NeuroSearch (Denmark)

The integration of CO 2 capture at waste-to-energy (WtE) facilities can provide carbon-neutral electricity and district heating, and treat residual waste streams. However, before full-scale implementation, a better understanding of the production of liquid CO 2 and emissions from the capture process is required. This study investigates the performance of a CO 2 capture demonstration-scale unit, including CO 2 liquefaction at the Amager Bakke WtE facility, covering topics including efficiencies, CO 2 purity, and emission control. The demonstration unit has a capacity of 4 t CO 2 d − 1 and is capable of capturing and conditioning CO 2 to food-grade-compliant purity for utilization by local consumers. The unit was operated for five months, using 35 wt% monoethanolamine (MEA) solvent. During the five months of operation, seven experimental campaigns with different objectives were conducted to optimize energy performance, evaluate flue-gas emissions, and monitor the quality of the produced CO 2 . Across 2002 h of on-stream time the specific reboiler duty (SRD) averaged 3.73–4.18 GJ t CO 2 − 1 , fully consistent with the best values reported for 30–35 wt% MEA systems. Production of liquid CO 2 totalled 193 t CO 2 , corresponding to an 84 % overall recovery, while a 12 % loss was observed between absorber and storage tank. The specific solvent consumption was 2.43 kg MEA t CO 2 − 1 . The most significant contributor to solvent loss was oxidative degradation to NH 3 . Peak NH 3 slip reached 75 ppmv and showed a positive correlation with both absorber temperature and dissolved‑iron level (up to 600 mg L − 1 ). Lastly, the effect of thermal reclaiming is qualitatively reported. Finally, the purity of the produced liquid CO 2 for export was measured and compared with the degradation of the solvent. All consignments met Northern Lights transport limits and EIGA beverage-grade specifications; typical impurities were <5 ppmv O 2 , <1 ppmv SO x , and <0.05 ppmv amine. We produced high-purity liquid CO 2 , with impurity levels in compliance with commercial CO 2 specifications, but found significant challenges related to amine degradation that must be solved before full-scale implementation. • Demonstration-scale CO 2 capture and liquefaction at Amager Bakke WtE • Achieved solvent consumption of 2.43 kg MEA per ton of CO 2 captured • Produced CO 2 met commercial purity standards for industrial use • Oxidative degradation was the main cause of solvent loss. • A correlation was found between solvent degradation and NH 3 slip.

Consumer wearables for mental state assessment face scepticism regarding data quality. This study evaluated whether a consumer-grade EEG/PPG wearable headband (Neurostellar’s wearable device) can reliably capture mental states in real-world settings. We compared the wearable device's EEG (AF7, AF8) and PPG-derived heart rate variability (HRV) signals with a laboratory-standard EEG/ECG device across 31 resting sessions (15 adults), assessing univariate correlations across 18 EEG, 12 HRV features. Participants then completed four cognitive and affective tasks while using the wearable device, providing subjective feedback. Novel multimodal features, combining short-window individual metrics with long-window complexity from multi-feature cluster sequences, were utilised in machine learning (Random Forest, Gradient Boosting) to classify tasks and predict changes in subjective relaxation and focus. Neurostellar’s wearable device showed moderate-to-strong correlations with lab measurements for numerous EEG (eyes-closed: 12; eyes-open: 14) and HRV (eyes-closed: 9; eyes-open: 6) features in &gt;50% of recordings. The advanced multimodal features significantly classified all tasks (Random Forest: z=13.08-13.11; Gradient Boosting: z=13.00-13.16, all p&lt;0.001) and predicted combined relaxation/focus ratings (Random Forest: z=2.37; Gradient Boosting: z=1.79, all p&lt;0.05) versus chance. These findings suggest that consumer wearables, employing robust multimodal feature engineering, can effectively capture psychophysiological changes and track mental states, such as focus and relaxation, in naturalistic environments, offering potential for real-world neuroscience applications. Limitations include a modest sample size and restricted demographic diversity, which warrant further research.

To perform an epidemiological survey of all patients in Denmark diagnosed with primary congenital glaucoma (PCG) from 1977 to 2016. A retrospective, nationwide study based on a review of medical files of all children with PCG born in Denmark from 1977 to 2016. PCG was defined as glaucoma due to isolated angle dysgenesis affecting children from birth and including late onset/late recognized PCG, excluding glaucoma associated with other congenital abnormalities. Incidence and risk factors of PCG including gender, consanguinity, family history, ethnicity, comorbidity and prematurity were evaluated and stratified by decade (1977-1986, 1987-1996, 1997-2006 and 2007-2016). Age at first symptoms, age at diagnosis, age at time of first surgery and possible diagnostic delay were assessed. Of 118 patients were identified, annual incidence of PCG was 4.8 per 100000 live born. 62.3% of cases were bilateral. The relative risk (RR) of PCG was significantly higher in boys (62.7% of patients, RR 1.60 (95% CI 1.10-2.32)). 13.6% had comorbidity. Median age at time of first symptoms was 75days, median age at time of diagnosis was 150days and median diagnostic delay was 75days with no significant difference throughout the decades. Unilateral cases presented symptoms and were diagnosed significantly later than bilateral cases. We provide unique nation-based information on the incidence of PCG from a single country covering 40years. Male gender was a risk factor. Diagnostic delay was unchanged throughout the 4 decades and a high percentage of comorbidity was revealed. Introducing a standardized paediatric screening of all PCG children should be considered.

Possible combinations of inputs of the order of 10100 can fire (axonal spike or action potential) a neuron that has nearly 104 inputs (dendritic spines). This extreme degeneracy of inputs that can fire a neuron involves significant loss of information when examination is limited to neuronal firing. Excitatory postsynaptic potentials (EPSPs) propagating from remote locations on the dendritic tree attenuate as they arrive at the axon hillock depending on the distance they propagate. Moreover, some EPSPs from remote locations will not even reach the axonal hillock. In this context, an operational mechanism at the location of origin of these EPSPs is necessary to preserve information for efficient storage. A similar mechanism is also expected at the location of origin of EPSPs generating dendritic spikes.

This study shows how liking politicians’ public Facebook posts can be used as an accurate measure for predicting present-day voter intention in a multiparty system. We highlight that a few, but selective digital traces produce prediction accuracies that are on par or even greater than most current approaches based upon bigger and broader datasets. Combining the online and offline, we connect a subsample of surveyed respondents to their public Facebook activity and apply machine learning classifiers to explore the link between their political liking behaviour and actual voting intention. Through this work, we show that even a single selective Facebook like can reveal as much about political voter intention as hundreds of heterogeneous likes. Further, by including the entire political like history of the respondents, our model reaches prediction accuracies above previous multiparty studies (60–70%).The main contribution of this paper is to show how public like-activity on Facebook allows political profiling of individual users in a multiparty system with accuracies above previous studies. Beside increased accuracies, the paper shows how such parsimonious measures allows us to generalize our findings to the entire population of a country and even across national borders, to other political multiparty systems. The approach in this study relies on data that are publicly available, and the simple setup we propose can with some limitations, be generalized to millions of users in other multiparty systems.

Abstract Weed harrowing is an alternative to herbicides but it may have negative effects on epigaeic arthropods. We assessed the effects of frequent (four) versus two harrowings during the growing season on the density and diversity of generalist arthropods and the weed flora. Collection by flooding was used to estimate arthropod densities, after collection of weeds and crop for biomass estimation. The predatory guild of spiders Tachyporus spp. carabids was reduced by frequent harrowing. Spiders and Tachyporus spp. were the most sensitive, with up to 38% higher density in plots harrowed only twice compared with four times. Furthermore, a marginally significant decrease in arthropod diversity was found after four harrowings. The negative effect of frequent harrowing on arthropods was probably caused by a combination of direct lethal effects and habitat disruption. Additional harrowings reduced weeds with weed seed biomass, on average, being 77% higher and species diversity being 48% higher in plots harrowed only twice compared with four times. There was a positive relationship between weed biomass and predatory arthropod guild density, supporting the hypothesis that weeds promote generalist arthropod predators. Weed harrowing should be carried out early and limited to a minimum to protect flora and fauna. Frequent harrowing had no positive effect on yield, suggesting that more weeds can be tolerated to support biodiversity and biocontrol.

Combination of dopamine D3 antagonism, serotonin 5-HT1A partial agonism, and antagonism at 5-HT2A leads to a novel approach to potent atypical antipsychotics. Exploitation of the original structure-activity relationships resulted in the identification of safe and effective antipsychotics devoid of extrapyramidal symptoms liability, sedation, and catalepsy. The potential atypical antipsychotic 5bb was selected for further pharmacological investigation. The distribution of c-fos positive cells in the ventral striatum confirmed the atypical antipsychotic profile of 5bb in agreement with behavioral rodent studies. 5bb administered orally demonstrated a biphasic effect on the MK801-induced hyperactivity at dose levels not able to induce sedation, catalepsy, or learning impairment in passive avoidance. In microdialysis studies, 5bb increased the dopamine efflux in the medial prefrontal cortex. Thus, 5bb represents a valuable lead for the development of atypical antipsychotics endowed with a unique pharmacological profile for addressing negative symptoms and cognitive deficits in schizophrenia.

Stressful life events are an established trigger for depression and may contribute to the heterogeneity within genome-wide association analyses. With depression cases showing an excess of exposure to stressful events compared to controls, there is difficulty in distinguishing between "true" cases and a "normal" response to a stressful environment. This potential contamination of cases, and that from genetically at risk controls that have not yet experienced environmental triggers for onset, may reduce the power of studies to detect causal variants. In the RADIANT sample of 3,690 European individuals, we used propensity score matching to pair cases and controls on exposure to stressful life events. In 805 case-control pairs matched on stressful life event, we tested the influence of 457,670 common genetic variants on the propensity to depression under comparable level of adversity with a sign test. While this analysis produced no significant findings after genome-wide correction for multiple testing, we outline a novel methodology and perspective for providing environmental context in genetic studies. We recommend contextualizing depression by incorporating environmental exposure into genome-wide analyses as a complementary approach to testing gene-environment interactions. Possible explanations for negative findings include a lack of statistical power due to small sample size and conditional effects, resulting from the low rate of adequate matching. Our findings underscore the importance of collecting information on environmental risk factors in studies of depression and other complex phenotypes, so that sufficient sample sizes are available to investigate their effect in genome-wide association analysis.