Many people around the globe prefer bottled water especially in developing countries, where tap water is not drinkable. This study investigated the quality of bottled drinking water sold in Lilongwe city, Malawi. Compliance with Malawi Standards (MS) 560 (2004) for natural mineral water, MS 699 (2004) for bottled water and the World Health Organisation guidelines for drinking water were examined.

Water resources face risks due to water use stress and water scarcity. Collective and integrated actions by different institutions and stakeholders are needed to reduce future water risks. This paper aimed to assess the potential for a water stewardship partnership in River Nzoia Basin to reduce future water risks facing the ecosystem, agriculture, and other sectors by quantifying water risks and

Mass production of nanocrystals with accurate size control is a central problem in nanotechnology. Aerosol technology offers the possibility to produce nanocrystals with well-controlled composition and size distribution.An aerosol is defined as solid or liquid particles suspended in a gas, and aerosol science and technology has been used since over 60 years, primarily to study the size, shape and

The Algerian civil war, 1992–2002, affected all aspects of life in the country. Major development efforts were therefore initiated in the post-conflict era. Almost 20 years later, the economy remains fragile, and the country’s large hydrocarbon revenues have not been used to develop the infrastructure for sustainability, support energy transition or reduce structural vulnerabilities. This paper pr

This paper investigated the role of local institutions in facilitating farm households’ response and adaptation to climate change impacts on their livelihood. A case study of adapting to drought events associated with crop failure in a Semi-Arid Ecosystems of northern Ghana was taken. A total of 49 semi-structured interviews with key representatives of various local institutions from different sec

Purpose: Western societies are currently facing major demographic changes, due to megatrends such as urbanization, ageing of the population, and migration. These disruptions placea lot of pressure on public services, and consequently on municipal facilities includingschools, day-care centres, and hospitals. The purpose of this study is to examine the potentialof modular facility solutions to respo

Herein, a technique to analyze air-dried kidney tissue impression smears by means of attenuated total reflection infrared (ATR-IR) spectroscopy is presented. Spectral tumor markers-absorption bands of glycogen-are identified in the ATR-IR spectra of the kidney tissue smear samples. Thin kidney tissue cryo-sections currently used for IR spectroscopic analysis lack such spectral markers as the sampl

We present a novel approach for detection of cancerous kidney tissue areas by measuring surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) spectra of extracellular fluid taken from kidney tissue. The method is based on spectral analysis of the cancerous and normal tissue areas in order to find the specific spectral markers. The samples were prepared by sliding the kidney tissue over a substrate—calcium fluo

Tracing aetiology and pathogenesis of urinary stone disease is of great importance in order to prescribe appropriate treatment and prevent recurrences. For this purpose, morphological examination combined with determination of chemical composition of urinary stones is fundamental. In this work, we have evaluated the potential of multimodal nonlinear optical imaging for investigation of (micro)stru

The crucial goal of kidney-sparing surgical resection of a malignant tumor is complete removal of the cancerous tissue. The exact border between the cancerous and normal tissues is not always possible to identify by naked eye, therefore, a supplementary intraoperative diagnosis is needed. Unfortunately, intraoperative pathology methods used nowadays are time consuming and of inadequate quality ren

Surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) spectroscopy is a useful method for detection of trace amounts of molecules. It has already been successfully implemented for detection of explosives, food additives, biomarkers in blood or urine, etc. In the last decade, SERS spectroscopy was introduced into the field of health sciences and has been especially focused on early disease detection. In the rec

ABSTRACT: Nanoimprint lithography (NIL) has the potential for low-cost andhigh-throughput nanoscale fabrication. However, the NIL quality and resolution areusually limited by the shape and size of the nanoimprint stamp features. Atomiclayer etching (ALE) can provide a damage-free pattern transfer with ultimate etchcontrol for features of all length scales, down to the atomic scale, and for all fea

Populärvetenskaplig sammanfattning:En studie publicerad av NASA:s Goddard Institute for Space Studies år 2019 visade att de genomsnittliga globala temperaturerna under de senaste fyra åren (2015-2018) var de högsta som någonsin registrerats i människans historia. Den nyheten passar väl in i de alarmerande prognoserna om global uppvärmning, och kräver snabba och radikala handlingar. Att studera “teInnovative design and materials are needed to satisfy the demand for efficient and scalable devices for electronic and opto-electronic applications, such as transistors, LEDs, and solar cells. Nanostructured III-V semiconductors are an appealing solution, combining the excellent functional properties of III-V materials with the flexibility typical of nanostructures, such as the nanowires (NWs) stu

Inherited genetic susceptibility to multiple myeloma has been investigated in a number of studies. Although 23 individual risk loci have been identified, much of the genetic heritability remains unknown. Here we carried out genome-wide interaction analyses on two European cohorts accounting for 3,999 cases and 7,266 controls and characterized genetic susceptibility to multiple myeloma with subsequ

Whole blood is rich in information about the physical state of an individual and is routinely used in a variety of clinical and research applications. In this thesis, the use of a microfluidic technique called acoustophoresis for separation of different blood components is explored. Acoustophoresis uses an ultrasonic standing wave field to manipulate cells in a microfluidic device. Cells within th

Background: Feedback postural control depends upon information from somatosensation, vision, and the vestibular system that are weighted depending on their relative importance within the central nervous system. Following loss of any sensory component, the weighting changes, e.g., when suffering a vestibular loss, the most common notion is that patients become more dependent on visual cues for main

Understanding the human dimension is critical for effective conservation management of species involved in human-carnivore conflict. There is also a need to recognize who among the local human population is supportive of wildlife conservation. We investigated how local people's attitudes and knowledge of the leopard cat Prionailurus bengalensis are influenced by socio-demographic variables, encoun

A c. 1450 Ma, east-west-oriented suite of Proterozoic mafic intrusions in eastern Canada, located between Labrador City and coastal Labrador near Rigolet, has been divided into two groups: the Shabogamo Gabbro, which is exposed west of Churchill Falls, and the Michael Gabbro, which crops out east of Churchill Falls. Both suites of gabbro are within-plate tholeiites that range from sub-alkaline bas

This paper aims to investigate the scientific productivity of China's science system. This paper employs the Malmquist productivity index (MPI) based on Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The results reveal that the overall efficiency of Chinese universities increased significantly from 2009 to 2016, which is mainly driven by technological progress. From the perspective of the functions of higher ed

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to assess complications and mortality and its predictors, with continuous-flow left ventricular assist devices (CF-LVADs) in the Nordic Countries. Design: This was a retrospective, international, multicenter cohort study. Results: Between 1993 and 2013, 442 surgically implanted long-term mechanical assist devices were used among 8 centers in the Nordic cou