Snap-8 mercury corrosion and materials research, volume iii topical report, jun. 1960 - dec. 1962

SNAP-8 materials research - mercury corrosion capsule tests of ferritic alloys for mass transfer, stress corrosion, mode of attack, and mechanical propertie

A 9Cr-1Mo steel as a mercury containment material for the SNAP-8 boiler

9Cr-1Mo steel as mercury containment material for SNAP-8 boile

Evaluation of tantalum for mercury containment in the SNAP-8 boiler

Corrosion testing of tantalum for mercury containment in SNAP 8 boile

Meaningful results for Information Retrieval in the MEANING project

The goal of the MEANING project (IST-2001-34460) is to develop tools for the automatic acquisition of lexical knowledge that will help Word Sense Disambiguation (WSD). The acquired lexical knowledge from various sources and various languages is stored in the Multilingual Central Repository (MCR) (Atserias et al 04), which is based on the design of the EuroWordNet database. The MCR holds wordnets in various languages (English, Spanish, Italian, Catalan and Basque), which are interconnected via an Inter-Lingual-Index (ILI). In addition, the MCR holds a number of ontologies and domain labels related to al

Contextual factors among indiscriminate or larger attacks on food or water supplies, 1946-2015

This research updates previous inventories of malicious attacks on food and water to include data from 1946 through mid-2015. A systematic search of news reports, databases and previous inventories of poisoning events was undertaken. Incidents that threatened or were intended to achieve direct harm to humans, and that were either relatively large (number of victims > 4 or indiscriminate in intent or realisation were included. Agents could be chemical, biological or radio-nuclear. Reports of candidate incidents were subjected to systematic inclusion and exclusion criteria as well as validity analysis (not always clearly undertaken in previous inventories of such attacks). We summarise contextual aspects of the attacks that may be important for scenario prioritisation, modelling and defensive preparedness. Opportunity is key to most realised attacks, particularly access to dangerous agents. The most common motives and relative success rate in causing harm were very different between food and water attacks. The likelihood that people were made ill or died also varied by food/water mode, and according to motive and opportunity for delivery of the hazardous agent. Deaths and illness associated with attacks during food manufacture and prior to sale have been fewer than those in some other contexts. Valuable opportunities for food defence improvements are identified in other contexts, especially food prepared in private or community settings

Population pharmacokinetics-based recommendations for a single delayed or missed dose of nusinersen

Nusinersen is an antisense oligonucleotide approved for the treatment of spinal muscular atrophy. The drug is given intrathecally at 12 mg, beginning with 3 loading doses at 2-week intervals, a fourth loading dose 30 days thereafter, and maintenance doses at 4-month intervals. This population pharmacokinetic model was developed to clarify how to maintain targeted nusinersen exposure after an unforeseen one-time delay or missed dose. Simulations demonstrated that the impact of a one-time delay in dosing or a missed dose on median cerebrospinal fluid exposures depended on duration of interruption and the regimen phase in which it occurred. Delays in loading doses delayed reaching the peak trough concentration by approximately the duration of the interruption. Resumption of the regimen as soon as possible resulted in achieving steady state trough concentration upon completion of the loading phase. A short delay (30-90 days) during the maintenance phase led to prolonged lower median cerebrospinal fluid concentration if all subsequent doses were shifted by the same 4-month interval. However, administration of the delayed dose, followed by the subsequent dose as originally scheduled, rapidly restored trough concentration. If a dose must be delayed, patients should return to the original dosing schedule as soon as possible

Using Social Software for Teamwork and Collaborative Project Management in Higher Education

This paper discusses the potential role of social software in supporting teamwork and collaborative project management in higher education. Based on the fact that social software has been widely spread among young students nowadays, using it for collaborative learning is believed to increase students' involvement and create learning incentives. Two social software platforms, Graaasp and Google Wave are examined in terms of sustaining collaborative learning activities. Relevant existing features and possible extensions that enhance the learning experience are addressed. Benefits and challenges resulting from the bottom-up learning paradigm are also presented

Stringy Toda Cosmologies

We discuss a particular stringy modular cosmology with two axion fields in seven space-time dimensions, decomposable as a time and two flat three-spaces. The effective equations of motion for the problem are those of the $SU(3)$ Toda molecule, and hence are integrable. We write down the solutions, and show that all of them are singular. They can be thought of as a generalization of the Pre-Big-Bang cosmology with excited internal degrees of freedom, and still suffering from the graceful exit problem. Some of the solutions however show a rather unexpected property: some of their spatial sections shrink to a point in spite of winding modes wrapped around them. We also comment how more general, anisotropic, solutions, with fewer Killing symmetries can be obtained with the help of STU dualities.Comment: 22 pages, latex, no figures. Several minor typos correcte

Autofluorescence lifetime augmented reality as a means for real-time robotic surgery guidance in human patients

Due to loss of tactile feedback the assessment of tumor margins during robotic surgery is based only on visual inspection, which is neither significantly sensitive nor specific. Here we demonstrate time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy (TRFS) as a novel technique to complement the visual inspection of oral cancers during transoral robotic surgery (TORS) in real-time and without the need for exogenous contrast agents. TRFS enables identification of cancerous tissue by its distinct autofluorescence signature that is associated with the alteration of tissue structure and biochemical profile. A prototype TRFS instrument was integrated synergistically with the da Vinci Surgical robot and the combined system was validated in swine and human patients. Label-free and real-time assessment and visualization of tissue biochemical features during robotic surgery procedure, as demonstrated here, not only has the potential to improve the intraoperative decision making during TORS but also other robotic procedures without modification of conventional clinical protocols