Cohort Profile: Burden of Obstructive Lung Disease (BOLD) study

The Burden of Obstructive Lung Disease (BOLD) study was established to assess the prevalence of chronic airflow obstruction, a key characteristic of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and its risk factors in adults (≥40 years) from general populations across the world. The baseline study was conducted between 2003 and 2016, in 41 sites across Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, the Caribbean and Oceania, and collected high-quality pre- and post-bronchodilator spirometry from 28 828 participants. The follow-up study was conducted between 2019 and 2021, in 18 sites across Africa, Asia, Europe and the Caribbean. At baseline, there were in these sites 12 502 participants with high-quality spirometry. A total of 6452 were followed up, with 5936 completing the study core questionnaire. Of these, 4044 also provided high-quality pre- and post-bronchodilator spirometry. On both occasions, the core questionnaire covered information on respiratory symptoms, doctor diagnoses, health care use, medication use and ealth status, as well as potential risk factors. Information on occupation, environmental exposures and diet was also collected

Förvrängningar av naturliga bilder ochträffsäkerhet hos optiskteckenigenkänning

Current state of the art optical character recognition tools are trained using high quality image datasets. In practical applications, natural images used for character recognition willnot always be of high quality. This report examines the accuracy of a state of the art optical character recognition tool using three distorted natural image datasets. The performed distortions were lossy JPEG compression, contrast reduction and white gaussian noise injection. The accuracy is presented as an average percentage of correct and located text using the Levenshtein distance algorithm. The results indicate that white gaussian noise injection significantly reduced OCR accuracy. On the other hand, lossy JPEG compressionand contrast reduction had a similar, but less of an effect.Nuvarande moderna verktyg för optisk teckenigenkänning tränas med bilder av hög kvalité. I praktiska situationer kommer naturliga bilder som används för optisk teckenigenkänning inte alltid vara av hög kvalité. Denna rapport använder tre förvrängda datauppsättningar av naturliga bilder för att utvärdera träffsäkerheten hos ett modernt verktyg för optiskteckenigenkänning. De utförda förvrängningarna var förstörande JPEG komprimering, kontrastreducering och injektion av vitt gaussiskt brus. Träffsäkerheten presenteras som en genomsnittlig procentenhet av korrekt och lokaliserad text genom användning av algoritmen Levenshteinavstånd. Resultaten indikerar att injektion av vitt gaussiskt brus försämrade träffsäkerheten hos optisk teckenigenkänning avsevärt. Vidare hade förstörande JPEG­ komprimering och kontrastreducering en liknande, men mindre, effekt

Förvrängningar av naturliga bilder ochträffsäkerhet hos optiskteckenigenkänning

Current state of the art optical character recognition tools are trained using high quality image datasets. In practical applications, natural images used for character recognition willnot always be of high quality. This report examines the accuracy of a state of the art optical character recognition tool using three distorted natural image datasets. The performed distortions were lossy JPEG compression, contrast reduction and white gaussian noise injection. The accuracy is presented as an average percentage of correct and located text using the Levenshtein distance algorithm. The results indicate that white gaussian noise injection significantly reduced OCR accuracy. On the other hand, lossy JPEG compressionand contrast reduction had a similar, but less of an effect.Nuvarande moderna verktyg för optisk teckenigenkänning tränas med bilder av hög kvalité. I praktiska situationer kommer naturliga bilder som används för optisk teckenigenkänning inte alltid vara av hög kvalité. Denna rapport använder tre förvrängda datauppsättningar av naturliga bilder för att utvärdera träffsäkerheten hos ett modernt verktyg för optiskteckenigenkänning. De utförda förvrängningarna var förstörande JPEG komprimering, kontrastreducering och injektion av vitt gaussiskt brus. Träffsäkerheten presenteras som en genomsnittlig procentenhet av korrekt och lokaliserad text genom användning av algoritmen Levenshteinavstånd. Resultaten indikerar att injektion av vitt gaussiskt brus försämrade träffsäkerheten hos optisk teckenigenkänning avsevärt. Vidare hade förstörande JPEG­ komprimering och kontrastreducering en liknande, men mindre, effekt

Increasing flux by back-pulsing in the microfiltration of milk

Milk with extended shelf-life can be produced by microfiltration (MF) and pasteurisation in a cascade arrangement. In a previous study, we have shown that back-pulsing can be used to reduce the energy requirement in the MF of defatted milk. In this study, the influence of back-pulsing on MF was investigated at higher milk fluxes than in a prior study. The MF experiments were performed in constant-flux mode. The operational time until a certain pressure build-up was used as a measure of the performance. Fluxes between 350 and 500 L m−2 h−1 were investigated, with and without back-pulsing (frequencies ranging from 6 to 0.2 min−1). It was shown that the fouling rate was strongly dependent on the permeate flux; higher flux leading to a higher fouling rate. Improved MF performance was found using back-pulsing at a flux of 350 L m−2 h−1, while at higher fluxes, back-pulsing impaired the performance