Background: There is a long-standing debate about the role of spacing and stopping in the fertility transition, fueled by a lack of methods to appropriately model spacing and stopping. Traditional event-history analysis cannot distinguish between the two processes in analyzing the determinants of birth risks, and attempts to separately model spacing and stopping have been criticized from a methodo

The ACMG/AMP guidelines include five categories of which variants of uncertain significance (VUSs) have received increasing attention. Recently, Fowler and Rehm claimed that all or most VUSs could be reclassified as pathogenic or benign within few years. To test this claim, we collected validated benign, pathogenic, VUS and conflicting variants from ClinVar and LOVD and investigated differences at

This paper presents a methodology for the assessment of time-dependent reliability of post-tensioned (PT) girders. As possible lack of consistent maintenance efforts and the constraints of economic and temporal resources become increasingly apparent, there is a need to comprehend their remaining service life, intricately tied to the gradual evolution of their reliability over time. In this study,

The service life of infrastructures is of high relevance for the provision of societal and industrial functionality and sustainability. Despite this high relevance, the service life is not explicitly considered of the design and operation procedures. Towards an efficient and sustainable service life management, this paper contains a description of approaches for service life limit quantification a

Warm Jupiters are ideal laboratories for testing the limitations of current tools for atmospheric studies. The cross-correlation technique is a commonly used method to investigate the atmospheres of close-in planets, leveraging their large orbital velocities to separate the spectrum of the planet from that of the star. Warm Jupiter atmospheres predominantly consist of molecular species, notably wa

Polymer gears are becoming more and more interesting parts of various machines; they are used in ever-more-demanding operating conditions. Due to their good mechanical properties, lightweight, and low noise during operation, they tend to substitute metallic gears in some traditional applications, and they also enter new applications such as e-bikes. A reliable design of polymer gears remains, to d

We present high spectral resolution observations of the hot Jupiter WASP-94 A b using the HARPS instrument on ESO’s 3.6-m telescope in La Silla, Chile. We probed for Na absorption in its atmosphere as well as constrained the previously reported misaligned retrograde orbit using the Rossiter–McLaughlin effect. Additionally, we undertook a combined atmospheric retrieval analysis with previously publ

Context. The spectra of fast-rotating A-type stars have strongly broadened absorption lines. This effect causes blending of the absorption lines, hindering the measurement of the abundances of the elements that are in the stellar photosphere.Aims. As the exoplanet transits across its host star, it obscures the stellar spectrum that is emitted from directly behind the planet. We aim to extract this

Context. Ultra-hot Jupiters (UHJ) have emerged as ideal testbeds for new techniques for studying exoplanet atmospheres. Only a limited number of them are currently well studied, however.Aims. We search for atmospheric constituents for the UHJ WASP-178 b with two ESPRESSO transits. Additionally, we show parallel photometry that we used to obtain updated and precise stellar, planetary, and orbital p

OBJECTIVE: Durable and stable phantoms for verifying and validating the new magnetomotive ultrasound technique are lacking. Here we propose a phantom design to address this need.METHODS: A mixture of styrene-butylene/ethylene-styrene (SEBS) in mineral oil and glass beads as a scattering material acted as a bulk material, in which a polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) inclusion containing magnetic nanoparticle

Magnetomotive Ultrasound, MMUS, is an imaging modality used to reveal a magnetic contrast agent using an external time-varying inhomogeneous magnetic field. By this, the particles are set in motion, and the motion is detected with ultrasound. The technique has applications in cancer detection but is limited in penetration as the magnetic field decreases rapidly with distance. Instead of increasing

The design of polymer gears is an open challenge; several constraints must bechecked during the design process due to the complex relations between different design parameters and specifics of application. The failure modes are determined by the load level, used material pair, and operating conditions—speed of rotation, environment temperature, and lubrication. Polymer gear design is not a straigh

To meet climate targets, expanding Populus spp. tree cultivation is proposed as a potential biomass feedstock, especially on agricultural land that does not come into conflict with food production. However, biomass potential assessments typically overlook landowners' perspectives, risking a gap between theoretical potentials and realisation. Here, we test empirical consequences of two hypotheses b

Product design requirements are becoming more and more complex, while the number of available materials is increasing. Polymeric materials are still dominant in many applications, replacing other manufacturing materials. Gears are one of the mechanical parts that are increasingly made of plastic. To effectively replace metal materials, the design process and product material must meet all applicat

The book serves as a comprehensive and professional guide on polymer gears design and production. It provides the reader withan overview of the current developments in the field composite materials, testing, and applications of polymer gears. This includesmaterial development, tribological properties, simulations, and processing methods.Due to their efficient mechanical properties, light weight, a

This paper investigates whether executive boards consider firm-specific inefficiencies when they change CEOs in the Swedish electricity distribution sector. Firm-level inefficiencies are calculated using data from all Swedish electricity distributors from 2001 to 2022 and a data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach. DEA has advantages over standard financial key performance indicators since it cont

A Stein-type control function maximum likelihood (CFML) estimator is suggested for the probit model in the presence of endogeneity. This novel estimator combines the probit maximum likelihood and CFML estimators. The asymptotic distribution and risk function for the new estimator is derived. It is demonstrated that, subject to certain conditions of the shrinkage parameter, the asymptotic risk of t