The conversion of rice hulls into fermentable saccharides was explored through steam pretreatment employing 2.5% SO2. The interaction between temperature and time was assessed by means of the response surface method to achieve optimum contents of C6-sugars in water-insoluble solids (WIS) and C5-sugars in the liquor. Pretreatment carried out at 218 °C for 2.3 min released liquor containing 55.4 g/L

In addition to a majority of insulin-producing β-cells, the mammalian pancreatic islets contain considerable numbers of α1- and α2-cells. While the α2-cells are the cellular source of glucagon, the secretory product stored in the granules of the α1-cells still remains to be identified.Several authors have reported that glucagon stimulates insulin release. This effect of glucagon was found to be de

Uncertainty during the course of a trip is regarded as a particularly disturbing phenomenon by public transport (PT) passengers and has been shown to have a substantial impact on travel behaviour. However, so far there has been little empirical evidence within contemporary research concerning the degree of mid- to long-term adaptation among PT passengers to changes in the principal cause of such u

Vi lever i en apokalyptisk tid. Apokalyptisk argumentation till stor del outforskad. Artikeln presenterar en analysmodell i tre steg: upplevd ondska, tidens tecken och tillförlitlig auktoritet, inspirerad av Stephen O'Leary. Artikeln innehåller två analysexempel: USA:s förre president Donald Trump och den Islamiska staten. Båda bygger sin argumentation på en apokalyptisk världsbild.Our time is an apocalyptic time, but the argumentation in this apocalyptic time has hardly been studied by scholars of argumentation. This article shows how both Donald Trump and the jihadist warriors of ISIS appeal to an apocalyptic worldview in their argumentation. The three topos of evil, time and authority from Stephen O’Leary’s Arguing the Apocalypse are used in the analysis. Both Trump suppo

Diversified farming systems, for example those that incorporate agroforestry elements, have been proposed as a solution that could maintain and improve multiple ecosystem services. However, habitat diversification in and around arable fields has complex and inconsistent effects on invertebrate crop pests and their natural enemies. This hinders the development of policy recommendations to promote t

BACKGROUND: HAART has improved the survival of HIV infected patients. However, compared to patients in high-income countries, patients in resource-poor countries have higher mortality rates. Our objective was to identify independent risk factors for death in Ethiopian patients treated with HAART.METHODS: In a district hospital in Ethiopia, we treated adult HIV infected patients with HAART based on

The fifth generation (5G) of mobile communications introduces improvements on many fronts when compared to its previous generations. Besides the performance enhancements and new advances in radio technologies, it also integrates other technological domains, such as cloud-to-things continuum and artificial intelligence. In this work, the 5G-DIVE Elastic Edge Platform (DEEP) is proposed as the linki

Background: Head and neck cancers (HNCs) encompass a heterogeneous group of cancers between the mouth and larynx. Familial clustering in HNCs has been described, but how it influences individual sites and to which extent known risk factors, such as human papilloma virus (HPV) infection, may contribute is not well established. Patients/methods: We employed standardized incidence ratios (SIRs) to es

Background: E surgical, anaesthesia, and obstetric (SAO) care were proposed in 2015 by the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery. These aimed to capture access to surgery, surgical workforce, surgical volume, perioperative mortality rate, and catastrophic and impoverishing financial consequences of surgery. Despite being rapidly taken up by practitioners, data points from which to derive the indicat

Celebrated by some as a ‘new’ mode of governance (Sabel and Zeitlin 2008) and experimentalist architecture (Sabel and Zeitlin 2010), and denigrated by others as a ‘red herring’ (Idema and Keleman 2006), the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) connects with major themes in EU politics and public policy, namely the Europe 2020 strategy for economic growth and competitiveness, the transformation of the

Milk polar lipids provide choline, ethanolamine, and polyunsaturated fatty acids, which are needed for the growth and plasticity of the tissues in a suckling child. They may also inhibit cholesterol absorption by interacting with cholesterol during micelle formation. They may also have beneficial luminal, mucosal, and metabolic effects in both the neonate and the adult. The milk fat globule membra

Responding to today's often transboundary emergencies, frequently characterized by unclear root causes and indistinct responsibilities as well as multiple actors, will require that responding actors come together to meet societal needs and solve problems arising in relation to those needs. In collective problem solving, representing the problem is crucial, especially in emergency situations, where

The use of concepts is a vital part of the research process. Many researchers overexploit popular concepts by adding more and more vague and poorly defined meanings to them, thereby making their boundaries unclear and the concepts increasingly unwieldy. We will refer to these types of concepts as hembigs – an acronym for hegemonic, ambiguous, big concepts. The article demonstrates the problem in t

Improved and enhanced oil recovery methods require sophisticated simulation tools to predict the injected flow pass together with the chemical reactions inside it. One approach is application of higher-order numerical schemes to avoid excessive numerical diffusion that is very typical for transport processes. In this work, we provide a first step towards higher-order schemes applicable on general

Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is a noninvasive imaging modality, where imperceptible currents are applied to the skin and the resulting surface voltages are measured. It has the potential to distinguish between ischaemic and haemorrhagic stroke with a portable and inexpensive device. The image reconstruction relies on an accurate forward model of the experimental setup. Because of the rela