OBJECTIVE:To investigate the impact of overweight and obesity on health-related quality-of-life (HRQL) in the general population in western Sweden. DESIGN: Cross-sectional survey. SUBJECTS: A total of 5633 men and women aged 16 -64 y born in Sweden. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Scale and summary component scores of the SF-36 Health Survey. RESULTS: Obese men aged 16 -34 y rated their HRQL lower than normal-weight men did on all four physical health scales of the SF-36 and on two of the four mental health scales. Obese women in the same age group rated their health worse than normal-weight women on three of the physical health scales. Thus, in younger men and women the analysis indicated a clearer negative association between obesity and physical health than between obesity and mental health. Obese women aged 35 -64 y rated their health worse on all scales than normal-weight women did, while obese men in this age group rated their health worse on only two SF-36 subscales -physical functioning and general health perception. The massively obese men and women suffered from a poor level of HRQL. CONCLUSION: Not only does the level of obesity affect HRQL, the impact of overweight and obesity also differs by age and sex. The importance of aspects of both physical and mental health should be fully recognised.

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The performance of a newly designed corner impinging jet air distribution method with an equilateral triangle cross section was evaluated experimentally and compared to that of two more traditional methods (mixing and displacement ventilation). At nine evenly chosen positions with four standard vertical points, air velocity, turbulence intensity, temperature, and tracer gas decay measurements were conducted for all systems. The results show that the new method behaves as a displacement ventilation system, with high air change effectiveness and stratified flow pattern and temperature field. Both local air change effectiveness and air exchange effectiveness of the corner impinging jet showed high quality and promising results, which is a good indicator of ventilation effectiveness. The results also indicate that there is a possibility to slightly lower the airflow rates for the new air distribution system, while still meeting the requirements for thermal comfort and indoor air quality, thereby reducing fan energy usage. The draught rate was also lower for corner impinging jet compared to the other tested air distribution methods. The findings of this research show that the corner impinging jet method can be used for office ventilation.Energies 2019, 12, 1354 2 of 15 the average IAQ in the occupied zone, and the results showed that there was a 35-50% improvement in the breathing zone due to the buoyancy effect around the mannequin body [4]. In a more recent publication, four different ventilation systems were compared in terms of ventilation efficiency, thermal comfort and energy-saving potential by using numerical simulations. The four systems compared were DV, mixing ventilation (MV), wall confluent jets ventilation (WCJ), and impinging jet ventilation (IJV). The comparison was done for an office environment. The results showed that DV was better than the other air delivery systems in all areas except when evaluating the vertical temperature gradient between ankle and neck levels for a standing person [5]. Other research groups have also concluded that DV is more suitable for cooling by exhibiting higher ventilation and energy effectiveness. It also creates a temperature stratification which facilitates the concentration of pollutants in the lower strata of the occupied space [6][7][8].Another type of air distribution system is IJV, which has been the subject of much research [9-13]. However, very few studies have examined multiple inlet devices based on IJV. In an early study, Karimipanah and Awbi [14] compared IJV to wall displacement ventilation in a laboratory classroom. They tested several key parameters such as ventilation efficiency, local mean age of air, and other characteristic parameters both experimentally and by numerical simulations. One of the conclusions of their research was that the IJV system showed a slight improvement in mean age of air and velocity distributions due to a better balance between buoyancy and momentum forces. Similarly, Koufi et al. [15] also reached the conclusion that IJV ha...

The aim of this study was to investigate the relative burden of rhinitis and asthma on health-related quality of life (HRQL) as a function of gender and age in the general population. A cross-sectional, general population survey was conducted, comprising 5918 men and women aged 16-64 years. The SF-36 Health Survey was administered by mail, along with questions regarding nasal complaints after 15 years of age and physician-diagnosed asthma. Overall, rhinitis and asthma were each associated with impaired HRQL compared with non-cases and the burden of these illnesses in combination was incremental. In the age group 16-49 years, men and women with rhinitis alone had significantly worse health profiles on most scales than non-cases, while asthmatics, with or without rhinitis, showed further decrements on only a few scales. In the age group 50-64 years, men with rhinitis did not differ from non-cases and no differences were found between asthmatics and rhinitis victims on any scale. In contrast, women aged 50-64 years with rhinitis had significantly worse scores than non-cases on bodily pain and general well-being scales (GH, VT), and asthmatics scored much lower on all scales than those with rhinitis alone. The negative association of rhinitis and asthma with HRQL differs by age and sex in the general population. Women aged 50-64 years with one or both ailments are particularly affected. Such gender and age differences should be taken into consideration in the care and treatment of patients with rhinitis and asthma.

Accurate navigation of a mobile robot in cluttered rooms USing a range-measuring laser as a sensor has been achieved. To extract the directions and distances to the walls of the room the range-weighted Hough transform is used. The following experimental results are emphasized:The area around the robot is measured using an on-board scanning time-of-flight laser. The observations of the walls are extracted using the range-weighted Hough transform (RWHT) and the position of the robot is continuousb updated using an extended Kalman filter (EKF). The experimental tests presented concern navigation in one room at a time. This is useful as The robot extracts the walls of the surrounding room from the range measurements. The distances between parallel walls are estimated with a standard deviation smaller than 1 cm. It is possible to navigate the robot along any preselected trajectory in the room. One special case is navigation through an open door detected by the laser. The accuracy of the passage is 1 cm at a speed of 0.5 d s . The trajectory is perpendicular to the wall within 0.5 degrees in angle. When navigating through corridors, the accuracy is better than 1 cm at 0.8 m / s -the maximum speed of the robot. Odometric data and laser measurements are combined a proof of concepts, and makes the result clearer and easier to understand. A complete map-building and navigation system along these lines is under development with preliminary results given in [ 141.Different Sensor Systems and Related Work Robot navigation is generally based on a combination of internal sensors (like odometers and rate gyros) for dead reckoning and external sensors (like time-of-flight lasers) for finding objects in the surroundings of the robot and for locating external position references. Robot navigation is a wide research area with numerous contributions including books like [6] and [ 151. Navigation can use external references and landmarks occurring naturally in the environment like walls and tree trunks. Landmarks can also be artificial as in navigation using --using the extended Kalman filter. The size of the cluttered rectangular room and the position and orientation (pose) of the robot are estimated during motion. The extraction and the resulting navigation are very robust against both spurious measurements in the laser measurements and disturbing objects.