Temperament in Childhood Predicts Body Mass in Adulthood: The Cardiovascular Risk in Young Finns Study.

This study examined associations of temperament at ages 6 to 12 with body-mass index (BMI) and waist circumference (WC) at ages 24 to 30 years. The participants were 619 men and women derived from the population-based Cardiovascular Risk in Young Finns Study. Temperament was operationalized as (negative) emotionality, sociability, and activity. High emotionality predicted increased BMI, independently of WC, and independently of childhood and adulthood risk factors for adult obesity. None of the temperament dimensions had any associations with WC after controlling for BMI. The findings suggest that temperamental difficulty in childhood may be a useful risk indicator for general body mass in adulthood, and the mechanisms relating temperament with body mass should be further explored. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hiding biometric data

With the wide spread utilization of biometric identification systems, establishing the authenticity of biometric data itself has emerged as an important research issue. The fact that biometric data is not replaceable and is not secret, combined with the existence of several types of attacks that are possible in a biometric system, make the issue of security/integrity of biometric data extremely critical. We introduce two applications of an amplitude modulation-based watermarking method, in which we hide a user's biometric data in a variety of images. This method has the ability to increase the security of both the hidden biometric data (e.g., eigen-face coefficients) and host images (e.g., fingerprints). Image adaptive data embedding methods used in our scheme lead to low visibility of the embedded signal. Feature analysis of host images guarantees high verification accuracy on watermarked (e.g., fingerprint) images.     

Minimal forbidden subwords

Motivated by a study of similar problems stated for factors of words, we study forbidden subwords of a language or a word. A procedure for obtaining the set of all words avoiding a given set of subwords is presented. On the other hand, an algorithm for computing the set of minimal forbidden subwords for a word is given. The case of a two-letter alphabet appears to be particularly interesting and it is considered separately.     

Disc filtration for separation of flocs from a moving bed bio-film reactor.

A Discfilter with 10 and 18 microm filter openings, respectively, was placed in parallel to a flotation plant for separation of biological flocs from a post-denitrifying Kaldnes Moving Bed Process, the last treatment step at the municipal wastewater treatment plant at Sj?unda, Malm?, Sweden. The effluent concentrations from the 10 and 18 microm filter were 2-5 and 2-8 mg SS L(-1), respectively, which is comparable to, or better than, the flotation plant. Comparison with experiences from activated sludge plants shows that the Discfilter works especially well after the Kaldnes process. Particle size distribution (PSD) studies show that particles larger than the filter openings of 10 and 18 microm are separated with approximately 90% efficiency, whereas most of the smaller particles pass the filter. This fact indicates that the major particle separation mechanism is physical blocking. These findings point to the possibility of improving the prediction of the separation efficiency by combining measurements of turbidity and suspended solids with particle size analysis.     

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Challenges in the Application of Stochastic Modal Identification Methods to a Cable-Stayed Bridge

This paper presents an analysis of the data collected in the ambient vibration test of the International Guadiana cable-stayed Bridge, which links Portugal and Spain, based on different output-only identification techniques: peak-picking, frequency domain decomposition, covariance-driven stochastic subspace identification, and data-driven stochastic subspace identification. The purpose of the analysis is to compare the performance of the four techniques and evaluate their efficiency in dealing with specific challenges involved in the modal identification of the tested cable-stayed bridge, namely the existence of closely spaced modes, the perturbation produced by the local vibration of stay-cables, and the variation of modal damping coefficients with wind velocity. The identified natural frequencies and mode shapes are compared with the corresponding modal parameters provided by a previously developed numerical model. Additionally, the variability of some modal damping coefficients is related with the variation of the wind characteristics and associated with a component of aerodynamic damping.