Organic compounds in surface sediments and oyster tissues from the Chesapeake Bay

This report contains three parts. In Part I, the methodology to extract and analyze sediment and oyster tissue samples from the Chesapeake Bay is described in detail. Remaining problems are clearly identified. Part II contains the results and their discussion. Part III contains a number of appendices with detailed data. For those readers interested in still more detail, the complete bank of processed data is on computer tapes at this institute and at the Environmental Protection Agency-Chesapeake Bay Program office at Annapolis, Maryland. Also included in Part III we give the results of volatile halogenated organic compounds determined in water collected near the outfalls of several chlorine using facilities as well as from river mouths. The distribution of the total and a few specific organic compounds within the Bay is presented by histograms. Mass spectrometric analyses clearly reveal the fact that one specific class of organic compounds, hydrocarbons, are the most prominent pollutants in the Bay. The application of two different search routines, one concentrating on compounds at levels \u3e50 ppb and the other on temporal changes, allows a quick determination of areas where problems may exist and where additional research may be indicated. Two unusual sediment samples collected during the fall 1979 cruise are discussed separately: Sample 2-19-S which clearly indicates a recent dumping of DDT and polychlorinated biphenyls, and Sample 2-27-S which contained very high concentrations of unsubstituted polynuclear aromatics

Sport and Society

Despite its economic and cultural centrality, sport is a relatively neglected and undertheorized area of sociological research. In this review, we examine sports\u27 articulation with stratification issues, especially race, class, and gender. In addition, we look at how the media and processes of globalization have affected sports.We suggest that sports and cultural sociologists need to attend more closely to how leisure products and practices are produced and distributed and how they intersect with educational, political, and cultural institutions. We propose the work of Bourdieu andthe new institutionalism to undergird future research

Mortality after surgery in Europe: a 7 day cohort study

Background: Clinical outcomes after major surgery are poorly described at the national level. Evidence of heterogeneity between hospitals and health-care systems suggests potential to improve care for patients but this potential remains unconfirmed. The European Surgical Outcomes Study was an international study designed to assess outcomes after non-cardiac surgery in Europe.Methods: We did this 7 day cohort study between April 4 and April 11, 2011. We collected data describing consecutive patients aged 16 years and older undergoing inpatient non-cardiac surgery in 498 hospitals across 28 European nations. Patients were followed up for a maximum of 60 days. The primary endpoint was in-hospital mortality. Secondary outcome measures were duration of hospital stay and admission to critical care. We used χ² and Fisher’s exact tests to compare categorical variables and the t test or the Mann-Whitney U test to compare continuous variables. Significance was set at p<0·05. We constructed multilevel logistic regression models to adjust for the differences in mortality rates between countries.Findings: We included 46 539 patients, of whom 1855 (4%) died before hospital discharge. 3599 (8%) patients were admitted to critical care after surgery with a median length of stay of 1·2 days (IQR 0·9–3·6). 1358 (73%) patients who died were not admitted to critical care at any stage after surgery. Crude mortality rates varied widely between countries (from 1·2% [95% CI 0·0–3·0] for Iceland to 21·5% [16·9–26·2] for Latvia). After adjustment for confounding variables, important differences remained between countries when compared with the UK, the country with the largest dataset (OR range from 0·44 [95% CI 0·19 1·05; p=0·06] for Finland to 6·92 [2·37–20·27; p=0·0004] for Poland).Interpretation: The mortality rate for patients undergoing inpatient non-cardiac surgery was higher than anticipated. Variations in mortality between countries suggest the need for national and international strategies to improve care for this group of patients.Funding: European Society of Intensive Care Medicine, European Society of Anaesthesiology