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Changes over time in annual basal area growth and mean height for Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) and Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) Karst.) over the period, 1983-2020 were studied using sample tree data from temporary plots recorded in the Swedish National Forest Inventory. The annual basal area growth was derived from the last measured full ring on increment cores. Using 20 to 60-year-old dominant trees, the mean height and annual basal area growth were examined as functions of tree, stand and site conditions, and trends were assessed mainly using residual analyses over time. A significant increase in mean height at a given age was found for both species, but the annual basal area growth level remained stable over the 38-year period. Currently, at a given age of 50 annual rings at breast height, the mean heights of pines and spruces increased on average by 10.1% (i.e. similar to 2 m), compared to 50 year-old pines and spruces in the 1980s, and the increase was similar in the different regions. The results suggest that trees have become taller and slenderer in Swedish forests. Increasing tree height over time at a given age in Northern Europe has been documented in several reports and many causes have been suggested, such as changed forest management, increasing temperatures and nitrogen deposition. We suggest that elevated CO2 in the air and improved water-use efficiency for the trees might also be strong drivers.

We generally appreciate the position of Ceccherini, Duveiller et al. (2022) that ground truth and remotely sensed data need to be combined to achieve reliable estimates. However, Ceccherini, Duveiller et al. (2022) make several incorrect and unfounded claims and accusations about Breidenbach, Ellison et al. (2022). We think these claims should be corrected. We respond to each of three basic claims by Ceccherini, Duveiller et al. (2022). Due to space limitations, we have focused on what we consider the principal points., Preprint submitted to Ann For Sci. Version 1.1 includes the list of authors.

The study focuses on facts about the role of the forests, near the mountains in the northwestern part of Sweden, from a climate perspective. This refers to the net removal in living tree biomass while the substitution effect is omitted. The area-based (design based) estimates are based on data from the Swedish National Forest Inventories permanent sample plots in two areas close to the mountains. The first area refers to the above limit for forests close to the mountains (above GFS) according to the Swedish Forest Agency and the second according to a map layer that is considered important of protection for biodiversity reasons according to the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA). Of the 8.1 Mha of land above the limit for forests close to mountains, 3.1 Mha is forest land, of which 1.7 Mha is formally protected forest land. Productive forest land used for timber production amounts to less than 0.5 Mha. For both formally protected forest land and non-formally protected forest land, living biomass constitutes a net uptake of -1 Mton CO2 / year during the period 1990-2016 on a reasonably similar area. If all forest land above GFS is excluded from timber production, the short-term increase in net removal in the forest will be approximately -0.4 Mton CO2 / year, which corresponds to harvest. Then we do not expect any substitution effect and believe that other carbon pools (dead wood, soil, litter and the carbon pool harvested wood products) in the short term are not affected by the stopping of felling. The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency has selected an area close to the mountains where two thirds comprise forest land. No land is formally protected. Of approximately 1.0 Mha of forest land, 0.39 Mha was assessed as forest land for timber production. The net uptake in living biomass of forest land amounted to approximately -1 Mton CO2 / year during the period. On productive forest land for timber production, the net uptake was approximately -0.6 Mton CO2 / year during the period. If all forest land according to the map layer is excluded from timber production, the short-term increase in net removal in the forest will be approximately -0.1 Mton CO2 / year, which corresponds to harvest. Then we do not expect any substitution effect and believe that other carbon pools in the short term are not affected by the stopping of felling.The study focuses on facts about the role of the forests, near the mountains in the northwestern part of Sweden, from a climate perspective. This refers to the net removal in living tree biomass while the substitution effect is omitted. The area-based (design based) estimates are based on data from the Swedish National Forest Inventories permanent sample plots in two areas close to the mountains. The first area refers to the above limit for forests close to the mountains (above GFS) according to the Swedish Forest Agency and the second according to a map layer that is considered important of protection for biodiversity reasons according to the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA). Of the 8.1 Mha of land above the limit for forests close to mountains, 3.1 Mha is forest land, of which 1.7 Mha is formally protected forest land. Productive forest land used for timber production amounts to less than 0.5 Mha. For both formally protected forest land and non-formally protected forest land, living biomass constitutes a net uptake of -1 Mton CO2 / year during the period 1990-2016 on a reasonably similar area. If all forest land above GFS is excluded from timber production, the short-term increase in net removal in the forest will be approximately -0.4 Mton CO2 / year, which corresponds to harvest. Then we do not expect any substitution effect and believe that other carbon pools (dead wood, soil, litter and the carbon pool harvested wood products) in the short term are not affected by the stopping of felling. The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency has selected an area close to the mountains where two thirds comprise forest land. No land is formally protected. Of approximately 1.0 Mha of forest land, 0.39 Mha was assessed as forest land for timber production. The net uptake in living biomass of forest land amounted to approximately -1 Mton CO2 / year during the period. On productive forest land for timber production, the net uptake was approximately -0.6 Mton CO2 / year during the period. If all forest land according to the map layer is excluded from timber production, the short-term increase in net removal in the forest will be approximately -0.1 Mton CO2 / year, which corresponds to harvest. Then we do not expect any substitution effect and believe that other carbon pools in the short term are not affected by the stopping of felling.

Using satellite-based maps, Ceccherini et al. (2020) report abruptly increasing harvested area estimates in several EU-countries beginning in 2015. They identify Finland and Sweden as countries with the largest harvest increases and the biggest potential effect on the EU’s climate policy strategy. Using more than 120,000 field reference observations to analyze the satellite-based map employed by Ceccherini et al. (2020) we found that the map’s ability to detect harvested areas abruptly increases after 2015. While the abrupt detected increase in harvest is merely an artifact, Ceccherini et al. (2020) interpret this difference as an indicator of increasing intensity in forest management and harvesting practice. In their response to comments, Ceccherini et al. (2021) revised their estimates to some degree but still used inadequate methods leading to an overestimation of harvested area in Finland and Sweden. Ceccherini, G. et al. (2020). Abrupt increase in harvested forest area over Europe after 2015. Nature 583, 72-77. Ceccherini, G., et al. (2021). Reply to Wernick, IK et al.; Palahí, M. et al. Nature 592(7856): E18-E23., Includes smaller additions to the text compared to version 1.0

Using satellite-based maps, Ceccherini et al. report abruptly increasing harvested area estimates in several EU26-countries beginning in 2015. They identify Finland and Sweden as countries with the largest harvest increases and the biggest potential effect on the EU’s climate policy strategy. Using more than 120,000 field reference observations to analyze the satellite-based map employed by Ceccherini et al. we found that the map’s ability to detect harvested areas abruptly increases after 2015. While the abrupt detected increase in harvest is merely an artifact, Ceccherini et al. interpret this difference as an indicator of increasing intensity in forest management and harvesting practice. Ceccherini, G. et al. Abrupt increase in harvested forest area over Europe after 2015. Nature 583, 72-77 (2020).

Genom att aktiviteter inom markanvändning och skogsbruk (LULUCF-sektorn) fått större betydelse i klimatarbetet, såväl internationellt (EU/2018/841) som nationellt (SOU 2020:4) har behovet av förbättrad uppföljning av dessa aktiviteter aktualiserats. Det finns även ett behov av att förbättra bedömningen av potentialen, dvs. effekten på växthusgasbalansen av att åtgärderna införs. I denna rapport analyseras hur kolinlagringen kan öka genom beskogning av jordbruksmark och hur åtgärden kan följas upp. I uppdraget ingår att (i) föreslå hur förändrade utsläpp och upptag kan kvantifieras på objektsnivå i samband med utförd åtgärd, (ii) identifiera tillgängliga datakällor för att följa upp åtgärderna, (iii) föreslå eventuellt ytterligare behov av data för uppföljning av åtgärderna. Eftersom omfattande inventering krävs för mäta effekten av beskogning på plats har vi tagit fram en uppsättning typbestånd för olika trädslag (gran, tall, björk, asp, contortatall, ek, lärk, bok), bördighet (låg, medel, hög), tidigare markanvändning (vallbruk, odling av ettåriga grödor respektive grönträda) för tre regioner (Götaland, Svealand, Norrland), dvs. 216 olika alternativ. Dessutom har vi också tagit fram motsvarande uppsättning för fall där föryngringen är något mindre lyckad. De olika typbestånden simulerades med Heureka Planwise med komplettering av markkolsdata för tidigare markanvändning som simulerades med ICBM-modellen. För att också visa effekten av att välja snabbväxande trädslag som poppel och hybridasp gjordes en litteraturgenomgång som jämfördes med de simulerade bestånden. Det är stor skillnad i utfallet för de olika simulerade beskogningsalternativen. Gran binder i genomsnitt 2,3 ton C ha-1 år-1 över en omloppstid, medan björk binder 0,9 ton C ha-1 år-1 över en omloppstid. Generellt sker ett större kolupptag vid lyckade föryngringar med i snitt 1,4 ton C ha-1 år-1 nettoupptag över en omloppstid vid 2000 stammar vid en återväxtinventering jämfört med 1,1 ton C ha-1 år-1 vid 1000 stammar. Högre bonitet ger i snitt 1,7 ton C ha-1 år-1 jämfört med 0,9 ton C ha-1 år-1 vid lägre bonitet i genomsnitt över samtliga simulerade bestånd. En intressant observation är att det tar ett antal år innan bestånden bidrar som nettosänka (men med stor variation givet variationerna ovan). Detta beror på att nedbrytningen av det gamla kolet i marken inledningsvis är högre än tillförseln av nytt kol. Även om man ska tolka dessa simulerade resultat med viss försiktighet visar det att tidigare markanvändning bör tas i beaktande för var beskogning bör ske och med vilka trädslag. Det finns annars en risk att nyttan med beskogningen begränsas både i total effekt och tidsmässigt för att bidraget ska bli signifikant relativt befintliga klimatmål. Underlagen från de simulerade typbestånden kan användas i kombination med aktivitetsdata, dvs. arealer för aktiv plantering för att beräknas totaleffekt av beskogning. Genomsnitt kan t.ex. tas fram som kan komplettera de utsläpps- och upptagsfaktorer som används i klimatrapporteringen idag i kombination med data från SLU Riksskogstaxeringen (RT), exempel ges i rapporten på regionvisa faktorer. Det är också möjligt att använda typvärden på den aggregeringsnivå som är lämplig givet de aktivitetsdata som finns tillgängliga. Andra källor för aktivitetsdata kan vara den anmälan som görs till Länsstyrelsen när jordbruksmark tas ur bruk eller uppgifter om att jordbruksmarken inte längre ingår i ansökan om stöd inom landsbygdsprogrammet. Om en bra uppföljning ska kunna göras i framtiden behöver ett system som sammanställer den anmälan som görs idag och de ansökningar om stöd som kan bli verklighet om aktiviteten beskogning kommer ges stöd i någon form (antingen genom ett nytt system eller genom att det implementeras i befintliga stödsystem). Uppföljning kan göras genom stickprovsinventering i lämpliga tidsintervall men också genom att markägaren informerar ansvarig myndighet löpande om beståndets utveckling, i.e. i vilken utsträckning beskogningen varit lyckad (kanske vart femte år). Uppgiftslämnarbördan ska dock hållas så låg som möjligt för att inte minska intresset för åtgärden. När det gäller potentialen av beskogning relativt klimatmål till 2030 och 2045 är det uppenbart att bidraget inte hinner bli så stort till 2030 givet att det tar tid innan tillväxten får fart och effekten av att nedbrytningen av markkol är högre än tillförseln av nytt kol initialt. Vi har beräknat ett antal scenarier med stöd av simuleringar av typbestånd. Utgångspunkten har varit dagens beskogningsintensitet och trädslagsfördelning. Den additionella effekten jämfört med det bidrag som aktiviteten beskogning ger idag, hamnar på i storleksordningen 50 kton CO2 år--1 10 år efter att scenarierna startar, men efter 25 år, dvs. runt 2045 kan bidraget bli mer än 1 000 kton CO2 år-1 vid beskogning på 10 kha år-1 i 20 år, dvs. totalt 200 kha. Det är dock stor variation beroende på vilken beskogningsstrategi som väljs. Ett alternativ där andelen löv ökar samtidigt som vi antar att bättre lokaler väljs ger bara ett extra bidrag på drygt 100 kton CO2 år-1 efter 25 år. Kortsiktigt verkar det effektivt att satsa på att plantera snabbväxande trädslag som poppel eller hybridasp, åtminstone på en del av den aktuella arealen. Beskogningen bidrar inte bara med inlagring av koldioxid utan också till produktion av träråvara. Efter 60 år kan bidraget från beskogad mark, dvs. den mark som beskogas i scenarierna bidra med mellan ca 0,4 miljoner m3 sk år-1 (scenario löv) och ca 1,4 miljoner m3 sk år-1 (scenario BAUx2) i gallring. Om utvecklingen följer alternativ Hög kan det handla om uppemot 2 miljoner m3 sk år-1för scenario BAUx2 (som innebär att upp till 400 kha mark tas i anspråk för beskogning). Jämfört med dagens avverkningsnivåer motsvarar detta ca 1-2% av det årliga virkesuttaget. Därtill tillkommer förstås virkesleveranser när bestånden slutavverkas men den kolmängden är inkluderad i nettoupptaget. Potentiellt skulle beskogning och produktion av skogsråvara på nedlagd jordbruksmark kunna frigöra produktiv skogsmark för andra ändamål, t.ex. för ökat bevarande av biologisk mångfald. Hur våra marker utnyttjas i framtiden är dock en svår balansgång, samtidigt som jordbruksmark läggs ner, pekar mycket på dessa arealer kan behövas för livsmedelsproduktion i framtiden. Det är därför rimligt att inte inteckna alltför stor areal för beskogning. Vår bedömning är att de 200 kha som vi använt i denna studie inte i alltför stor utsträckning inkräktar på framtida livsmedelsproduktion eftersom marken i huvudsak redan tagits ur jordbruksproduktion.

The Nordic Council of Ministers has set up the Nordic COP 15 Group to help achieve a successful outcome in the climate change negotiations at COP 15 in Copenhagen in December 2009. The Nordic COP 15 Group have identified key elements in the negotiations where efforts are needed to ensure a good outcome, i.e. adaptation to climate change, technolo-gy transfer, legal issues, sinks and deforestation. This report explore ways to adjust the current accounting rules on sinks into rules that would create better incen-tives for actively managing lands, in order to decrease the emission of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and/ or to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Different proposals for the treatment of the LULUCF-sector (Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry sector) are compared and analysed.

Two of the most important internal functions within a company, which have gained increased importance, are purchasing and logistics. Purchasing and logistics both contribute to the competitiveness of an organisation by conducting different value adding activities separately. There is also a huge potential for increased benefits if a high degree of integration exists between the two functions. Although there is evidence that purchasing and logistics have been working closely together historically, the operational focus of logistics and the commercial focus of purchasing have created a tension between the two functions. It has been shown that some purchasing managers mostly have been committed to reducing the price. The logistics function has as a cause of this sometimes been forced to deal with late deliveries and inferior quality from suppliers. To manage the interface activities between the functions is crucial in order to able to achieve integration. Purchasing and logistics functions are of major importance within wholesaling companies because they are considered as core internal functions. This study has been conducted at the wholesaling companies The Body Shop, Hälsokostcentralen (HKC), Mekonomen, Elgiganten and ICA. Research questions: § What activities exist within the purchasing and logistics function at the specific wholesaling companies and which of these activities are integrated? § What are the factors that influence the integration between the purchasing and logistics functions and how do these factors hinder or enable the integration? Purpose: Initially this thesis aims to identify what activities that exist and which of them that are integrated between the purchasing and logistics functions within the wholesaling companies The Body Shop, HKC, Mekonomen, Elgiganten and ICA. Furthermore the purpose is to identify what factors that influence the integration between the purchasing and logistics function in these companies and also explain how these factors hinder and enable the integration.

Medical science and health care both possess a strong tradition of structuring their terminological knowledge through controlled vocabularies, such as nomenclatures, thesauri, or classification systems [1-6]. The availability of such resources mirrors the need for sharing a common understanding of the employed terms and the semantic relations holding between them. Community-wide efforts such as the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) [7], have reached a level of both coverage and depth today that is unmatched within many if not most other scientific disciplines. The reason behind investing such a tremendous effort into those terminological systems is evident: They are intended to provide support for a wide range of different tasks, such as unambiguous, focused access to patient data for retrieval and decision support, the comparison of clinical cases, the retrieval of similar cases, clinical epidemiology and research, billing and accounting activities, the generation of health statistics from relevant and valid data, semantic interoperability between several (thematically overlapping) data sources, the quality management of medical services, as well as the structuring of scientific literature repositories and experimental databases. So, the question may be raised whether the current biomedical terminological resources are already sufficient to properly serve the expressed needs. Basically, all terminology systems in current routine use rest on informal specifications. Their semantics are essentially rooted in a human understanding of natural language and implicit assumptions about the taxonomic, partonomic and other unspecified relations between terms. Interpreting such relations in light of a particular search, a decision support problem or, even more challenging, the drawing of ad hoc inferences often leads to strange and erroneous results. This is usually due to a lack of any rigid, formal semantics and ontological foundation underlying the respective terminological systems, an issue that has been increasingly addressed in recent years. Whereas current biomedical terminology systems such as ICD, ICF, LOINC, CMPU, ICNP and many others are highly focused on quite well-delimited tasks and subdomains, the vision of a universal clinical terminology, covering a broad range of health-related domains and meeting the needs of all health professionals, has stimulated numerous health informatics research activities. Is this vision now being materialized by the new health terminology SNOMED CT? [8] During the last two decades, SNOMED (Systemized Nomenclature of Medicine) has been growing from a pathology-centered vocabulary to a comprehensive, structured clinical terminology. Even though SNOMED CT is still rooted in a strong legacy, it is increasingly subscribing to principles of logics and ontology. This fact, together with its impressive number of terms in most areas of medicine and health care has lead to a growing international interest. Nine countries have so far joined the International Health Terminology Standards Development Organization IHTSDO, a non-profit association founded in 2007 with the task of the development, quality assurance and distribution of SNOMED CT. However, there are still only very few prototypical implementations of SNOMED CT in clinical settings, the feasibility of such a comprehensive terminology as basis for the whole health delivery process is still subject to discussion, and several shortcomings, regarding both SNOMED CT architeture and content, still persist [9]. The papers in this supplement of BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making are extended and updated contributions to the Semantic Mining Conference on SNOMED CT (SMCS 2006), organized by the European Union Network of Excellence "Semantic Interoperability and Data Mining in Biomedicine" in October 2006. It was the first European forum on SNOMED CT for health policy makers, clinicians, nurses, system developers, computer scientists, terminologists and translators. A number of prominent invited speakers provided overviews of the current efforts and developments in the context of SNOMED CT and many scientific contributions illuminated ongoing research on SNOMED CT. Out of the 22 scientific papers and posters published in the proceedings of this conference, eight were selected for this special issue by the program committee due to their scientific excellence. This selection mirrors the different research strands on SNOMED CT and represents a broad range of countries, viz., The Netherlands, USA, France, Australia, Switzerland, Sweden, UK, Hungary, and Germany. We want to thank the reviewers for their in-depth work in reviewing first the conference submissions and then again the selected contributions. The following contributions are included in this special issue: In their article Forty years of SNOMED: a literature review [10] Ronald Cornet and Nicolette de Keizer provide an overview of published studies on SNOMED over a period of 40 years, reflected in scientific publications. They found that most studies concern SNOMED in theory and a minor number provides an account of the use of SNOMED in practice. (This is also a clear tendency regarding the papers in this special issue). A major challenge of the adoption of a world-wide terminology is the use of legacy terminologies tailored and optimized to meet specific coding and documentation requirements. Therefore, a seamless migration from proprietary solutions to a common standard requires high-quality rules for manual cross-terminology mapping as described by Geraldine Wade and Trent Rosenbloom in their paper Experiences Mapping a Legacy Interface Terminology to SNOMED CT [11] which emphasizes the value of discoveries resulting from this mapping as important contributions to the refinement of SNOMED CT. The relation between SNOMED CT and a legacy terminology is also addressed by Iulian Alecu, Cedric Bousquet, and Marie-Christine Jaulent in their paper A case report: Using SNOMED CT for grouping Adverse Drug Reactions Terms [12]. The authors provide evidence that the logical structure of SNOMED CT can be employed to improve term grouping and retrieval in the WHO Adverse Reaction Terminology, important for clinical trials and medical care. Another mapping experience is reported by Yefeng Wang, Jon Patrick, Graeme Miller, and Julie O'Hallaran in A Computational Linguistics Motivated Mapping of ICPC-2 PLUS to SNOMED CT [13]. The authors compare different terminology mapping approaches including language engineering methods and also address the problem arising from the fact that one source concept maps to the coordination of two target concepts. Computational linguistics approaches are also employed by Patrick Ruch, Julien Gobeill, Christian Lovis, and Antoine Geissbuhler. [14] In their contribution Automatic Medical Encoding with SNOMED Categories they present two information retrieval approaches that address both the retrieval of SNOMED CT concepts and the automated encoding of free text and report on a first evaluation of a prototype. The encoding of clinical data using information models and archetypes is addressed by Erik Sundvall, Rahil Qamar, Mikael Nystrom, Mattias Forss, Hakan Petersson, Hans Ahlfeldt, and Alan Rector. In their paper Integration of Tools for Binding Archetypes to SNOMED CT [15] they present an approach that supports this task. They also discuss the yet unresolved problems of binding clinical information models to SNOMED CT and the control of post-coordination of concepts. Two articles deal with the ontological background of SNOMED CT, an issue that has repeatedly been advocated in recent years. [9,16-18] In the first one, entitled Ontological analysis of SNOMED CT [19], Gergely Heja, Gyorgy Surjan, and Peter Varga perform an analysis of the structure of SNOMED CT based on the formal top-level ontology DOLCE. They present a typology of errors occuring when the SNOMED CT hierarchies are submitted to formal ontological scrutiny and provide suggestions of how to avoid these errors. In the second one, Formal Representation of Complex SNOMED CT Expressions [20], Stefan Schulz, Kornel Marko, and Boontawee Suntisrivaraporn focus on the representation of complex events and procedures, highlight the limited expressiveness of SNOMED CT regarding negations and formally describe the ambiguities in the representation of complex concepts. Due to the recently facilitated access to the SNOMED CT sources, research activities are increasing all over the world and the interchange between the SNOMED CT community and the academic world is strengthening. Evidence for this is given by the recent MEDINFO, MIE and AMIA conferences as well as by the recent AMIA KR-MED 2008 conference on "Representing and Sharing Knowledge using SNOMED CT". We hope that you will enjoy this special issue and that it helps you keeping track of some of the fascinating research in applied terminology, ontology and clinical terminologies.

Background The Archetype formalism and the associated Archetype Definition Language have been proposed as an ISO standard for specifying models of components of electronic healthcare records as a means of achieving interoperability between clinical systems. This paper presents an archetype editor with support for manual or semi-automatic creation of bindings between archetypes and terminology systems. Methods Lexical and semantic methods are applied in order to obtain automatic mapping suggestions. Information visualisation methods are also used to assist the user in exploration and selection of mappings. Results An integrated tool for archetype authoring, semi-automatic SNOMED CT terminology binding assistance and terminology visualization was created and released as open source. Conclusion Finding the right terms to bind is a difficult task but the effort to achieve terminology bindings may be reduced with the help of the described approach. The methods and tools presented are general, but here only bindings between SNOMED CT and archetypes based on the openEHR reference model are presented in detail. Background The Archetype formalism and the associated Archetype Definition Language have been proposed as an ISO standard for specifying models of components of electronic healthcare records as a means of achieving interoperability between clinical systems. This paper presents an archetype editor with support for manual or semi-automatic creation of bindings between archetypes and terminology systems. Methods Lexical and semantic methods are applied in order to obtain automatic mapping suggestions. Information visualisation methods are also used to assist the user in exploration and selection of mappings. Results An integrated tool for archetype authoring, semi-automatic SNOMED CT terminology binding assistance and terminology visualization was created and released as open source. Conclusion Finding the right terms to bind is a difficult task but the effort to achieve terminology bindings may be reduced with the help of the described approach. The methods and tools presented are general, but here only bindings between SNOMED CT and archetypes based on the openEHR reference model are presented in detail. Original Publication: Erik Sundvall, Rahil Qamar, Mikael Nyström, Mattias Forss, Håkan Petersson, Hans Åhlfeldt and Alan Rector, Integration of Tools for Binding Archetypes to SNOMED CT, 2008, BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making, (8), S7. http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6947-8-S1-S7 Licensee: BioMed Central http://www.biomedcentral.com/