Commercially available blood-collection tubes may be contaminated with endotoxin (315 +/- 95 pg/tube) and could therefore be unsuitable for blood collection for endotoxin measurement. Plasma separation and storage are a potential source of contamination. To avoid contamination and error, we have developed new blood collection tubes that contain heparin free of endotoxin (LPS) and a gel to separ...

During World War I, when it became increasingly difficult for physicians in many European countries to have their defective X-ray tubes repaired or replaced, since most of these tubes were produced by German-based companies, Dutch physicians made an urgent request to Philips, asking the company if they could repair their X-ray tubes. Because Philips had the necessary expertise in glass and vacu...

Energy absorber systems like metallic dampers for controlling the structural vibrations due to earthquake have witnessed considerable development in the past few decades. Also there are some studies on the energy absorption of thin-walled tubes due to impact load. Thin-walled tubes have a large deformation capacity and are suitable energy absorbers in the structure during an earthquake provided...

The nonparametric empirical likelihood approach is used to obtain simultaneous confidence tubes for multiple quantile plots based on k independent (possibly right-censored) samples. These tubes are asymptotically distribution free, except when both k > 3 and censoring is present. Pointwise versions of the confidence tubes, however, are asymptotically distribution free in all cases. The various ...

The nonparametric empirical likelihood approach is used to obtain simultaneous conndence tubes for multiple quantile plots based on k independent (possibly right-censored) samples. These tubes are asymptotically distribution-free, except when both k 3 and censoring is present. Pointwise versions of the conndence tubes, however, are asymptotically distribution-free in all cases. The various conn...

By studying multidimensional Kaluza-Klein theories, or gravity plus U(1) or SU(2) gauge fields it is shown that these theories possess similar flux tube solutions. The gauge field which fills the tube geometry of these solutions leads to a comparision with the flux tube structures in QCD. These solutions also carry a “magnetic” charge, Q, which for the SU(2) Einstein-Yang-Mills (EYM) system exh...

Many mobile robots such as wheeled robots, boats, or plane are described by nonholonomic differential equations. As a consequence, they have to satisfy some differential constraints such as having a radius of curvature for their trajectory lower than a known value. For this type of robots, it is difficult to prove some properties such as the avoidance of collisions with some moving obstacles. T...