RF-based localization has gained popularity because it offers low-cost positioning solution for ad-hoc networks. The Received Signal Strength (RSS) measured by a node has traditionally been used as a parameter to estimate location. However, RSS is not made readily available in the ad-hoc routing protocols like some other link quality indication parameter, e.g., Expected Transmission Count (ETX)...

The potential danger of natural mercury accumulation in the diet of the Eskimo is evaluated through mercury levels determined in cord blood, placenta, maternal blood, hair, and milk of 38 maternal-infant pairs from Anchorage and the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. Although mercury levels are not discernably dangerous, trends to larger accumulations in maternal and fetal RBC and placental tissue with pro...

Current literature suggests that grassland degradation occurs in areas with poor soil conditions or noticeable environmental changes and is often a result of overgrazing or human disturbances. However, these views are questioned in our analyses. Based on the analysis of satellite vegetation maps from 1984, 1998, and 2004 for the Xilin River Basin, Inner Mongolia, China, and binary logistic regr...

Alzheimer's disease is characterized by the deposition of senile plaques and progressive dementia. The molecular mechanisms that couple plaque deposition to neural system failure, however, are unknown. Using transgenic mouse models of AD together with multiphoton imaging, we measured neuronal calcium in individual neurites and spines in vivo using the genetically encoded calcium indicator Yello...

Dietary or aerosol exposure to the environmental neurotoxin β-N-methylamino-l-alanine (BMAA) is a putative risk factor for the development of sporadic neurodegenerative disease. There are many potential sources of BMAA in the environment, but BMAA presence and quantities are highly variable. It has been suggested that BMAA in human hair may serve as an indicator of exposure. We sought to evalua...

An Active Robust Optimisation Problem (AROP) aims at finding robust adaptable solutions, i.e. solutions that actively gain robustness to environmental changes through adaptation. Existing AROP studies have considered only a single performance objective. This study extends the Active Robust Optimisation methodology to deal with problems with more than one objective. Once multiple objectives are ...

Dimerization-dependent fluorescent proteins (ddFP) are a recently introduced class of genetically encoded reporters that can be used for the detection of protein interactions in live cells. The progenitor of this class of tools was a red fluorescent ddFP (ddRFP) derived from a homodimeric variant of Discosoma red fluorescent protein. Here, we describe the engineering and application of an expan...

Using the dexamethasone suppression test, we studied the activity of the hypothalamicpituitary-adrenal axis within the first week after onset in 62 patients with acute ischemic stroke. Compared with two control groups (one comprising 25 elderly patients with various acute medical disorders and the other comprising 33 80-year-old volunteers), stroke patients had higher postdexamethasone cortisol...

The importance of preventing the voltage collapse is gaining importance due to increase in dependency on the use of electricity. This has compelled the utilities to maintain high system reliability. The evaluation of a power systems ability to withstand dangerous contingencies and to survive to a normal or acceptable operating point is a prerequisite for security analysis. Fast and accurate sec...

This paper is concerned with the best proximity pair problem in Hilbert spaces. Given two subsets $A$ and $B$ of a Hilbert space $H$ and the set-valued maps $F:A o 2^ B$ and $G:A_0 o 2^{A_0}$, where $A_0={xin A: |x-y|=d(A,B)~~~mbox{for some}~~~ yin B}$, best proximity pair theorems provide sufficient conditions that ensure the existence of an $x_0in A$ such that $$d(G(x_0),F(x_0))=d(A,B).$$