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Climatic fire danger will likely increase because more droughts and heat-waves are caused by climate change. Climate change can shift fires from occurring only rarely to regularly in ecosystems not until now adapted to fire. We applied dynamic vegetation-fire models to investigate these future responses. The future of fire in Mediterranean-type ecosystems depends strongly on changes in vegetation
Under climate change conditions, climatic wildfire danger could also increase in ecosystems not dominated by fires until now. This increasing trend could lead to more area burned in the future. We have developed an algorithm to map new fire-prone areas in Europe and Northern Africa that identifies grid points where a rare fire event is becoming the mean at the end of the 21st century. When applyin
PurposeThe paper aims to provide a conceptual map of how to mediate between sustainability theory and practice in higher education and how disciplinary divides can be bridged. It further looks at issues linked to knowledge views and drivers for institutional change that affect opportunities for whole institution development promoting action preparedness.Design/methodology/approachTaking its point
In this chapter, a control design approach based on linear parametervarying (LPV) systems, which can be exploited to solve several problems typically encountered in control engineering, is presented. By means of recent techniques based on Youla–Kucera parametrization, it is shown how it is possible not only to design and optimize stabilizing controllers, but also to exploit the structure of the Yo
The peak-to-valley (PTV) method was investigated experimentally comparing PTV ratios for three HPGe detectors, with complementary Monte Carlo simulations of scatter in air for larger source-detector distances. The measured PTV ratios for 137Cs in air were similar for three different detectors for incident angles between 0 and 90°. The study indicated that the PTV method can differentiate between s
This study evaluates associations between objectively measured daily physical activity vs aerobic fitness and body fat in children aged 8-11 years. A cross-sectional study of 225 children aged 7.9-11.1 years was performed. Abdominal fat mass (AFM) and total body fat (TBF) were quantified by dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry. TBF was calculated as percentage of total body mass (BF%). Body fat distri
Ongoing inflammation including activation of the complement system is a hallmark of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Antimicrobial neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) are composed of secreted chromatin that may act as a source of autoantigens typical for SLE. In this study, we investigated how complement interacts with NETs and how NET degradation is affected by complement in SLE patients. We
Dopamine (DA) neurons derived from human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) are potentially valuable in drug screening and as a possible source of donor tissue for transplantation in Parkinson's disease. However, existing culture protocols that promote the differentiation of DA neurons from hESCs are complex, involving multiple steps and having unreliable results between cultures. Here we report a simpl
A Hidden Markov Model (HMM) is used to improve the robustness to noise when tracking the atrial fibrillation (AF) frequency in the ECG. Each frequency interval corresponds to a state in the HMM. Following QRST cancellation, a sequence of observed states is obtained from the residual ECG, using the short time Fourier transform. Based on the observed state sequence, the Viterbi algorithm, which uses
Background: Rhinovirus (RV)-induced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) exacerbations exhibit TH(2)-like inflammation. We hypothesized that RV-infected bronchial epithelial cells (BEC) overproduce TH(2)-switching hub cytokine, thymic stromal lymphopoietin (TSLP) in COPD. Methods: Primary BEC from healthy (HBEC) and from COPD donors (COPD-BEC) were grown in 12-well plates, infected with RV
Rationale, aims and objectives The aim of this study was to compare acute hospital utilization and costs for patients with refractory angina pectoris undergoing spinal cord stimulation (SCS) versus enhanced external counterpulsation (EECP). Method Seventy-three persons were included in this register study. The acute hospital utilization and costs for SCS and EECP were followed over a period from 1
The current status of the software package PHASE for the propagation of coherent light pulses along a synchrotron radiation beamline is presented. PHASE is based on an asymptotic expansion of the Fresnel-Kirchhoff integral (stationary phase approximation) which is usually truncated at the 2nd order. The limits of this approximation as well as possible extensions to higher orders are discussed. The
