The Final Countdown?—Charting a New Course for Capital Ships in Pacific War Plans

The Navy’s World War II fleet demonstrated that success came from employing the capital ship of the time—the battleship—collaboratively with aircraft carriers. Today, the Navy and the joint force should combine today’s capital ship—the aircraft carrier—with a reinvestment in surface and undersea platforms with extended-range standoff weapons

Fluidic Technology and Some Recent Applications to Space and Oceanography

This paper is presented to show the degree of advancements that fluidic technology is making in various technical disciplines. Examples are used and discussed based on the many programs sponsored by the government. The references used here represent only a small percent of the total. Individuals with specific interests or applications can expand the reference list on the choosen subject to take advantage of the considerable amount of advanced research and development already completed

Fractoluminescence characterization of the energy dissipated during fast fracture of glass

Fractoluminescence experiments are performed on two kinds of silicate glasses. All the light spectra collected during dynamic fracture reveal a black body radiator behaviour, which is interpreted as a crack velocity-dependent temperature rise close to the crack tip. Crack velocities are estimated to be of the order of 1300 m.s$^{-1}$ and fracture process zones are shown to extend over a few nanometers.Comment: Accepted for publication in Europhysics Letters; 5 pages; 4 figure

Countering the Global Landmine Epidemic Through Basic Scientific Research

Since their first use during the U.S. Civil War (Croll 1998), blast landmines have played a role in almost every armed conflict from the World Wars to the most recent limited skirmishes. Landmines are the epitome of the consummate soldier: always ready, never tiring. Mines are simple devices that can be fabricated with little effort and from readily available materials. In Sri Lanka, numerous news releases covering the conflict mention a Johnny mine (Botsford 1997), which is a local term for an improvised explosive device. Manufactured mines can be inexpensive, costing as little as two dollars apiece. If mine laying operations ceased tomorrow, an estimated 100 million mines would remain in place throughout the world (United Nations 1994)

Isolation of CD133+ Liver Stem Cells for Clonal Expansion

Liver stem cell, or oval cells, proliferate during chronic liver injury, and are proposed to differentiate into both hepatocytes and cholangiocytes. In addition, liver stem cells are hypothesized to be the precursors for a subset of liver cancer, Hepatocellular carcinoma. One of the primary challenges to stem cell work in any solid organ like the liver is the isolation of a rare population of cells for detailed analysis. For example, the vast majority of cells in the liver are hepatocytes (parenchymal fraction), which are significantly larger than non-parenchymal cells. By enriching the specific cellular compartments of the liver (i.e. parenchymal and non-parenchymal fractions), and selecting for CD45 negative cells, we are able to enrich the starting population of stem cells by over 600-fold.The proceduresdetailed in this report allow for a relatively rare population of cells from a solid organ to be sorted efficiently. This process can be utilized to isolateliver stem cells from normal murine liver as well as chronic liver injury models, which demonstrate increased liver stem cell proliferation. This method has clear advantages over standard immunohistochemistry of frozen or formalin fixed liver as functional studies using live cells can be performed after initial co-localization experiments. To accomplish the procedure outlined in this report, a working relationship with a research based flow-cytometry core is strongly encouraged as the details of FACS isolation are highly dependent on specialized instrumentation and a strong working knowledge of basic flow-cytometry procedures. The specific goal of this process is to isolate a population of liver stem cells that can be clonally expanded in vitro

Needle fenestration of popliteal artery covered stent graft to salvage inadvertent stent misdeployment

Endovascular methods have transformed treatment of lower extremity peripheral arterial disease but can still present technical challenges. We report the case of a 69-year-old man with rest pain who underwent superficial femoral artery recanalization with covered stents. During completion angiography, the distal stent was discovered to have been misdeployed into an anterior geniculate branch overlying the behind-the-knee popliteal artery. Subsequently, an endovascular reentry device was used to fenestrate the stent posteriorly to enter the lumen of the popliteal artery. Cutting balloons were used to enlarge the fenestration in the stent fabric, with placement of an additional 6 × 50-mm covered stent bridging from the popliteal artery into the fenestrated misdeployed covered stent. Completion angiography demonstrated no evidence of distal embolization and patent two-vessel runoff. The patient had an uncomplicated recovery and at 2 years of follow-up remained asymptomatic with documented popliteal stent patency