This paper presents a novel control architecture for enhanced operator awareness and improved safety in telesurgical systems. We introduce an intermediate layer between the master and slave sides which allows us to modify the slave motion for safety and the force feedback for operator awareness. The intermediate layer is then designed with a performance objective for the specific task at hand. The

Corrosion of steel structures in the marine environment is a major problem. The deterioration of this kind of structures is costly and difficult to predict both when designing new structures and when estimating the remaining service life time for existing structures. The aim of this investigation was to find indicative values for the corrosion rate of steel sheet piles on the Swedish west coast. S

China's natural wetlands occupy 3.77% of the land and provide 54.9% of China's ecosystem services. Healthy natural wetland ecosystems play an important role in the sustainable development of China, which was realized by the Chinese government in the early 1970s. In the past 5 years, China has made great efforts in wetlands conservation, which is signified by the funding of billions of dollars to r

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to assess whether grating-based X-ray imaging may have a role in imaging of pulmonary nodules on radiographs. Materials and methods: A mouse lung containing multiple lung tumors was imaged using a small-animal scanner with a conventional X-ray source and a grating interferometer for phase-contrast imaging. We qualitatively compared the signal characteristics

A split sample study was performed on 109 bronchial brushings and washings and evaluated from conventional slides (CS) and CytoRich Red/Tripath preparations (CRR/Tripath). Unassessable bronchial washings were significantly more frequent in CS (5 vs. 0), but as all brushings were assessable with both methods, no overall diagnostic advantage was found. CS and CRR/Tripath gave discordant diagnoses in

Background: Survival and prognostic factors for thin melanomas have been relatively little studied in population-based settings. This patient group account for the majority of melanomas diagnosed in western countries today and better prognostic information is needed. Objective: The aim of this study is to use established prognostic factors such as ulceration, tumour thickness and Clark's level of

Behavioural syndromes (correlations between suites of behavioural traits) have been documented in a wide range of animals and are important for the understanding of evolution and ecology. Previous research has focused primarily on behavioural syndromes composed of individual animals: we investigated behavioural syndromes at the individual, caste and colony levels in Myrmica ants. We first related

This paper considers the characterisation and measurement of income-related health inequality using longitudinal data. The paper elucidates the nature of the Jones and Lopez Nicolas (2004) index of "health-related income mobility" and explains the negative values of the index that have been reported in all the empirical applications to date. The paper further presents an alternative approach to th

Cystatin C is suggested to be involved in neurodegeneration and the development of Alzheimer's disease (AD) by binding to soluble amyloid-beta (A beta) peptides. Studies of cystatin C levels in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) in relation to risk of AD are conflicting and relations between cystatin C, A beta(42), and tau levels in CSF in AD, mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and healthy controls are unkno

The increase in chilled food consumption requires enhanced food safety and quality assurance. Food deteriorating processes are affected by the presence of oxygen, combined with factors such as time and temperature. To slow down deterioration processes and prolong shelf life, traditional packaging methods are being replaced by Modified Atmosphere Packaging (MAP), for example. Oxygen, which is natur

Objective: The vagina makes a major contribution to the normal female sexual response cycle. An increase in vaginal blood flow is considered a key event in the mechanism of sexual arousal. Recent research has focused mainly on the cyclic GMP pathway and phosphodiesterase type 5 (PDE5, cyclic GMP specific PDE) in the control of vaginal vascular smooth muscle, whereas only little is known on the rol

Poly(d,l-lactide-co-glycolide) (PLG) is the most frequently used biodegradable polymer in the controlled release of an encapsulated drug. The purpose of this work was to explain the surprisingly slow diffusion through this polymer, and locate the major source of mass transport resistance. Diffusion of human growth hormone (hGH) and glucose through PLG films was undetectable (using a diffusion cell

Proteoglycans (PGs) are macromolecules that consist of long linear polysaccharides, glycosaminoglycan (GAG) chains, covalently attached to a core protein by the carbohydrate xylose. The biosynthesis of GAG chains is initiated by xylosylation of the core protein followed by galactosylation by the galactosyltransferase β4GalT7. Some β-d-xylosides, such as 2-naphthyl β-d-xylopyranoside, can induce GA

The worldwide incidence of gastric adenocarcinoma (GC) is lower in women than in men. Furthermore, cancer patients treated with estrogens have been reported to have a lower subsequent risk of GC. The authors conducted a prospective analysis of menstrual and reproductive factors, exogenous hormone use, and GC in 335,216 women from the European Prospective Investigation Into Cancer and Nutrition, a

Despite the importance of regioselective reductive openings of cyclic acetals, mechanistic details are scarce. In this study 4,6-O-benzylidene acetals were used as model compounds for deciphering the mechanism of regioselective openings using a variety of reducing agents. Competitive isotopic studies aiming at primary and secondary isotope effects, as well as an electron-deficient substrate, were

Biodiversity continues to decline, despite the implementation of international conservation conventions and measures. To counteract biodiversity loss, it is pivotal to know how conservation actions affect biodiversity trends. Focussing on European farmland species, we review what is known about the impact of conservation initiatives on biodiversity. We argue that the effects of conservation are a

P>1. Environmental changes may not always result in rapid changes in species distributions, abundances or diversity. In order to estimate the effects of, for example, land-use changes caused by agri-environment schemes (AES) on biodiversity and ecosystem services, information on the time-lag between the application of the scheme and the responses of organisms is essential. 2. We examined the effec

Purpose: We have developed a statistical prediction model for prostate cancer based on four kallikrein markers in blood: total, free, and intact prostate-specific antigen ( PSA), and kallikrein-related peptidase 2 ( hK2). Although this model accurately predicts the result of biopsy in unscreened men, its properties for men with a history of PSA screening have not been fully characterized. Experime