INTRODUCTION Hearing protection devices are one of the primary noise reduction tools in developing countries. This study is intended to produce and apply acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS)/clay nanocomposites to fabricate a laboratory single cup earmuffs and then compare it with double cup and single cup pure ABS earmuffs in terms of noise attenuation performance and comfort. In addition, th...

In this study, we investigate the effect of substituents in determining the modes of one-electron reductive cleavage of X-NRR' (X = Cl and Br) molecules. We achieve this through comparison of the calculated gas-phase electron affinities (EAs) and aqueous-phase one-electron reduction potentials (E°'s) for a range of nitrogen-centered radicals ((•)NRR') with the corresponding EA and E° values for...

As one of the most important chemicals and carbon-free energy carriers, ammonia (NH3) has significant energy-related applications in industry agriculture. Ninety percent NH3 is produced by Haber–Bosch process using high-purity N2 H2 at high temperatures pressures, which consumes about 1% total production causes 1.4% global CO2 emissions. The environmentally friendly electrochemical nitrogen red...

Ammonia (NH3) is an important raw material for nitrogen fertilizer production and widely used in industry. It also a carbon-free renewable fuel excellent hydrogen storage material. Reaction conditions of the traditional Haber–Bosch process are very harsh even though it supports most today’s NH3 production. Recently, electrocatalytic reduction reaction (NRR) has become one effective alternative ...

As an attempt to find an inexpensive and simple laboratory method for artificial insemination (AI) bull semen quality assessment, the osmotic resistance of spermatozoa was measured using the hypoosmotic swelling (HOS) test, developed by Jeyendran et al. (1984) (labelled HOS-1), and its modifications (HOS-2, HOS-3), with decreased osmotic pressure aimed at challenging sperm survival ability. The...

PURPOSE Optical coherence tomography (OCT) measures of the retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) thickness and neuroretinal rim (NRR) parameters are often used as a surrogate for retinal ganglion cell content. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between these morphological measures and the aging effects on these structures. METHODS One hundred thirteen healthy individuals...

Though considerable progress has been made in inferring phylogenetic relationships of many plant lineages, deep unresolved nodes remain a common problem that can impact downstream efforts, including taxonomic decision-making and character reconstruction. The Core Goodeniaceae is a group affected by this issue: data from the plastid regions trnL-trnF and matK have been insufficient to generate a...

We present a generic method for assessing the quality of non-rigid registration (NRR), that does not require ground truth, but rather depends solely on the registered images. We consider the case where NRR is applied to a set of images, providing a dense correspondence between images. Given this correspondence, it is possible to build a generative statistical model of appearance variation for t...

Variations of instantaneous heart rate appears regularly oscillatory in deeper levels of anesthesia and less regular in lighter levels of anesthesia. It is impossible to observe this “rhythmic-to-non-rhythmic” phenomenon from raw electrocardiography waveform in current standard anesthesia monitors. To explore the possible clinical value, I proposed the adaptive harmonic model, which fits the de...