The importance of a planned irrigation system in the biological control of the snail vectors in areas where the topography is suitable and site selection is possible

A journal article on bilharzia control measures in irrigated estates of Sub-Saharan Africa.Bilharzia (schistosomiasis) today is a major tropical and sub-tropical disease and ranks with malaria as a health problem in these areas. As a health hazard it is beginning to replace the latter disease owing to the improved means of malarial control. Bilharzia is gradually spreading and is now firmly established in areas where it previously did not exist.12 Especially is this so in Africa, where the increasing employment of irrigation and water conservation will tend to disseminate it more widely still.3 Water is the life blood of Africa and the necessity for it is apt to override considerations of health, particularly where preventive measures to control this disease appear on the surface to be impracticable. There results an attitude of mind which often ignores the hazards and even neglects to take elementary precautions. The sequel is an unnecessary intensification of the disease, whereas a little forethought would have kept its incidence within normal bounds. The danger of this attitude needs no stressing. This paper adds to the extensive literature on the theme that its intensity in certain areas may be unnecessarily increased by ill-planned and ill- controlled irrigation schemes. It may be introduced into previously free areas by such schemes, when a little forethought will prevent it ever getting a serious foothold

Effect of nitrogen, sulfur, and planting rate on dryland malt barley

Non-Peer ReviewedDryland malting barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) experiments were initiated in north central Montana to evaluate the effects of planting, N, and S rates on grain yield and quality. Planting rates of 10, 15, and 20 seeds/ft2, nitrogen (N) rates of 0, 30, and 60 lbs N/acre, and S rates of 0, 10, and 20 lbs/acre were applied in all possible combinations to Metcalfe barley at 11 locations in 2004 and 2005. Optimal grain yields were generally achieved with a planting rate of 15 seeds/ft2, but 10 seeds/ft2 produced grain with the highest kernel plumpness and the highest grain protein content. Barley responses to N were similar to previously published data (i.e. increasing N resulted in higher yield and protein content but lower kernel plumpness). Sulfur fertilization had little effect on grain quality but increasing S significantly lowered grain yields at several locations

Tropical ulcer in Natal

No Abstrac

Decomposition of wheat and barley straw treated with urea-sulfuric acid

Wheat straw treated with 0.5 or 1.0 ml/g urea-sulfuric acid (1 : 1 acid in water v/v) and incubated in Protneuf or Woodburn silt loam soils in the laboratory decomposed faster than nontreated straw the first 4-6 weeks but at 12 weeks the nontreated straw had decomposed 25% – 45% more. In a field experiment, urea-sulfuric acid treated straw, removed at 40-day intervals over 160 days, decomposed faster than nontreated straw. The differences were attributed to salt buildup in the laboratory samples, where electrical conductivities up to 17.6 dS/m were observed. In the field, leaching removed the excess salts. Nitrification produced up to 1875 mg NO3-N/kg Portneuf silt loam soil in the laboratory, indicating that nitrifying bacteria were not suppressed by the salt. Total plate counts with no straw were 1.8 x 10^6 microorganisms/g and with urea-sulfuric acid treated straw were 15.7 x 10^6/g soil after 14 days incubation. The respective actinomycete counts were 0.3 x 10^6 and 6.7 x 10^6/g for the no straw and straw-treated soils, respectively. The urea-sulfuric acid treatments suppressed straw decomposition in the laboratory and accelerated straw decomposition in the field

CMAS challenges to CMC-T/EBC systems

Gas turbine technology is undergoing a major transition with the recent implementation of SiC based ceramic composites (CMCs) in aircraft engines. While the potential improvement in temperature capability (≥1500°C) is unprecedented, there are a number of issues that limit the full exploitation of such potential. In addition to the longstanding concern for low temperature oxidative embrittlement and the limited temperature capability of current bond coats and matrices, the susceptibility of the protective SiO2 to volatilization in the combustion environment requires the use of environmental barrier coatings (EBCs) to achieve durability targets. Most EBC concepts, however, are based on silicates and are thus susceptible to degradation by molten silicate deposits generically known as CMAS originating from mineral debris ingested into engines with the intake air. This presentation will discuss the thermodynamic and mechanistic foundation of the degradation of EBCs by CMAS, recent progress in establishing the relevant phase equilibria for these systems, and the role of the CMAS composition on the extent of degradation, as well as perspective on mitigation. (Research supported by ONR, AFOSR and the P&W Center of Excellence in Composites at UCSB.

Extracting antipsychotic polypharmacy data from electronic health records: developing and evaluating a novel process

Background Antipsychotic prescription information is commonly derived from structured fields in clinical health records. However, utilising diverse and comprehensive sources of information is especially important when investigating less frequent patterns of medication prescribing such as antipsychotic polypharmacy (APP). This study describes and evaluates a novel method of extracting APP data from both structured and free-text fields in electronic health records (EHRs), and its use for research purposes. Methods Using anonymised EHRs, we identified a cohort of patients with serious mental illness (SMI) who were treated in South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust mental health care services between 1 January and 30 June 2012. Information about antipsychotic co-prescribing was extracted using a combination of natural language processing and a bespoke algorithm. The validity of the data derived through this process was assessed against a manually coded gold standard to establish precision and recall. Lastly, we estimated the prevalence and patterns of antipsychotic polypharmacy. Results Individual instances of antipsychotic prescribing were detected with high precision (0.94 to 0.97) and moderate recall (0.57-0.77). We detected baseline APP (two or more antipsychotics prescribed in any 6-week window) with 0.92 precision and 0.74 recall and long-term APP (antipsychotic co-prescribing for 6 months) with 0.94 precision and 0.60 recall. Of the 7,201 SMI patients receiving active care during the observation period, 338 (4.7 %; 95 % CI 4.2-5.2) were identified as receiving long-term APP. Two second generation antipsychotics (64.8 %); and first -second generation antipsychotics were most commonly co-prescribed (32.5 %). Conclusions These results suggest that this is a potentially practical tool for identifying polypharmacy from mental health EHRs on a large scale. Furthermore, extracted data can be used to allow researchers to characterize patterns of polypharmacy over time including different drug combinations, trends in polypharmacy prescribing, predictors of polypharmacy prescribing and the impact of polypharmacy on patient outcomes

Velocity of sound in a Bose-Einstein condensate in the presence of an optical lattice and transverse confinement

We study the effect of the transverse degrees of freedom on the velocity of sound in a Bose-Einstein condensate immersed in a one-dimensional optical lattice and radially confined by a harmonic trap. We compare the results of full three-dimensional calculations with those of an effective 1D model based on the equation of state of the condensate. The perfect agreement between the two approaches is demonstrated for several optical lattice depths and throughout the full crossover from the 1D mean-field to the Thomas Fermi regime in the radial direction.Comment: final versio

Persistent currents in a Bose-Einstein condensate in the presence of disorder

We examine bosonic atoms that are confined in a toroidal, quasi-one-dimensional trap, subjected to a random potential. The resulting inhomogeneous atomic density is smoothened for sufficiently strong, repulsive interatomic interactions. Statistical analysis of our simulations show that the gas supports persistent currents, which become more fragile due to the disorder.Comment: 5 pages, RevTex, 3 figures, revised version, to appear in JLT

Irradiation of benzene molecules by ion-induced and light-induced intense fields

Benzene, with its sea of delocalized $\pi$-electrons in the valence orbitals, is identified as an example of a class of molecules that enable establishment of the correspondence between intense ion-induced and laser-light-induced fields in experiments that probe ionization dynamics in temporal regimes spanning the attosecond and picosecond ranges.Comment: 4 ps figure