Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is a common cause of morbidity among children. Evidence on seasonality, especially on the frequency of viral and bacterial causative agents is scarce; such information may be useful in an era of changing climate conditions worldwide. To analyze the frequency of distinct infections, meteorological indicators and seasons in children hospitalized for CAP in Salva...

Achieving computer vision on micro-scale devices is a challenge. On these platforms, the power and mass constraints are severe enough for even the most common computations (matrix manipulations, convolution, etc.) to be difficult. This paper proposes and analyzes a class of miniature vision sensors that can help overcome these constraints. These sensors reduce power requirements through templat...

Background & Aims: Human beings are constantly exposed to different radiations that have always been recognized as a health hazard. Radon -222 and its daughter products are major sources of natural radiations and a significant total inhalation dose is related to them. Hence, the measurement of radon activity in the environment has gained an increasing importance. In this study, with the measure...

Levels of neutral poly-/perfluoroalkyl substances (nPFASs) in air and snow collected from Ny-Ålesund were measured and their air-snow exchange was determined to investigate whether they could re-volatilize into the atmosphere driven by means of air-snow exchange. The total concentration of 12 neutral PFASs ranged from 6.7 to 39 pg m(-3) in air and from 330 to 690 pg L(-1) in snow. A significant...

Recent increases in air temperature have affected species phenology, resulting in the earlier onset of spring life-cycle events. Trends in the first appearance of adult dragonflies across Japan were analysed using a dataset consisting of observations from 1953 to 2005. Dynamic factor analysis was used to evaluate underlying common trends in a set of 48 time series. The appearance of the first a...

Air springs are prevalently used as suspension in train. However, air springs are seldom used in automobiles where they improve stability and comfort by enhancing the impact-relief, breaking, and cornering performance. Thus, this study proposed a new method to analyze air springs and obtained some reliable design parameter which can be utilized in vehicle suspension system in contrast to conven...