To be accurate and equivalent, laboratory results should be traceable to higher-order references. Furthermore, their analytical performance should fulfill acceptable measurement uncertainty criteria defined to fit the intended clinical use. With this aim, In Vitro Diagnostics (IVD) manufacturers should define a calibration hierarchy to assign traceable values to their system calibrators and to ...

Graphene, in addition to its unique electronic and optical properties, reveals unusually high thermal conductivity. The fact that the thermal conductivity of large enough graphene sheets should be higher than that of basal planes of bulk graphite was predicted theoretically by Klemens. However, the exact mechanisms behind the drastic alteration of a material's intrinsic ability to conduct heat ...

BACKGROUND External quality assessment schemes (EQAS) are conducted to evaluate user performance (participant assessment) and to assess different methods and instruments (method assessment). The quality of control materials is crucial to achieving these goals. Inconsistencies in between-lot variations detected by use of different control and sample materials may affect EQAS outcomes. METHODS ...

Self-healing materials attract a lot of attention because of their ability to repair the internal and external damage, thereby extending the lifetime of the material in numerous applications that we cannot repair easily. Diarylbibenzofuranone (DABBF), which is a novel dynamic covalent bond unit, can reach a state of radically thermodynamic equilibrium under air at room temperature without any s...

This work is the first extensive study on the removal of carbon monoxide from polluted air in biofilters. It compares the performance of two packing materials, namely lava rock alone and a mixture of peat and lava rock. The results show that the biofilter packed with the mixture of peat and lava rock performed much better than the other one. The effect of operating conditions as, among others, ...

Weapons-grade uranium and plutonium could be used as nuclear explosives with extreme destructive potential. The problem of their detection, especially in standard cargo containers during transit, has been described as "searching for a needle in a haystack" because of the inherently low rate of spontaneous emission of characteristic penetrating radiation and the ease of its shielding. Currently,...

The purpose of this review is to present information about raw materials that can be used in pig and poultry diets and the factors responsible for variations in their mycotoxin contents. The levels of mycotoxins in pig and poultry feeds are calculated based on mycotoxin contamination levels of the raw materials with different diet formulations, to highlight the important role the stage of produ...

The endohedral functionalization of carbon nanotubes with both organic and inorganic materials allows the development of tailored functional hybrids whose properties benefit from the synergistic effects of the constituent compounds. Bulk filling of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) results in samples that contain a large amount of non-encapsulated material external to the CNTs. The presence of the extern...