Moisture Barrier Cone

Closed air space devices and methods of use for all body bio hazard type suits that eliminates condensation and fogging from forming on the face masks and the window visors of the suit. The devices and methods have a sealed closed air space that can be formed from flexible see-through plastic in a cone shape that can be sealed between the mask and the visor. The closed air space can be presealed to the visor/outer wall of the suit and have a second end fitted with an elastic type band that allows the wearer to attache and detach the closed space by wrapping the band about their face mask. Other embodiment use flat see-though plastic sheets, and sheets that attach about the neck of the user to form the closed air spaces between the face mask and the window visor of the suit

Pilot-Scale Antioxidant Dipping of Herring (Clupea harengus) Co-products to Allow Their Upgrading to a High-Quality Mince for Food Production

To enable production of high-quality mince from herring backbones, a scalable antioxidant strategy is needed due to the high susceptibility of herring muscle to lipid oxidation. We here measured the stabilizing effect of lab-/pilot-scale predipping of herring backbones (30-500 kg) in antioxidant solutions prior to production of mechanically separated mince (MSM). The antioxidants were (i) Duralox MANC, a mixture of rosemary extract, ascorbic acid, α-tocopherol, and citric acid, and (ii) rosemary extract with or without isoascorbic acid. Delivery of the key rosemary-derived antioxidant components carnosol and carnosic acid was monitored during the dipping process and ice/frozen storage. Predipping in 2% Duralox MANC gave MSM with 26.7-31.7 mg/kg carnosol + carnosic acid and extended the oxidation lag phase from <1 to 12 days during ice storage and from <1 to 6 months during frozen storage compared to control. Dipping in 0.2% rosemary extract with or without 0.5% isoascorbic acid solution gave MSM with 20.6-28.2 mg/kg carnosol + carnosic acid and extended the lag phase to 6 days and 9 months during ice and frozen storage, respectively. Our results confirmed, in pilot scale, that predipping herring coproducts in antioxidant solutions is a promising strategy to utilize these raw materials for, e.g., mince and burger production rather than for low value products as fish meal

Learning in a simple biological system: a pilot study of classical conditioning of human macrophages in vitro

Recent advances in cell biology and gene regulation suggest mechanisms whereby associative learning could be performed by single cells. Therefore, we explored a model of classical conditioning in human macrophages in vitro. In macrophage cultures, bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS; unconditioned stimulus) was paired once with streptomycin (conditioned stimulus). Secretion of interleukin-6 (IL-6) was used as response measure. At evocation, conditioning was not observed. Levels of IL-6 were higher only in those cultures that had been exposed to LPS in the learning phase (p's < .05), regardless whether they received the conditioned stimulus or not at evocation

Progeny selection for enhanced forest growth alters soil communities and processes

Genetic enhancement of tree species is integral to global forest management practices with mass propagation of enhanced plant material being used to reforest whole landscapes. It is unclear, however, how genetic enhancement of basic traits such as tree growth may influence the function of life supporting soil ecosystems. We studied the potential cascading effects of genetic increases in growth of Norway spruce (Picea abies) on a range of soil chemical and biological properties. Because this species is a prime candidate for the genetic enhancement of boreal forest landscapes and it has been introduced around the world, its impacts on soil microbiomes are likely of importance both locally and globally. In a 40-year common garden, we assessed how genetic increases in growth generated through controlled crossing of high-quality "plus" trees from across the central boreal zone of Sweden influenced a range of soil properties beneath the canopies. Properties included pH, carbon, nitrogen, nitrate, ammonium, phosphate, respiration rate, and the composition of microbial communities assessed via phospholipid fatty acids (PLFAs). We found that Norway spruce family significantly affected each of the seven chemical properties assessed, with differences of up to 140% among families, and that three of the seven were significantly correlated with mean family growth rate. We also found that fungal PLFAs varied significantly across Norway spruce families, but these differences were not strongly related to mean family growth rate. This study, representing just one cycle of selective breeding, suggests that genetic increases in tree growth rates may also be inadvertently altering soil communities and ecosystem services. Such alterations across forest landscapes may have unexpected implications for the function of forest ecosystems (i.e., nutrient cycling) as well as processes of global significance (i.e., carbon sequestration)

Besiktning av järnvägsanläggningar - Alternativa besiktningsmetoder vid järnvägen

The traffic has increased, leaving less time for inspection of the railway system. With the increased freight- and passenger traffic in the Malmö area the wear of railway infrastructure also increase. As traffic has increased, the space for the inspection of the railway system has decreased, making it difficult for inspectors to do their work. The need for analyzing and identifying potential alternative methods is crucial. This report aims to provide various options for a more efficient railway inspection process and present the alternative which is the most time- and cost efficient

Beauty sleep: experimental study on the perceived health and attractiveness of sleep deprived people

Objective To investigate whether sleep deprived people are perceived as less healthy, less attractive, and more tired than after a normal night’s sleep

Separation of Test-Free Propositional Dynamic Logics over Context-Free Languages

For a class L of languages let PDL[L] be an extension of Propositional Dynamic Logic which allows programs to be in a language of L rather than just to be regular. If L contains a non-regular language, PDL[L] can express non-regular properties, in contrast to pure PDL. For regular, visibly pushdown and deterministic context-free languages, the separation of the respective PDLs can be proven by automata-theoretic techniques. However, these techniques introduce non-determinism on the automata side. As non-determinism is also the difference between DCFL and CFL, these techniques seem to be inappropriate to separate PDL[DCFL] from PDL[CFL]. Nevertheless, this separation is shown but for programs without test operators.Comment: In Proceedings GandALF 2011, arXiv:1106.081

Skin colour changes during experimentally-induced sickness

This project was supported by Swedish foundation for humanities and social sciences and a British Academy Wolfson Foundation Research Professorship grant. AH is supported by a studentship from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.Skin colour may be an important cue to detect sickness in humans but how skin colour changes with acute sickness is currently unknown. To determine possible colour changes, 22 healthy Caucasian participants were injected twice, once with lipopolysaccharide (LPS, at a dose of 2 ng/kg body weight) and once with placebo (saline), in a randomised cross-over design study. Skin colour across 3 arm and 3 face locations was recorded spectrophotometrically over a period of 8 hours in terms of lightness (L∗), redness (a∗) and yellowness (b∗) in a manner that is consistent with human colour perception. In addition, carotenoid status was assessed as we predicted that a decrease it skin yellowness would reflect a drop in skin carotenoids. We found an early change in skin colouration 1-3 hours post LPS injection with facial skin becoming lighter and less red whilst arm skin become darker but also less red and less yellow. The LPS injection also caused a drop in plasma carotenoids from 3 hours onwards. However, the timing of the carotenoid changes was not consistent with the skin colour changes suggesting that other mechanisms, such as a reduction of blood perfusion, oxygenation or composition. This is the first experimental study characterising skin colour associated with acute illness, and shows that changes occur early in the development of the sickness response. Colour changes may serve as a cue to health, prompting actions from others in terms of care-giving or disease avoidance. Specific mechanisms underlying these colour changes require further investigation.PostprintPeer reviewe

Detection of Inflammation via Volatile Cues in Human Urine

Contagious disease is a major threat to survival, and the cost of relying on the immune system to defeat pathogens is high; therefore, behavioral avoidance of contagious individuals is arguably an adaptive strategy. Animal findings demonstrate the ability to detect and avoid sick individuals by the aid of olfactory cues, and a recent study indicated that human axillary odor also becomes more aversive as a function of immune activation. By injecting healthy human participants with lipopolysaccharide (0.6 ng/kg body weight) to experimentally induce inflammation, this study demonstrates that natural daily rhythms of urine odor—its perceived dimensions and volatile profile—are altered within hours of inflammation onset. Whereas healthy human urine decreases in averseness over the course of a single day, inflammation interrupts this process and results in an increased urine odor averseness and an altered volatile composition. These results support the notion that subtle and early cues of sickness may be detected and avoided, thereby complementing the immune system in its role of keeping us alive and healthy

Deep Learning for Identification of Acute Illness and Facial Cues of Illness

Background: The inclusion of facial and bodily cues (clinical gestalt) in machine learning (ML) models improves the assessment of patients' health status, as shown in genetic syndromes and acute coronary syndrome. It is unknown if the inclusion of clinical gestalt improves ML-based classification of acutely ill patients. As in previous research in ML analysis of medical images, simulated or augmented data may be used to assess the usability of clinical gestalt. Objective: To assess whether a deep learning algorithm trained on a dataset of simulated and augmented facial photographs reflecting acutely ill patients can distinguish between healthy and LPS-infused, acutely ill individuals. Methods: Photographs from twenty-six volunteers whose facial features were manipulated to resemble a state of acute illness were used to extract features of illness and generate a synthetic dataset of acutely ill photographs, using a neural transfer convolutional neural network (NT-CNN) for data augmentation. Then, four distinct CNNs were trained on different parts of the facial photographs and concatenated into one final, stacked CNN which classified individuals as healthy or acutely ill. Finally, the stacked CNN was validated in an external dataset of volunteers injected with lipopolysaccharide (LPS). Results: In the external validation set, the four individual feature models distinguished acutely ill patients with sensitivities ranging from 10.5% (95% CI, 1.3–33.1% for the skin model) to 89.4% (66.9–98.7%, for the nose model). Specificity ranged from 42.1% (20.3–66.5%) for the nose model and 94.7% (73.9–99.9%) for skin. The stacked model combining all four facial features achieved an area under the receiver characteristic operating curve (AUROC) of 0.67 (0.62–0.71) and distinguished acutely ill patients with a sensitivity of 100% (82.35–100.00%) and specificity of 42.11% (20.25–66.50%). Conclusion: A deep learning algorithm trained on a synthetic, augmented dataset of facial photographs distinguished between healthy and simulated acutely ill individuals, demonstrating that synthetically generated data can be used to develop algorithms for health conditions in which large datasets are difficult to obtain. These results support the potential of facial feature analysis algorithms to support the diagnosis of acute illness