This study focuses on the drying process of pasta in a convectional air drying oven. A model predictive control algorithm is designed, based on a dynamic model describing the mass transfer between pasta and the surrounding air. The multiple input single output control algorithm minimizes a cost function over a prediction horizon which represents the deviation of the process from a desired refer...

BACKGROUND Children with growth retardation or short stature generally present with lower strength than children of the same chronological age. The aim of the study was to establish if strength was dependent on variables related to stature in a population of healthy children and to propose practical predictive models for the muscle functions tested. A secondary aim was to test for any learning ...

Cats were trained to jump from a force platform to their maximum achievable heights. Vertical ground reaction forces developed by individual hindlimbs showed that the propulsion phase consists of two epochs. During the initial "preparatory phase' the cat can traverse many different paths. Irrespective of the path traversed, however, the cat always attains the same position, velocity and momentu...

BACKGROUND Computerized mathematical models describing absolute and relative individual growth during puberty in both cm and standard deviation (SD)-scores are lacking. The present study aimed to fill this gap, by applying the QEPS-model that delineates mathematically the specific pubertal functions of the total growth curve. METHODS Study population used was the individual growth curves of t...

BACKGROUND Arm span length is related to standing height and has been studied as a substitute for current standing height for predicting lung function parameters. However, it has never been studied in elderly COPD patients. PURPOSE To evaluate the accuracy of substituting arm span length for current standing height in the evaluation of pulmonary function parameters and severity classification...

In a recent editorial one of the founding fathers of conservation biology, Michael Soule, expressed concern about ideas that he fears stray from conservation’s core principles and the primary goal of protecting nature (Soule 2013). Michael has inspired generations of students to pursue conservation biology, including me. When I was a university professor, Michael’s papers figured prominently in...

The authors present a comparison between urban and rural boys and girls, based on their Hungarian National Growth and Physical Fitness Study, carried out in the whole territory of Hungary. The sample investigated (N=39.035) contained 1.5% of the 3-18 year-old healthy boys and girls in Hungary. The anthropometric programme included 18 body measurements, the physical fitness investigation used a ...

In this brief note, we will investigate the number of points of bounded height in a projective variety defined over a function field, where the function field comes from a projective variety of dimension greater than or equal to 2. A first step in this investigation is to understand the p-adic analytic properties of the height zeta function. In particular, we will show that for a large class of...

This study was carried out to obtain normal lung function values for women in south eastern Nigeria with a view to establishing prediction equations for forced vital capacity (FVC), forced expiratory volume at the first second (FEV(1)) and peak expiratory flow rate (PEFR). Lung function values were measured in 600 apparently healthy Nigerian women aged between 18 and 57 years. FVC and FEV1 were...

There is currently rather little agreement about the existence of, and explanation for, a vocabulary spurt in children during the second year. Here we apply a Functional Data Analysisbased technique called Automatic Maxima Detection to the problem of finding vocabulary spurts in a sample of 20 children. Even with considerable smoothing of the data, children were found to exhibit multiple vocabu...