Rescue litter flotation assembly Patent

Development and characteristics of rescue litter with inflatable flotation device for water rescue applicatio

Buoyant stokes litter assembly used for sea rescue operations

Standard stokes litter is fastened to inflatable flotation units for sea rescue operations. The assembly keeps an injured person immobilized during transportation to a first aid station

A comparison of the modern and classic golf swing: a clinician's perspective

Objective. There is little descriptive research on the motion the body displays during the golf swing. The purpose of this research is to review the modern golf swing and compare its motion to the classic golf swing. Discussion. The comparison revealed subtle but significant differences in the backswing and the follow-through positions. The potential implications for power and injury, particularly of the lower back, are discussed. The discussion describes a third swing, the hybrid swing, which is a combination of the classic and modern swing. The hybrid swing may potentially reduce the chances of sustaining a low back injury while still retaining the power of the modern swing. Conclusion. The golf swing has evolved over time as a result of a combination of advanced equipment, course design and human experimentation. The hybrid swing is being taught by some golf professionals as a balance between the power-potential of the modern swing and the ‘back-friendly\' nature of the classic swing, though no studies have so far been conducted on its efficacy. Further investigation into the three golf swings, classic, modern and hybrid, is required to determine which swing is the most effective while also being friendly to the body. Such research will make possible the development programmes aimed at reducing golf injury rates, particularly to the lower back. South African Journal of Sports Medicine Vol. 18 (3) 2006: pp. 80-9

European household waste management schemes: Their effectiveness and applicability in England.

This paper reviews European household waste management schemes and provides an insight into their effectiveness in reducing or diverting household waste. The paper also considers the feasibility of replicating such schemes in England. Selected case studies include those implemented using variable charging schemes, direct regulation and household incentivisation (reduced disposal charges). A total of 15 case studies were selected from developed countries in the EU where some schemes have operated for more than a decade. Criteria for assessing the effectiveness and replicability of schemes were developed using scheme progress towards targets, response time, compatibility with government policy, ease of administration and operation, and public acceptance as attributes. The study demonstrates the capability of these schemes to significantly reduce household waste and suggests changes to allow their possible adoption in England. One of the main barriers to their adoption is the Environmental Protection Act, 1990 that prevents English local authorities (LAs) from implementing the variable charging method for household waste management. This barrier could be removed through a change in legislation. The need to derive consistent data and standardise the method of measuring the effectiveness of schemes is also highlighted

The Epstein-Barr Virus Episome Maneuvers between Nuclear Chromatin Compartments during Reactivation.

The human genome is structurally organized in three-dimensional space to facilitate functional partitioning of transcription. We learned that the latent episome of the human Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) preferentially associates with gene-poor chromosomes and avoids gene-rich chromosomes. Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus behaves similarly, but human papillomavirus does not. Contacts on the EBV side localize to OriP, the latent origin of replication. This genetic element and the EBNA1 protein that binds there are sufficient to reconstitute chromosome association preferences of the entire episome. Contacts on the human side localize to gene-poor and AT-rich regions of chromatin distant from transcription start sites. Upon reactivation from latency, however, the episome moves away from repressive heterochromatin and toward active euchromatin. Our work adds three-dimensional relocalization to the molecular events that occur during reactivation. Involvement of myriad interchromosomal associations also suggests a role for this type of long-range association in gene regulation.IMPORTANCE The human genome is structurally organized in three-dimensional space, and this structure functionally affects transcriptional activity. We set out to investigate whether a double-stranded DNA virus, Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), uses mechanisms similar to those of the human genome to regulate transcription. We found that the EBV genome associates with repressive compartments of the nucleus during latency and with active compartments during reactivation. This study advances our knowledge of the EBV life cycle, adding three-dimensional relocalization as a novel component to the molecular events that occur during reactivation. Furthermore, the data add to our understanding of nuclear compartments, showing that disperse interchromosomal interactions may be important for regulating transcription

From treebank resources to LFG F-structures

We present two methods for automatically annotating treebank resources with functional structures. Both methods define systematic patterns of correspondence between partial PS configurations and functional structures. These are applied to PS rules extracted from treebanks, or directly to constraint set encodings of treebank PS trees

The prediction of the operating conditions on the permeate flux and on protein aggregation during membrane processing of monoclonal antibodies

The lack of available material during early stage bioprocess development poses numerous processing challenges such as limiting the number of full-scale experiments. Extended fundamental process understanding could be gained with the use of an ultra scale-down (USD) device using as little as 1.7 mL per experimental run. The USD system is used to predict diafiltration and ultrafiltration/diafiltration (UF/DF) performance of a pilot-scale tangential flow filtration (TFF) system, fitted with a flat-sheet cassette, operating at 500-fold larger scale. Both systems were designed by maintaining a volumetric loading of 8.1 L of feed per m2. Permeate flux was predicted for monoclonal antibody solutions with the USD system across a range of transmembrane pressure drops, feed concentrations and flow conditions during diafiltration, and desired retentate concentrations during UF/DF operations. The resulting USD data were in good agreement with the pilot-scale TFF when scaled based on similar shear rates over the membrane surface. Little change in soluble aggregates was observed in both systems but there were significantly higher increases in product turbidity in the USD system. A correlation was established to relate turbidity increase based on the volume fraction of high shear stress zone for USD systems and various pilot-scale TFF systems. The correlation was extended to encompass the processing time and concentration for a wide range of membrane processing challenges in both scales

An Exactly Conservative Integrator for the n-Body Problem

The two-dimensional n-body problem of classical mechanics is a non-integrable Hamiltonian system for n > 2. Traditional numerical integration algorithms, which are polynomials in the time step, typically lead to systematic drifts in the computed value of the total energy and angular momentum. Even symplectic integration schemes exactly conserve only an approximate Hamiltonian. We present an algorithm that conserves the true Hamiltonian and the total angular momentum to machine precision. It is derived by applying conventional discretizations in a new space obtained by transformation of the dependent variables. We develop the method first for the restricted circular three-body problem, then for the general two-dimensional three-body problem, and finally for the planar n-body problem. Jacobi coordinates are used to reduce the two-dimensional n-body problem to an (n-1)-body problem that incorporates the constant linear momentum and center of mass constraints. For a four-body choreography, we find that a larger time step can be used with our conservative algorithm than with symplectic and conventional integrators.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figures; to appear in J. Phys. A.: Math. Ge

Static stress drop associated with brittle slip events on exhumed faults

We estimate the static stress drop on small exhumed strike-slip faults in the Lake Edison granodiorite of the central Sierra Nevada (California). The sub-vertical strike-slip faults were exhumed from 4-15 km depth, and were chosen because they are exposed in outcrop along their entire tip-to-tip lengths of 8-12 m. Slip nucleated on joints and accumulated by ductile shearing (forming quartz mylonites from early quartz vein filling in joints) and successive brittle faulting (forming epidote-bearing cataclasites). The occurrence of thin, < 1 mm wide, pseudotachylytes along some small faults throughout the study area suggests that some portion of the brittle slip was seismic. We suggest that the contribution of seismic slip to the total slip along the studied cataclasite-bearing small faults may be estimated by the length of epidote-filled, rhombohedral dilatational jogs (rhombochasms) distributed semi-periodically along the length of the faults. The interpretation that slip recorded by rhombochasms occurred in single events is based on evidence that: 1) epidote crystals are randomly oriented and undeformed within the rhombochasm; and 2) cataclasite structure in principal slip zones does not include clasts of previous cataclasite. We thereby constrain both the rupture length and slip. Based on these measurements, we calculate stress drops ranging over 90-250 MPa, i.e., one to two orders of magnitude larger than typical seismological estimates for earthquakes, but similar in magnitude to recent observations of small (< M2) earthquakes from the San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth (SAFOD). These inferred seismic ruptures occurred along small, deep-seated faults, and, given the calculated stress drops and observations that brittle faults exploited joints sealed by quartz-bearing mylonite, we conclude that these were “strong” faults