Declining biological production as a part of an ongoing land degradation process is considered a severe environmental problem in the dry northern and northwestern regions of China. The aim of this study is to develop and adapt a satellite data-driven gross primary production model called Lund University light use efficiency model (LULUE) to temperate conditions in order to map gross primary produc

A maximal symmetry group is a group of isomorphisms of a three-dimensional hyperbolic manifold of maximal order in relation to the volume of the manifold. In this paper we determine all maximal symmetry groups of the types PSL(2, q) and PGL(2, q). Depending on the prime p there are one or two such groups with q=pk and k always equals 1, 2 or 4.

The influence of several operating parameters on the critical flux in the separation of lactic acid-producing bacteria from fermentation broth was studied using a ceramic microfiltration membrane equipped with a permeate pump. The operating parameters studied were crossflow velocity over the membrane, bacterial cell concentration, protein concentration, and pH. The influence of the isoelectric poi

This paper presents a model-based method to aid in the process validation for the purification of pharmaceutical drugs. The critical process parameters are identified by simulating process disturbances, and this information is then used to determine if the process control space is robust. Simulations are chosen to analyze the entire control space to also find nonlinearities and interaction effects

A new model for financial returns with time varying variance, skewness and kurtosis based on the Normal Inverse Gaussian (NIG) distribution is proposed. The new model and two previously suggested NIG models are evaluated by their Value at Risk (VaR) forecasts on a long series of daily Standard and Poor's 500 returns. All three models perform very well compared with extant models and clearly outper

Eighteen-year-old adolescents with alpha1-antitrypsin (alpha1AT) deficiency have mostly normal lung function tests. We hypothesized that compensatory increases in other protease inhibitors and/or a decreased leukocyte activity might favorably affect the protease/protease-inhibitor balance in alpha1AT-deficient adolescents. At the age of 18 y 46 PiZZ (severe deficiency), 22 PiSZ (moderate deficienc

Radiative lifetime measurements were performed by time-resolved laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) technique for eight even-parity levels of the astrophysically important ion Er+ over the energy range from 33753 to 55317 cm(-1). Free erbium ions were generated by a laser-induced plasma. A narrow bandwidth UV laser pulse (1 ns) was employed to populate selectively the short-lived upper levels, and th

As coexisting vestibular and cochlear lesions are of etiological importance, evaluation of children with congenital or early acquired hearing impairment (HI) should include vestibular assessment. A rotation test requires specific equipment and allows only detection of bilateral vestibular impairment. An impulse or head thrust test allows assessment of one ear at a time, detects more pronounced cal

How animals adjust their foraging or mate finding behaviour according to the risk of predation has received much attention recently. However, few studies have focused on the behaviour of prey when stimuli representing different adaptive behaviours originate from different sensory modalities. Here we present data on how male moths trade off odour-mediated mate attraction and auditory-mediated preda

We study here deterministic broadcasting in geometric radio networks (GRN) whose nodes have complete knowledge of the network. Nodes of a GRN are deployed in the Euclidean plane (R 2) and each of them can transmit within some range r assigned to it. We adopt model in which ranges of nodes are non-uniform and they are drawn from the predefined interval 0 ≤ r min ≤ r max . All our results are in the

OBJECTIVE: Desmin intermediate filaments are key structures in the cytoskeleton of cardiac muscle. Since they are associated with Z-discs and intercalated discs, they may have a role in sarcomere alignment or force transmission. We have explored the mechanical function of the desmin filaments in the cardiac wall by comparing desmin-deficient (Des-/-) and wild-type (Des+/+) mice. METHODS: The Lange

The room-temperature Raman and infrared spectra of zirconium vanadate (ZrV2O7) were observed up to pressures of 12 GPa and 5.7 GPa, respectively. The frequencies of the optically active modes at ambient pressure were calculated using direct methods and compared with experimental values. Average mode Gruneisen parameters were calculated for the Raman and infrared active modes. Changes in the spectr

The present study was designed to examine the production of the Swedish tonal accents in children with language impairment and normal controls in order to verify previous findings. The productions of 25 children with linguistic impairment and their matched controls, aged 4;4-10;0 (mean age 5;11) were evaluated by ratings of fundamental frequency patterns, and by perceptual analysis by ten linguist

The aim of this study was to examine dose-dependent effects of intranasal application of neuropeptide Y (NPY) on nasal mucosal blood flow, blood content, and intranasal nitric oxide (NO) concentration. Blood flow was measured by laser Doppler flowmetry (LDF) and blood content by rhinomanometry. Mucosal biopsies were taken for investigation of Y1 and Y2 receptor mRNA expression, using the reverse t

AIMS: Studies indicate a poorer quality of life (QoL) for implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) patients than for the general population. However, studies comparing the QoL of ICD patients with that of patients with other implantable cardiac devices are scarce. We hypothesized that ICD patients had a poorer QoL than pacemaker patients. METHODS AND RESULTS: All ICD patients living in Iceland

We report on the feasibility and process parameters of nanoimprint lithography to fabricate low refractive index passive optical devices. Diffraction gratings printed in polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) exhibit a sharp dispersion with a full width at half maximum of about 20 nm. Waveguides were printed in polystyrene (PS) on silicon oxide and had losses between 8-20 dB cm(-1) at wavelengths between 6