The performance of a forced-liquid Vertical Tubular Loop Bioreactor (VTLB), a forced-liquid Horizontal Tubular Loop Bioreactor (HTLB) and a gas-induced External Airlift Loop Bioreactor (EALB) were compared for production of biomass from natural gas. Hydrodynamic characteristics and mass transfer coefficients were determined as functions of design parameters, physical properties of gases as ...

BACKGROUND Forced-air warming is sometimes unable to maintain perioperative normothermia. Therefore, the authors compared heat transfer, regional heat distribution, and core rewarming of forced-air warming with a novel circulating-water garment. METHODS Nine volunteers were each evaluated on two randomly ordered study days. They were anesthetized and cooled to a core temperature near 34 degre...

Phonetic reduction has been an important topic in linguistics research. It also presents a great challenge for forced alignment, a technique widely used for automatic phonetic segmentation. In this study, we employed skip-state HMMs to improve forced alignment quality and to make forced alignment applicable to the investigation of phonetic reduction and deletion. With skip-state HMMs, forced al...

This study compared the effect of two forms of chest physiotherapy. In the "conventional" form of physiotherapy, postural drainage was combined with percussion and directed coughing. The other, relatively new form of physiotherapy, was the forced expiration technique, i.e. huffing combined with postural drainage, breathing exercises and, if necessary, coughing. Eight patients (six with cystic f...

OPPORTUNITIES The economic environment of the rural poor comprises several interlocking markets: for agricultural produce and for agri-inputs; for production support (agricultural extension) or financial services; for information; for assets, including land and water; for labour; and for food and other consumer goods. The terms upon which the rural poor enter and participate in such markets are...

BACKGROUND Mild perioperative hypothermia increases the risk of several severe complications. Perioperative patient warming to preserve normothermia has thus become routine, with forced-air warming being used most often. In previous studies, various resistive warming systems have shown mixed results in comparison with forced-air. Recently, a polymer-based resistive patient warming system has be...

the performance of a forced-liquid vertical tubular loop bioreactor (vtlb), a forced-liquid horizontal tubular loop bioreactor (htlb) and a gas-induced external airlift loop bioreactor (ealb) were compared for production of biomass from natural gas. hydrodynamic characteristics and mass transfer coefficients were determined as functions of design parameters, physical properties of gases as well...