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It is possible to establish a sustainable quality register for stroke at the national level covering all hospitals admitting acute stroke patients. Riks-Stroke is fulfilling its main goals to support continuous quality improvement of Swedish stroke services and serve as an instrument for following up national stroke guidelines.

An inverse association between self-reported allergies and glioma and meningioma risk, has been previously observed in case-control studies. Approximately 27% (median) of the information on both glioma and meningioma in these studies, however, is collected from proxy respondents. In fact, the odds ratios (OR) among previous brain tumor studies are inversely related to the proportion of proxy respondents (Pearson correlation coefficient ‫؍‬ ؊0.94; 95% CI ‫؍‬ ؊1.00 to ؊0.65); this correlation suggests bias. We therefore con- In Cohort III, immune-related discharge diagnoses are also inversely associated with glioma (HR ‫؍‬ 0.46; 95% CI ‫؍‬ 0.14 -1.49). There is no strong evidence against (and some for) the hypothesis that allergies reduce glioma risk.

The injection of a beam of free 50 keV electrons into an unstructured gold surface creates a highly localized source of traveling surface plasmons with spectra centered below the surface plasmon resonance frequency. The plasmons were detected by a controlled decoupling into light with a grating at a distance from the excitation point. The dominant contribution to the plasmon generation appears to come from the recombination of d-band holes created by the electron beam excitation.

Obesity increases the risk of certain cancer types, e.g., cancer of the endometrium, colon and gallbladder. For some other cancer forms, e.g., prostate cancer, the association is less clear. We examined the association between body mass index (BMI) and hormone-dependent tumors, utilizing a cohort of 21,884 Swedish twins born during 1886 -1925. Information about BMI at different ages and potential confounding factors was collected prospectively. The Swedish Cancer Registry was used to identify cases of cancer in the prostate (n ‫؍‬ 666), breast (n ‫؍‬ 607), corpus uteri (n ‫؍‬ 150) and ovary (n ‫؍‬ 118) during 1969 -1997 Key words: obesity; hormone-dependent tumor; body mass index; anthropometryObesity has become an increasing health concern in many countries and is related to an increased risk of Type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, respiratory complications and certain forms of cancer. 1 The prevalence of overweight, defined as body mass index (BMI, weight/height 2 ) of 25-29 kg/m, 2 and obesity, defined as BMI Ն30 kg/m, 2 , has increased rapidly over the last decades; and studies have found a prevalence of obesity of 10 -25% in Europe and the United States. 2 Overweight and obesity are increasing also among young people 3 and is generally more common in women than in men. 2 Several studies have found an association between obesity and hormone-dependent cancers. The strongest positive associations and most consistent results have been observed for endometrial cancer and, to some extent but with weaker effects, for postmenopausal breast cancer, while results for other hormone-dependent tumors are less consistent. 4 -8 Most studies have focused on recent BMI, which mainly means obesity late in life, as the studied cancer types are more common at older ages. However, overweight and obesity early in life have been associated with reduced risk of premenopausal breast cancer, also with adjustment for recent BMI. 9 Studies on the effect of obesity early in life on endometrial and prostate cancer risk have provided inconsistent results. 5,6,10 -13 Obesity occurs when the energy balance is disturbed and the expenditure is less than the intake. Intake and expenditure can be modified by diet (e.g., high-fat diets) and physical activity (or inactivity). Influence on the energy balance is multifactorial and includes genetic, environmental and psychosocial factors. 1 Genetic factors account for a large proportion of the variation in BMI, through susceptibility genes. 1,2,14 Differences in genetic susceptibility within a population determine who is the most likely to become obese, but the environment determines the opportunity for exposure to external factors affecting energy balance (e.g., diet and physical activity).Our aim was to further explore the association between BMI at different ages and the risk of developing hormone-dependent tumors, e.g., cancer of the breast, corpus uteri, ovary and prostate. We utilized the Swedish Twin Registry with prospectively collected data on BMI and lifestyle factors such as phys...

The variation in process performance and sustainability of results indicate that lean efforts should be carefully adapted to the complexity of the care process and to the educational commitment of healthcare organizations. Ultimately, the ability to adapt lean to a particular context of application depends on the development of routines that effectively support learning from daily practices.

This paper describes new methods for fast correlation attacks, based on the theory of convolutional codes. They can be applied to arbitrary LFSR feedback polynomials, in opposite to the previous methods, which mainly focus on feedback polynomials of low weight. The results improve significantly the few previous results for this general case, and are in many cases comparable with corresponding results for low weight feedback polynomials.

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