Cadmium (Cd) pollution poses a risk to human health for its accumulation in soil and crops, but this can be alleviated by calcium (Ca) addition. However, its mechanism remains unclear yet. In this study, Arabidopsis thaliana was used to explore the alleviating effects of Ca on Cd toxicity and its specific function during uptake, upward-translocation, and distribution of Cd. Supplementing plants wi

Despite the performance gains of heat exchangers by thermal-hydraulic optimization, many design approaches suffer from a long process of trial-and-error, limited practical problem formulation and poor robustness. This paper addresses those challenges and develops an optimization framework for designing multi-stream compact heat exchangers. The optimization framework consists of a multi-stream matc

Pyranose Dehydrogenase 1 from the basidiomycete Agaricus meleagris (AmPDH1) is an oxidoreductase capable of oxidizing a broad variety of sugars. Due to this and its ability of dioxidation of substrates and no side production of hydrogen peroxide, it is studied for use in enzymatic bio-fuel cells. In-vitro deglycosylated AmPDH1 as well as knock-out mutants of the N-glycosylation sites N75 and N175,

Given the current energy crises, recent efforts have been directed at bringing energy efficiency and environmental awareness across the board into architectural education in Egypt. Although interest in sustainable design teaching and learning started more than 20 years ago at both post graduate and undergraduate level in Egypt, ecological illiteracy persists in architecture education. There is a l

A compression-molded green composite material comprising of bacterially synthesized poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-3-hydroxyhexanoate) [P(3HB-co-3HHx)] and short kenaf fibers (KF) was prepared in the present study. Accordingly, P(3HB-co-3HHx) was produced by the Cupriavidus necator Re2058/pCB113 using the palm oil as the sole carbon source, while the polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) copolymer with ∼99% purit

Powerful analytical tools are vital for characterizing the complex molecular changes underlying oncogenesis and cancer treatment. This is particularly true, if information is to be collected in vivo by noninvasive approaches. In the recent past, hyperpolarized (13)C magnetic resonance (MR) spectroscopy has been employed to quickly collect detailed spectral information on the chemical fate of trace

In massive MIMO performance evaluations it is often assumed that the terminal has a single antenna. The combination of multiple antennas in a terminal and massive MIMO precoding at the base station side can further improve overall system performance. We present measurement results for multi antenna terminals operating in different transmission schemes and how they perform under varying loading con

As alterations in tissue pH underlie many pathological processes, the capability to image tissue pH in the clinic could offer new ways of detecting disease and response to treatment. Dynamic nuclear polarization is an emerging technique for substantially increasing the sensitivity of magnetic resonance imaging experiments. Here we show that tissue pH can be imaged in vivo from the ratio of the sig

Mitochondrial disease refers to a heterogeneous group of disorders resulting in defective cellular energy production due to dysfunction of the mitochondrial respiratory chain, which is responsible for the generation of most cellular energy. Because cardiac muscles are one of the high energy demanding tissues, mitochondrial cardiomyopathies is one of the most frequent mitochondria disorders. Mitoch

Background: We have recently analyzed the profile of T-cell subtypes based on chemokine receptor expression in blood from untreated early rheumatoid arthritis (ueRA) patients compared to healthy controls (HC). Here, we compared the levels of the respective chemokines in blood plasma of ueRA patients with those of HC. We also studied the association of chemokine levels with the proportions of circu

Automatic detection of point groups as well as symmetrisation of molecular geometry and wavefunctions are useful tools in computational quantum chemistry. Algorithms for developing these tools as well as an implementation are presented. The symmetry detection algorithm is a clustering algorithm for symmetry invariant properties, combined with logical deduction of possible symmetry elements using t

We formulate two simple benchmark problems for event-based control, where the optimal solutions in the continuous-time setting turn out to be ordinary PI and PID controllers. The benchmarks can be used to compare the performance of continuous-time, discrete-time, and various event-based controllers with regard to for instance disturbance attenuation, control effort, and average sampling or actuati

Background High parity has been suggested to increase risk of maternal cardiovascular disease independent of body mass index measured after childbearing. Pregnancy is, however, associated with persistent weight gain and metabolic changes that, independent of parity, increase the risk of cardiovascular disease. It could therefore be questioned if high parity independently increases the risk of card

Multi-dimensional harmonic retrieval (HR) in white noise is required in numerous applications such as channel estimation in wireless communications and imaging in multiple-input multiple-output radar. In this paper, we propose two R-dimensional (R -D) extensions of the subspace-based MUSIC model order selection scheme, for R≥2R≥2, to detect the number of multi-dimensional cisoids. The key idea in Multi-dimensional harmonic retrieval (HR) in white noise is required in numerous applications such as channel estimation in wireless communications and imaging in multiple-input multiple-output radar. In this paper, we propose two R-dimensional (R -D) extensions of the subspace-based MUSIC model order selection scheme, for R≥2R≥2, to detect the number of multi-dimensional cisoids. The key idea in

Given its high specificity, the use of nuclear quadrupole resonance (NQR) spectroscopy allows for a reliable identification and quantification of substances containing quadrupolar nuclei, such as the 14N nucleus prevalent in many explosives, medicines, and narcotics. Regrettably, the measured signals are typically weak and suffers from interference signals often being several orders of magnitude s

Many state-of-the-art multichannel speech enhancement methods rely on second-order statistics of the desired speech signal, the noise signal, or both. Estimation of those are difficult in practice, resulting in a practical performance that is typically much lower than their potential theoretical performance. We propose two multichannel enhancement techniques that instead rely on a model for voiced

In this work, we introduce a computationally efficient multi-pitch estimation algorithm making use of an approximative frequency domain reformulation of a recent block-sparse multi-pitch estimator. Different to most other pitch estimators, the proposed method does not require a prior knowledge of the number of sources present, nor the number of overtones of each such source. Evaluated on measured