The past few decades have seen an increasing demand for environmental information on which to make more informed decisions, strengthened by several international calls for improving available environmental information. In a democratic South Africa, the involvement of people in policy and decision-making processes has led to an even greater need for accessible information. In response to this deman

With more advanced manufacturing technologies, small and medium sized enterprises can compete with low-wage labor by providing customized and high quality products. For small production series, robotic systems can provide a cost-effective solution. However, for robots to be able to perform on par with human workers in manufacturing industries, they must become flexible and autonomous in their taskWith more advanced manufacturing technologies, small and medium sized enterprises can compete with low-wage labor by providing customized and high quality products. For small production series, robotic systems can provide a cost-effective solution. However, for robots to be able to perform on par with human workers in manufacturing industries, they must become flexible and autonomous in their task

Objective: Understanding the cartilage surface structure, lost in arthritic disease, is essential for developing strategies to effectively restore it. Given that adherence of the lubricating protein, lubricin, to the cartilage surface is critical for boundary lubrication, an interaction with cartilage oligomeric matrix protein (COMP) was investigated. COMP, an abundant cartilage protein, is known

The relative roles of different receptor systems in compensating for vestibular loss were studied in 18 children (12 to 16 years of age) with congenital or early acquired bilateral vestibular loss (BVL) and impaired hearing, and compared to that in 33 normal children (9 to 16 years of age). Postural stability was studied with posturography evaluating the velocity of anterior-posterior body sway. W

The postural control mechanisms were evaluated in 10 blinds and in 10 subjects with Usher's syndrome. The results were compared with 27 age matched healthy volunteers. In visual conditions the subjects with Usher's syndrome performed worse, but in nonvisual condition they performed equally well as the controls. The results were the same irrespective of whether the tests were performed on a rigid s

Anaplastic thyroid cancer (ATC) is a highly malignant disease with a very short median survival time. Few studies have addressed the underlying somatic mutations, and the genomic landscape of ATC thus remains largely unknown. In the present study, we have ascertained copy number aberrations, gene fusions, gene expression patterns, and mutations in early-passage cells from ten newly established ATC

Fourteen patients with vestibular neuritis were examined at onset of symptoms and after one year. Postrotatory time constant and gain in the vestibulo-ocular reflex (VOR) were measured after rotation with a velocity step of 150 deg/s. There was no significant difference in gain towards the healthy side at onset of the disease compared to recordings after one year. The time constant towards the hea

Many subjects have a negative spike in the beginning of a saccade in electro-oculographic signals. The amplitude of the spike depends on the location of the electrodes. The spike distorts the saccades and causes errors in the parameters. The saccade spike can assist in the identification of small saccades. A syntactic technique based on formal languages and parsing is presented which looks for spi

Optokinetic nystagmus (OKN) at a constant stimulus velocity of 90 degrees/s was studied in 50 healthy subjects and three different groups of patients: 10 with vestibular neuritis (VN), 17 with unilateral infratentorial lesion (UI) and 13 patients with bilateral infratentorial lesion (BI). Among healthy subjects, OKN decreased with age in those over 42 and 44 years for maximum and mean velocity, re

Saccadic eye movements provide important information about the neuron system at several levels. In recent years computer analysis of saccades has been adapted for use in clinical work. The most common detection methods do not always function without the user's control and aid. In the present paper a digital filter is described for the detection of saccades. This non-recursive filter unscrambles sa

BACKGROUND: In select patients with heart failure, cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) is the most common complementary treatment besides medical treatment. We aimed to assess the association between post CRT-implant changes in cardiovascular medication and cardiovascular mortality and heart failure hospitalization.METHODS: 211 patients on optimal medical therapy eligible for CRT were retrospe

In the context of Internet of Things (IoT), the research of this dissertation is concerned with the development of applications for end-user devices, i.e. devices through which the end-user directly interacts with systems. The complexity of such applications is partly due to network intricacies, and partly because GUI (Graphical User Interface) development is generally complicated and time consumi

In this work, extraction and characterization of compounds with antioxidant and antimicrobial activity from Haematococcus pluvialis microalga in red phase have been carried out. To do this, subcritical water extraction (SWE) has been combined with analytical techniques such as HPLC-DAD, HPLC-QqQ-MS and GC-MS and in vitro assays (i.e., for antioxidant and antimicrobial activity). The effect of the

The article intends to analyze the closely correlated concepts of trademark exhaustion and parallel imports. The growing importance of these concepts in the current world, especially in the European Union, makes it an interesting research topic, even though the concepts are complicated due to their nature and different actors involved. The authors use comparative approach, concentrating on two wor