The paper analyses the influence of cigarette butts and waste coffee grounds addition on the properties of the brick clay. The waste materials were added to the clay in amounts of 5 wt.% and 10 wt.%. Standard consistency, plasticity, drying and firing behaviour and refractoriness were tested on the clay sample and the samples with wastes additions. Apparent density, apparent porosity, water absorption, strength and thermal conductivity were investigated on the samples fired at 1173 K. Addition of the waste materials improved thermal insulation characteristics and drying shrinkage, while other properties remain within the required limits for brick industry.

Tearful crying is a ubiquitous and mainly human phenomenon. The persistence of this behavior throughout adulthood has fascinated and puzzled many researchers. Scholars have argued that emotional tears serve an attachment function: Tears are thought to act as a social glue that binds individuals together and triggers social support intentions. Initial experimental studies supported this proposition across several methodologies, but these were typically conducted only across Western participants, resulting in limited generalizability. The present study examines this effect across 36 countries spanning all populated continents, providing the most comprehensive investigation of the social effects of tearful crying to-date. Next to testing possible mediating factors, we also examine a number of moderating factors, including the crier’s gender and group membership, the situational valence (positive or negative situations), the social context (in private or public settings), the perceived appropriateness of crying, and trait empathy of the observer. The current work can inform theories on crying across the social sciences.

Due to the increased popularity of robotic systems and their more frequent application, some companies have opted to incorporate modular robotic systems in their assortment. The advantages of such systems are great flexibility in terms of combining components, relatively easy programmability, a wide range of functions that can be performed, the availability of components, as well as modularity in terms of functional and structural connectivity. The disadvantages are reflected by the fact that these systems are not optimized for a particular application. The precision and accuracy of such systems are substantially less than those of the system created exclusively for a particular application. Gaps and dead strokes of moving parts are very influential on the performance of functions and there is relatively little autonomy to such systems. The problem of mutual inarticulation of motors was introduced, and a solution was given to overcome these problems. The observations concerning the aforementioned problems have been explained and the most important features of this approach to robotic systems highlighted.

This commentary is about predicting a woman’s breast cancer risk from her mammogram, building on the work of Wolfe, Boyd and Yaffe on mammographic density. We summarise our efforts at finding new mammogram-based risk predictors, and how they combine with the conventional mammographic density, in predicting risk for interval cancers and screen-detected breast cancers across different ages at diagnosis and for both Caucasian and Asian women. Using the OPERA (odds ratio per adjusted standard deviation) concept, in which the risk gradient is measured on an appropriate scale that takes into account other factors adjusted for by design or analysis, we show that our new mammogram-based measures are the strongest of all currently known breast cancer risk factors in terms of risk discrimination on a population-basis. We summarise our findings graphically using a path diagram in which conventional mammographic density predicts interval cancer due to its role in masking, while the new mammogram-based risk measures could have a causal effect on both interval and screen-detected breast cancer. We discuss attempts by others to pursue this line of investigation, the measurement challenge that allows different measures to be compared in an open and transparent manner on the same datasets, as well as the biological and public health consequences.

In the present work, freeze crystallization studies, as a novel concentration method for aqueous 1,5-diazabicyclo[4.3.0]non-5-enium acetate ([DBNH][OAc]) ionic liquid solution, were conducted. In order to find the appropriate temperature and composition range for freeze crystallization, the solid–liquid equilibrium of a binary [DBNH][OAc]–water compound system was investigated with differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). Results of this analysis showed that the melting temperature of the pure ionic liquid was 58 ℃, whereas the eutectic temperature of the binary compound system was found to be −73 ℃. The activity coefficient of water was determined based on the freezing point depression data obtained in this study. In this study, the lowest freezing point was −1.28 ℃ for the aqueous 6 wt.% [DBNH][OAc] solution. Ice crystal yield and distribution coefficient were obtained for two types of aqueous solutions (3 wt.% and 6 wt.% [DBNH][OAc]), and two freezing times (40 min and 60 min) were used as the main parameters to compare the two melt crystallization methods: static layer freeze and suspension freeze crystallization. Single-step suspension freeze crystallization resulted in higher ice crystal yields and higher ice purities when compared with the single-step static layer freeze crystallization. The distribution coefficient values obtained showed that the impurity ratios in ice and in the initial solution for suspension freeze crystallization were between 0.11 and 0.36, whereas for static layer freeze crystallization these were between 0.28 and 0.46. Consequently, suspension freeze crystallization is a more efficient low-energy separation method than layer freeze crystallization for the aqueous-ionic liquid solutions studied and, therefore, this technique can be applied as a concentration method for aqueous-ionic liquid solutions.

Diabetes mellitus (DM) as a chronic condition is a growing global problem. Its numerous complications, including ocular diseases, affect patients’ quality and length of life. Metformin is an effective, safe, and inexpensive first-line pharma-cotherapy for type 2 diabetes (T2D). The current evidence indicates metformin’s multiple sites of action and multiple molecular mechanisms leading to its beneficial impact on metabolism, inflammation, oxidative stress, aging, as well as to its cardiovascular, neurological, bone, and antiproliferative properties. These impacts are the result of its acting on adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase (AMPK)-dependent and AMPK-independent pathways. Limited data suggest the protective role of metformin on microvascular ocular complications, including retinopathy, glaucoma, and age-related macular degeneration in patients with T2D. However, to confirm its mentioned protective and therapeutic effects, more large, randomized, double-blind, and placebo-controlled clinical studies are needed.

BACKGROUND A blunted heart rate reserve (HRR) during dipyridamole stress echocardiography (DSE) is a prognostically unfavorable sign of cardiac autonomic dysfunction. Short-term adjustments of heart rate (HR) are thought to rise from changes in neural input to the heart. DSE is applied in potential heart donors to rule out underlying coronary artery disease and left ventricular dysfunction. AIM to assess HRR during DSE in brain death. METHODS We enrolled 2 Groups: Group 1 (n=49, 22 men, 54.6±8.8 years) with patients in brain death enrolled in the nationwide marginal donor heart recruiting program; Group 2 (n=49, 18 men, 66.4±12.0 years) referred to DSE for suspected or known coronary artery disease. All underwent DSE (0.84 mg/kg in 6') by quality-controlled readers certified via web-based training (1487/CE Lazio-1). We assessed left ventricular contractile reserve (LVCR) as stress/rest ratio of force (systolic blood pressure /end-systolic volume). HRR was calculated as the peak/rest HR ratio from 12-lead EKG. RESULTS The 2 groups were similar for prevalence of inducible ischemia (4/49 vs 9/49, p=ns). Group 1 showed higher resting HR (Group 1= 88.1±15.5 vs Group 2= 66.5±11.5 bpm, p<0.01) and similar peak HR (Group 1=94.7±15.3 vs Group 2=89.5±19.3 bpm, p=0.144), with blunted HRR (Group 1= 1.08±0.10 vs Group 2= 1.36±0.31 bpm, p<0.01). HRR was unrelated to LVCR. CONCLUSIONS HRR is almost abolished and unrelated to LVCR in brain-dead patients during DSE. The modulation of neural input to the heart is essential to determine HRR, and plays no significant role in determining the inotropic response during DSE.

In this paper, we focus on the problem of blind joint calibration of multiband transceivers and time-delay (TD) estimation of multipath channels. We show that this problem can be formulated as a particular case of covariance matching. Although this problem is severely ill-posed, prior information about radio-frequency chain distortions and multipath channel sparsity is used for regularization. This approach leads to a biconvex optimization problem, which is formulated as a rank-constrained linear system and solved by a simple group Lasso algorithm. Numerical experiments show that the proposed algorithm provides better calibration and higher resolution for TD estimation than current state-of-the-art methods.