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This study aims to extract and explain the territorially varied relation between socioeconomic factors and absence rate from work due to own illness or disability in European countries in the years 2006-2020. For this purpose, several causes were identified, depending on men and women. To explain the absenteeism and emphasize gender as well as intercountry differences, geographically weighted regression was applied. For men, there were five main variables that influenced sickness absence: body mass index, the average rating of satisfaction by job situation, employment in the manufacturing sector, social benefits by sickness/health care, and performing health-enhancing physical activity. For women, there were five main variables that increased the absence rate: the risk of poverty or social exclusion, long-standing illness or health problems, employment in the manufacturing sector, social protection benefits, and deaths due to pneumonia. Based on the conducted research, it was proven that the sickness absence observed in the analyzed countries was highly gender and spatially diverged. Understanding the multifactorial factors playing an important role in the occurrence of regional and gender-divergent sickness absence may be a good predictor of subsequent morbidity and mortality as well as be very useful to better prevent this outcome.

Thermal characterization of materials, especially civil engineering materials, in the way of non-destructive methods, are more and more widespread. In this article, we show an original point of view to describe the used method, the thermal waves, to obtain the thermal impedance of the studied system, using a specific sensor--a fluxmeter. The identification technique, based on a frequential approach, is optimized by applying a random input to the system. This kind of random heating is shown to provide a frequency range where the thermal effusivity is able to be identified and not correlated to another parameter. The strength of the method is also the determination of the contact resistance of the system, that allows to validate the identification process. Experimental results obtained from a sample with well-known thermal properties (polyvinyl chloride) are used to validate the proposed method.

Pregnant rats, hypophysectomized-hysterectomized on day 12 (day 1=insemination), secreted progesterone (P) at about 50% of the day 12 level for 3-5 days. Daily treatment with estradiol 100 microng (E100) but not with E25 or E50, from day 12 to day 20, of such rats, restored P secretion until day 16 to that of intact pregnant rats; on day 17 a drastic permanent fall occurred. E100 had no effect after ovariectomy, and did not change the metabolic clearance rate of P. This E100 effect was absent in decidual tissue (DT)-bearing, or hysterectomized pseudopregnant (PSP) rats, and in pregnant ones before day 11. When pregnant rats were hypophysectomized-hysterectomized on day 10, and were treated with rat placental luteotrophin (rPL) (in the form of day 12 pregnant rat serum: "PRS-12") on days 10 and 11, however, E100 increased P secretion above that found with either PRS-12 or E100 alone. DT-bearing PSP rats, similarly operated on on day 12 and treated with PRS-12 on day 12, responded in the same way to E100. In these rats also the E100 effect lasted for four days. In the day 12 hypophysectomized-hysterectomized pregnant rat, the E100 effect could not be prolonged by single treatments with PRS-12 on either days 13, 14 or 16, but when PRS-12 was given daily from day 12 to 19, P was secreted until day 20 only slightly below the day 12 level; this treatment plus E100 raised P secretion, prolonged it to day 18, and led to a marked fall by day 20 similar to that of the intact pregnant rat at term. The marked increase in P secretion between days 12 and 15 of normal pregnancy may thus be a response to intraluteal estrogen; the pattern of P secretion from day 12 to term may reflect the effects of both estrogen and rPL. rPL probably induces this effect by generating luteal estrogen and LH receptors. The placenta may also secrete an LH-like hormone (rCG?) which, through the LH receptors, could stimulate intraluteal estrogen production.