Indoor environments have a large impact on health and well-being, so it is important to understand what makes them healthy and sustainable. There is substantial knowledge on individual factors and their effects, though understanding how factors interact and what role occupants play in these interactions (both causative and receptive) is lacking. We aimed to: (i) explore interactions between factor

Consumers appreciate leafy green vegetables such as baby leaves for their convenience and wholesomeness and for adding a variety of tastes and colors to their plate. In Western cuisine, leafy green vegetables are usually eaten fresh and raw, with no step in the long chain from seed to consumption where potentially harmful microorganisms could be completely eliminated, e.g., through heating. A conc

Context: The current Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Union includes three greening measures, which are partly intended to benefit farmland biodiversity. However, the relative biodiversity effects of the greening measures, including joint effects of landscape context, are not well understood. Objectives: We studied the effects of increasing crop diversity, proportions of production

There is limited research that evaluates occupational therapy and lifestyle interventions,especially for mental health service users. This thesis provides increased knowledge and understanding of the processes and factors that led to betterquality of everyday life, engagement in meaningful activities, and balance forparticipants who took part in the Balancing Everyday Life (BEL) intervention.BEL w

Metabolic syndrome and diabetes impact brain function and metabolism. While it is well established that rodents exposed to diets rich in saturated fat develop brain dysfunction, contrasting results abound in the literature, likely as result of exposure to different high-fat diet (HFD) compositions and for varied periods of time. In the present study, we investigated alterations of hippocampal-depe

Adenosine A(1) and A(2A) receptors are neuromodulatory systems that can control mnemonic behavior, which is modified by diabetes. Since the density of these adenosine receptors can change upon chronic noxious brain conditions, we now tested if the density of A(1) and A(2A) receptors was modified in the hippocampus of streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats. The binding density of the selective A(1) r

This reflection, based on a keynote address to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of Disasters on 14 September 2017, begins by considering some of the prevailing assumptions that existed at the time of the journal's creation. Next is a summary of significant milestones during the past 40 years, covering major global trends, changing disaster impacts, and key developments in disaster risk managemen

The problem of designing a linear feedback when all state variables are not available is discussed. The design scheme is based on computation of a complete state feedback and a reduction to a specified structure. The reduction is made by approximation of the eigenspace corresponding to a set of dominant eigenvalues. The method consists of successive choices of weightings on this space. The method

African ball-rolling dung beetles can use their front legs for multiple purposes that include walking, manipulating or forming a dung ball, and also transporting it. Their multifunctional legs can be used as inspiration for the design of a multifunctional robot leg. Thus, in this paper, we present the development of real robot legs based on the study of the front legs of the beetle. The leg moveme

Introduction: The complement system is essential for an adequate immune response. Much attention has been given to the role of complement in disease. However, to better understand complement in pathology, it is crucial to first analyze this system under different physiological conditions. The aim of the present study was therefore to investigate the inter-individual variation in complement activit

Aiming at a feasible industrial scale bioplastic (PHAs) production, a microbial-based PHA-extraction technique was developed and investigated for extraction of different kinds of PHAs and a variety of well-studied producing microbial strains. This technology could make bioplastics production free of the use of organic solvents or other recovery chemicals. The technology allows the co-production of

Virtual platforms provide benefits to developers in terms of a more rapid development cycle since development may begin before next-generation hardware is available. However, there is a distinct lack of graphics virtualization in industry-grade virtual platforms, leading to performance issues that may reduce the benefits virtual platforms otherwise have over execution on actual hardware. This pape

Diabetes affects the morphology and plasticity of the hippocampus, and leads to learning and memory deficits. Caffeine has been proposed to prevent memory impairment upon multiple chronic disorders with neurological involvement. We tested whether long-term caffeine consumption prevents type 2 diabetes (T2D)-induced spatial memory impairment and hippocampal alterations, including synaptic degenerat

Cerebral glucose homeostasis is maintained by the equilibrium between glucose transport across the blood-brain-barrier (BBB), which occurs through facilitative carriers, and glucose consumption mainly initiated by hexokinase phosphorylation. Glucose concentrations can be quantified non invasively by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and such measurements, through appropriate mathematic

Electric road systems (ERS) are designed to transfer power to electric vehicles (EV) while moving, not only for charging the on-board battery, but also for propelling the vehicle and supplying the auxiliary systems. The step from dynamic charging to static charging with a conductive ERS is not large since most of the equipment can be used without modification, yet it brings thermal challenges. Sta

Ba3Si6O12N2:Eu2+ and Ba3Si6O9N4:Eu2+ have strikingly similar atomistic structures, but the former is an efficient green phosphor at working temperature while the latter is a bluish-green phosphor whose luminescence decreases quite fast with temperature. Aiming at the understanding of such different behavior, we compute the quasiparticle electronic band structure of the two hosts, Ba3Si6O 12N2 and

For a set of ten crystalline materials (oxides and semiconductors), we compute the electronic band structures using the Tran-Blaha (TB09) functional. The band widths and gaps are compared with those from the local-density approximation (LDA) functional, many-body perturbation theory (MBPT), and experiments. At the density-functional theory (DFT) level, TB09 leads to band gaps in much better agreem