Background--The electrocardiographic interatrial block (IAB) has been associated with atrial fibrillation (AF). We aimed to test whether IAB can improve risk prediction of AF for the individual person. Methods and Results--Digital ECGs of 152 759 primary care patients aged 50 to 90 years were collected from 2001 to 2011. We identified individuals with P-wave ≥120 ms and the presence of none, 1, 2,

Flux footprint models are often used for interpretation of flux tower measurements, to estimate position and size of surface source areas, and the relative contribution of passive scalar sources to measured fluxes. Accurate knowledge of footprints is of crucial importance for any upscaling exercises from single site flux measurements to local or regional scale. Hence, footprint models are ultimate

This study examines the hydrological recovery of two regenerating boreal trembling aspen (Populus tremuloides Michx.) dominated stands and the sensitivity of that regeneration to drought within the first 5 years of establishment. The results indicate that evapotranspiration fluxes and water-use efficiency rebounded quickly as a result of new vegetation foliage growth and wet conditions found withi

A newly developed pulsed cavity ring-down spectroscopy (CRDS) system for measuring atmospheric gaseous elemental mercury (GEM) concentrations at high temporal resolution (25 Hz) was used to successfully conduct the first eddy covariance (EC) flux measurements of GEM. GEM is the main gaseous atmospheric form, and quantification of bidirectional exchange between the Earth’s surface and the atmospher

Despite the controversies that surround the introduction of the third generation (3G) mobile telecommunication systems, the massive investment by industry and the constant demand for new technology and services are expected to usher in its eventual success. WCDMA is a dominant standard in the 3G system designed to succede the highly successful GSM standard. A new technology proposed for WCDMA is a

The Western Boreal Plain of north‐central Alberta is prone to water‐deficit conditions and is hydrologically sensitive to changes in climate, natural resource extraction and disturbance. Accurate measurement and modelling of the main components of the water balance are important for ecosystem and reclamation management; however, the lack of hydro‐meteorological instrumentation found within differe

The Davies transformation is a method to transform the steering vector of a uniform circular array (UCA) to a vector with Vandermonde form. As this form is similar to that of the steering vector of a uniform linear array (ULA), we can apply to UCAs the many tools that have been developed for ULAs. However, the Davies transformation can be highly sensitive to perturbations of the underlying ideal a

Fetuin-A, a hepatic-origin protein, is strongly positively associated with risk of type 2 diabetes in human observational studies, but it is unknown whether this association is causal. We aimed to study the potential causal relation of circulating fetuin-A to risk of type 2 diabetes in a Mendelian randomization study with single nucleotide polymorphisms located in the fetuin-A–encoding AHSG gene.

The Davies transformation is a method to transform the steering vector of a uniform circular array to another vector with Vandermonde form. However, this transformation can be highly sensitive to perturbations of the underlying ideal array model. In this paper, we describe a method for deriving a more robust transformation using optimisation techniques. The effectiveness of the method is illustrat

BACKGROUND:Identification and characterization of non-typeable Haemophilus influenzae (NTHi) with reduced susceptibility to β-lactam antibiotics due to mutations in penicillin binding protein 3 (PBP3) is a clinical challenge. We analyzed a blood isolate, NTHi93-57485, that was categorized as aminopenicillin resistant but lacked key amino acid substitutions in PBP3 that have previously been associa

The spatial and spectral filtering characteristics of a microphone array can be greatly enhanced through the use of an appropriately designed spatial/spectral filter. In this paper, we consider the design of optimum, in the minimax sense, spatial/spectral filters. The optimum minimax design problem is solved using the new efficient computational technique of Jiang et al. Numerical results demonstr

Purpose: We examined if data-driven food-patterns associate with weight change, incidence of type 2 diabetes (T2D), coronary events (CE) and stroke. Methods: The study included 20,487 individuals (61% women) from the Malmö Diet and Cancer cohort, 45–74 years, without diabetes and CVD at baseline (1991–1996) and who did not report dietary changes. Diet was measured with a modified diet history meth

This paper treats development and research at the regulatory control layer in process control. It is noticed that very little attention is payed to this subject, with the exception PID controller tuning. The reason for this is discussed. Two examples of recent advances in the field treating feedforward control and ratio control, respectively, are presented. A goal of the paper is to point out the

In the present study, we characterize the binding of divalent cations to insulin in aqueous salt solutions by means of capillary electrophoresis and molecular dynamics simulations. The results show a strong pH dependence. At low pH, at which all the carboxylate groups are protonated and the protein has an overall positive charge, all the cations exhibit only weak and rather unspecific interactions

Human exposure to radio frequency (RF) electromagnetic fields should not exceed the exposure limits set by the relevant regulatory guidelines. In this paper, we provide approaches to determine upper bounds of maximum exposure from multiple antennas. When the total transmitted power is fixed, the maximum exposure can be determined by an eigenvalue decomposition. If an individual antenna has additio

Feedforward control schemes to compensate for disturbances are very well known in process control. In those control approaches, PID controllers are usually considered in the feedback loop, where nominal design for both feedback and feedforward controllers are commonly performed. This paper presents a robustness analysis to study how uncertainties can affect the classical feedforward control scheme

Timescale uncertainties between paleoclimate reconstructions often inhibit studying the exact timing, spatial expression and driving mechanisms of climate variations. Detecting and aligning the globally common cosmogenic radionuclide production signal via a curve fitting method provides a tool for the quasi-continuous synchronization of paleoclimate archives. In this study, we apply this approach

This paper proposes a simple and improved approach of estimating MIMO capacity from antenna magnitude patterns, i.e., the antenna patterns are phaseless. The simple approach synthesizes the phases according to the antenna spacing, and it compares favorably with an existing approach based on random phase synthesis. Moreover, the simple approach can be improved by taking into account the correlation

We discuss in this paper the relevance of the territorial scalar approach in the analysis of biodiversity conservation and natural resource exploitation. We do this by using an empirical case study focused on the use of the forest ecosystems by diverse stakeholders in Korup region, South West Cameroon.Our aim is to contextualize biodiversity conservation in Korup National Park in a larger territor

The effective use of multiple antenna systems in compact terminal devices is plagued by the problems of mutual coupling and spatial correlation. Consequently, increasing the number of antennas per unit volume results in rapidly diminishing returns after an upper limit is reached. We review recent advances on this topic of closely coupled antennas, including several existing techniques that may be