We propose a hollow tapered planar waveguide for compression of high-energy ultrashort laser pulses. Direct measurements suggest that it seems to find a very good trade-off among the energy throughput, the beam focusability, and the pulse compressibility. With a Ti:sapphire laser pulse of 12.0 mJ and 40 fs, our experiment produces an output pulse of 9: 4 fs duration with energy 9: 1 mJ (transverse

In a forested near-urban location in central Germany, the CCN efficiency of particles smaller than 100 nm decreases significantly during periods of new particle formation. This results in an increase of average activation diameters, ranging from 5 to 8% at supersaturations of 0.33% and 0.74%, respectively. At the same time, the organic mass fraction in the sub-100-nm size range increases from appr

This paper presents a novel method for the analysis of heart rate variability (HRV) during exercise stress testing enhanced with respiratory information. The instantaneous frequency and power of the low frequency (LF) and high frequency (HF) bands of the HRV are estimated by parametric decomposition of the instantaneous autocorrelation function (ACF) as a sum of damped sinusoids. The instantaneous

This paper presents a noise cancelling 0.7– 3.8GHz receiver front-end implemented in 65nm technology. The circuit has a main path consisting of a high input impedance gm-stage, current-mode passive mixers and baseband amplifiers, where the input match is provided by frequency translational negative feedback from baseband to RF input. An auxiliary path with tunable gain is introduced to cancel nois

This paper presents a first analysis of the distribution of head and eyebrow movements as a function of (a) phonological prominence levels (focal, non-focal) and (b) word accent (Accent 1, Accent 2) in Swedish news broadcasts. Our corpus consists of 31 brief news readings, comprising speech from four speakers and 986 words in total. A head movement was annotated for 229 (23.2%) of the words, while

Individuals differ consistently in their behavioural reactions towards novel objects and new situations. Reaction to novelty is one part of a suit of individually consistent behaviours called coping strategies or personalities and is often summarised as bold or shy behaviour. Coping strategies could be particularly important for migrating birds exposed to novel environments on their journeys. We c

Cross-sectional studies have shown that patients with primary hip osteoarthritis (OA) have higher bone mineral density (BMD), higher BMI, lower lean body mass, and higher fat content. But it is unknown if this phenotype is found also in patients with knee OA and if it precedes OA or manifests as a result of the disease.

BACKGROUND: Interventions aimed at reducing the number of smokers are generally believed to be cost effective. However as the cost of the interventions should be paid up front whereas the gains in life years only appear in the future--the budgetary consequences might be a barrier to implementing such interventions. AIMS: The aim of the present paper was to assess the long-term cost effectiveness

I flera andra europeiska länder har antalet elektriska cyklar ökat kraftigt de senaste åren. En liknande ökning förväntas också i Sverige. Hittills har kunskapen om attityder hos elcyklister i Sverige varit begränsade. Denna studie består av intervjuer med 39 personer från hela Sverige för att få en bättre förståelse för varför de har valt att cykla en elcykel, och vad de tror kan göras för att få

Catchment export of terrestrial dissolved organic matter (DOM) and its downstream degradation in aquatic ecosystems are important components of landscape scale carbon balances. In order to assess the influence of peatland permafrost on river DOM characteristics, we sampled 65 rivers along a 900 km transect crossing into the southern discontinuous permafrost zone on the Boreal and Tundra Plains of

Electricity prices are known to spike during peak hours, only to revert to normal levels during off-peak hours. We introduce a generalization of the time varying independent spike model commonly used to model the electricity spot price from daily data to hourly data to cope with this feature. We let the probability of extreme prices depend on several variables, such as consumption, reserve margin

The effect of the antibiotic sulfamethoxazole (SMX) on soil bacteria was studied using two methods (leucine incorporation and Biolog plates) of estimating pollution-induced community tolerance (PICT). SMX was added to an agricultural soil in a microcosm setup. The addition of different substrates (manure and alfalfa), and a non-amended soil, were also studied over 5 weeks. PICT measurements were v

A measurement of jet shapes in top-quark pair events using 1.8 fb(-1) of pp collision data recorded by the ATLAS detector at the LHC is presented. Samples of top-quark pair events are selected in both the single-lepton and dilepton final states. The differential and integrated shapes of the jets initiated by bottom-quarks from the top-quark decays are compared with those of the jets originated by

Perivascular adult stem cells have been isolated from several tissues, including the adult human brain. They have unique signatures resembling both pericytes and mesenchymal stem cells. Understanding the nature of these cells in their specific vascular niches is important to determine their clinical potential as a new adult stem cell source. Indeed, they have promising features in vitro in terms o

Endosomal entrapment is known to be a major bottleneck to successful cytoplasmic delivery of nucleic acids (NAs) using cationic liposome-NA nanoparticles (NPs). Quantitative measurements of distributions of NPs within early endosomes (EEs) have proven difficult due to the sub-resolution size and short lifetime of wildtype EEs. In this study we used Rab5-GFP, a member of the large family of GTPases

In this study, we demonstrate that articular cartilage chondrocytes are surrounded by the defining basement membrane proteins laminin, collagen type IV, nidogen and perlecan, and suggest that these form the functional equivalent of a basement membrane. We found by real-time PCR that mouse chondrocytes express these four cardinal components of basement membranes and demonstrated by immunohistochemi

Accurate accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) measurements rely on standards with well-known isotopic ratios. For radiocarbon measurements, a number of standards with different properties are commercially available, of which the IAEA-C6 sucrose standard with a 14C value of 150.61 pMC is the most active. When analyzing biological samples resulting from studies using 14C-labeled substances, the activ