2,298 research outputs found

    The labor market regimes of Denmark and Norway – one Nordic model?

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    The literature on the Danish and Norwegian labor market systems emphasizes the commonalities of the two systems. We challenge this perception by investigating how employers in multinational companies in Denmark and Norway communicate with employees on staffing changes. We argue that the development of ‘flexicurity’ in Denmark grants Danish employers considerably greater latitude in engaging in staffing changes than its Nordic counterpart, Norway. Institutional theory leads us to suppose that large firms located in the Danish setting will be less likely to engage in employer–employee communication on staffing plans than their Norwegian counterparts. In addition, we argue that in the Danish context indigenous firms will have a better insight into the normative and cognitive aspects to flexicurity than foreign-owned firms, meaning that they are more likely to engage in institutional entrepreneurialism than their foreign owned counterparts. We supplement institutional theory with an actor perspective in order to take into account the role of labor unions. Our analysis is based on a survey of 203 firms in Norway and Denmark which are either indigenous multinational companies or the subsidiaries of foreign multinational companies. The differences we observe cause us to conclude that the notion of a common Nordic model is problematic

    Causes of albuminuria in patients with type 2 diabetes without diabetic retinopathy

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    Causes of albuminuria in patients with type 2 diabetes without diabetic retinopathy.BackgroundThe causes of albuminuria in patients with type 2 diabetes are heterogeneous and are scantily investigated, particularly if the patient has a lack of diabetic retinopathy. Therefore, we evaluated the structural background of albuminuria in a large consecutive group of Caucasian patients with type 2 diabetes without retinopathy.MethodsThree hundred forty-seven consecutive patients with type 2 diabetes with persistent albuminuria (>300 mg/24 h) were recorded. Fundus photo (80%) and ophthalmoscopy were performed. Ninety-three (27%) had no retinopathy, and a kidney biopsy was performed in 52 (56%) of these patients. An insufficient tissue sample was obtained in one patient. The biopsies were evaluated by three masked nephropathologists.ResultsThe biopsies revealed diabetic glomerulopathy in 69% of the patients (28 males and 7 females), while the remaining 31% (95% CI, 18 to 44) had either nondiabetic glomerulopathies such as glomerulonephritis (N = 7, 6 males and 1 female, 13%) or normal glomerular structure (N = 9, 7 males and 2 females, 18%). No significant differences in sex, age (56 ± 8 vs. 53 ± 10 years, mean SD), body mass index (30 ± 4 vs. 31 ± 8 kg/m2), known duration of diabetes (6 ± 6 vs. 4 ± 3 years), GFR (95 ± 29 vs. 89 ± 31 mL/min/1.73 m2), albuminuria (1304 ± 169 to 4731 vs. 1050 ± 181 to 5176 mg/24 hours), blood pressure (150/87 ± 16/9 vs. 145/89 ± 16/9 mm Hg), prevalence of hypertension (89 vs. 100%), hemoglobin A1c (8.2 ± 1.6% vs. 9.0 ± 2.5%), and serum total cholesterol (7.1 ± 2.4 vs. 6.3 ± 1.6 mmol/L) were found between patients with and without diabetic glomerulopathy.ConclusionsAlbuminuric patients with type 2 diabetes without diabetic retinopathy have a prevalence of biopsies with normal glomerular structure or nondiabetic kidney diseases of approximately 30%. A separation between diabetic and nondiabetic glomerular lesions was not possible based on demographic, clinical, or laboratory data. Consequently, such patients may require further evaluation, including a kidney biopsy

    Veileder til startpakkene for kartlegging av marint biologisk mangfold - Troms

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    Den foreliggende rapporten utgjør en veileder til Troms sin digitale startpakke, med oversikt over hvilke informasjon som er inkludert i startpakken, status for kartleggingen for de ulike naturtypene, og et forslag til prioritering av framtidig innsats for å få kartlagt de gjenstående viktigste forekomstene

    Veileder til startpakkene for kartlegging av marint biologisk mangfold - Sør-Trøndelag

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    Den foreliggende rapporten utgjør en veileder til Sør-Trøndelags digitale startpakke, med oversikt over hvilke informasjon som er inkludert i startpakken, status for kartleggingen for de ulike naturtypene, og et forslag til prioritering av framtidig innsats for å få kartlagt de gjenstående viktigste forekomstene

    Mapping the carbon footprint of EU regions

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    While the EU Commission has encouraged Member States to combine national and international climate change mitigation measures with subnational environmental policies, there has been little harmonized effort towards the quantification of embodied greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from household consumption across European regions. This study develops an inventory of carbon footprints associated with household consumption for 177 regions in 27 EU countries, thus, making a key contribution for the incorporation of consumption-based accounting into local decision-making. Footprint calculations are based on consumer expenditure surveys and environmental and trade detail from the EXIOBASE 2.3 multiregional input-output database describing the world economy in 2007 at the detail of 43 countries, 5 rest-of-the-world regions and 200 product sectors. Our analysis highlights the spatial heterogeneity of embodied GHG emissions within multiregional countries with subnational ranges varying widely between 0.6 and 6.5 tCO2e/cap. The significant differences in regional contribution in terms of total and per capita emissions suggest notable differences with regards to climate change responsibility. The study further provides a breakdown of regional emissions by consumption categories (e.g. housing, mobility, food). In addition, our region-level study evaluates driving forces of carbon footprints through a set of socio-economic, geographic and technical factors. Income is singled out as the most important driver for a region's carbon footprint, although its explanatory power varies significantly across consumption domains. Additional factors that stand out as important on the regional level include household size, urban-rural typology, level of education, expenditure patterns, temperature, resource availability and carbon intensity of the electricity mix. The lack of cross-national region-level studies has so far prevented analysts from drawing broader policy conclusions that hold beyond national and regional borders

    Veileder til startpakkene for kartlegging av marint biologisk mangfold - Troms

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    Den foreliggende rapporten utgjør en veileder til Troms sin digitale startpakke, med oversikt over hvilke informasjon som er inkludert i startpakken, status for kartleggingen for de ulike naturtypene, og et forslag til prioritering av framtidig innsats for å få kartlagt de gjenstående viktigste forekomstene.Direktoratet for naturforvaltning, Fiskeridirektoratet, Statens forurensingstilsyn, Forsvarsbyg

    Veileder til startpakkene for kartlegging av marint biologisk mangfold - Buskerud

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    Den foreliggende rapporten utgjør en veileder til Buskeruds digitale startpakke, med oversikt over hvilke informasjon som er inkludert i startpakken, status for kartleggingen for de ulike naturtypene, og et forslag til prioritering av framtidig innsats for å få kartlagt de gjenstående viktigste forekomstene.Direktoratet for naturforvaltning(DN

    Species‐level image classification with convolutional neural network enables insect identification from habitus images

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    1. Changes in insect biomass, abundance, and diversity are challenging to track at sufficient spatial, temporal, and taxonomic resolution. Camera traps can capture habitus images of ground-dwelling insects. However, currently sampling involves manually detecting and identifying specimens. Here, we test whether a convolutional neural network (CNN) can classify habitus images of ground beetles to species level, and estimate how correct classification relates to body size, number of species inside genera, and species identity. 2. We created an image database of 65,841 museum specimens comprising 361 carabid beetle species from the British Isles and fine-tuned the parameters of a pretrained CNN from a training dataset. By summing up class confidence values within genus, tribe, and subfamily and setting a confidence threshold, we trade-off between classification accuracy, precision, and recall and taxonomic resolution. 3. The CNN classified 51.9% of 19,164 test images correctly to species level and 74.9% to genus level. Average classification recall on species level was 50.7%. Applying a threshold of 0.5 increased the average classification recall to 74.6% at the expense of taxonomic resolution. Higher top value from the output layer and larger sized species were more often classified correctly, as were images of species in genera with few species. 4. Fine-tuning enabled us to classify images with a high mean recall for the whole test dataset to species or higher taxonomic levels, however, with high variability. This indicates that some species are more difficult to identify because of properties such as their body size or the number of related species. 5. Together, species-level image classification of arthropods from museum collections and ecological monitoring can substantially increase the amount of occurrence data that can feasibly be collected. These tools thus provide new opportunities in understanding and predicting ecological responses to environmental change.This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2019 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. The attached file is the published pdf

    Large scale localization of protein phosphorylation by use of electron capture dissociation mass spectrometry.

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    We used on-line electron capture dissociation (ECD) for the large scale identification and localization of sites of phosphorylation. Each FT-ICR ECD event was paired with a linear ion trap collision-induced dissociation (CID) event, allowing a direct comparison of the relative merits of ECD and CID for phosphopeptide identification and site localization. Linear ion trap CID was shown to be most efficient for phosphopeptide identification, whereas FT-ICR ECD was superior for localization of sites of phosphorylation. The combination of confident CID and ECD identification and confident CID and ECD localization is particularly valuable in cases where a phosphopeptide is identified just once within a phosphoproteomics experiment

    Topical immunotherapy of severe alopecia areata with diphenylcyclopropenone (DPCP): experience in an Iranian population

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    BACKGROUND: Highly variable results of topical diphenylcyclopropenone (DPCP) in the treatment of alopecia areata have been reported so far. The purposes of the present study were to evaluate the efficacy and tolerability of DPCP treatment in severe alopecia areata. METHODS: Twenty-eight patients (16 female and 12 male, 10–35 years old, mean age 25 years) with extensive alopecia areata were enrolled in an open-label clinical trial. After sensitization with 2% DPCP, progressively higher concentrations beginning at 0.001% were applied weekly for 6 months to one side of the scalp, after which, if terminal hair growth was noted, the entire scalp was then treated under the same weekly protocol. The maximum concentration of DPCP in acetone was 2%. RESULTS: Twenty-seven of 28 patients completed therapy. The overall response rate was 81.5% (22/27), complete remission (90%-100% terminal hair re-growth) was obtained 22.2% (6/27) and partial remission (10%-90% terminal hair re-growth) in 59.3% (16/27). In all patients an eczematous reaction consisting of erythema, itching, and scaling at the site of application were observed. During therapy, other side effects including, occipital lymphadenopathy 40.7% (11/27), severe eczema/blister formation 40.7% (11/27), hyperpigmentation 18.5% (5/27) were observed, but no hypopigmentation, vitiligo, contact urticaria, and erythema multiforme-like reaction were seen in the patients. Nineteen of 27 (70.4%) patients had at least one side effect, other than eczematous reaction. Notably, partial recurrence was observed in 50.9% (13/22) of these patients after 6 to 12 months of follow-up. During the follow-up time the maintenance DPCP immunotherapy was continued. CONCLUSION: Topical DPCP treatment for alopecia areata is an effective therapy with a slightly high relapse rate during bilateral maintenance treatment. According to the author's knowledge this is the first experience with DPCP in Iran
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