Hovering flight is one of the most energetically demanding forms of animal locomotion. Despite the cost, hummingbirds regularly hover at high elevations, where flight is doubly challenging because of reduced air density and oxygen availability. We performed three laboratory experiments to examine how air density and oxygen partial pressure influence wingbeat kinematics. In the first study, we e...

The contribution of motorized traffic to air pollution is widely recognized, but relatively few studies have looked at the respiratory health status of subjects living near busy roads. We studied children in six areas located near major motorways in the Netherlands. We measured lung function in the children, and we assessed their exposure to traffic-related air pollution using separate traffic ...

Interhemispheric transport from the earth’s surface north of 32.48N (region VN) to the surface south of 32.48S (region VS) is quantified using the path-density diagnostic developed in Part I of this study. The path density is computed using the Model of Atmospheric Transport and Chemistry (MATCH) driven by NCEP reanalyses. The structure of both the VN / VS and VN / VN zonally averaged path dens...

Lithium-air (Li-air) batteries have a much higher theoretical energy density than conventional lithium batteries and other metal air batteries, so they are being developed for applications that require long life. Water vapor from air must be prevented from corroding the lithium (Li) metal negative electrode during discharge under ambient conditions, i.e., in humid air. One method of protecting ...

The use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) alone for radiation planning is limited by the lack of electron density for dose calculations. The purpose of this work is to evaluate the dosimetric accuracy of using bulk electron density as a substitute for computed tomography (CT)-derived electron density in intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) treatment planning of head and neck (HN) canc...

The purpose of this report was to illustrate how thoracic gas compression (TGC) artifact, and differences in air density, may together conflate the interpretation of changes in the forced expiratory flows (FEFs) at high altitude (>2400 m). Twenty-four adults (10 women; 44 ± 15 year) with normal baseline pulmonary function (>90% predicted) completed a 12-day sojourn at Mt. Kilimanjaro. Participa...

Bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD), a common complication of preterm birth, is associated with pulmonary hypertension (PH) in 25% of infants with moderate to severe BPD. Neonatal mice exposed to hyperoxia for 14d develop lung disease similar to BPD, with evidence of associated PH. The cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP) signaling pathway has not been well studied in BPD-associated PH. In additi...

Fundamental characteristics of decentralized separation control in a high density air corridor are discussed. A high density air corridor is expected to be an air space where aircraft capable of airborne self-separation are allowed to fly into the same direction. Some decentralized control algorithms are indispensable for its operational safety and a large traffic throughput. In this study two ...

[1] We study the initial downward propagation of long sprite streamers in naturally varying air density with numerical simulations on adaptively refined grids. We find that the ionization rate and the light emission from the streamer head increase approximately linearly with air density (therefore exponentially with time) while the radius hardly changes, in contradiction with a naive applicatio...