Acupuncture treatment for pain: systematic review of randomised clinical trials with acupuncture, placebo acupuncture, and no acupuncture groups

Objectives To study the analgesic effect of acupuncture and placebo acupuncture and to explore whether the type of the placebo acupuncture is associated with the estimated effect of acupuncture

Geographic variation in diagnostic and treatment interval, cancer stage and mortality among colorectal patients : an international comparison between Denmark and Scotland using data-linked cohorts

FUNDING This project was conducted without external funding and with the support of the Data Safe Haven (DaSH) of the University of Aberdeen and Statistics Denmark. Acknowledgements We wish to acknowledge Dr Vicky Munro and Dr Joanne Lumsden from the Aberdeen Centre of Data Health Science who worked with the authors in preparing the Scottish Data for Transfer to Statistic Denmark. We also acknowledge Statistics Denmark for hosting the combined dataset for analysis and Kaare Rud Flarup for help with data management. We also acknowledge Professor Lesley Anderson and Dr Lisa Iversen for providing comments on the manuscript.Peer reviewedPostprin

Wake interaction and power production of variable height model wind farms

Understanding wake dynamics is an ongoing research topic in wind energy, since wakes have considerable effects on the power production when wind turbines are placed in a wind farm. Wind tunnel experiments have been conducted to study the wake to wake interaction in a model wind farm in tandem with measurements of the extracted power. The aim is to investigate how alternating mast height influences the interaction of the wakes and the power production. Via the use of stereo-particle image velocimetry, the flow field was obtained in the first and last rows of the wind turbine array as a basis of comparison. It was found that downstream of the exit row wind turbine, the power was increased by 25% in the case of a staggered height configuration. This is partly due to the fact that the taller turbines reach into a flow area with a softened velocity gradient. Another aspect is that the wake downstream of a tall wind turbine to some extent passes above the standard height wind turbine. Overall the experiments show that the velocity field downstream of the exit row changes considerably when the mast height is alternating

Association between Pregnancy Loss and Urinary Phthalate Levels around the Time of Conception

Background: Animal studies indicate that some phthalate metabolites may harm female reproductive function

Dust exposure and the impact on hospital readmission of farming and wood industry workers for asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)

Objectives It is still not well established how occupational air pollutants affect the prognosis of asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). This study uses nationwide Danish registers and quantitative dust industry exposure matrices (IEM) for the farming and wood industries to estimate whether previous year dust exposure level impacts hospital readmissions for workers diagnosed with asthma or COPD. Methods We identified all individuals with a first diagnosis of either asthma (769 individuals) or COPD (342 individuals) between 1997 and 2007 and followed them until the next hospital admission for asthma or COPD, emigration, death or 31 December 2007. We included only individuals who worked in either the wood or farming industries at least one year during follow-up. We used logistic regression analysis to investigate associations between dust exposure level in the previous year and hospital readmission, adjusting for sex, age, time since first diagnosis, socioeconomic status, and labor force participation. Results Asthma readmissions for individuals with low and high dust exposure were increased [adjusted rate ratio (RR adj) 2.52, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.45-4.40] and RR adj2.64 (95% CI 1.52-4.60), respectively. For COPD readmission, the risk estimates were RR adj1.36 (95% CI 0.57-3.23) for low and RR adj1.20 (95% CI 0.49-2.95) for high exposure level in the previous year. For asthma readmission, stratified analyses by type of dust exposure during follow-up showed increased risks for both wood dust [RR adj2.67 (95% CI 1.35-5.26) high exposure level] and farming dust [RR adj3.59 (95% CI 1.11-11.59) high exposure level]. No clear associations were seen for COPD readmissions. Conclusions This study indicates that exposure to wood or farm dust in the previous year increases the risk of hospital readmission for individuals with asthma but not for those with COPD