“One More for Luck”: The Destruction of U971 by HMCS Haida and HMS Eskimo, 24 June 1944

On the evening of 23 June 1944, HMCS Haida and HMS Eskimo set out from Plymouth, operational base of the 10th Destroyer Flotilla (10th DF), to conduct a sweep of the Western Approaches to the English Channel. Their role was to assist in securing these waters for the ongoing delivery of supplies and reinforcements to the Normandy bridgehead. Across the Channel to the southest, American, British and Canadian forces were now in their third week of fighting across the fields and hedgerows of Normandy. Operation OVERLORD had been the largest amphibious invasion in history and, dependent as it was on the unimpeded use of the sea, required an intensive concentration of air and naval forces to protect Allied supply convoys. This naval counterpart of OVERLORD was Operation NEPTUNE, and it was as part of this massive undertaken that Haida and Eskimo now steamed out of Plymouth

Thrombotic variables and risk of idiopathic venous thromboembolism in women aged 45-64 years - Relationships to hormone replacement therapy

Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) has been shown to increase the relative risk of idiopathic venous thromboembolism (VTE) about threefold in several observational studies and one randomised controlled trial. Whether or not this relative risk is higher in women with underlying thrombophilia phenotypes, such as activated protein C (APC) resistance, is unknown. We therefore restudied the participants in a case-control study of the relationship between the use of HRT and the occurrence of idiopathic VTE in women aged 45-64 years. After protocol exclusions, 66 of the cases in the original study and 163 of the controls were studied. Twenty haematological variables relevant to risk of VTE were analysed, including thrombotic states defined from the literature. The relative risk of VTE showed significant associations with APC resistance (OR 4.06; 95% CI 1.62, 10.21); low antithrombin (3.33; 1.15, 9.65) or protein C (2.93; 1.06, 8.14); and high coagulation factor IX (2.34: 1.26, 1.35), or fibrin D-dimer (3.84; 1.99, 7.32). HRT use increased the risk of VTE in women without any of these thrombotic static; (OR 4.09; 95% CI 1.26, 13.30). A similar effect of HRT use on the relative risk of VTE was also found in women with prothrombotic states. Thus for example, the combination of HRT use and APC resistance increased the risk of VTE about 13-fold compared with women of similar age without either APC resistance or HRT use (OR 13.27; 95%, CI 4.30, 40.97). We conclude that the combination of HRT use and thrombophilias (especially if multiple) increases the relative risk of VTE substantially; hence women known to have thrombophilias (especially if multiple) should be counselled about this increased risk prior to prescription of HRT. However. HRT increases the risk of VTE about fourfold even in women without any thrombotic abnormalities: possible causes are discussed

Expression of alternatively spliced isoforms of human Sp7 in osteoblast-like cells

BACKGROUND: Osteogenic and chondrocytic differentiation involves a cascade of coordinated transcription factor gene expression that regulates proliferation and matrix protein formation in a defined temporo-spatial manner. Bone morphogenetic protein-2 induces expression of the murine Osterix/Specificity protein-7 (Sp7) transcription factor that is required for osteoblast differentiation and bone formation. Regulation of its expression may prove useful for mediating skeletal repair. RESULTS: Sp7, the human homologue of the mouse Osterix gene, maps to 12q13.13, close to Sp1 and homeobox gene cluster-C. The first two exons of the 3-exon gene are alternatively spliced, encoding a 431-residue long protein isoform and an amino-terminus truncated 413-residue short protein isoform. The human Sp7 protein is a member of the Sp family having 78% identity with Sp1 in the three, Cys2-His2 type, DNA-binding zinc-fingers, but there is little homology elsewhere. The Sp7 mRNA was expressed in human foetal osteoblasts and craniofacial osteoblasts, chondrocytes and the osteosarcoma cell lines HOS and MG63, but was not detected in adult femoral osteoblasts. Generally, the expression of the short (or beta) protein isoform of Sp7 was much higher than the long (or alpha) protein isoform. No expression of either isoform was found in a panel of other cell types. However, in tissues, low levels of Sp7 were detected in testis, heart, brain, placenta, lung, pancreas, ovary and spleen. CONCLUSIONS: Sp7 expression in humans is largely confined to osteoblasts and chondrocytes, both of which differentiate from the mesenchymal lineage. Of the two protein isoforms, the short isoform is most abundant

Applications of the Upside-Down Normal Loss Function

The upside-down normal loss function (UDNLF) is a weighted loss function that has accurately modeled losses in a product engineering context. The function\u27\u27s scale parameter can be adjusted to account for the actual percentage of material failing to work at specification limits. Use of the function along with process history allows the prediction of expected loss-the average loss one would expect over a long period of stable process operation. Theory has been developed for the multivariate loss function (MUDNLF), which can be applied to optimize a process with many parameters-a situation in which engineering intuition is often ineffective. Computational formulae are presented for expected loss given normally distributed process parameters (correlated or uncorrelated), both in the univariate and multivariate case

Management and Social Indicators of Soil Carbon Storage in a Residential Ecosystem, Midlothian, VA

Soil carbon storage- defined here as carbon mass per unit ground area- is an important ecosystem service, sequestering carbon that might otherwise exist in atmospheric CO2 . Significant attention has focused on the effects that humans have on carbon cycling, but little is known about how human behaviors and attitudes relate to lawn carbon storage. The objectives of this study were to conduct household surveys in concert with soil carbon sampling in a 10-year-old exurban neighborhood near Richmond, Virginia to quantify differences in soil carbon storage between residential lawns and mixed pine-hardwood forest fragments, and to determine how lawn management and environmental attitudes relate to soil carbon storage. Lawns stored significantly less carbon than forest fragments in the top 10 cm of soils. A significant negative relationship was observed between watering and fertilizer frequency and soil carbon storage, but the goodness-of-fit was sensitive to intra-lawn variability in soil carbon mass. Survey respondents that claimed to be environmentalists stored significantly more carbon and spent one hour less per week managing their lawns, suggesting that environmental attitudes may affect how households manage their lawns and, in turn, the quality of soil carbon stored in residential soils

Asteroseismic Theory of Rapidly Oscillating Ap Stars

This paper reviews some of the important advances made over the last decade concerning theory of roAp stars.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figure

Limitations of the Pilot in Applying Forces to Airplane Controls

Measurements were made to determine the relative maximum forces a pilot can exert on the controls of an airplane with the view of obtaining systematic data upon which to base the location of controls within the cockpit and the design of the control surfaces. A cockpit model of generous proportions, capable of being rotated to any attitude, was built with the location of the control stick and rudder pedals adjustable over a wide range of positions with respect to the seat. Besides measurements of maximum forces obtainable with various control locations and with the pilot in several attitudes, estimates of forces within the range normally encountered in flight were made to gain an indication of the accuracy of estimating control forces. The maximum aileron forces measured were of the order of 90 pounds, maximum elevator 200 pounds, and maximum rudder 450 pounds. The average forces applied with the controls in the neutral position for the various cockpit attitudes were of the order of 35, 95, and 400 pounds, respectively, for the ailerons, elevators, and rudder

On the similarity of Information Energy to Dark Energy

Information energy is shown here to have properties similar to those of dark energy. The energy associated with each information bit of the universe is found to be defined identically to the characteristic energy of a cosmological constant. Two independent methods are used to estimate the universe information content of ~10^91 bits, a value that provides an information energy total comparable to that of the dark energy. Information energy is also found to have a significantly negative equation of state parameter, w < -0.4, and thus exerts a negative pressure, similar to dark energy.Comment: 5 pages, no figures, no table

Contemplations on Dirac's equation in quaternionic coordinates

A formulation of Dirac's equation using complex-quaternionic coordinates appears to yield an enormous gain in formal elegance, as there is no longer any need to invoke Dirac matrices. This formulation, however, entails several peculiarities, which we investigate and attempt to interpret

The effects of sodium bicarbonate ingestion on swimming interval performance in trained competitive swimmers

The use of sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO) supplementation to improve repeated high-intensity performance is recommended; however, most swimming performance studies examine time trial efforts rather than repeated swims with interspersed recovery that are more indicative of training sessions. The aim of this study, therefore, was to investigate the effects of 0.3 g.kg BM NaHCO supplementation on sprint interval swimming (8 × 50 m) in regionally trained swimmers. Fourteen regionally competitive male swimmers (body mass (BM): 73 ± 8 kg) volunteered for this double-blind, randomised, crossover designed study. Each participant was asked to swim 8 × 50 m (front crawl) at a maximum intensity from a diving block, interspersed with 50 m active recovery swimming. After one familiarisation trial, this was repeated on two separate occasions whereby participants ingested either 0.3 g.kg BM NaHCO or 0.05 g.kg BM sodium chloride (placebo) in solution 60 min prior to exercise. Whilst there were no differences in time to complete between sprints 1-4 (p > 0.05), improvements were observed in sprint 5 (p = 0.011; ES = 0.26), 6 (p = 0.014; ES = 0.39), 7 (p = 0.005; ES = 0.60), and 8 (p = 0.004; ES = 0.79). Following NaHCO supplementation, pH was greater at 60 min (p < 0.001; ES = 3.09), whilst HCO was greater at 60 min (p < 0.001; ES = 3.23) and post-exercise (p = 0.016; ES = 0.53) compared to placebo. These findings suggest NaHCO supplementation can improve the latter stages of sprint interval swimming performance, which is likely due to the augmentation of pH and HCO prior to exercise and the subsequent increase in buffering capacity during exercise