A lthough how life began on our planet will always be of intrigue, polymers must have certainly existed before the beginning of life, because life as we now know it requires replicating polymers. There is little doubt (1) that replication of polymers, e.g., DNA, involves complexation among molecules consisting of complementary specific chemical sequences. Such processes of recognition of chemic...

The modern-day, first-world epidemics of obesity and hypertension are central drivers of an epidemic of combined chronic kidney disease (CKD) and cardiovascular disease (CVD) (1). Among those with diabetes for 25 years or more, the prevalence of diabetic nephropathy in type 1 and type 2 diabetes is 57% and 48%, respectively (2). Approximately half of all cases of end-stage renal disease (ESRD) ...

One hundred ninety-five rear impacts with both front- and rear-seat occupants in the struck car, where at least one occupant sustained permanent disability, were selected for study. There was a significantly higher disability risk for the female rear-seat occupant compared with the male driver. Furthermore, a higher risk was found for female rear-seat occupants compared with female front-seat p...

Extensible database systems allow users to create new data types representing spatial, text, image, and other multimedia objects, and functions which operate on the new types[S96]. The new data types and functions can be used as predicates in SQL queries. Consider an insurance industry application, built using an extensible DBMS that has user defined extensions for spatial, text, date/time, and...

The purpose of this study was to investigate the rear knee angle range in the set position that allows sprinters to reach greater propulsion on the rear block during the sprint start. Eleven university-track team sprinters performed the sprint start using three rear knee angle conditions: 90°, 115° and 135°. A motion capture system consisting of 8 digital cameras (250 Hz) was used to record kin...

Proper securement of wheelchairs in motor vehicles is vital to providing wheelchair users an adequate level of safety in a crash. Thus far, wheelchair tiedown and occupant restraint systems (WTORS) loading has mostly been examined under frontal impact conditions. Because of the inherent crash dynamic differences, rear-impact loading of WTORS is expected to differ greatly. In this study, three i...

Rear projection of large-scale upright displays is often preferred over front projection because of the elimination of shadows that occlude the projected image. However, rear projection is not always a feasible option for space and cost reasons. Recent research suggests that many of the desirable features of rear projection, in particular shadow elimination, can be reproduced using new front pr...