High-level waste concentration and storage: an overview

An overview of high-level waste concentration and storage operations and some of the problems involved in them are given. (LK

Patterns of Silurian deformation and magmatism during sinistral oblique convergence, northern Scottish Caledonides

Funding Information: Acknowledgments Fieldwork by RAS, REH and GIA was carried out in part during the remapping of BGS Scotland sheets 114E (Tongue), 108E (Loch Naver), 109E (Kildonan) and 109W (Badenloch) and funded under the NERC-BGS Academic Collaboration Programme. IMB acknowledges a PhD studentship funded by Oxford Brookes University (1990-93). Mark Witton is thanked for drafting. Rick Law, Fernando Corfu, Calvin Mako and Kathryn Goodenough contributed detailed comments that resulted in significant improvements to the paper. John Waldron and Rick Law are thanked for supplying editable versions of figures 1 and 3, respectively. Stephen Daly is thanked for efficient editorial handling.Peer reviewedPostprin

Regulatory policy issues and the Clean Air Act: An interim report on the state implementation workshops

The National Regulatory Research Institute (NRRI), with funding from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), conducted two workshops on state public utility commission implementation of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 (CAAA). The first workshop was held in Charlotte, North Carolina for southern and eastern states in April 1992 and the second was held in St. Louis, Missouri for Midwestern states in May. The workshops had four objectives: (1) discuss key issues and concerns on CAAA implementation, (2) encourage a discussion among states on issues of common interest, (3) attempt to reach consensus, where possible, on some key issues, and (4) provide the workshop participants with information and materials to assist in developing rules, orders, and procedures in their state. Of primary interest from the federal perspective was for workshop participants to return to their states with additional background and understanding of how state commission actions may affect implementation of the CAAA and enable them to provide guidance to their jurisdictional utilities. It was hoped this would reduce some of the uncertainty utilities face and assist in the development of an efficient allowance market. The basic format of the workshops was that invited speakers made presentations on specific issues. {open_quotes}Primary participants{close_quotes} from each state and other workshop attendees then discussed the issues raised by the speakers and other related concerns. The primary participants were state commissioners, commission staff, representatives from state consumer advocate organizations, EPA, DOE, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Other attendees were utility representatives, consultants, and other interested parties. All participants were given a workbook with excerpts from an NRRI report on CAAA implementation and papers or outlines from speakers

Research report: Summary of key state issues of FERC orders 888 and 889

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission`s (FERC) Order 888 is perhaps the most important and far reaching FERC electricity order in decades. The consequences on the structure of the industry and how the industry is regulated are significant departures from past methods and regulatory philosophy. This will undoubtedly have a dramatic impact on the manner in which state public utility commissions, which are also undergoing or considering dramatic change, regulate their jurisdictional electric utilities. This report summarizes and discusses the actions that the FERC is taking and their profound repercussions on the industry and state commissions. The report is not a comprehensive summary of the entire order. Rather, it is intended to highlight the order`s more important features and discuss what this could mean for the states. The report is organized into eight sections; the first seven address Order 888 and the last section (section 8) addresses Order 889. Section 1 through 5 summarize and discuss the main features of Order 888. Section 6 (on jurisdiction) and Section 7 (on property rights) interpret the likely consequences of the order. Section 8, summarizes the FERC`s Open Access Same Time System (OASIS) and discusses some concerns about its real-world application

Inflammatory bowel disease in Cape Town, 1975-1980 Part I. Ulcerative colitis

Previously documented and new patients with ulcerative colitis seen between 1975 and 1980 in the Gastro-intestinal Clinic of Groote Schuur Hospital were studied to establish the local incidence and clinical features of tHis disease. There were 220 patients and the mean follow-up was 7,7 ± 0,4 years. Sixty percent of patients were White, 37% Coloured and 3% Black. The incidence for the Coloured and White population was calculated' to be 1,3 and 2,4/100000 per year during 1970-1974 and 1,6 and 2,1/100000per year during 1975-1980. respectively. In Jews the rates were 8.5 and 10.4/100 000 per year for the two periods. Insufficient data are available to calculate an incidence for the Black population. The disease was limited to less than 15 cm above the anus in 14% of patients, to the rectoSigmoid colon in 45%. and to the rest of the colon in 40%. Although the severity of symptoms was related to the extent of disease, 22% of patients with extensive colitis had mild symptoms, while 15% with disease limited to the rectum had severe symptoms. The clinical features were similar in the White and Coloured population groups. A total colectomy was performed on 20% of patients with extensive colitis; in 2%the diseasewas complicated by colonic-carcinom

Vacuum-assisted decellularization: an accelerated protocol to generate tissue-engineered human tracheal scaffolds

Patients with large tracheal lesions unsuitable for conventional endoscopic or open operations may require a tracheal replacement but there is no present consensus of how this may be achieved. Tissue engineering using decellularized or synthetic tracheal scaffolds offers a new avenue for airway reconstruction. Decellularized human donor tracheal scaffolds have been applied in compassionate-use clinical cases but naturally derived extracellular matrix (ECM) scaffolds demand lengthy preparation times. Here, we compare a clinically applied detergent-enzymatic method (DEM) with an accelerated vacuum-assisted decellularization (VAD) protocol. We examined the histological appearance, DNA content and extracellular matrix composition of human donor tracheae decellularized using these techniques. Further, we performed scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and biomechanical testing to analyze decellularization performance. To assess the biocompatibility of scaffolds generated using VAD, we seeded scaffolds with primary human airway epithelial cells in vitro and performed in vivo chick chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) and subcutaneous implantation assays. Both DEM and VAD protocols produced well-decellularized tracheal scaffolds with no adverse mechanical effects and scaffolds retained the capacity for in vitro and in vivo cellular integration. We conclude that the substantial reduction in time required to produce scaffolds using VAD compared to DEM (approximately 9 days vs. 3–8 weeks) does not compromise the quality of human tracheal scaffold generated. These findings might inform clinical decellularization techniques as VAD offers accelerated scaffold production and reduces the associated costs

Legal Steps Outside the Climate Convention: Litigation as a Tool to Address Climate Change

This article examines the recent academic interest in litigation as a tool to address climate change, as well as the surge of legal actions worldwide to bring the problem to the attention of judiciaries. This new interest reveals the frustration of legal scholars and activists at the slow rate at which policy makers are addressing the climate change problem. This article shows the slow build-up of academic interest in litigation, before moving on to analyse the kinds of legal causes of action that are being used in different parts of the world. Most of these cases have not been fully resolved, and it is more than likely that the judgments may not always be favourable to the plaintiffs, but at least a first step has been made to involve yet another forum for addressing the climate change problem. © 2007 The Author. Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Community psychiatric nurses and the care co-ordinator role: squeezed to provide ‘limited nursing’.

Background: The Care Programme Approach (CPA) is the key policy underpinning community-focused mental health services but has been unevenly implemented and is associated with increased inpatient bed use. The care co-ordinator role is central to the CPA and is most often held by Community Psychiatric Nurses (CPNs), but there has been little research into how this role is conducted or how it impacts on the work of CPNs and their ability to meet the needs of service users. Aim: The study aimed to identify and illuminate the factors that either facilitated or constrained the ability of CPNs, in their role as care co-ordinators, to meet service users’ and carers’ needs. Methods: A multiple case study of seven sectorised community mental health teams was employed over two years using predominantly qualitative methods of participant observation, semi-structured interviews and document review. Findings: Additional duties and responsibilities specifically associated with the care co-ordinator role and multidisciplinary working, combined with heavy workloads, combined to produce ‘limited nursing’, whereby CPNs are unable to provide evidence-based psychosocial interventions that are recognised to reduce relapse amongst people with severe mental illness. Conclusions: The role of the CPA care co-ordinator was not designed to support the provision of psychosocial interventions. Consequently, CPNs in the co-ordinator role faced with competing demands are unable to provide the range of structured, evidence-based interventions required. This may partially account for the increased inpatient bed use associated with the CPA

Heavy quarkonium: progress, puzzles, and opportunities

A golden age for heavy quarkonium physics dawned a decade ago, initiated by the confluence of exciting advances in quantum chromodynamics (QCD) and an explosion of related experimental activity. The early years of this period were chronicled in the Quarkonium Working Group (QWG) CERN Yellow Report (YR) in 2004, which presented a comprehensive review of the status of the field at that time and provided specific recommendations for further progress. However, the broad spectrum of subsequent breakthroughs, surprises, and continuing puzzles could only be partially anticipated. Since the release of the YR, the BESII program concluded only to give birth to BESIII; the $B$-factories and CLEO-c flourished; quarkonium production and polarization measurements at HERA and the Tevatron matured; and heavy-ion collisions at RHIC have opened a window on the deconfinement regime. All these experiments leave legacies of quality, precision, and unsolved mysteries for quarkonium physics, and therefore beg for continuing investigations. The plethora of newly-found quarkonium-like states unleashed a flood of theoretical investigations into new forms of matter such as quark-gluon hybrids, mesonic molecules, and tetraquarks. Measurements of the spectroscopy, decays, production, and in-medium behavior of c\bar{c}, b\bar{b}, and b\bar{c} bound states have been shown to validate some theoretical approaches to QCD and highlight lack of quantitative success for others. The intriguing details of quarkonium suppression in heavy-ion collisions that have emerged from RHIC have elevated the importance of separating hot- and cold-nuclear-matter effects in quark-gluon plasma studies. This review systematically addresses all these matters and concludes by prioritizing directions for ongoing and future efforts.Comment: 182 pages, 112 figures. Editors: N. Brambilla, S. Eidelman, B. K. Heltsley, R. Vogt. Section Coordinators: G. T. Bodwin, E. Eichten, A. D. Frawley, A. B. Meyer, R. E. Mitchell, V. Papadimitriou, P. Petreczky, A. A. Petrov, P. Robbe, A. Vair