We present characteristics of infective endocarditis (IE) caused by Staphylococcus lugdunensis and compare with IE caused by Staphylococcus aureus and other CoNS, in the National Swedish Registry of IE (2008–2018). Thirty episodes of S. lugdunensis IE were registered, of which 21 cases affected native valves, and 7 patients were subjected to surgery. The mortality rate at 30 days was significantly

Controlling infinite dimensional models remains a challenging task for many practitioners since they are not suitable for traditional control design techniques or will result in a high-order controller too complex for implementation. Therefore, the model or the controller need to be reduced to an acceptable dimension, which is time-consuming, requires some expertise and may introduce numerical err

Photoinduced bimolecular charge transfer processes involving the iron(III) N-heterocyclic carbene (FeNHC) photosensitizer [Fe(phtmeimb)2]+ (phtmeimb = phenyltris(3-methyl-imidazolin-2-ylidene)borate) and triethylamine as well as N,N-dimethylaniline donors have been studied using optical spectroscopy. The full photocycle of charge separation and recombination down to ultrashort time scales was stud

Aerogels are attracting increasing interest due to their functional properties, such as lightweight and high porosity, which make them promising materials for energy storage and advanced composites. Compressive deformation allows the nano- and microstructure of lamellar freeze-cast aerogels to be tailored toward the aforementioned applications, where a 3D nanostructure of closely spaced, aligned s

To respond to the question of whose interest proportionality serves, this article enquires into the function of this important principle. As the article argues, proportionality functions in much the same way as any generally applicable pragmatic principle: it facilitates comprehension of communicative behaviour on the part of utterers, in this case international lawmakers. Thus, the principle of p

During conditioned food aversion — a.k.a. sauce béarnaise syndrome — the ingestion of a spoiled food item leads to a lasting aversion towards cues reminiscent of the item. A new study finds that, in Drosophila, taste aversion depends on the immune system and the mushroom body.

The development of environmental certification schemes has increased rapidly during the last twenty years and are often used as benchmarks during design of new buildings or reconstruction. However, for management of our existing buildings the members of Sweden Green Building Council request for clear guidelines and a certification scheme. Therefore, a new certification scheme called Miljöbyggnad i

As a result of the energy performance of the buildings directive (EPBD 2010), the requirements have been gradually tightened in the Swedish building regulations. For the purpose of the directive to be realized, it is becoming increasingly important to ensure that buildings actually live up to the minimum rules laid down in the Swedish Building Regulations (BBR) or more ambitious requirements impos

Research and innovation are key pillars of the EU’s strategy to create sustainable growth and prosperity in Europe. Research infrastructures (RIs) are central instruments to implement this strategy. They bring together a wide diversity of expertise and interests to look for solutions to many of the problems society is facing today. To facilitate the creation and operation of such RIs, the EU adopt

This article explores relevant laws and doctrines of patent infringement in Europe with a special emphasis on 3D printing (3DP) technologies. Considering the difficulties that patent owners might face in pursuing direct patent infringement actions in the rapidly evolving era of 3DP, we suggest that patent owners will most likely direct their efforts towards indirect patent infringement strategies.

HQC is an IND-CCA2 KEM running for standardization in NIST’s post-quantum cryptography project and has advanced to the second round. It is a code-based scheme in the class of public key encryptions, with given sets of parameters spanning NIST security strength 1, 3 and 5, corresponding to 128, 192 and 256 bits of classic security.In this paper we present an attack recovering the secret key of an H

Evaporation is one of the vital components of hydrological cycle. Precise estimation of pan evaporation (Epan) is essential for the sustainable water resources management. The current study proposed a novel approach to estimate daily Epan across the humid region of Iran using support vector regression (SVR) technique coupled with Krill Herd Algorithm (SVR-KHA). Meteorological data were collected f

Rainwater harvesting systems (RWHSs) have been accepted as a simple and effective approach to ease the worsening of urban water stress. However, in arid and semiarid regions, a comprehensive method for promoting domestic RWHSs in a large-scale water-saving scheme that incorporates water consumption reducing equipment (WCRE) and gray water reuse (GWR), has not been well developed. For this, based o

Artificial intelligence (AI) models have been effectively applied to predict/forecast certain variable in several engineering applications, in particular, where this variable is highly stochastic in nature and complex to identify utilizing classical mathematical model, such as river streamflow. However, the existing AI models, such as multi-layer perceptron neural network (MLP-NN), are basically i

Root zone temperature is one of the most important soil characteristics, controlling many of the physical, chemical and biological processes in the soil. Temperature varies by soil depth, and exerts a profound impact on plant germination and growth. In this study, the accuracy of two artificial intelligence models including support vector regression (SVR) and elman neural network (ENN) and their h

In achieving water resource management goals such as irrigation scheduling, an accurate estimate of reference evapotranspiration (ET0) is critical. Support vector regression (SVR) was applied to the modeling of daily ET0 at three meteorological stations in Iran subject to different climates: Isfahan (arid), Urmia (semi-arid), and Yazd (hyper-arid). Different pre-processing approaches [relief (RL),

Field capacity (FC) and permanent wilting point (PWP) are two important properties of the soil when the soil moisture is concerned. Since the determination of these parameters is expensive and time-consuming, this study aims to develop and evaluate a new hybrid of artificial neural network model coupled with a whale optimization algorithm (ANN-WOA) as a meta-heuristic optimization tool in defining