University of Gothenburg

About: University of Gothenburg is a education organization based out in Gothenburg, Sweden. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Health care. The organization has 23855 authors who have published 65241 publications receiving 2606327 citations. The organization is also known as: Göteborg University & Gothenburg University.

The Influence of Urinary Incontinence on the Quality of Life of Elderly Women

Abstract: The quality of life assessed by the Nottingham Health Profile Questionnaire was compared in a group of women (n = 120) suffering from urinary incontinence (age 75.4 +/- 1.9, range 65-84 years) and an age-matched representative sample of the total population (n = 313). There were no significant differences between the two groups of women in occurrence of other illnesses or social characteristics. Women suffering from urinary incontinence obtained higher scores in the domains of emotional disturbances (p < 0.05) and social isolation (p < 0.001) than women from the control group. When subdividing the incontinent women by type of incontinence it was found that women suffering from urge and mixed incontinence reported emotional disturbances (p < 0.05) more than women from the control group. There was, however, no difference within the domain of emotional disturbances between stress-incontinent women and the control group. Women suffering from urge incontinence reported more disturbance of sleep (p < 0.05) than the control group. Women suffering from all types of urinary incontinence (p < 0.05) were socially more isolated than those from the age-matched group of women from the total population. Urinary incontinence in women has a detrimental effect on their daily lives and causes them to avoid social contacts.

Astrocyte intermediate filaments in CNS pathologies and regeneration.

Abstract: Astroglial cells are the most abundant cells in the mammalian central nervous system (CNS), yet our knowledge about their function in health and disease has been limited. This review focuses on the recent work addressing the function of intermediate filaments in astroglial cells under severe mechanical or osmotic stress, in hypoxia, and in brain and spinal cord injury. Recent data show that when astrocyte intermediate filaments are genetically ablated in mice, reactive gliosis is attenuated and the course of several CNS pathologies is altered, while the signs of CNS regeneration become more prominent. GFAP is the principal astrocyte intermediate filament protein and dominant mutations in the GFAP gene have been shown to lead to Alexander disease, a fatal neurodegenerative condition in humans.

Skill-relatedness and firm diversification

Abstract: According to the knowledge-based view of the firm, a firm’s workforce is its most important resource, and firms often diversify into activities that allow them to leverage human resources. Human capital also represents a main asset for employees. When switching jobs, individuals are expected to remain in industries that value the skills that they have developed in their previous work. Based on this observation, this article develops theoretical arguments and a statistical method that uses cross-industry labor flows to assess the skill-relatedness between industries. Industries classified in different sectors of the economy sometimes exhibit strong skill-relatedness linkages. Also, industry space, i.e., the resulting network that connects industries with overlapping skill requirements, is highly predictive of diversification moves on the part of firms. Diversification is found to be over 100 times more likely to occur into industries that have ties to a firm’s core activity in terms of skills than into industries that do not. This effect of skill-relatedness eclipses the effect of other types of relatedness, such as value chain linkages and classification-based relatedness.

Reduced diversity in the early fecal microbiota of infants with atopic eczema

Abstract: Background It might be that early intestinal colonization by bacteria in westernized infants fails to give rise to sufficient immune stimulation to support maturation of regulatory immune mechanisms. Objective The purpose of the present study was to characterize the very early infantile microbiota by using a culture-independent approach and to relate the colonization pattern to development of atopic eczema in the first 18 months of life. Methods Fecal samples were collected from 35 infants at 1 week of age. Twenty infants were healthy, and 15 infants were given diagnoses of atopic eczema at the age of 18 months. The fecal microbiota of the infants was compared by means of terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) and temporal temperature gradient gel electrophoresis (TTGE) analysis of amplified 16S rRNA genes. Results By means of T-RFLP analysis, the median number of peaks, Shannon-Wiener index, and Simpson index of diversity were significantly less for infants with atopic eczema than for infants remaining healthy in the whole group and for the Swedish infants when Alu I was used for digestion. The same was found when TTGE patterns were compared. In addition, TTGE analysis showed significantly less bands and lower diversity indices for the British atopic infants compared with those of the control subjects. Conclusion There is a reduced diversity in the early fecal microbiota of infants with atopic eczema during the first 18 months of life.

Evaluation of the Global Climate Models in the CMIP5 over the Tibetan Plateau

Abstract: The performance of 24 GCMs available in the fifth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) is evaluated over the eastern Tibetan Plateau (TP) by comparing the model outputs with ground observations for the period 1961–2005. The twenty-first century trends of precipitation and temperature based on the GCMs’ projections over the TP are also analyzed. The results suggest that for temperature most GCMs reasonably capture the climatological patterns and spatial variations of the observed climate. However, the majority of the models have cold biases, with a mean underestimation of 1.1°–2.5°C for the months December–May, and less than 1°C for June–October. For precipitation, the simulations of all models overestimate the observations in climatological annual means by 62.0%–183.0%, and only half of the 24 GCMs are able to reproduce the observed seasonal pattern, which demonstrates a critical need to improve precipitation-related processes in these models. All models produce a warming tre...