Hydraulic Assessment of Notched River Training Structures on a Portion of the Lower Mississippi River using the Adaptive Hydraulics Model

River training structures are widely used to create and maintain navigable waterways, to restore rivers and channels in a more stable condition, to promote environmental benefits, and to protect people and infrastructure from damages or floods. Few historical datasets on the changes and impacts in secondary waterbodies resulting from notched river training structures are available for the Lower Mississippi River. Access to the notched training structures on the Lower Mississippi River remains difficult and inhibits data collection for monitoring efforts. This increases the need for alternative methods such as numerical models for assessing the performance of the notched training structures. A quasi-three-dimensional Adaptive Hydraulics model was assembled and used to provide a hydraulic assessment of seven notched river training structures in the Lower Mississippi River. The hydraulic assessment of the notches included assessing the impacts to navigation, the long-term trends, and the potential for aquatic wildlife habitat diversity

Surfactant-aided exfoliation of molydenum disulphide for ultrafast pulse generation through edge-state saturable absorption

We use liquid phase exfoliation to produce dispersions of molybdenum disulphide (MoS2) nanoflakes in aqueous surfactant solutions. The chemical structures of the bile salt surfactants play a crucial role in the exfoliation and stabilization of MoS2. The resultant MoS2 dispersions are heavily enriched in single and few (<6) layer flakes with large edge to surface area ratio. We use the dispersions to fabricate free-standing polymer composite wide-band saturable absorbers to develop mode-locked and Q- switched fibre lasers, tunable from 1535-1565 and 1030-1070 nm, respectively. We attribute this sub-bandgap optical absorption and its nonlinear saturation behaviour to edge-mediated states introduced within the material band-gap of the exfoliated MoS2 nanoflakes.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure

Empirical Legal Studies Before 1940: A Bibliographic Essay

The modern empirical legal studies movement has well-known antecedents in the law and society and law and economics traditions of the latter half of the 20th century. Less well known is the body of empirical research on legal phenomena from the period prior to World War II. This paper is an extensive bibliographic essay that surveys the English language empirical legal research from approximately 1940 and earlier. The essay is arranged around the themes in the research: criminal justice, civil justice (general studies of civil litigation, auto accident litigation and compensation, divorce, small claims, jurisdiction and procedure, civil juries), debt and bankruptcy, banking, appellate courts, legal needs, legal profession (including legal education), and judicial staffing and selection. Accompanying the essay is an extensive bibliography of research articles, books, and reports

Mutations in INPP5K Cause a Form of Congenital Muscular Dystrophy Overlapping Marinesco-Sjögren Syndrome and Dystroglycanopathy.

Congenital muscular dystrophies display a wide phenotypic and genetic heterogeneity. The combination of clinical, biochemical, and molecular genetic findings must be considered to obtain the precise diagnosis and provide appropriate genetic counselling. Here we report five individuals from four families presenting with variable clinical features including muscular dystrophy with a reduction in dystroglycan glycosylation, short stature, intellectual disability, and cataracts, overlapping both the dystroglycanopathies and Marinesco-Sjögren syndrome. Whole-exome sequencing revealed homozygous missense and compound heterozygous mutations in INPP5K in the affected members of each family. INPP5K encodes the inositol polyphosphate-5-phosphatase K, also known as SKIP (skeletal muscle and kidney enriched inositol phosphatase), which is highly expressed in the brain and muscle. INPP5K localizes to both the endoplasmic reticulum and to actin ruffles in the cytoplasm. It has been shown to regulate myoblast differentiation and has also been implicated in protein processing through its interaction with the ER chaperone HSPA5/BiP. We show that morpholino-mediated inpp5k loss of function in the zebrafish results in shortened body axis, microphthalmia with disorganized lens, microcephaly, reduced touch-evoked motility, and highly disorganized myofibers. Altogether these data demonstrate that mutations in INPP5K cause a congenital muscular dystrophy syndrome with short stature, cataracts, and intellectual disability

Hydraulic Assessment of Notched River Training Structures on a Portion of the Lower Mississippi River Using the Adaptive Hydraulics Model

River training structures are widely used to create and maintain navigable waterways, to restore rivers and channels in a more stable condition, to promote environmental benefits, and to protect people and infrastructure from damages or floods. Few historical datasets on the changes and impacts in secondary waterbodies resulting from notched river training structures are available for the Lower Mississippi River. Access to the notched training structures on the Lower Mississippi River remains difficult and inhibits data collection for monitoring efforts. This increases the need for alternative methods such as numerical models for assessing the performance of the notched training structures. A quasi-three-dimensional Adaptive Hydraulics model was assembled and used to provide a hydraulic assessment of seven notched river training structures in the Lower Mississippi River. The hydraulic assessment of the notches included assessing the impacts to navigation, the long-term trends, and the potential for aquatic wildlife habitat diversity