A few years ago the Maritime Pilots Institute Netherlands (MPIN) was asked to carry out practical research aimed at developing a simple method to predict wind loads on huge constructions. For practical reasons the method should not be time consuming. Some reasons for the initiative were the following. …

After 2001, nine years after the fall of the Taliban, women's socio-economic position in Afghanistan has hardly improved. To this day, women are subjected to many cruelties such as torture and rape. After the Taliban had been defeated in 2001, the total amount of development assistance by the international …

Delirium occurs frequently in critically ill patients, and especially in severely ill and in infectious patients. Although several causal pathways for delirium have been described, the role of biomarkers in ICU patients is unknown. We investigated potential differences in various serum biomarkers between …

Delirium is a frequent disorder in the ICU associated with poor outcome. Several organizations, including the SCCM and the APA, therefore recommend standard screening for delirium to improve early diagnosis and treatment. The CAM-ICU is the most frequently used delirium detection tool in the Netherlands. …

Background: Patients in hospitals and nursing homes are at risk for the development of often preventable adverse events. Guidelines for the prevention of many types of adverse events are available, however compliance with these guidelines appears to be lacking. As a result many patients do not receive …

Dynamic plantar pressure images are routinely used in clinical gait assessment, and peak pressure, mean pressure, and pressure-time integral are the most frequently used parameters to summarize these images. Many studies report only one parameter, but other studies report all three. The interdependency …

Confronting environmental sustainability issues requires firms to both enhance traditional operational practices and introduce new, innovative ones. There are opportunities to enter emergent markets for products and services supporting the sustainability agenda. It is anticipated that these circumstances …

A psycho-organic disorder such as delirium is a frequently occurring and serious disorder especially on Intensive Care units. Nowadays, more attention is paid to this problem by physicians, nurses and by researchers, but assessment of delirium in all ICU patients is still not common practice. If patients …

Obesity, especially morbid obesity, is a major health problem with considerable impact on physical, mental and social quality of life. Assessment of quality of life is considered crucial to understand and evaluate the consequences of obesity. However, the heterogeneity of the quality of life concept …

One of the most significant changes with regard to the use of internet is the transformation of passive information users into active actors, who increasingly create the content of the ¨World Wide Web¨ (WWW) themselves. Along with these changes, the economic impact of established media declines and experts …