The human-environment connection in the mostly rural drylands of sub-Saharan Africa forms a complex, interlinked system that provides ecosystem services. This system is susceptible to climatic variability that impacts the supply of its products, and high population growth, which impacts the demand for these products. When plants remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through the process of phot

There are many challenges associated with the construction processes of planning and scheduling. These challenges are relevant to all project parties or stakeholders and therefore management roles or organisational behaviours of those parties have to be properly considered and assessed. With this in mind, this study is aimed at assessing practitioners' perspectives on the current significance and

Background: Atrial fibrillation (AF) detection in ischemic stroke patients triggers initiation of oral anticoagulant therapy (OAC). However, little is known regarding whether the persistency of AF affects long-term prognosis after ischemic stroke. We aimed to assess the impact of AF types and OAC on the outcome during a 10-year follow-up (FU) after first-ever ischemic stroke. Material and methods:

In 2009 the Democratic Party of Japan came to power with a new foreign policy tailored to the regional and global power shift from the United States to China: a more equal relationship with the United States and improved relations with Japan’s Asian neighbours. Within nine months the new Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio resigned and the foreign policy shift was jettisoned by his successors. Conventio

Heat loss is one of the greatest energy losses in engines. More than half of the heat is lost to cooling media and exhaust losses, and they thus dominate the internal combustion engine energy balance. Complex processes affect heat loss to the cylinder walls, including gas motion, spray-wall interaction and turbulence levels. The aim of this work was to experimentally compare the heat transfer char

Introduction: We aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of microsurgical subinguinal varicocele repair in patients with grade II-III lesions and chronic dull scrotal pain. Materials and Methods: A total of 29 patients with grade II-III varicocele and chronic dull scrotal pain that had a microsurgical subinguinal varicocele repair were included in the study. They were followed-up for 6-12 months inclu

China uses half the world’s annual coal consumption, since coal is the primary energy source for heating in urban areas, particularly in northern China. This entails significant challenges for urban air quality in China and for the global climate. Unlike the electricity and transportation sectors, the heating sector has received little attention from policy and research actors in China, despite ve

With industrial robots ready to take the next step in mastering manufacturing tasks new approaches to reduce the programming effort are needed. This is achieved by introducing skills as robot "know-how" and using them as a higher abstraction level of robot instructions during programming. The skills are reusable items providing motion control and rich declarative descriptions of complex robot capa