OBJECTIVES Lipoprotein(a) consists of an LDL-particle attached to apolipoprotein(a), which is made by the liver. Diterpenes present in boiled coffee raise serum levels of LDL cholesterol and of the liver enzyme alanine aminotransferase in man. We investigated the association between intake of boiled coffee and serum levels of lipoprotein(a). DESIGN, SETTING AND SUBJECTS Healthy Norwegians 40-...

OBJECTIVE Adolescents and young adults born preterm have elevated blood pressure (BP). The objective of this study was to investigate if BP is elevated at 2.5 years of age after an extremely preterm birth (EXPT). METHODS In a regional subset of the national population-based cohort Extremely Preterm Infants in Sweden Study, BP at 2.5 years of age was studied in 68 survivors of EXPT (gestationa...

BACKGROUND Heart failure clinical practice guidelines recommend applying validated clinical predictive models (CPMs) to support decision making. While CPMs are now widely available, the generalizability of heart failure CPMs is largely unknown. METHODS AND RESULTS We identified CPMs derived in North America that predict mortality for patients with acute heart failure and validated these model...

The association between home dampness and lower respiratory symptoms in children has been well documented. Whether fungal exposures contribute to this association is uncertain. In a prospective birth cohort of 499 children of parents with asthma/allergies, we examined in-home fungal concentrations as predictors of lower respiratory illnesses (LRI) (croup, pneumonia, bronchitis, and bronchioliti...

Exploiting the increasingly wide use of Light-emitting Diode (LED) lighting, in this paper, we study the problem of using visible LED lights for accurate localization. The basic idea is to leverage the existing lighting infrastructure and apply trilateration to localize any devices with light sensing capability (e.g., a smartphone), using LED lamps as anchors. Through the design of Epsilon, we ...

Thrombin activatable fibrinolysis inhibitor (TAFI, or procarboxypeptidase B) is the precursor of a recently described carboxypeptidase that potently attenuates fibrinolysis. Therefore, we hypothesized that elevated plasma TAFI levels induce a hypofibrinolytic state associated with an increased risk for venous thrombosis. To evaluate this hypothesis, we developed an electroimmunoassay for TAFI a...

The objective is to explore the value of preoperative magnetic resonance (MR) histogram analyses in predicting microvascular invasion (MVI) of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).Fifty-one patients with histologically confirmed HCC who underwent diffusion-weighted and contrast-enhanced MR imaging were included. Histogram analyses were performed and mean, variance, skewness, kurtosis, 1th, 10th, 50th...

The roll dynamics of a 5kg, 1.3 m high sounding rocket are analyzed in a vertical wind tunnel. Significant turbulence in the tunnel makes the system identification of the effective inertia, damping and asymmetry with respect to roll challenging. A novel method is developed which decouples the disturbance from the rocket frame’s intrinsic roll dynamics and allows accurate prediction of roll rate...

BACKGROUND Current data on the rates of macrosomia in women with gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) are heterogenous. No study has specifically examined macrosomia rates in women with diet-controlled gestational diabetes. AIMS To compare the rates of macrosomia between mothers with diet-controlled GDM to mothers without diabetes mellitus. METHODS A retrospective study in which all patients...

The objectives of this study were to examine the association between contact current exposure and the risk of childhood leukemia and to investigate the relationship between residential contact currents and magnetic fields. Indoor and outdoor contact voltage and magnetic-field measurements were collected for the diagnosis residence of 245 cases and 269 controls recruited in the Northern Californ...