Supplemental Instruction (SI) is a programme that is attached to difficult courses with the objective of increasing student performance and retention. However, an SI programme also has the potential to increase overall student performance and retention during the first critical year if applied to introductory courses. In this study the latter objective is investigated in an engineering educational

Infrared (IR) dryers are widely used in the paper industry for drying coated paper grades. However, there is limited knowledge regarding the efficiency of IR dryers. This study was undertaken to investigate the radiation efficiency and the total efficiency of electric IR dryers. Radiation efficiency was measured in the laboratory and on an industrial machine. The results indicate that radiation ef

Linkage analysis of F-2 crosses has led to identification of large numbers of quantitative trait loci (QTL) for complex diseases, but identification of the underlying genes has been more difficult. Reasons for this could be complications that arise from separation of interacting or neighboring loci. We made a partial advanced intercross (PAI) to characterize and fine-map linkage to collagen-induce

Thiopurine S-methyltransferase (TPMT) deficient patients develop life threatening haematotoxicity (for example, pancytopenia) when treated with a standard dose of azathioprine (AZA) and 6-mercaptopurine (6-MP) due to excessive accumulation of cytotoxic metabolites. At present, it is generally recommended that these patients should not receive AZA or 6-MP treatment for inflammatory bowel disease. W

Context: Adiponectin is a key insulin-sensitizing adipokine acting on muscle metabolism via two specific receptors [adiponectin receptors 1 and 2 (AdipoR1 and AdipoR2, respectively)]. Objectives: The aim of the study was to investigate the genetic and nongenetic control of plasma adiponectin and muscle AdipoR1/R2 gene expression and the impact of these components on in vivo glucose and fat metabo

Objective To compare, in young active adults with an acute anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tear, the mid-term (five year) patient reported and radiographic outcomes between those treated with rehabilitation plus early ACL reconstruction and those treated with rehabilitation and optional delayed ACL reconstruction. Design Extended follow-up of prospective randomised controlled trial. Setting Ortho

This study investigated eyewitnesses’ memory and confidence accuracy for action information (what happened at the crime scene), and detail information (descriptions of persons, objects, time and place). In Experiment 1, 89 participants watched a film and participated in one of four conditions: Laboratory discussion, Family discussion, Retell and Control, the first three with five meetings each. Th

Women prostituting in Vilnius City, Lithuania, were studied with regard to their socioeconomic background, drug and alcohol abuse, conditions for prostituting and for the carrier rate of sexually transmitted infectious agents. The 73 women studied represented a group of low-socioeconomic prostitutes with a great age span, i.e. 14-52 years. Forty-five per cent had one or more children. Roughly one-

Ultrafast lasers are finding many applications in medicine and biology. Pulses from such systems can be used directly or after non-linear modification. Direct utilisation includes time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy and imaging. Such studies can be performed for tissue diagnosis in the field of malignant diseases as well as in the cardiovascular sector. Two-photon induced fluorescence provides

Background and aim of the study: The study aim was to analyze the relationship between patient-prosthesis mismatch (PPM) and in-hospital complications and mortality after aortic valve replacement (AVR). Methods: AVR was performed in 1,819 patients between January 1996 and July 2006. Follow up investigations were performed after a mean of 4.3 years (range: 0 days to 10.6 years). Univariate and mult

Activated protein C (APC) is a serine proteinase that regulates blood coagulation. In plasma it is inhibited mainly by the protein C inhibitor (PCI). The plasma concentrations of APC-PCI complex is increased in hypercoagulative states such as deep venous thrombosis. Formation of the APC-PCI complex induces a drastic conformational change in PCI that exposes new epitopes (neoepitopes) on the molecu

In synthetic aperture radar one wishes to reconstruct the reflectivity function of a region on the ground from a set of radar measurements taken at several angles. The ground reflectivity is found by interpolating measured samples, which typically lie on a polar grid in frequency space, to an equally spaced rectangular grid in frequency space, then computing an inverse Fourier transform. The class

Popular Abstract in Swedish Även om civil flygindustri har genomgått stora teknologiska och kommersiella förändringar under de senaste årtiondena så har grundläggande civil flygutbildning inte förändrats på motsvarande sätt. Förändringarna inom civilflyget har sällan resulterat i forskningsprogram med inriktning mot grundläggande flygutbildning och denna utbildningsfas har länge varit föremål för Although the civil aviation industry has gone through great technological and commercial change in the last decades, basic civil aviation training has not kept pace accordingly. The changes in civil aviation have rarely resulted in research programs in the field of basic training, which has long received minimal attention from the industry. In the research presented in this thesis, methods for und

A sparse mesh-neighbour based approximate inverse preconditioner is proposed for a type of dense matrices whose entries come from the evaluation of a slowly decaying free space Green's function at randomly placed points in a unit cell. By approximating distant potential fields originating at closely spaced sources in a certain way, the preconditioner is given properties similar to, or better than,