Triton Field Trials: Promoting Consistent Environmental Monitoring Methodologies for Marine Energy Sites

Uncertainty surrounding the potential environmental impacts of marine energy (ME) has resulted in extensive and expensive environmental monitoring requirements for ME deployments. Recently, there have been more ME deployments and associated environmental data collection efforts, but no standardized methodologies for data collection. This hinders the use of previously collected data to inform new ME project permitting efforts. Triton Field Trials (TFiT), created at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory by the United States (U.S.) Department of Energy, explores ways to promote more consistent environmental data collection and enable data transferability across ME device types and locations. Documents from 118 previous ME projects or ME-related research studies in the U.S. and internationally were reviewed to identify the highest priority stressor–receptor relationships to be investigated and the technologies and methodologies used to address them. Thirteen potential field sites were assessed to determine suitable locations for testing the performance of relevant monitoring technologies. This introductory paper provides an overview of how priority research areas and associated promising technologies were identified as well as how testing locations were identified for TFiT activities. Through these scoping efforts, TFiT focused on four activity areas: collision risk, underwater noise, electromagnetic fields, and changes in habitat. Technologies and methodologies were tested at field sites in Alaska, Washington, California, and New Hampshire. Detailed information on the effectiveness of the identified methodologies and specific recommendations for each of the four focus areas are included in the companion papers in this Special Issue

Allogeneic Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation in Children with Relapsed Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia Isolated to the Central Nervous System

AbstractAllogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) is the standard of care for pediatric patients with early medullary relapse of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Most patients with isolated central nervous system (CNS) relapse have good outcomes when treated with intrathecal and systemic chemotherapy followed by irradiation to the neuroaxis. However, the role of HCT remains unclear for those patients with early isolated CNS relapse (<18 months) or who had high risk disease at diagnosis. We therefore compared the HCT outcomes of 116 children treated at the University of Minnesota from 1991 to 2006 with relapsed ALL involving the CNS alone (CNS, n = 14), the bone marrow alone (BM, n = 85), or both bone marrow and CNS (BM + CNS, n = 17). There were no significant differences among groups in age at diagnosis or transplant, length of first complete remission (CR1), remission status (CR2 versus ≥CR3), graft source, or preparative regimen. The incidence of acute GVHD was similar between groups. Patients with isolated CNS relapse had the lowest cumulative incidence of mortality following transplant (CNS: 0%, BM: 19%, BM + CNS: 29%, P = .03) and relapse (CNS: 0% BM: 30%, BM + CNS: 12%, at 2 years, P = .01) and highest leukemia-free survival (CNS: 91%, BM: 35%, BM + CNS: 46%, P < .01) at 5 years. Risk factors for poor survival were: T cell leukemia or BCR-ABL gene rearrangement, history of marrow relapse, and receipt of HLA-mismatched marrow. These data support the use of allogeneic HCT in the treatment of children with poor prognosis isolated CNS relapse