Search results for "GB"
showing 10 items of 531 documents
Innate immunity but not NLRP3 inflammasome activation correlates with severity of stable COPD.
2014
Background In models of COPD, environmental stressors induce innate immune responses, inflammasome activation and inflammation. However, the interaction between these responses and their role in driving pulmonary inflammation in stable COPD is unknown. Objectives To investigate the activation of innate immunity and inflammasome pathways in the bronchial mucosa and bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) of patients with stable COPD of different severity and control healthy smokers and non-smokers. Methods Innate immune mediators (interleukin (IL)-6, IL-7, IL-10, IL-27, IL-37, thymic stromal lymphopoietin (TSLP), interferon γ and their receptors, STAT1 and pSTAT1) and inflammasome components (NLRP3, NA…
‘Ordinary’ and ‘diverse’ families : A case study of family discourses by Finnish early childhood education and care administrators
2021
The increased family diversity is a major global trend. Although family configurations are also diverse in contemporary Finland, it has been argued that Finnish family policies and institutional understanding of family life continues to focus on the heteronormative two-parent family with a native Finnish background. To address this issue, we analysed Finnish family discourses through qualitative interviews with early childhood education and care administrators (n = 47), applying a discourse analytic framework. Our results suggest that families are discussed through two divergent but interwoven discourses, i.e. the discourse of ordinary families and that of diverse families. The former focus…
Interspecific Social Learning: Novel Preference Can Be Acquired from a Competing Species
2007
SummaryNongenetic transmission of behavioral traits via social learning allows local traditions in humans, and, controversially, in other animals [1–4]. Social learning is usually studied as an intraspecific phenomenon (but see [5–7]). However, other species with some overlap in ecology can be more than merely potential competitors: prior settlement and longer residence can render them preferable sources of information [8]. Socially induced acquisition of choices or preferences capitalizes upon the knowledge of presumably better-informed individuals [9] and should be adaptive under many natural circumstances [10, 11]. Here we show with a field experiment that females of two migrant flycatch…
Niche filling slows the diversification of Himalayan songbirds.
2013
In Himalayan songbirds, the speciation rate is ultimately set by ecological competition, rather than by the rate of acquisition of reproductive isolation. The beginnings of adaptive radiation and speciation have been widely studied — in Darwin's finches, sticklebacks and cichlid fish, for example — but relatively little is known about what happens next. Specifically, what is the rate-limiting step for the establishment of new species? This seven-year study of the 358 songbird species found on the Himalayan slopes suggests that it is the rates at which new niches are created and occupied that limits diversification, not the rate at which new species form through reproductive isolation. Speci…
A microeconometric analysis of the springboard subsidiary: The case of Spanish firms
2015
Abstract This paper provides a microeconometric analysis of the distinctive characteristics of springboard subsidiaries that have a positive impact on the subsidiaries’ performance. Based on panel data estimations for subsidiaries of European multinational companies with a presence in Spain, the authors found that if the subsidiary is located in the springboard country, then the performance improvement (increase in profit margin) of the subsidiary is about 49 percentage points. When the Spanish subsidiary is considered a springboard subsidiary, its performance is 7.7 percentage points higher than the performance of other subsidiaries that are not springboard subsidiaries. If the subsidiary …
Plaça de Les Glories Catalanes: relazioni a livello urbano
2006
Osservando una cartina o una foto aerea zenitale dell'area metropolitana di Barcellona si nota immediatamente un punto particolare, una sorta di cerniera ad est del Barri Gotic, punto di discontinuità tra la maglia regolare del Plan Cerdà (del 1859) e quella generata dal più recente sviluppo produttivo industriale, un punto di accumulazione delle tensioni generate dalle differenti evoluzioni urbane: questo punto è la Plaòa de Les Glories Catalanes
Free Energy, Enthalpy and Entropy from Implicit Solvent End-Point Simulations
2018
Free energy is the key quantity to describe the thermodynamics of biological systems. In this perspective we consider the calculation of free energy, enthalpy and entropy from end-point molecular dynamics simulations. Since the enthalpy may be calculated as the ensemble average over equilibrated simulation snapshots the difficulties related to free energy calculation are ultimately related to the calculation of the entropy of the system and in particular of the solvent entropy. In the last two decades implicit solvent models have been used to circumvent the problem and to take into account solvent entropy implicitly in the solvation terms. More recently outstanding advancement in both impli…
Investigation of thick sheet AHSS springback in combined bending under tension
2012
In this paper, we investigate the springback behavior of several advanced high-strength sheet steels (TRIP, Dual-Phase, ferrite-bainite) with thicknesses up to 4 mm. Samples were tested by means of the bending-under-tension (BUT) test. The BUT has been extensively applied, in the literature, to relatively thin (1 mm and thinner) sheet metals for automotive applications; the applicability of several guidelines from the literature was investigated in this work in the context of thick advanced high strength steel (AHSS) sheets and using a sample width of 12 mm. The monotonic decrease of springback as back force increased was confirmed for this category of sheet steels, and a general trend for …
<title>Textures from stereo-based IR imaging for industrial tire inspection</title>
2000
A conceptual system to produce 3D thermal models of tires for tire inspection and defect characterization is proposed. The system uses registered range and thermal information to build highly detailed 3D models using either a volumetric or mech-based approach. To achieve this goal, two narrow bandpass filters are used in conjunction with two IR cameras to obtain the true temperature of the target body. The thermal information is then translated to texture data and mapped as an overlay onto a 3D model. The textures are realizable through the use of three-component texture maps that include rgb values to specify the texture coordinates in the plane. The objective is to generate a movie loop d…
Influence of material properties variability on springback and thinning in sheet stamping processes: a stochastic analysis
2010
A very critical issue for stamping operations is the improvement of process robustness. The reliability of final results, in fact, strongly depends on the intrinsic variability due to stochastic behavior of many parameters, namely, operative ones and material properties. A given process performance may undergo a variation around the value which would be obtained neglecting stochastic behaviors of the operative or material parameters (i.e., considering a deterministic parameters behavior). Such variation introduces a significant source of uncertainty within the process design: a possible consequence may be the rejection of some stamped parts. In this paper, reliability analyses aimed to evid…