In this paper an attempt is made to evaluate the convective mass transfer coefficient during drying of jaggery in a controlled environment. In this method, different masses of jaggery were used. The jaggery was dried in the roof type even span greenhouse with a floor area of 1.2x0.8 m in natural and forced convection mode at atmospheric pressure till it attained almost no variation in mass. The...

Radiosonde humidity data provide the longest record for assessing changes in atmospheric water vapor, but they often contain large discontinuities because of changes in instrumentation and observational practices. In this study, the variations and trends in tropospheric humidity (up to 300 hPa) over China are analyzed using a newly homogenized radiosonde dataset. It is shown that the homogeniza...

BACKGROUND Although some authors have suggested that there is some seasonal periodicity of hemoptysis, or relation to respiratory tract infections, the association of influenza or climatic parameters with hemoptysis has been poorly investigated. Our aim was to describe the relationship between influenza and climatic parameters with severe hemoptysis that required bronchial artery embolization (...

Effect of humidity on nitric acid uptake to mineral dust aerosol particles A. Vlasenko, S. Sjogren, E. Weingartner, K. Stemmler, H. W. Gäggeler, and M. Ammann Laboratory of Radioand Environmental chemistry, Paul Scherrer Institute, Villigen, Switzerland Laboratory of Atmospheric Chemistry, Paul Scherrer Institute, Villigen, Switzerland Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Ber...

BACKGROUND Climatic or meteorological condition changes have been implicated in the pathogenesis of Bell's palsy (BP). We evaluate the influence of meteorological parameters, such as temperature, humidity, and atmospheric pressure, and their variation and covariation on the incidence of BP and present a review of the literature on the effect of meteorological conditions on facial nerve function...

This paper provides early instrumental data recovered for 20 countries of Latin-America and the Caribbean (Argentina, Bahamas, Belize, Brazil, British Guiana, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, France (Martinique and Guadalupe), Guatemala, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Puerto Rico, El Salvador and Suriname) during the 18th and 19th centuries. The main meteorological variabl...

[1] This study evaluates three major Numerical-Weather-Prediction reanalyses (ERA-Interim, NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis I, and NCEP/DOE Reanalysis II) in modeling surface relative shortwave cloud forcing, cloud fraction, and cloud albedo. The observations used for this evaluation are decade-long surface-based continuous measurements of the U.S. Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) program from 03/25...

Few studies have assessed the spatial association of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) incidence in the world. The aim of this study was to identify the association of climatic factors and ALS incidence in Taiwan. A total of 1,434 subjects with the primary diagnosis of ALS between years 1997 and 2008 were identified in the national health insurance research database. The diagnosis was also ve...

The National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) reanalysis data on tropospheric humidity are examined for the period 1973 to 2007. It is accepted that radiosonde-derived humidity data must be treated with great caution, particularly at altitudes above the 500 hPa pressure level. With that caveat, the face-value 35-year trend in zonal-average annual-average specific humidity q is signif...