Strategic Sealift and National Security: Effects of a Declining Merchant Marine and Problematic MARAD-Administered Reserve Forces

Strategic sealift, the movement of cargo in support of deployed troops in an international conflict, relies primarily on a national asset--a National Defense Reserve Force, administered by MARAD, and a commercial asset--the US Merchant Marine. The decline of the merchant marine, along with the attendant decline and unmanageable nature of MARAD-administered forces, made sealift (which was once carried out simply by purchasing space on US carriers) the limiting factor in the successful execution of Operations DESERT SHIELD/DESERT STORM. This decline is documented in a literature review. A nine case analysis of sealift performance, examining three scenarios at three times, is then presented. The analysis yields mixed results. In some cases sealift is sufficient, in others, it is not. The substandard cases point to areas ripe for change in policy or procurement

Electrochemical sintering process for producing electrodes from cadmium felt and a nickel or silver grid

Electrochemical sintering process produces cadmium felt electrodes. Two pieces of cadmium felt are sandwiched around a nickel screen or silver expanded metal grid, held together by mold compression, and electrochemically sinitered by being put through several charge and discharge cycles at low current density

Restoring riparian ecosystems: The challenge of accommodating variability and designing restoration trajectories

Flood disturbance processes play a key role in the functioning of riparian ecosystems and in the maintenance of biodiversity along river corridors. As a result, riparian ecosystems can be described as mobile habitat mosaics characterized by variability and unpredictability. Any river restoration initiative should aim to mimic these attributes. This paper suggests that there needs to be an increased institutional capacity to accept some levels of both variability and unpredictability in the ecological outcomes of river restoration projects. Restoration projects have frequently used some form of historical or contemporary reference system to define objectives and to help in the evaluation process. Using these reference systems can give a false sense of the predictability of ecological outcomes. We suggest that reference systems need to be used with caution for six reasons: (1) there are often no appropriate reference systems to use, (2) many catchment parameters have changed since the times of chosen historic reference systems, (3) climate change has been continuous throughout the Holocene, (4) projected climate change is of uncertain magnitude, (5) alien species cannot be avoided, and (6) landscape context changes through time. As well as defining short-term objectives, we suggest that river restoration projects should also formulate longer-term (decadel) restoration trajectories that are less predictable but more representative of real system attributes. Restoration trajectories could be defined using a range of ecological outcomes to accommodate interannual variability. The challenges of defining what levels of variability are important for restoring European floodplain forests are used to demonstrate the difficulties of broadening approaches and creating trajectories. In particular, the changing significance of variability at different spatial and temporal scales is discussed. An account is given of a restoration project at Wicken Fen in the United Kingdom in which nondeterministic approaches to goal setting have been initiated

Electrochemical cell has internal resistive heater element

External source supplies power to electrochemical cells containing internal resistive heater element. Each cell plate is individually contained in its own Pellon bag, enabling the heater element to be arranged in a continuous, parallel circuit

Identification of the promoter of amidase gene for expression of useful mycobacterial genes

The genetics of mycobacteria has lagged behind because of several reasons. Mycobacteria grow very slowly. their generation time ranging anywhere between 12-24 hrs. Mycobacteria are rather hydrophobic and tend to grow in clusters and there is difficulty in purifying individual cells for genetic analysis. Very few genetic markers have been found in mycobacteria because there is no known naturally occurring genetic exchange in mycobacteria. With the creation of genomic libraries of M. tuberculosis more than 50 genes have been characterised. Many of them are not expressed efficiently in Escherichia coli (E.coli) under the control of their own promoters, since very few mycobacterial promoters are recognised by the E. coli transcription machinery. This clearly shows that mycobacteria use a different system of gene regulation. Understanding the gene regulation of mycobacteria might throw light on the slow growth rate, about their persistence in a resting phase and also about their intracellular survival. Besides this if inducible or strong promoters are identified they can be used in over expression of genes coding for proteins useful in diagnosis and protection

Non-HLA gene polymorphism in pulmonary tuberculosis

BCG vaccination has been shown to give protection against tuberculosis. However, South Indian (Chingleput) Trial of BCG vaccination did not give any protection against bacillary forms of tuberculosis. A number of hypotheses and possibilities were put forward for this failure (1). One of the possibilities suggested was the genetics of the people (Host genetics) living in that region. Pulmonary tuberculosis is a granulomatous lung disease caused by Mycobactrium tuberculosis. Susceptibility to tuberculosis has been suggested to be multifactorial. Though environmental and socio-economic factors are primarily related, numerous studies have emphasised the importance of host resistance and hereditary susceptibility (2,3)

A phase I study of the vitamin D analogue EB 1089 in patients with advanced breast and colorectal cancer.

Preclinical studies have shown that the vitamin D analogue EB 1089 has significantly less calcaemic activity than its parent compound 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D (1,25(OH)2D3) and significant anti-tumour activity. This phase I trial was designed to evaluate the calcaemic effect of the drug in patients with advanced cancer. EB 1089 was given to 36 patients with advanced breast and colorectal cancer in doses of between 0.15 and 17.0 microg m(-2) day(-1). Serial serum and urine calcium, urine creatinine and serum parathyroid hormone (PTH) were monitored. Hypercalcaemia was seen in all patients receiving 17.0 microg m(-2) day(-1). Hypercalcaemia attributable to EB 1089 was reversible by discontinuing or reducing EB 1089 therapy. During the first 5 days of treatment, urine calcium (P = 0.0001) and serum-corrected calcium (P = 0.027) were related to EB 1089 dose, whereas serum parathyroid hormone (P = 0.0001) showed an inverse relationship. Twenty-one patients received compassionate treatment for between 10 and 234 days. No complete or partial responses were seen. Six patients on treatment for more than 90 days showed stabilization of disease. EB 1089 was well tolerated and adverse events considered to be caused by EB 1089 were limited to dose-dependent effects on calcium metabolism. The dose estimated to be tolerable for most patients from this study is around 7 microg m(-2) day(1). These data support previous work that has demonstrated EB 1089 to be significantly less calcaemic than 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3

Determination of Arsenic, Mercury and Barium in herbarium mount paper using dynamic ultrasound-assisted extraction prior to atomic fluorescence and absorption spectrometry

A dynamic ultrasound-assisted extraction method using Atomic Absorption and Atomic Flourescence spectrometers as detectors was developed to analyse mercury, arsenic and barium from herbarium mount paper originating from the herbarium collection of the National Museum of Wales. The variables influencing extraction were optimised by a multivariate approach. The optimal conditions were found to be 1% HNO3 extractant solution used at a flow rate of 1 mL min-1. The duty cycle and amplitude of the ultrasonic probe was found to be 50% in both cases with an ultrasound power of 400 W. The optimal distance between the probe and the top face of the extraction chamber was found to be 0 cm. Under these conditions the time required for complete extraction of the three analytes was 25 min. Cold vapour and hydride generation coupled to atomic fluorescence spectrometry was utilized to determine mercury and arsenic, respectively. The chemical and instrumental conditions were optimized to provide detection limits of 0.01ng g-1 and 1.25 ng g-1 for mercury and arsenic, respectively. Barium was determined by graphite-furnace atomic absorption spectrometry, with a detection limit of 25 ng g-1. By using 0.5 g of sample, the concentrations of the target analytes varied for the different types of paper and ranged between 0.4–2.55 µg g-1 for Ba, 0.035–10.47 µg g-1 for As and 0.0046–2.37 µg g-1 for Hg