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Acoustic comfort is a concept hardly described in the literature. But it has been used in engineering typically to refer to low noise or annoyance in order to invoke no discomfort. Current standardized methods for airborne and impact sound reduction are deployed to assess acoustic comfort in dwellings. However, the measured sound pressure levels do not represent comfort. The latter should include

Background: Chronic suppurative otitis media (CSOM) is an important cause of hearing loss in children and constitutes a serious health problem globally with a strong association to resource-limited living conditions. Topical antibiotics combined with aural toilet is the first-hand treatment for CSOM but antimicrobial resistance and limited availability to antibiotics are obstacles in some areas. T

There is increasing interest in the drivers of industrial diversification, and how these depend on economic and industry structures. This article contributes to this line of inquiry by analyzing the role of industry relatedness in explaining variations in industry diversification, measured as the entry of new industry specializations, across 173 European regions during the period 2004–2012. First,

Numerous species of nematodes have evolved to inhabit the gastrointestinal tract of animals and humans, with over a billion of the world's population infected with at least one species. These large multicellular pathogens present a considerable and complex challenge to the host immune system given that individuals are continually exposed to infective stages, as well as the high prevalence in endem

We analyze the local convergence of proximal splitting algorithms to solve optimization problems that are convex besides a rank constraint. For this, we show conditions under which the proximal operator of a function involving the rank constraint is locally identical to the proximal operator of its convex envelope, hence implying local convergence. The conditions imply that the non-convex algorith

Milk powder and gluten are common components in Swedish infants’ diets. Whereas large intakes of gluten early in life increases the risk of celiac disease in genetically at-risk Swedish children, no study has yet evaluated if intake of milk powder by 2 years of age is associated with celiac disease. A 1-to-3 nested case-control study, comprised of 207 celiac disease children and 621 controls match

Due to critical impacts of air pollution, prediction and monitoring of air quality in urban areas are important tasks. However, because of the dynamic nature and high spatio-temporal variability, prediction of the air pollutant concentrations is a complex spatio-temporal problem. Distribution of pollutant concentration is influenced by various factors such as the historical pollution data and weat

A supervisory observer is a multiple-model architecture, which estimates the parameters and the states of nonlinear systems. It consists of a bank of state observers, where each observer is designed for some nominal parameter values sampled in a known parameter set. A selection criterion is used to select a single observer at each time instant, which provides its state estimate and parameter value

Chinese hybrid rice of different varieties, growing in paddies in the Pingqiao district, north of Xinyang city, Henan province, China, was studied in detailed spectroscopic characteristics using laser-induced fluorescence. The base for the studies was the new South China Normal University mobile lidar laboratory, which was dispatched on site, providing facilities both for laboratory studies using

Cloud computing infrastructures are powering most of the web hosting services that we use at all times. A recent failure in the Amazon cloud infrastructure made many of the website that we use on a hourly basis unavailable1. This illustrates the importance of cloud applications being able to absorb peaks in workload, and at the same time to tune their power requirements to the power and energy cap

Objectives Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a chronic autoimmune condition with heterogeneous presentation and complex aetiology where DNA methylation changes are emerging as a contributing factor. In order to discover novel epigenetic associations and investigate their relationship to genetic risk for SLE, we analysed DNA methylation profiles in a large collection of patients with SLE and he

In this paper we consider L1 optimal and H-infinity optimal control problems for a particular class of Positive Bilinear Systems that arise in drug dosage design for HIV treatment. Starting from existent characterizations of the L1-norm for positive systems, a convex formulation for the first problem is provided. As for the H-infinity case, we propose an algorithm based on the iterative solution o

It is commonly assumed that sex chromosomes evolve recombination suppression because selection favours linkage between sex-determining and sexually antagonistic genes. However, although the role of sexual antagonism during sex chromosome evolution has attained strong support from theory, experimental and observational evidence is rare or equivocal. Here, we highlight alternative, often neglected,

We show here that increased S100A8 and S100A9 protein expression is induced in spleen of animals with active inflammation or with inoculated tumors. In tumor bearing animals an increased expression was also detected in the lung. To further analyze the induced proteins, we performed chemical cross-linking followed by Western blotting. We observed in protein extracts from spleen that both S100A8/S10

Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is a type of diabetes which is first recognised during pregnancy. In the county of Skåne in Southern Sweden, over 2% of all pregnancies are complicated by GDM, a number that is generally several times higher worldwide. Women with GDM during pregnancy are at risk of developing GDM anew in subsequent pregnancies, but also have an increased risk of developing postp

A major goal in evolutionary biology is to understand the genetic basis of adaptive traits. In migratory birds, wing morphology is such a trait. Our previous work on the great reed warbler (Acrocephalus arundinaceus) shows that wing length is highly heritable and under sexually antagonistic selection. Moreover, a quantitative trait locus (QTL) mapping analysis detected a pronounced QTL for wing le

Autoimmune diseases, such as psoriasis and arthritis, show a patchy distribution of inflammation despite systemic dysregulation of adaptive immunity. Thus, additional tissue-derived signals, such as danger-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs), are indispensable for manifestation of local inflammation. S100A8/S100A9 complexes are the most abundant DAMPs in many autoimmune diseases. However, regula

Objective: In patients presenting with acute type-A aortic dissection (aTAAD), lactic acid measurement is a frequently used analysis for diagnosis of acute ischemia, which may have a dismal prognosis. The aim of the current study was to determine the performance of perioperative arterial lactic acid measurements in predicting outcome in aTAAD patients. Design: Retrospective, observational study. S

Lately, different wearable form factors have reached the consumer domain. Wearables enable at-a-glance access to information and can continually sense the surrounding environment. Internet of Things (IoT) researchers have focused on the main enabling factors: The integration of several technologies and communication solutions. Less effort has been devoted to exploring how not-so-tech-savvy end use

Background: Environmental lead exposure has been associated with decreased kidney function, but evidence from large prospective cohort studies examining low exposure levels is scarce. We assessed the association of low levels of lead exposure with kidney function and kidney disease. Study Design: Prospective population-based cohort. Setting & Participants: 4,341 individuals aged 46 to 67 years