BACKGROUND BCG and measles vaccine (MV) may have beneficial non-specific effects (NSEs). If an unplanned intervention with a vaccine (a natural experiment) modifies the estimated effect in a randomised controlled trial (RCT), this suggests NSEs. We used this approach to test NSEs of triple oral polio vaccine (OPV). METHODS During an RCT of 2 doses of MV at 4.5 and 9 months versus 1 dose of MV...

BACKGROUND Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in women worldwide. Nevertheless, it is unknown whether higher mortality after breast cancer contributes to the life-expectancy gap of 15 years in women with severe mental illness (SMI). METHODS We estimated all-cause mortality rate ratios (MRRs) of women with SMI, women with breast cancer and women with both disorders compared to ...

BACKGROUND Bereavement by spousal death and child death in adulthood has been shown to lead to an increased risk of mortality. Maternal death in infancy or parental death in early childhood may have an impact on mortality but evidence has been limited to short-term or selected causes of death. Little is known about long-term or cause-specific mortality after parental death in childhood. METHO...

We investigated the risk of, prognosis of and symptoms of multiple sclerosis (MS) among all Danish residents who owned a mobile phone subscription before 1996. Using the Danish Multiple Sclerosis Registry and Civil Registration System, study subjects were followed up for MS through 2004. Poisson models were used to calculate incidence rate ratios (IRR, age range: 18-64 years) and mortality rate...

We describe a universal FPGA-based feedback algorithm for thermal stabilization of cascaded silicon photonic micro-ring resonators based subsystem-on-chip. Scalability is demonstrated through the successful simultaneous optimization of 10Gb/s/λ WDM uni/multicast data. Introduction Silicon photonic (SiP) technology has recently been adapted by industry on scales ranging from basic devices to hig...

A Modular Reconfigurable Robot (MRR) composed of standard joint and link modules has the advantages rapid changeover assembly configurations for a diversity application requirements. To tackle kinematics analysis issues an MRR, it is essential to develop generic method mathematically represent all possible automatically generate their kinematic models. In this paper, two types robot modules, i....

BACKGROUND Opioid dependence increases risk of premature mortality. Opioid substitution therapy with methadone or buprenorphine reduces mortality risk, especially for drug-related overdose. Clinical guidelines recommend methadone as the first line of opioid substitution therapy. We aimed to test whether buprenorphine treatment has a lower mortality risk than does methadone treatment by comparin...

BACKGROUND Comparison of mortality among patients with positive and negative blood cultures may indicate the contribution of bacteremia to mortality. This study (1) compared mortality among patients with community-acquired bacteremia with mortality among patients with negative blood cultures and (2) determined the effects of bacteremia type and comorbidity level on mortality among patients with...

Background: Electrical Discharge Machining (EDM) is a well-established non-conventional machining process for the machining of electrically conductive and difficult-to-machine materials. But its applications are limited because of the slow machining rate and poor surface finish. Powder mixed EDM (PMEDM) is unitary of the recent progresses in the EDM process in which powder particles mixed in th...