Search results for "Field"
showing 10 items of 15048 documents
Motor action execution in reaction-time movements : Magnetoencephalographic study
2019
OBJECTIVE: Reaction-time movements are internally planned in the brain. Presumably, proactive control in reaction-time movements appears as an inhibitory phase preceding movement execution. We identified the brain activity of reaction-time movements in close proximity to movement onset and compared it with similar self-paced voluntary movements without external command. DESIGN: We recorded 18 healthy participants performing reaction-time and self-paced fast index finger abductions with 306-sensor magnetoencephalography and electromyography. Reaction-time movements were performed as responses to cutaneous electrical stimulation delivered on the hand radial nerve area. Motor field and movemen…
Anatomical and electrophysiological study of the vomeronasal circuits: Amygdaloid response to odours and pheromones
2017
Rodents detect information concerning the world around them mainly through two chemosensory systems: the olfactory and the vomeronasal systems. In order to develop an appropriate behavioural response to their environment, these systems exhibit both functional and physiological convergence. Further understanding of the organization and function of the olfactory systems would allow us to comprehend how their information is integrated in the brain. In a first approach we performed a thorough analysis of the connections of key structures involved in the processing of vomeronasal information: the medial (Me) and the posteromedial cortical (PMCo) amygdaloid nucleus. Then, we enquire the populatio…
Prescription opioid use and employment : A nationwide Finnish register study
2021
Background: The secular decline in labor market participation and the concurrent increase in opioid use in many developed countries have sparked a policy debate on the possible connection between these two trends. We examined whether the use of prescription opioids was connected to labor market outcomes relating to participation, employment and unemployment among the Finnish population. Methods: The working-age population (aged 19–64 years) living in Finland during the period 1995–2016 was used in the analyses (consisting of 67 903 701 person-year observations). Lagged values of prescription opioid use per capita were used as the exposure. Instrumental variables (IV) estimation method was u…
Examining Consumers’ Usage Intention of Contactless Payment Systems
2019
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a conceptual model that combines the modified Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT2) with a consumer brand engagement (CBE) model to predict consumers’ usage intentions toward contactless payment systems in a developed country. Design/methodology/approach The authors cooperated with a contactless payment service provider in Finland and reached out to 22,000 customers, resulting in 1,165 usable responses. The collected data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Findings The study shows that the UTAUT2 and the CBE model together explain approximately 70 percent of the variance in usage intention. Of the…
The wage curve and local monopsony power
2019
AbstractUsing longitudinal micro-data from Finland, a country with a geographically dispersed population and relatively long distances between local labor markets, this paper examines the responsiveness of the pay level to local unemployment conditions. In particular, this study tests the hypothesis that the pay level is more responsive to the unemployment level in less agglomerated and more remote regions as might be expected if employers have a higher degree of monopsony power in such regions. The results consistently suggest that the pay level is lower in localities with a higher unemployment level and, hence, provide strong support for the so-called wage curve hypothesis, which predicts…
X-ray tomographic method for measuring three-dimensional deformation and water content distribution in swelling clays
2015
A non-invasive method for simultaneous measurement of the 3D displacement field and the water content distribution of a wetted solid material is developed. The method is based on comparison of X-ray tomographic images of a material sample in the reference state and in the wetted and deformed state. The deformation and water content analyses were successfully compared with numerical results for a cylindrical rubber test sample under axial compression, and with gravimetric results from axially wetted and sliced cylindrical bentonite samples, respectively. The methods were applied in a 4D study (three spatial dimensions and time) of wetting and deformation of purified swelling bentonite doped …
Inspiratory Muscle Strength and Cardiorespiratory Fitness Association With Health-Related Quality of Life in Healthy Older Adults
2021
The main purpose of this study was to explore similarities and differences in the association between two capabilities affecting the cardiorespiratory system (overall and multifactorial cardiorespiratory fitness and inspiratory muscle strength) and the health-related quality of life (HRQoL), in a group of active healthy seniors. Sixty-five individuals (age, 73.01 ± 5.27 years; 53 women) who participated regularly in a multicomponent training program completed the EuroQol 5D-5L questionnaire, the 6-min walking test (6MWT), and the maximum inspiratory pressure test (MIP). Non-parametric correlations (Spearman's rho) were conducted to analyze the association between HRQoL indices (EQindex and …
Lagrangian matches between observations from aircraft, lidar and radar in a warm conveyor belt crossing orography
2021
Warm conveyor belts (WCBs) are important airstreams in extratropical cyclones, often leading to the formation of intense precipitation and the amplification of upper-level ridges. This study presents a case study that involves aircraft, lidar and radar observations in a WCB ascending from western Europe towards the Baltic Sea during the Hydrological Cycle in the Mediterranean Experiment (HyMeX) and T-NAWDEX-Falcon in October 2012, a preparatory campaign for the THORPEX North Atlantic Waveguide and Downstream Impact Experiment (TNAWDEX). Trajectories were used to link different observations along the WCB, that is, to establish so-called Lagrangian matches between observations. To this aim, a…
Fractional calculus approach for the representation of power spectral densities and correlation functions in wind engineering
2010
The paper deals with the digital simulation of wind velocity samples by Fractional Spectral Moment function. It is shown that such a function represents a third useful way to characterize a stationary Gaussian stochastic process, alongside the power spectral density and the correlation function. The method is applied to wind velocity fields whose power spectra is given by the Kaimal’s, the Davenport’s and the Solari’s representation. It is shown that by constructing a digital filter whose coefficients are the fractional spectral moments, it is possible to simulate samples of the target process as superposition of Riesz fractional derivatives of Gaussian white noise processes.
Precision Agriculture: Past, Present and Future
2011
From 1978 the Global Positioning System, needed for sensing the position of military targets (e.g. buildings, machinery), was developed as a pure military system, while in 1983 it was made available also for public use. Therefore, at the beginning of 80s precision agriculture, requiring GPS for sensing the position to which any measured field parameter must be geo-referenced, was implemented for the first time in US. In fact, soil and crop parameters are spatially variable in a field, so that spatially uniform rate crop input applications cause increased environmental impact and crop input waste. In order to reduce the environmental impact and optimise the use of crop inputs, precision agri…