In Kenya the government is promoting diversification of crops to embrace high value crops and drought resistant crop varieties in efforts to reduce poverty in rural areas. Sugar beet is one of the crops considered as an option in this context and it is therefore important to increase knowledge about the potentials in the country for cultivating this crop. Sugar beet trials conducted in Nyandarua a

The problem of optimum load control of steam power plants has been dealt within many technical papers during the last decades. Deregulation of the power markets and close to the (bio-) fuel source thinking has lead to a trend of small scale combined heat and power plants. These plants are usually operated according to the heat demand and therefore they spend a significant time on partial load. The

A vibrational spectroscopy study (infrared and Raman) is reported for the biogenic polyamine analogues norspermidine (NSpd), N(1),N(11)-bis(ethyl)norspermine (BENSpm) and N(1)-cyclo-propylmethyl-N(11)-ethylnorspermine (CPENSpm), as well as for their newly synthesised Pt(II) and Pd(II) complexes. Attending to the potential antineoplastic properties of this kind of systems, their full conformational

Severe knee trauma, such as an ACL disruption, produces aggrecan degradation as evidenced by elevated synovial fluid (SF) N-terminal (393) Alanine-Arginine-Glycine-Serine (ARGS) neoepitope (or ARGS-aggrecan) and is associated with inflammatory activity soon after injury. However, it is not known if this process persists for a substantial time interval following the initial trauma. The purpose of t

This paper presents an algorithm for better phasor estimation at off-nominal frequencies. The sampling rate remains unchanged, but instead the amplitude of the sample values within a buffer is altered in order to give a signal of the same amplitude but different frequency. The re-calculation of the samples is done by second order spline interpolation. The effect is that the signal frequency appear

In this paper, we report experimentally and theoretically a surface photocatalysis reaction of 4-aminothiophenol (PATP) to p,p'-dimercaptoazobenzene (DMAB) on Au, Ag, and Cu colloids. Surface enhanced Raman scattering (SEAS) spectra of PATP on Au and Cu colloids are significantly different from the normal Raman spectrum of PATP powder. Quantum chemical calculations reveal that PATP on Au and Cu co

Pharmacologically mediated bronchodilation is important in the management of asthma, and is primarily achieved with β2-agonists. Novel compounds should preferably have a longer duration of action and a better systemic side effect profile than established alternatives at comparable peak bronchodilation. This single-dose crossover study was conducted to investigate and compare with formoterol the br

Woody biomass production is a critical indicator in evaluation of land use management and the dynamics of the global carbon cycle (sequestration/emission) in terrestrial ecosystems. The objective of the present study was to develop, through a case study in Sudan, an operational multiscale remote-sensing-based methodology for large-scale estimation of woody biomass in tropical savannahs. Woody biom

This study investigated the impact of building orientations, typical layouts and positions at facades on daylight and sunlight availability in high-density residential areas in North-east China. Vertical daylight factor (including sky component and reflected component) and sunlight hours along the centre building facades in three typical models were calculated using Radiance and Autodesk Ecotect A

Common diseases such as type 2 diabetes are phenotypically heterogeneous. Obesity is a major risk factor for type 2 diabetes, but patients vary appreciably in body mass index. We hypothesized that the genetic predisposition to the disease may be different in lean (BMI= 30 Kg/m(2)). We performed two case-control genome-wide studies using two accepted cut-offs for defining individuals as overweight

Objective: To describe non-lymphoma hematological malignancies in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Methods: A large SLE cohort was linked to cancer registries. We examined the types of non-lymphoma hematological cancers. Results: In 16,409 patients, 115 hematological cancers [including myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS)] occurred. Among these, 33 were non-lymphoma. Of the 33 non-lymphoma cases, 13

There is limited information about whether time from recognition of decreased perfusion to revascularization affects the probability of healing in a patient with a diabetic foot ulcer. The aim of the present study was to examine whether time to revascularization after referral to a multidisciplinary foot center was related to the outcome of foot ulcers in patients with diabetes and severe peripher

Soil nutrient supply is likely to change in the Arctic due to altered process rates associated with climate change. Here, we compare the responses of herbaceous tundra and birch forest understory to fertilization, considering both above-and below-ground responses. We added nitrogen and phosphorus to plots in both vegetation types for three years near Abisko, northern Sweden, and measured the effec

BACKGROUND: Work ability and work ability assessments have become important both in health care and in relation to granting sick leave. There are different interpretations of work ability among the different professionals involved, and there is no consensus on how work ability should be assessed. Aim The aim was to analyse how a group of experienced and specially trained physiotherapists (PTs) in

BACKGROUND: Previous studies have found insomnia and long sleep duration to be independently associated with subsequent disability pension (DP). However, the issue of a possible gender-based pattern in this context has received little attention. PURPOSE: This study aims to assess the impact of insomnia symptoms and sleep duration on the DP rates among Swedish women and men during a 12-year follow-

Amyloid diseases are defined by tissue deposition of insoluble, fibrillar beta-sheet polymers of specific proteins, but it appears that toxic oligomeric species rather than the fibrils are the main cause of tissue degeneration. Many proteins can form amyloid-like fibrils in vitro, but only similar to 30 proteins have been found to cause mammalian amyloid disease, suggesting that physiological mech

Multimeric lactosides based on carbohydrate scaffolds with valencies ranging from 1 to 4 and different linker lengths were synthesized by a copper-catalyzed azide-alkyne cycloaddition (CuAAC). The binding affinities and crosslinking abilities of the new "click clusters" toward biologically relevant galectins (gal-1, gal-3) and peanut lectin were evaluated by fluorescent polarization assay (FPA) an

In the framework of quantum field theory, a graviton interacts locally with a quantum state having definite mass, that is, the gravitational mass eigenstate, while a weak boson interacts with a state having definite flavor, that is, the flavor eigenstate. An interaction of a neutrino with an energetic graviton may trigger the collapse of the neutrino to a definite mass eigenstate with probability

This paper explores leadership and governance arrangements in seven developed health systems: Australia, England, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland. It presents a cybernetic model of leadership and governance comprising three fundamental functions: priority setting, performance monitoring and accountability arrangements. The paper uses a structured survey to examine critical