From growing oil prices and the expected shortage of raw materials of fossil origin during the next decades, the fermentation-based processes for (bio)chemical production arises that are based on the exploitation of renewable resources. The product family of amino acids represents a particularly striking example for our growing technological ability to replace petrol-based syntheses of bulk che...

Critical collapse in general relativity refers to phenomena that occur at the threshold, in the space of initial data, between data that lead to black hole formation (collapse) and those that do not. Regular initial data can be classified as supercritical or subcritical according to whether or not they form a black hole. We refer to the boundary between supercritical and subcritical data as the...

Estimates of total body water (TBW) play an important role in studies of body composition and energetics in mammals. We evaluated bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) as a means of rapidly and inexpensively estimating TBW in 38 grey seals (Halichoerus grypus). Twenty-two males and 16 females, representing the range of body sizes in the population, were studied at Sable Island, Nova Scotia. Se...

This paper presents a universal engineering model, which can be used to formulate both counterflow and crossflow cooling towers. By using fundamental laws of mass and energy balance, the effectiveness of heat exchange is approximated by a second order polynomial equation. Gauss-Newton and Levenberg-Marquardt methods are then used to determine the coefficients from manufactures data. Compared wi...

Two new species of the diplodactylid gecko Bavayia are described from restricted areas within the main island of New Caledonia. Both species are characterized by small size, a single row of preanal pores, and distinctive dorsal color patterns. One species is known only from the endangered sclerophyll forest of the drier west coast of New Caledonia, where it was collected in the largest remainin...

This paper presents clinical, experimental, and epidemiologic evidence to help explain the rapidly increasing incidence of primary lung cancer, with recently observed reversal in leading cell type from squamous cell to adenocarcinoma. It postulates that this may be due to changes in modern cigarettes, with or without filters, which allow inhalation of increased amounts of radioactive lead and p...