Properties and Wood Bonding Capacity of Nanoclay-Modified Urea and Melamine Formaldehyde Resins

Urea formaldehyde (UF) and melamine formaldehyde (MF) thermosetting resins were substituted with up to 6% nanoclay (organic modified Cloisite®30B and unmodified Nanofil® 116; Southern Clay Ltd, Austin, TX) and assessed for mixing and curing compatibility using X-ray diffraction, differential scanning calorimetry, wood lap-shear tests, and particleboard strength tests. Cloisite® 30B exfoliated fully in both resin types, whereas Nanofil® 116 showed increased spacing between platelets (intercalation) but not exfoliation. Nanoclays improved bonding strength of MF more than UF resin, and 2% nanoclay with a coupling agent in MF significantly enhanced particleboard bonding strength. Also, thickness swelling of particleboard in water decreased with up to 6% nanoclay. To decrease costs, MF resin could potentially be substituted by up to 6% nanoclay with no detrimental effect on properties

Neighborhoods of trees in circular orderings

In phylogenetics, a common strategy used to construct an evolutionary tree for a set of species X is to search in the space of all such trees for one that optimizes some given score function (such as the minimum evolution, parsimony or likelihood score). As this can be computationally intensive, it was recently proposed to restrict such searches to the set of all those trees that are compatible with some circular ordering of the set X. To inform the design of efficient algorithms to perform such searches, it is therefore of interest to find bounds for the number of trees compatible with a fixed ordering in the neighborhood of a tree that is determined by certain tree operations commonly used to search for trees: the nearest neighbor interchange (nni), the subtree prune and regraft (spr) and the tree bisection and reconnection (tbr) operations. We show that the size of such a neighborhood of a binary tree associated with the nni operation is independent of the tree’s topology, but that this is not the case for the spr and tbr operations. We also give tight upper and lower bounds for the size of the neighborhood of a binary tree for the spr and tbr operations and characterize those trees for which these bounds are attained

Analysis of the superdefomed rotational bands

All available experimental data for the $\Delta I=2$ transition energies in superdeformed bands are analyzed by using a new one-point formula. The existence of deviations from the smooth behavior is confirmed in many bands. However, we stress that one cannot necessarily speak about staggering patterns as they are mostly irregular. Simulations of the experimental data suggest that the irregularities may stem from the presence of irregular kinks in the rotational spectra. This could be a clue but, at the moment, where such kinks come from is an open question.Comment: 6 pages, RevTex, 7 p.s. figures, submitted to P.R.

Impact of Scottish smoke-free legislation on smoking quit attempts and prevalence

<p><b>Objectives:</b> In Scotland, legislation was implemented in March 2006 prohibiting smoking in all wholly or partially enclosed public spaces. We investigated the impact on attempts to quit smoking and smoking prevalence.</p> <p><b>Methods:</b> We performed time series models using Box-Jenkins autoregressive integrated moving averages (ARIMA) on monthly data on the gross ingredient cost of all nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) prescribed in Scotland in 2003–2009, and quarterly data on self-reported smoking prevalence between January 1999 and September 2010 from the Scottish Household Survey.</p> <p><b>Results:</b> NRT prescription costs were significantly higher than expected over the three months prior to implementation of the legislation. Prescription costs peaked at £1.3 million in March 2006; £292,005.9 (95% CI £260,402.3, £323,609, p<0.001) higher than the monthly norm. Following implementation of the legislation, costs fell exponentially by around 26% per month (95% CI 17%, 35%, p<0.001). Twelve months following implementation, the costs were not significantly different to monthly norms. Smoking prevalence fell by 8.0% overall, from 31.3% in January 1999 to 23.7% in July–September 2010. In the quarter prior to implementation of the legislation, smoking prevalence fell by 1.7% (95% CI 2.4%, 1.0%, p<0.001) more than expected from the underlying trend.</p> <p><b>Conclusions:</b> Quit attempts increased in the three months leading up to Scotland's smoke-free legislation, resulting in a fall in smoking prevalence. However, neither has been sustained suggesting the need for additional tobacco control measures and ongoing support.</p&gt

The comparative clinical course of pregnant and non-pregnant women hospitalised with influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 infection

Introduction: The Influenza Clinical Information Network (FLU-CIN) was established to gather detailed clinical and epidemiological information about patients with laboratory confirmed A(H1N1)pdm09 infection in UK hospitals. This report focuses on the clinical course and outcomes of infection in pregnancy.Methods: A standardised data extraction form was used to obtain detailed clinical information from hospital case notes and electronic records, for patients with PCR-confirmed A(H1N1)pdm09 infection admitted to 13 sentinel hospitals in five clinical 'hubs' and a further 62 non-sentinel hospitals, between 11th May 2009 and 31st January 2010.Outcomes were compared for pregnant and non-pregnant women aged 15-44 years, using univariate and multivariable techniques.Results: Of the 395 women aged 15-44 years, 82 (21%) were pregnant; 73 (89%) in the second or third trimester. Pregnant women were significantly less likely to exhibit severe respiratory distress at initial assessment (OR?=?0.49 (95% CI: 0.30-0.82)), require supplemental oxygen on admission (OR?=?0.40 (95% CI: 0.20-0.80)), or have underlying co-morbidities (p-trend <0.001). However, they were equally likely to be admitted to high dependency (Level 2) or intensive care (Level 3) and/or to die, after adjustment for potential confounders (adj. OR?=?0.93 (95% CI: 0.46-1.92). Of 11 pregnant women needing Level 2/3 care, 10 required mechanical ventilation and three died.Conclusions: Since the expected prevalence of pregnancy in the source population was 6%, our data suggest that pregnancy greatly increased the likelihood of hospital admission with A(H1N1)pdm09. Pregnant women were less likely than non-pregnant women to have respiratory distress on admission, but severe outcomes were equally likely in both groups

Folding and unfolding phylogenetic trees and networks

Phylogenetic networks are rooted, labelled directed acyclic graphs which are commonly used to represent reticulate evolution. There is a close relationship between phylogenetic networks and multi-labelled trees (MUL-trees). Indeed, any phylogenetic network $N$ can be "unfolded" to obtain a MUL-tree $U(N)$ and, conversely, a MUL-tree $T$ can in certain circumstances be "folded" to obtain a phylogenetic network $F(T)$ that exhibits $T$. In this paper, we study properties of the operations $U$ and $F$ in more detail. In particular, we introduce the class of stable networks, phylogenetic networks $N$ for which $F(U(N))$ is isomorphic to $N$, characterise such networks, and show that they are related to the well-known class of tree-sibling networks.We also explore how the concept of displaying a tree in a network $N$ can be related to displaying the tree in the MUL-tree $U(N)$. To do this, we develop a phylogenetic analogue of graph fibrations. This allows us to view $U(N)$ as the analogue of the universal cover of a digraph, and to establish a close connection between displaying trees in $U(N)$ and reconcilingphylogenetic trees with networks

Newsprint coverage of smoking in cars carrying children : a case study of public and scientific opinion driving the policy debate

Acknowledgements Date of Acceptance:17/10/2014 Acknowledgements: This project was funded by Cancer Research UK (MC_U130085862) and the Scottish School of Public Health Research. Cancer Research UK and the Scottish School of Public Health Research was not involved in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data, writing of the manuscript or the decision to submit the manuscript for publication. Shona Hilton, Karen Wood, Josh Bain and Chris Patterson are funded by the UK Medical Research Council as part of the Understandings and Uses of Public Health Research programme (MC_UU_12017/6) at the MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow. We thank Alan Pollock who provided assistance with coding.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Quadrupole and Hexadecapole Correlations in Rotating Nuclei Studied within the Single-j Shell Model

The influence of quadrupole and hexadecapole residual interactions on rotational bands is investigated in a single-j shell model. An exact shell-model diagonalization of quadrupole-plus-hexadecapole interaction can sometimes produce a staggering of energy levels in the yrast bands.Comment: 15 pages, 9 Postscript figures, REVTEX, to be published in PR

Manganese-Enhanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Takotsubo Syndrome

Acknowledgments The authors thank the Edinburgh Imaging Facility. Sources of Funding This work and T. Singh, S. Joshi, and Drs Dweck and Newby are supported by the British Heart Foundation (grants FS/17/19/32641, CS/17/1/32445, RG/16/10/32375, RE/18/5/34216, FS/ICRF/20/26002, and FS/SCRF/21/32010). T. Singh is supported by the Medical Research Council (grant MR/T029153/1). Dr Newby is the recipient of a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award (WT103782AIA). Dr McCann is supported by an NIHR Research Professorship (08-2017-ST2-007). The Edinburgh Clinical Research Facilities and Edinburgh Imaging Facility are supported by the National Health Service Research Scotland through the National Health Service Lothian Health Board.Peer reviewe