University of Southern Denmark

About: University of Southern Denmark is a education organization based out in Odense, Syddanmark, Denmark. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Randomized controlled trial. The organization has 11928 authors who have published 37918 publications receiving 1258559 citations. The organization is also known as: SDU.

The international EAACI/GA²LEN/EuroGuiDerm/APAAACI guideline for the definition, classification, diagnosis, and management of urticaria.

Abstract: This update and revision of the international guideline for urticaria was developed following the methods recommended by Cochrane and the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) working group. It is a joint initiative of the Dermatology Section of the European Academy of Allergology and Clinical Immunology (EAACI), the Global Allergy and Asthma European Network (GA²LEN) and its Urticaria and Angioedema Centers of Reference and Excellence (UCAREs and ACAREs), the European Dermatology Forum (EDF; EuroGuiDerm), and the Asia Pacific Association of Allergy, Asthma and Clinical Immunology with the participation of 64 delegates of 50 national and international societies and from 31 countries. The consensus conference was held on 3 December 2020. This guideline was acknowledged and accepted by the European Union of Medical Specialists (UEMS). Urticaria is a frequent, mast cell-driven disease that presents with wheals, angioedema, or both. The lifetime prevalence for acute urticaria is approximately 20%. Chronic spontaneous or inducible urticaria is disabling, impairs quality of life, and affects performance at work and school. This updated version of the international guideline for urticaria covers the definition and classification of urticaria and outlines expert-guided and evidence-based diagnostic and therapeutic approaches for the different subtypes of urticaria.

The Basis Set Convergence of Spin-Spin Coupling Constants Calculated by Density Functional Methods.

Abstract: The previously proposed polarization-consistent basis sets, optimized for density functional calculations, are evaluated for calculating indirect nuclear spin-spin coupling constants. The basis set limiting values can be obtained by performing a series of calculations with increasingly larger basis sets, but the convergence can be significantly improved by adding functions with large exponents. An accurate calculation of the Fermi-contact contribution requires the addition of tight s functions, while the paramagnetic spin-orbit contribution is sensitive to the presence of tight p functions. The spin-dipolar contribution requires the addition of p, d, and f functions. The optimal exponents for the tight functions can be obtained by optimizing the absolute sum of all contributions to the spin-spin coupling constant. On the basis of a series of test cases, we propose a standard set of tight s, p, d, and f functions to be added to the polarization-consistent basis sets. The resulting pcJ-n basis sets should be suitable for calculating spin-spin coupling constants with density functional methods.

Income inequality, unemployment and suicide: A panel data analysis of 15 European countries

Abstract: Most panel data studies have employed overall suicide rates (male and female) to identify the determinants of suicide. This research has also neglected the use of country specific linear time trends. Neglecting these factors may confound the empirical estimates of socio-economic variables due to the impact of unobserved country specific determinants of suicide that are time-varying. Empirical results from 15 European countries between 1970 and 1998 support this hypothesis. Specifically, economic growth, fertility rate, and alcohol consumption seem to have a significant impact on male and female suicide rates after the inclusion of country specific linear trends. Contrary to prior studies, suicide rates were not sensitive to income levels, female labour participation rates and unemployment. In addition, the effect of divorce rate is specific to gender. Finally, the results also illustrate the importance of employing age-specific suicide rates compared to what has been traditionally used, in trying to evalu...

Colliding clusters and dark matter self-interactions

Abstract: When a dark matter halo moves through a background of dark matter particles, self-interactions can lead to both deceleration and evaporation of the halo and thus shift its centroid relative to the collisionless stars and galaxies. We study the magnitude and time evolution of this shift for two classes of dark matter self-interactions, viz. frequent self-interactions with small momentum transfer (e.g. due to long-range interactions) and rare self-interactions with large momentum transfer (e.g. contact interactions), and find important differences between the two cases. We find that neither effect can be strong enough to completely separate the dark matter halo from the galaxies, if we impose conservative bounds on the self-interaction cross-section. The majority of both populations remain bound to the same gravitational potential and the peaks of their distributions are therefore always coincident. Consequently any apparent separation is mainly due to particles which are leaving the gravitational potential, so will be largest shortly after the collision but not observable in evolved systems. Nevertheless the fraction of collisions with large momentum transfer is an important characteristic of self-interactions, which can potentially be extracted from observational data and provide an important clue as to the nature of dark matter.

Coarse-graining polymers with the MARTINI force-field: polystyrene as a benchmark case

Abstract: We hereby introduce a new hybrid thermodynamic-structural approach to the coarse-graining of polymers. The new model is developed within the framework of the MARTINI force-field (Marrink et al., J. Phys. Chem. B, 2007, 111, 7812), which uses mainly thermodynamic properties as targets in the parameterization. We refine the MARTINI procedure by including one additional target property related to the structure of the polymer, namely the radius of gyration. The force-field optimization is mainly based on experimental data. We test our procedure on polystyrene, a standard benchmark for coarse-grained (CG) polymer force-fields. Our model preserves the backbone-ring structure of the molecule, with each monomer represented by four CG beads. Structural properties in the melt are well reproduced, and their scaling with chain length agrees with the available experimental data. The time conversion factor between the CG and the atomistic simulations is nearly constant over a wide temperature range, and the CG force-field shows reasonable transferability between 350 and 600 K. The model is computationally efficient and polymer melts can be simulated over length scales of tens of nanometres and time scales of tens of microseconds. Finally, we tested our model in dilute conditions. The collapse of the polymer chains in a bad solvent and the swelling in a good solvent could be reproduced.