Cold endangers the heat balance of the human body. Protective clothing is the natural and most common equipment against cold stress. However, clothing for cold protection may be bulky and heavy, affecting human performance and increasing the work load. In such cases, a heated garment with built-in heating elements may be helpful. This pilot study presents a method based on a thermal manikin to inv

Blood concentrations of lipoproteins and lipids are heritable risk factors for cardiovascular disease. Using genome-wide association data from three studies (n = 8,816 that included 2,758 individuals from the Diabetes Genetics Initiative specific to the current paper as well as 1,874 individuals from the FUSION study of type 2 diabetes and 4,184 individuals from the SardiNIA study of aging-associa

Light sensors are increasingly used to monitor vegetation growing status by measuring reflectance or transmittance in multispectral or photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) bands. The measurements are then used to estimate vegetation indices or the fraction of absorbed PAR (FPAR) in a continuous and long-term manner and to serve as inputs to environmental monitoring and calibration/validation

Early vision is the process occurring before any semantic interpretation of an image takes place. Motion estimation, object segmentation and detection are all parts of early vision, but recognition is not. Some models in early vision are easy to perform inference with---they are tractable. Others describe the reality well---they have high fidelity. This thesis improves the tractability-fidelity tr

We present a combination of semiempirical quantum-mechanical (SQM) calculations in the conductor-like screening model with the MM/GBSA (molecular-mechanics with generalized Born and surface-area solvation) method for ligand-binding affinity calculations. We test three SQM Hamiltonians, AM1, RM1, and PM6, as well as hydrogen-bond corrections and two different dispersion corrections. As test cases,

In this paper the design and demonstration of a 7 nm(3) h(-1) integrated steam reforming based hydrogen production unit using a Fischer-Tropsch diesel is reported. The system design is discussed in detail, including the fuel processor itself as well as the hydrogen purification and results from stand-alone operation of the combined unit operations is reported. Further, the results of an integratio

The purpose of this study was to determine whether delayed gadolinium-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging of cartilage (dGEMRIC) and T2 mapping are accurate techniques for measuring cartilage thickness in the metacarpus3/metatarsus3 (Mc3/Mt3) of Thoroughbred racehorses. Twenty-four Mc3/Mt3 cadaver specimens were acquired from six healthy racehorses. Cartilage thickness was measured from postintra-

The Bicoid (Bcd) protein gradient in Drosophila serves as a paradigm for gradient formation in textbooks. To explain the generation of the gradient, the ARTS model, which is based on the observation of a bcd mRNA gradient, proposes that the bcd mRNA, localized at the anterior pole at fertilization, migrates along microtubules (MTs) at the cortex to the posterior to form a bcd mRNA gradient which i

Proteinuria is associated with progression of kidney disease and is an independent risk factor for cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. The pathophysiological alterations resulting in proteinuria are obscure, although proteinuria is often associated with pathological changes in the glomerular filtration barrier (GFB). It is therefore of great interest to study the physiology of the GFB, in orde

Here we investigate the counting ability in honeybees by training them to receive a food reward after they have passed a specific number of landmarks. The distance to the food reward is varied frequently and randomly, whilst keeping the number of intervening landmarks constant. Thus, the bees cannot identify the food reward in terms of its distance from the hive. We find that bees can count up to

The diagnostic guidelines of Alzheimer's disease (AD) have recently been updated to include brain imaging and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers, with the aim of increasing the certainty of whether a patient has an ongoing AD neuropathologic process or not. The CSF biomarkers total tau (T-tau), hyperphosphorylated tau (P-tau) and the 42 amino acid isoform of amyloid beta (A beta 42) reflect the

Both logisticians and tax lawyers design global supply chains – but based on different logics. If they do not align each other’s perspectives, problems might occur in different areas. The purposes of this paper are to 1) illustrate the impact the tax system could have on supply chain design, 2) reflect (from both perspectives) on how the rules function. 3) propose a common communication platform

A light-induced photoluminescence (PL) enhancement in surface-deposited methylammonium lead iodide (CH3NH3PbI3) perovskites was investigated in detail using time-resolved luminescence microscopy. We found the PL intensity to increase up to three orders of magnitude upon light illumination with an excitation power density of 0.01-1 W cm(-2). The PL enhancement is accompanied by an increase of the P

QR decomposition (QRD) is used to solve least squares (LS) problems for a wide range of applications. However, traditional QR decomposition methods, such as Gram-Schmidt (GS), require high computational complexity and non-linear operations to achieve high throughput, limiting their usage on resource-limited platforms. To enable efficient LS computation on embedded systems for real-time application

We investigate electron localization in fully spin-polarized few-electron concentric double quantum rings submitted to a perpendicular magnetic field by means of density functional theory and exact diagonalization calculations. The variation of the applied magnetic field turns out to strongly affect the distribution of the electrons in such 'crystallized' configurations. A comparison and discussio