The proton exchange membrane (PEMFC) fuel cell represents the energy of the future, in parallel with hydrogen. However, this technology must meet many technical challenges related to performance and durability before being sold on a large scale. It is well known that these challenges are closely linked to water management. This paper develops and implements a model of PEM fuel for simulation to...

BACKGROUND This paper studies the effect of mosquito abundance and malaria incidence in the last 3 weeks, and their interaction, on the hazard of time to malaria in a previously studied cohort of children in Ethiopia. METHODS We model the mosquito abundance and time to malaria data jointly in a Bayesian framework. RESULTS We found that the interaction of mosquito abundance and incidence pla...

Realistic prediction of concrete shrinkage and creep requires the calculation of the distributions of relative humidity at various times. Although the distributions of the relative humidity can be computed by numerical methods from the differential equation for diffusion, simple prediction formulas can facilitate structural analysis. The purpose of this paper is to present a simple formula for ...

The distribution of the rare and endangered perennial herb Primulina tabacum Hance is restricted to eight karst caves in southern China. To conserve P. tabacum and to evaluate possible reintroduction, we studied its historical distribution and conducted field surveys of both its biotic and physical environment. We used detrended correspondence analysis and canonical correspondence analysis to i...

The effect of environmental storage relative humidity (RH) on the moisture content, viability, and moist heat and gaseous ethylene oxide (EO) resistance of biological indicators (BIs) was evaluated. No statistically significant difference was observed between the initial Bacillus stearothermophilus spore population and the spore population of BIs stored at 20 degrees C and 0, 20, 44, of 55% RH ...

The reduction of wood response to variations of ambient humidity, described as kind of ageing, has been studied from both points of view of moisture uptake and dimensional changes. Clearwood specimens from 3 gymnosperms (Pinus sylvestris L., Pinus pinaster Ait., Pinus insignis Dougl.) and 4 angiosperms (Populus spp., Quercus pyrenaica Willd., Entandrophragma cylindricum Sprague, Chlorophora exc...

Volatilization of pesticides from soils under dry conditions (water content below the permanent wilting point) can be significantly influenced by sorption to hydrated mineral surfaces. This sorption process strongly depends on the water activity, expressed as equilibrium relative humidity in the pore space of the soil, and on the available surface area of the hydrated minerals. In this study, t...