target to execute software whether this software is a simple or complicated one. Most of HPCS should have an interface to enable software owners to upload their files to be installed by the HPCS administrator. The interface should be extensible to work together in the future with the other remaining parts of the complete system. Also it has to be divided into phases in order to make development easier and also to make those components reusable. It is the best option to make the software a platform independent one. To achieve that, J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) should be chosen to implement this interface and also free licensed and open source software have to be chosen such as Tomcat Jakarta server, MySQL to be used in the development phases. All of the previous recommendations are applied in this research prototype. On top of that, the interface prototype has been tested on local environment and has achieved the expected results. This report passes through all phases to have a proper web interface to be used for a HPCS

A framework for loosely coupled components to automate municipal services (FLCCAMS)

Unifying and computerizing the procedures of municipal operations and maintenance is of great importance to municipalities as well as to ministries of local governments. On top of that, enhancing municipal e-services in terms of efficiency, quality, reusability, distribution and interoperability of these services; is a goal for most of municipalities.  Municipalities need to unify and computerize the procedures of maintenance and operations for their assets. This will eliminate the difficulties to prioritize the maintenance tasks; to let every task takes its turn fairly. In addition, this will speed up performing such maintenance and operation tasks, and will decrease the bugs appear after the maintenance is done. Therefore, the objective of this research work is to define, design and evaluate a conceptual framework for loosely coupled components to automate municipal services as well as unifying and computerizing maintenance and operations in local governments. The scope of this research covers roads and public buildings as the most important parts of municipal assets

Empirical Research on Realizing, Evaluating, and Validating a Conceptual Breast Cancer e-portal Model with Arabic Content

This paper presents an empirical research that realizes a previous research of a conceptual breast-cancer e-portal model with Arabic content. The paper starts with briefing the previous research, after that, it highlights the gaps need to be bridged and the problems need to be solved. A real development of an e-portal prototype is done for achieving the research goal. This e-portal prototype has applied the conceptual model of the previous research

Human-activity-centered measurement system:challenges from laboratory to the real environment in assistive gait wearable robotics

Assistive gait wearable robots (AGWR) have shown a great advancement in developing intelligent devices to assist human in their activities of daily living (ADLs). The rapid technological advancement in sensory technology, actuators, materials and computational intelligence has sped up this development process towards more practical and smart AGWR. However, most assistive gait wearable robots are still confined to be controlled, assessed indoor and within laboratory environments, limiting any potential to provide a real assistance and rehabilitation required to humans in the real environments. The gait assessment parameters play an important role not only in evaluating the patient progress and assistive device performance but also in controlling smart self-adaptable AGWR in real-time. The self-adaptable wearable robots must interactively conform to the changing environments and between users to provide optimal functionality and comfort. This paper discusses the performance parameters, such as comfortability, safety, adaptability, and energy consumption, which are required for the development of an intelligent AGWR for outdoor environments. The challenges to measuring the parameters using current systems for data collection and analysis using vision capture and wearable sensors are presented and discussed