The use of non-proven therapy among patients treated in Norwegian oncological departments. A cross-sectional national multicentre study

A national multicentre study was performed to investigate the prevalent use of "alternative medicine", here called "non-proven therapies (NPT)", applied among Norwegian cancer patients. Of 911 patients invited to take part in the study, 642 were included in the analysis. Demographic characteristics were collected for all patients. The participating physicians gave information about the patients' clinical characteristics. Among 630 evaluable patients, 20% had been or were present users of NPTs for their oncological disease. The preferred methods were healing by hand and faith healing. Herbs, vitamins, diets and Iscador were other popular methods. As many as 40% of the users of NPTs had used NPTs earlier for non-malignant diseases. Elderly patients were less likely to use NPTs. Use was high in the northern part of Norway.     

Photocatalytic Valorization of Plastic Waste over Zinc Oxide Encapsulated in a Metal–Organic Framework

The conversion of waste plastic into high-value-added chemicals is regarded as a promising approach for relieving global plastic pollution and contributing to the circular economy. Herein, a partial calcination strategy is developed to fabricate a zinc oxide/UiO66-NH₂ (ZnO/UiO66-NH₂) heterojunction, in which ZnO is encapsulated in porous UiO66-NH₂ for the photocatalytic valorization of plastic. This strategy preserves the framework structure of UiO66-NH₂, thus enabling the formation of ZnO with ultra-small size distributed inside the skeleton. The synergistic effect of the obtained ZnO/UiO66-NH₂ heterojunction facilitates providing an efficient channel for carrier/mass transfer and guarantees structural stability. As a result, ZnO/UiO66-NH₂ exhibits high activity for converting polylactic acid (PLA) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) into acetic acid, coupled with H₂ production. This work provides a feasible strategy for rationally designing heterojunction photocatalysts, as well as an insight into understanding the process of photocatalytic valorization of plastic.     

Berechnung und Optimierung von Geometrie und Eingriffsverhalten von Zahnformen beliebiger Achslage

The main benefit, the economical manufacturability of traditional gear profiles, such as an involute, are no longer of major importance in times of computer-aided design and production. Due to existing modern production techniques standard and more sophisticated gear types can be produced with high precision and maintainable financial effort. Especially for non-standard gear types modern gear production systems ensure high quality and reliability to the operator with regard to flank and meshing geometry. Depending on the context of application different gear types have advantages and disadvantages concerning load carrying capacity, effectiveness or noise excitation. Developing an optimized gearing for the desired application is thus a complex and elementary goal within the design process.     

Holographic correction of large telescope primaries by proximal, off-axis beacons

Compact telescope configurations incorporating a holographic correction of large, low-quality primary collectors are demonstrated. Aberration correction is demonstrated with an off-axis laser beacon located close to the primary. This arrangement results in a compact telescope with minimum obscuration. The reduction of additional off-axis aberrations introduced by the method is also demonstrated.     

Coherent lidar airborne wind sensor II: flight-test results at 2 and 10 νm

The use of airborne laser radar (lidar) to measure wind velocities and to detect turbulence in front of an aircraft in real time can significantly increase fuel efficiency, flight safety, and terminal area capacity. We describe the flight-test results for two coherent lidar airborne shear sensor (CLASS) systems and discuss their agreement with our theoretical simulations. The 10.6-μm CO(2) system (CLASS-10) is a flying brassboard; the 2.02-μm Tm:YAG solid-state system (CLASS-2) is configured in a rugged, light-weight, high-performance package. Both lidars have shown a wind measurement accuracy of better than 1 m/s.     

Clinical trial designs--made to order

At times, clinical trial design presents difficult problems for the consulting statistician. The nature of the disease under study or the inadequacies of standard methodology often suggest alternative strategies for the development of useful clinical trial designs. This paper examines two case of novel clinical trial designs that are "made-to-order" for the problem at hand. Both address disease-specific issues. The first case considers the use of adaptive allocation of treatments to patients in a trial in major depressive disorder. The second case reviews the design of a novel efficacy parameter in advanced pancreatic cancer.     

Portfolios of buyer–supplier exchange relationships in an online marketplace for IT services

Most studies on the role of IT for economic exchange predicted that under a given set of exchange attributes buyers would choose a certain mode of relationship with suppliers. Our study of an online IT services marketplace revealed that buyers do not have a single, uniformly preferred type of relationship, but rather maintain a portfolio of relationships. Furthermore, different buyers arrange their portfolios of exchange relationships in different ways. We found four clusters of buyers' portfolios of relationships labeled Transactional buyers, Recurrent buyers, Small diversifiers and Large diversifiers, that differ in their usage of auction or negotiation mechanism, their supplier relations as well as their usage of preferred suppliers. Our results thus paint a richer picture of how buyers organize their supplier networks online.