INTRODUCTION The aim of this study is to examine the effects of an internet-based cognitive behavioural therapy (iCBT) program on decreasing the risk of major depressive episodes (MDEs) among workers employed in a private corporate group in Japan, using a randomised controlled trial design. METHODS AND ANALYSIS All of the workers in a corporate group (n=20,000) will be recruited through an in...

The Mediterranean Sea has been recently proposed as one of the most impacted regions of the world with regards to microplastics, however the polymeric composition of these floating particles is still largely unknown. Here we present the results of a large-scale survey of neustonic micro- and meso-plastics floating in Mediterranean waters, providing the first extensive characterization of their ...

The perceived health risk of recently introduced nicotine and tobacco products may influence both their uptake and continued use. The aim of the study was to assess how adolescents rate relative harmfulness of slim and menthol cigarettes, water pipes, e-cigarettes, and smokeless tobacco compared to regular cigarettes. Cross-sectional survey data from students aged 13-19 years from Piotrkowski d...

Inadequate calorie intake or starvation has been suggested as a cause of neonatal jaundice, which can further cause permanent brain damage, kernicterus. This study experimentally investigated whether additional glucose treatments induce the bilirubin-metabolizing enzyme--UDP-glucuronosyltransferase (UGT) 1A1--to prevent the onset of neonatal hyperbilirubinemia. Neonatal humanized UGT1 (hUGT1) m...

Knowledge of serum markers of liver decompensation would facilitate care of patients with hepatitis C virus (HCV) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infections. HCV load and anti-c33c and anti-NS5 levels did not distinguish 28 HCV- and HIV-positive predecompensation patients from 28 matched control patients, whereas more patients than controls had high anti-c100(p) and low anti-c22(p). In m...

Millions of computers are now connected together by the Internet. At a fast pace, applications are taking proot of these new capabilities, and become parallel and distributed , e.g. applets on the WWW or agent technology. As we live in a world with nite resources, an important challenge is to be able to control computations in such an environment. For instance, a user might like to suspend a co...

Under the Lambertian reflectance model, uncalibrated photometric stereo with unknown light sources is inherently ambiguous. In this paper, we consider the use of a more general reflectance model, namely the Torrance and Sparrow model, in uncalibrated photometric stereo. We demonstrate that this can not only resolve the ambiguity when the light sources are unknown, but can also result in more ac...

Pancreatic adenocarcinoma is one of the most aggressive malignant tumors and represents the fourth leading cause of cancer-related death. The median survival of locally advanced pancreatic carcinoma is ten to thirteen months. In this year's American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting, several studies were presented with novel approaches towards treating locally advanced pancreat...

Objective The meta-analysis was used to evaluate the skeletal-related events (SREs) and efficacy of denosumab versus zoledronic acid (ZA) in patients with bone metastases. Methods The data of this meta-analysis study were searched from PUBMED, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, Web of Science with Conference Proceedings, Elsevier and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) databases till August...