Epidemiology of canine atopic dermatitis

Canine atopic dermatitis (CAD) is a chronic, allergic skin disease associated with IgE-mediated reactions to environmental allergens. Atopic dermatitis/eczema in humans shares many similarities with CAD and is an increasing problem in industrialized countries. This increase has been attributed to lifestyle and environment factors. The current knowledge about the epidemiology of CAD is limited. The aim of this thesis was therefore to investigate the incidence of and potential risk factors for the development of CAD. Three of the included studies involve the use of a large animal-insurance database. The database includes information about a large number of healthy and diseased individuals over time, but it was not collected for research purposes and data-quality issues needed to be addressed. A validation of the diagnosis CAD in the insurance database showed that although the vast majority of the recorded cases could be considered allergic, the important differential diagnosis cutaneous adverse food reactions had not been ruled out for many patients. The overall incidence rate of CAD was 1.7 cases per 1000 dog years at risk. Several factors were found to be associated with an increased risk of CAD in the insured population; living in an urban area or in the south of Sweden, being born in the autumn and belonging to a high-risk breed. Furthermore, a spatial analysis showed that the incidence of CAD increased by increasing human population density and increasing annual rainfall, and was decreased in the north of Sweden and if there was no veterinary dermatologist present in the county. Finally, a case-control study was performed where 12 veterinarians collected CAD cases from the three identified high-risk breeds; boxer, bullterrier and West Highland white terrier. The main finding was that feeding a diet containing home-made/ non-commercial ingredients to the bitch during lactation protected her offspring from developing CAD. In conclusion, a strong breed predisposition for CAD was seen. Evidence of an increased incidence of CAD in densely populated areas exists but might be biased by the locations of veterinary dermatologists. The potential of using diet for primary prevention of CAD is interesting but randomized controlled clinical trials are required to support this finding

Confronting the Competence Conundrum of an EU Directive on Minimum Wages: In Search of a Legal Basis. College of Europe Policy Brief #9.19 December 2019

> The new European Commission has boldly announced its plans to deliver an EU minimum wage legal measure within the first 100 days in office. > This commendable ambition raises the muchcontested question of competence in this field. > Under Article 153 TFEU, the EU’s main social legal basis, the issue of ‘pay’ is excluded from the provisions of this Article (para. 5). This seems to prevent the adoption, on this legal basis, of a binding EU measure that directly fixes the level of minimum wages in the Member States. > Another, and oft-overlooked social legal basis can be found in Article 175 TFEU on economic, social and territorial cohesion. Article 175 TFEU may offer an alternative route to adopt a fully-fledged minimum wage directive to diminish the social and economic disparities that are hampering a harmonious development of the Union in both economic and societal terms. > The main advantage offered by Article 175 TFEU, as compared to the other contending alternative legal basis found in the flexibility clause of Article 352 TFEU, is that it allows the EU to act through the ordinary legislative procedure rather than requiring unanimity while maintaining a social focus. > Furthermore, the objective of cohesion policy seems the most credible alternative, compared to the general harmonisation clause for the internal market under 115 TFEU or the free movement of workers under Article 46 TFEU

Risk, Mispricing, and Asset Allocation: Conditioning on Dividend Yield

In the asset pricing literature, time-variation in market expected excess return captured by financial ratios like dividend yield is typically viewed as a reflection of either changing risk, related to the business cycle, or irrational mispricing. Extending the work on asset allocation and dividend yield by Kandel and Stambaugh (1996) to accommodate variation in risk as well as expected return, we develop Bayesian methods to examine the interaction between the data and an investor's initial beliefs about the sources of return predictability. Although results vary with the subperiod examined, different views on the relative importance of these factors can have important implications for asset allocation between a stock index and a riskless asset. In general, however, the simple risk/return model of Merton (1980) explains very little of the yield-related return predictability observed.

Strategic analysis of Statoil’s international competitiveness

The oil industry is becoming increasingly competitive and with the rising nationalisation of resources, international oil companies are struggling to secure access to new oil and gas reserves. Statoil faces challenging tasks as it seeks to move from a protected home market to the extremely competitive international arena. Its ambitious internationalisation strategy relies heavily on getting access to new oil and gas reserves and large investments in new and leading technology. However, Statoil needs to consider different growth alternatives to increase its international competitiveness. In this paper, we recommend the proposed merger with Norsk Hydro to be the most politically feasible alternative. Nevertheless, we question whether this will give Statoil sufficient international strength required for the fiercely competitive international arena. Consequently, Statoil might have to consider other growth alternatives even after the merger or adapt its business model to better fit the needs and requirements of the industry today

Hesse Pencils and 3-Torsion Structures

This paper intends to focus on the universal property of this Hesse pencil and of its twists. The main goal is to do this as explicit and elementary as possible, and moreover to do it in such a way that it works in every characteristic different from three

Cooperation between librarians and teaching staff

The changing times with new challenges and new need means that university libraries must look closely at their own visions and missions. The libraries must be ready to accept new tasks and cover the needs of the student’s and academic staff in new areas. In this paper I will look at the need for cooperation between librarians and academic staff in order to optimize the teaching of information literacy in the library, and also present the on-line tutorial Search and Write