Customised commodity derivates; the case of natural gas in the Dutch horticulture sector

Financial banks in the Netherlands are developing customised derivatives for the agriculture industry to decrease the volatility of input or output prices. These derivatives can also be attractive for Dutch agriculture producers because a big part of the business risk in agriculture is caused by fluctuating commodity input and output prices. This report provides insight on how customised derivatives can be constructed and what the advantage is for a farmer. This insight is given by a simulation of the natural gas market for horticulture producers in the Netherland

Dynamic RSA for the evaluation of inducible micromotion of Oxford UKA during step-up and step-down motion

Orthopaedics, Trauma Surgery and Rehabilitatio

Distribution of cholinergic nerve terminals in the aged human brain measured with [18F]FEOBV PET and its correlation with histological data

Introduction: [18F]fluoroetoxybenzovesamicol ([18F]FEOBV) is a positron emission topography (PET) tracer for the vesicular acetylcholine transporter (VAChT), a protein located predominantly in synaptic vesicles in cholinergic nerve terminals. We aimed to use [18F]FEOBV PET to study the cholinergic topography of the healthy human brain. Materials and methods: [18F]FEOBV PET brain data volumes of healthy elderly humans were normalized to standard space and intensity-normalized to the white matter. Stereotactic atlases of regions of interest were superimposed to describe and quantify tracer distribution. The spatial distribution of [18F]FEOBV PET uptake was compared with histological and gene expression data. Results: Twenty participants of both sexes and a mean age of 73.9 ± 6.0 years, age-range [64; 86], were recruited. Highest tracer binding was present in the striatum, some thalamic nuclei, and the basal forebrain. Intermediate binding was found in most nuclei of the brainstem, thalamus, and hypothalamus; the vermis and flocculonodular lobe; and the hippocampus, amygdala, insula, cingulate, olfactory cortex, and Heschl's gyrus. Lowest binding was present in most areas of the cerebral cortex, and in the cerebellar nuclei and hemispheres. The spatial distribution of tracer correlated with immunohistochemical post-mortem data, as well as with regional expression levels of SLC18A3, the VAChT coding gene. Discussion: Our in vivo findings confirm the regional cholinergic distribution in specific brain structures as described post-mortem. A positive spatial correlation between tracer distribution and regional gene expression levels further corroborates [18F]FEOBV PET as a validated tool for in vivo cholinergic imaging. The study represents an advancement in the continued efforts to delineate the spatial topography of the human cholinergic system in vivo

Significant risks facing agriculture in the Netherlands

The purpose of this report is to identify significant risks facing agriculture in the Netherlands and to help establish a future research agenda for these topics

Dynamic analysis methods for nuclear facilities

A comparison is made between three different dynamic analysis methods commonly used in the analysis of nuclear facilities. The methods are applied to a typical non-reactor type nuclear facility; namely, an early configuration of the High Performance Fuel Laboratory which was to have been designed and constructed to house an automated fuel process line on the Hanford Reservation near Richland, Washington. The fuel to be handled was mixed plutonium and uranium in powder and pellet form which, therefore, required design for severe earthquake and tornado conditions. The structure is a two-story reinforced concrete shear wall building with a high bay on one end. The comparison is made for earthquake motion in the lateral horizontal direction only. The first method employs a three degree of freedom spring mass system with the masses lumped at the three floor and roof slab levels. After shears are obtained they are distributed to the shear walls in proportion to their stiffnesses. Floor and roof slabs are assumed rigid but eccentricities are accounted for in the shear distribution. The second method utilizes a pseudo three-dimensional stick model. The shear walls and horizontal floor and roof diaphram are modeled as three dimensional beam elements using the SAP IV computer Code. All nodal points are in the X, Y plane (Z-0) but motions in this plane are restricted with unrestricted translation in the Z direction. This enables shears to be obtained in all the walls and diaphrams without resorting to lumping walls together and in addition, automatically accounts for eccentricities in the direction being considered. The third and last model is a three dimensional finite element model. All walls and diaphrams are modeled using plane stress quadrilateral membrane elements again using the SAP IV Computer Code

Customised commodity derivates; the case of natural gas in the Dutch horticulture sector

Financial banks in the Netherlands are developing customised derivatives for the agriculture industry to decrease the volatility of input or output prices. These derivatives can also be attractive for Dutch agriculture producers because a big part of the business risk in agriculture is caused by fluctuating commodity input and output prices. This report provides insight on how customised derivatives can be constructed and what the advantage is for a farmer. This insight is given by a simulation of the natural gas market for horticulture producers in the Netherland

Oxford medial unicompartmental knees display contact-loss during step-cycle motion and bicycle motion: A dynamic radiostereometric study

Orthopaedics, Trauma Surgery and Rehabilitatio

Neuropathological evidence of body-first vs. brain-first Lewy body disease

Aggregation of alpha-synuclein into inclusion bodies, termed Lewy pathology, is a defining feature of Parkinson's disease (PD) and Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB). In the majority of post mortem cases, the distribution of Lewy pathology seems to follow two overarching patterns: a caudo-rostral pattern with relatively more pathology in the brainstem than in the telencephalon, and an amygdala-centered pattern with the most abundant pathology in the “center of the brain”, including the amygdala, entorhinal cortex, and substantia nigra, and relatively less pathology in the lower brainstem and spinal autonomic nuclei. The recent body-first versus brain-first model of Lewy Body Disorders proposes that the initial pathogenic alpha-synuclein in some patients originates in the enteric nervous system with secondary spreading to the brain; and in other patients originates inside the CNS with secondary spreading to the lower brainstem and peripheral autonomic nervous system. Here, we use two existing post mortem datasets to explore the possibility that clinical body-first and brain-first subtypes are equivalent to the caudo-rostral and amygdala-centered patterns of Lewy pathology seen at post mortem