To cite: van Walbeek C. Tob Control Published Online First: [please include Day Month Year] doi:10.1136/tobaccocontrol2013-051178 ABSTRACT Background The tobacco industry claims that illicit trade in cigarettes has increased sharply since the 1990s and that government has lost substantial tax revenue. Objectives (1) To determine whether cigarette excise tax revenue has been below budget in rece...

[1] The Potsdam Magnetic Model of the Earth (POMME) is a geomagnetic field model providing an estimate of the Earth’s core, crustal, magnetospheric, and induced magnetic fields. The internal field is represented to spherical harmonic (SH) degree 90, while the secular variation and acceleration are given to SH degree 16. Static and time-varying magnetospheric fields are parameterized in Geocentr...

Can the height of a rice plant be measured from space? TanDEM-X, a mission designed to generate high accuracy global elevation models, has been shown to be capable of doing just that [1]. The growth of a rice plant can be observed starting from its vegetative phase, through its maturation phase until harvest. The measured height is very accurate, with a root mean square error ranging from a few...

Floor vibrations induced by human walking were investigated in a reinforced concrete structure. Six experimental floor structures were built in laboratories with the same dimensions and boundary conditions. Subjective tests were performed to assess the vibration serviceability of the floor structures. First, the subjects were asked to walk across a floor and then to rate the intensity of the vi...

[1] Inverse weighted distance and regression nonexact techniques were evaluated for interpolating methods snow water equivalent (SWE) across the entire Colorado River Basin of the western United States. A 1-km spacing was used for the gridding of snow telemetry (SNOTEL) measurements for the years 1993, 1998, and 1999, which on average, represented higher than average, average, and lower than av...

In this paper, we present the simulation of the propagation characteristics of the picocellular propagation channel environment. The first aim has been to find a correct description of the environment for received wave. The result of the first investigations is that the environment of the indoor wave significantly changes as we change the electric parameters of material constructions. A modifie...

To improve the efficiency of forest fire fighting, ride comfort is very important for firemen to maintain good physical condition. Firstly, a whole vehicle model was established with the ADAMS/view(Automatic Dynamic Analysis of Mechanical Systems) software. Next, test and simulation were performed to verify the three-dimensional model. Finally, the comparison of real vehicle test and ride comfo...

The ECG (Electrocardiogram) signal represents electrical activity of heart and is recorded for monitoring and diagnostic purpose. These signals are corrupted by artifacts during acquisition and transmission predominantly by high frequency noise due to power line interference, electrode movements, etc. Addition of these noise change the amplitude and shape of the ECG signal which affect accurate...

In this letter we report experimental observations on the times of adhesion of living Tokay geckos (Gekko geckos) on polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) inverted surfaces. Two different geckos (male and female) and three surfaces with different root mean square (RMS) roughness (RMS=42, 618 and 931 nm) have been considered, for a total of 72 observations. The measured data are proved to be statistical...

METHODS: Ocular wavefront maps were obtained from 19 normal eyes using a ShackHartmann aberrometer. The tenth Zernike order fit was considered to be the real wavefront of the eyes. Different fittings from second to ninth Zernike orders were computed and compared with the tenth order. The ratio of the root mean square (RMS) error between the different fittings and the original wavefront was calc...