The use of complementary and alternative medicine products in preceding two days among Finnish parents - a population survey

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The use of complementary and alternative medicines (CAM) has been extensively studied globally among adult and paediatric populations. Parents, as a group, had not been studied to assess their knowledge and attitude to CAM and general medicine use. This study is necessary since parents' attitude to medicine use is known to influence their child's attitude to medicine use later in life. We therefore aim to assess the extent and types of CAM use among Finnish parents, and to determine the factors that promote the CAM use. Also, we aim to determine parents' attitude to general medicine use.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Children less than 12 years old, as of spring 2007, were identified from the database of the Finnish Population Register Centre and were selected by random sampling. The parents of these children were identified and a questionnaire was sent to them. Only the parent who regularly takes care of the child's medicine was requested to fill the questionnaire. Cross-tabulations and Chi-square test were used to determine the associations between categorical variables. CAMs were defined as natural products that are not registered as medicines, such as homeopathic preparations, dietary food supplements, and traditional medicinal products.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The response rate of the survey was 67% (n = 4032). The use of CAM was 31% in the preceding two days. The most commonly used CAM products were vitamins and minerals, followed by fish oils and fatty acids. Prescription and OTC medicines were used concomitantly with CAM by one-third of the parents. CAM was frequently used by parents over 30 years (33%), female parents (32%), highly educated parents (35%), and parents with high monthly net income (3000-3999 euros, 34%). The users of CAM had more negative attitudes towards medicines than non-users of CAM.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our findings are in accordance with those of previous studies that women over 30 years of age with a high education and income typically use CAMs. Finnish parents seem to use CAMs as complementary rather than alternative to medicines. Health care professionals should take into consideration both the concomitant use as well as the negative attitudes among CAM users in encounters with the parents.</p

Change but no climate change: discourses of climate change in corporate social responsibility reporting in the oil industry

Using corpus linguistic tools and methods, this paper investigates the discourses of climate change in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and environmental reports produced by major oil companies from 2000 to 2013. It focuses on the frequency of key references to climatic changes and examines in detail discourses surrounding the most frequently used term ‘climate change’. The analysis points to shifting patterns in the ways in which climate change has been discursively constructed in the studied sample. Whereas in the mid-2000s, it was seen as a phenomenon that something could be done about, in recent years the corporate discourse has increasingly emphasised the notion of risk portraying climate change as an unpredictable agent. A pro-active stance signalled by the use of force metaphors is offset by a distancing strategy often indicated through the use of hedging devices and ‘relocation’ of climate change to the future and other stakeholders. In doing so, the discourse obscures the sector’s large contribution to environmental degradation and ‘grooms’ the public perception to believe that the industry actively engages in climate change mitigation. At the methodological level, this study shows how a combination of quantitative corpus-linguistic and qualitative discourse-analytical techniques can offer insights into the existence of salient discursive patterns and contribute to a better understanding of the role of language in performing ideological work in corporate communications

Hyperhidrosis comorbidities and treatments:a register-based study among 511 subjects

Abstract Hyperhidrosis is a dermatological condition that causes psychosocial impairment and has a negative impact on patients’ quality of life. The epidemiology of hyperhidrosis is currently poorly understood. The aim of this study was to analyse comorbidities and treatments in 511 subjects with hyperhidrosis selected from the patient records of Oulu University Hospital. The mean age of patients with local hyperhidrosis was 27.9 years and the majority were female (62.7%). The most common anatomical site of symptoms in the youngest age group was the palms, whereas the axillae were a more common site in advanced age. Depression was a common comorbidity in both local (11.6%) and generalized hyperhidrosis (28.6%). Anxiety affected 12.7% of patients with generalized hyperhidrosis. In 36.8% of the patients with local hyperhidrosis there was a delay in diagnosis of more than 10 years. The most commonly used treatments included topical antiperspirants, iontophoresis and botulin toxin injections

Arctic tourism in times of change : Seasonality

Arctic Tourism in Times of Chang

Control of Polymer-Packing Orientation in Thin Films through Synthetic Tailoring of Backbone Coplanarity

Controlling solid-state order of π-conjugated polymers through macromolecular design is essential for achieving high electronic device performance; yet, it remains a challenge, especially with respect to polymer-packing orientation. Our work investigates the influence of backbone coplanarity on a polymer’s preference to pack face-on or edge-on relative to the substrate. Isoindigo-based polymers were synthesized with increasing planarity by systematically substituting thiophenes for phenyl rings in the acceptor comonomer. This increasing backbone coplanarity, supported by density functional theory (DFT) calculations of representative trimers, leads to the narrowing of polymer band gaps as characterized by ultraviolet-visible-near infrared (UV-vis-NIR) spectroscopy and cyclic voltammetry. Among the polymers studied, regiosymmetric II and TII polymers exhibited the highest hole mobilities in organic field-effect transistors (OFETs), while in organic photovoltaics (OPVs), TBII polymers that display intermediate levels of planarity provided the highest power conversion efficiencies. Upon thin-film analysis by atomic force microscropy (AFM) and grazing-incidence X-ray diffraction (GIXD), we discovered that polymer-packing orientation could be controlled by tuning polymer planarity and solubility. Highly soluble, planar polymers favor face-on orientation in thin films while the less soluble, nonplanar polymers favor an edge-on orientation. This study advances our fundamental understanding of how polymer structure influences nanostructural order and reveals a new synthetic strategy for the design of semiconducting materials with rationally engineered solid-state properties