Acetylation is a wood modification used to increase the durability. Although it is known that the wood moisture content is lowered, the exact mechanisms behind the increased durability are not known. However, since fungi need water in different locations for different purposes the location and state of water is most probably of importance in addition to the total moisture content. In a previous st

Land subsidence, a silent death, occurs due to various factors like significant reduction in groundwater (GW) levels. It is a widespread phenomenon with irreparable consequences on buildings, infrastructures, and, in severe cases, groundwater aquifers. This study aims to assess the impact of river flow on the acceleration and control of land subsidence in an arid and semi-arid region. To achieve t

The management of water resources in a basin can be challenging due to the sharing of water resources among multiple stakeholders and conflicting interests. This often results in imbalanced water resource development across the basin. While small and medium-sized projects are efficiently implemented in the headwater and upstream areas, the commissioning of large reservoirs faces delays due to the

Numerous assays exist to measure aggressive behaviour in honeybees, most of them using free-flying bees under natural conditions, with results often variable due to environmental factors. Our study describes a novel, laboratory-based Petri dish assay that uses a moving target treated with the alarm pheromone component isoamyl acetate (IAA). In this assay, aggression levels can be measured in indiv

BACKGROUND: Bronchodilator responsiveness (BDR) in asthma involves both the central and peripheral airways but is primarily relieved with beta-2-agonists and evaluated by spirometry. To date, antimuscarinics can be added as a reliever medication in more severe asthma. We hypothesize that combining both short-acting beta-2 agonist (SABA) and short-acting muscarinic antagonist (SAMA) could also impr

Anthropogenic stressors such as agricultural intensification, climate change, andincreased densities of non-native managed bees used for crop pollination arecontributing to bee declines. Understanding how and why bees have responded topast environmental changes is crucial for predicting future ones and enablingmitigation to maintain the functioning of both natural and agricultural ecosystems.The a

BACKGROUND: Neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NACT) for early breast cancer can make breast-conserving surgery more feasible and might be more likely to eradicate micrometastatic disease than might the same chemotherapy given after surgery. We investigated the long-term benefits and risks of NACT and the influence of tumour characteristics on outcome with a collaborative meta-analysis of individual patien

Cartesian impedance control is a type of motion control strategy for robots that improves safety in partially unknown environments by achieving a compliant behavior of the robot with respect to its external forces. This compliant robot behavior has the added benefit of allowing physical human guidance of the robot. In this paper, we propose a C++ implementation of compliance control valid for any

BACKGROUND: The administration of endocrine therapy for 5 years substantially reduces recurrence rates during and after treatment in women with early-stage, estrogen-receptor (ER)-positive breast cancer. Extending such therapy beyond 5 years offers further protection but has additional side effects. Obtaining data on the absolute risk of subsequent distant recurrence if therapy stops at 5 years co

The need for autonomous robot systems in both the service and the industrial domain is larger than ever. In the latter, the transition to small batches or even “batch size 1” in production created a need for robot control system architectures that can provide the required flexibility. Such architectures must not only have a sufficient knowledge integration framework. It must also support autonomou

Purpose Radiotherapy reduces the absolute risk of breast cancer mortality by a few percentage points in suitable women but can cause a second cancer or heart disease decades later. We estimated the absolute long-term risks of modern breast cancer radiotherapy. Methods First, a systematic literature review was performed of lung and heart doses in breast cancer regimens published during 2010 to 2015

Observational studies consistently disclose brain imaging-derived phenotypes (IDPs) as critical markers for early diagnosis of both brain disorders and cardiovascular diseases. However, it remains unclear about the shared genetic landscape between brain IDPs and the risk of brain disorders and cardiovascular diseases, restricting the applications of potential diagnostic techniques through brain ID

There has been a substantial rise in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases after adjusting the dynamic zero-COVID policy in China. We conducted a survey to investigate the self-perceived symptom profile and its association with vaccination status during this outbreak. There were 552 individuals in this survey. The infected individuals displayed various symptoms associated with different factor

BackgroundThe epidemiological association between type 2 diabetes and cataract has been well established. However, it remains unclear whether the two diseases share a genetic basis, and if so, whether this reflects a putative causal relationship.MethodsWe used East Asian population-based genome-wide association studies (GWAS) summary statistics of type 2 diabetes (Ncase = 36 614, Ncontrol = 155 15