Measuring water sorption isotherm of mortar containing chloride

The water sorption isotherm of materials is of great importance to predict their durability. Many different methods are used in the literature to measure this water sorption isotherm. Chloride present in concrete elements/structures e.g. in marine exposure, can change the water sorption of the material. In this paper, the water sorption isotherm of a standard mortar with and without chloride is measured with a hygroscopic method. The chloride penetration into the sample is obtained by the vacuum saturation method. Subsequently the sample is placed in a glass vessel and dried. By injecting a known amount of water into the vessel, the water evaporates and is partly adsorbed by the sample until an equilibrium state is reached. With the known amount of the injected water into the vessel, the humidity inside the vessel and the volume of the vessel, one point of the adsorption isotherm is determined. For measuring the next point, more water is injected into the vessel. More points are measured in the same manner until the sample is saturated and with this the adsorption isotherm is completed. Afterwards, the measurement of the desorption isotherm starts with blowing dry air with a known flow, humidity and duration into the vessel. After reaching equilibrium, the first point of the desorption curve is measured. The next point is measured by blowing more dry air into the vessel. This continues until the sample is completely dry and with it the desorption isotherm is also completed

Pooling Time Series Based on Slightly Different Questions About the Same Topic Forty Years of Survey Research on Happiness and Life Satisfaction in The Netherlands

Survey research on subjective wellbeing in The Netherlands started in the early 1970s. The time series happiness and life satisfaction that have emerged since then are unfortunately based on slightly different survey items of which one part uses verbal response scales and another part uses numerical response scales. The diversity of the survey items and a number of other measurement issues, such as the effects of changes in survey mode, hamper comparison over time and make it difficult to establish whether life became any better over the last forty years. These problems can be tackled using the recently developed Reference Distribution Method with which responses to equivalent but not identical survey questions can be pooled to obtain long, consistent time series. We applied the Reference Distribution method to pool time series of happiness and life satisfaction. We conclude that in the past 40 years the Dutch have become slightly happier and satisfied with their lives

The Gerasimov-Drell-Hearn Sum Rule and the Spin Structure of the Nucleon

The Gerasimov-Drell-Hearn sum rule is one of several dispersive sum rules that connect the Compton scattering amplitudes to the inclusive photoproduction cross sections of the target under investigation. Being based on such universal principles as causality, unitarity, and gauge invariance, these sum rules provide a unique testing ground to study the internal degrees of freedom that hold the system together. The present article reviews these sum rules for the spin-dependent cross sections of the nucleon by presenting an overview of recent experiments and theoretical approaches. The generalization from real to virtual photons provides a microscope of variable resolution: At small virtuality of the photon, the data sample information about the long range phenomena, which are described by effective degrees of freedom (Goldstone bosons and collective resonances), whereas the primary degrees of freedom (quarks and gluons) become visible at the larger virtualities. Through a rich body of new data and several theoretical developments, a unified picture of virtual Compton scattering emerges, which ranges from coherent to incoherent processes, and from the generalized spin polarizabilities on the low-energy side to higher twist effects in deep inelastic lepton scattering.Comment: 32 pages, 19 figures, review articl

Long-Term Treatment of Metastatic Colorectal Cancer with Panitumumab

Colorectal cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer-related deaths worldwide. More than 30% patients present with metastases at diagnoses and will require systemic chemotherapy. In recent years many anti-EGFR targets have been developed. Among them, panitumumab, a fully human IgG2 monoclonal antibody has shown important benefits in the treatment of this disease

In Vivo Imaging of Activated Estrogen Receptors in Utero by Estrogens and Bisphenol A

Environmental estrogens are of particular concern when exposure occurs during embryonic development. Although there are good models to study estrogenic activity of chemicals in adult animals, developmental exposure is much more difficult to test. The weak estrogenic activity of the environmental estrogen bisphenol A (BPA) in embryos is controversial. We have recently generated transgenic mice that carry a reporter construct with estrogen-responsive elements coupled to luciferase. We show that, using this in vivo model in combination with the IVIS imaging system, activation of estrogen receptors (ERs) by maternally applied BPA and other estrogens can be detected in living embryos in utero. Eight hours after exposure to 1 mg/kg BPA, ER transactivation could be significantly induced in the embryos. This was more potent than would be estimated from in vitro assays, although its intrinsic activity is still lower than that of diethylstilbestrol and 17β-estradiol dipropionate. On the basis of these results, we conclude that the estrogenic potency of BPA estimated using in vitro assays might underestimate its estrogenic potential in embryos

Albumin Yanomama-2, a ‘private’ polymorphism of serum albumin

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/65429/1/j.1469-1809.1974.tb01949.x.pd

Conversion of Verbal Response Scales: Robustness Across Demographic Categories

Happiness and life satisfaction have traditionally been measured using verbal response scales, however, these verbal scales have not kept up with the present trend to use numerical response scales. A switch from a verbal scale to a numerical scale, however, causes a severe problem for trend analyses, due to the incomparability of the old and new measurements. The Reference Distribution Method is a method that has been developed recently to deal with this comparison problem. In this method use is made of a reference distribution based on responses to a numerical scale which is used to decide at which point verbally labelled response options transit from one state to another, for example from ‘happy’ to ‘very happy’. Next, for each wave of the time series in which the verbal scale is used, a population mean is estimated for the beta distribution that fits best to these transition points and the responses in this wave. These estimates are on a level that is comparable to that of the mean of the reference distribution and are appropriate for use in an extended time series based on the responses measured using a verbal and a numerical scale. In this paper we address the question of whether the transition points derived for the general population can be used for demographic categories to produce reliable, extended time series to monitor differences in trends among these categories. We conclude that this is possible and that it is not necessary to derive transition points for each demographic category separately