The Superconducting Proximity Effect as a Tool to Investigate Metal Films and Interfaces

052The superconducting proximity effect is measured in sandwiches of thin Pb films and the alkali metals Cs, Rb, K and Na. The $T_{c}$-dependence provides information about the interface barriers between Pb and the alkalis. Such a barrier is particularly large in Pb/Cs sandwiches. It is not due to impurities or oxydation. In the presence of a sufficiently strong barrier a special form of the Cooper limit can be applied to calculate the transition temperature of the sandwich

Death within 8 years after childhood convulsive status epilepticus:a population-based study

The risk of long-term mortality and its predictors following convulsive status epilepticus in childhood are uncertain. We report mortality within 8 years after an episode of convulsive status epilepticus, and investigate its predictors from a paediatric, prospective, population-based study from north London, UK. In the current study, we followed-up a cohort previously ascertained during a surveillance study of convulsive status epilepticus in childhood. After determining the survival status of the cohort members, we defined cause of death as that listed on their death certificates. We estimated a standardized mortality ratio to compare mortality in our cohort with that expected in the reference population. Multivariable Cox regression analysis was used to investigate any association between the clinical and demographic factors at the time of status epilepticus and subsequent risk of death. The overall case fatality was 11% (95% confidence interval 7.5–16.2%); seven children died within 30 days of their episode of convulsive status epilepticus and 16 during follow-up. The overall mortality in our cohort was 46 times greater than expected in the reference population, and was predominantly due to higher mortality in children who had pre-existing clinically significant neurological impairments when they had their acute episode of convulsive status epilepticus. Children without prior neurological impairment who survived their acute episode of convulsive status epilepticus were not at a significantly increased risk of death during follow-up. There were no deaths in children following prolonged febrile convulsions and idiopathic convulsive status epilepticus. A quarter of deaths during follow-up were associated with intractable seizures/convulsive status epilepticus, and the rest died as a complication of their underlying medical condition. On regression analysis, presence of clinically significant neurological impairments prior to convulsive status epilepticus was the only independent risk factor for mortality. In conclusion, there is a high risk of death within 8 years following childhood convulsive status epilepticus but most deaths are not seizure related. Presence of pre-existing clinically significant neurological impairments at the time of convulsive status epilepticus is the main risk factor for mortality within 8 years after the acute episode. The attributable role of convulsive status epilepticus on mortality remains uncertain, but appears less than is generally perceived

Dicarba-closo-dodecaborane(12) derivatives of phosphonium salts: easy formation of nido-carborane phosphonium zwitterions

The first examples of arylphosphonium salts containing a dicarba-closo-dodecaborane(12) (closo-carborane) are reported; in contrast to the 1,12-carborane derivative, the 1,2- and 1,7-isomers undergo a facile deboronation reaction in polar solvents to afford the corresponding nido-carborane phosphonium zwitterions

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Performance evaluation of several sequencing batch biofilm reactors with movable bed in treatment of linear alkyl benzene sulfonate in urban wastewater

Detergents are one of the major environmental pollutants whose consumption will increase by increasing the level of health of countries, which can cause many problems if they are not unfiltered and exposed to the environment. After soap, linear benzene sulfonate is the most common household detergent and it is used in more than 100 countries around the world as a raw material for the production of surfactants such as washing powders, dishwashing liquids and other detergents. Among the various methods of treatment, biological processes are the most promising ones. The aim of this study is to evaluate the performance of a moving bed sequencing continuous-inflow reactor (MSCR) for linear alkyl benzene sulfonate (LAS) removal from municipal wastewater at different operating conditions. In this research study, a Plexiglass pilot with dimensions of 54\u2009 7\u200925\u2009 7\u200925 cm, and total volume of about 35 L and used volume of 30 L was used. The reactor contained 70% of K3 (Kaldnes) media, and the remaining 30% was considered as the functional volume. Results showed that the MSCR has a high capability in the treatment of municipal wastewater polluted by LAS and a good flexibility to input variation of both LAS and organic load. The maximum removal efficiency obtained at hydraulic retention time of 2.5 h, with input organic load of 300 mg/L and input LAS of 15 mg/L, was 96.4%. The maximum efficiencies obtained at hydraulic retention time of 2.5 h, with input organic load of 500 mg/L and input LAS of 15 mg/L and 25 mg/L, were 88.7%, and 92.2%, respectively

Effect of drought and salinity stresses on morphological and physiological characteristics of canola

Environmental stresses such as salinity and drought are the most important factors yield reduction and crops productivity. In order to investigate the effects of drought and salinity stresses on morphological and physiological characteristics of canola an experiment was conducted as a split-plot based on a randomized complete block design with three replications at greenhouse of Agriculture Research Center and Natural Resources of East Azarbaijan in 2014. Main plots were including drought stress at four levels (0, -4, -8 and -12 bar polyethylene glycol solution) and sub plots including salinity stress at four levels of sodium chloride (0, 75, 150 and 225 mM). The results analysis of variance indicated that the interaction of drought and salinity stresses was significant on leaf area and relative water content of leaf. The most leaf area (383.03 cm-2) was obtained at non-stress treatments. The results showed that drought stress conditions led to significant reduction of relative water content in leaf. The highest proline (0.08 \ub5m/g fresh weight) and soluble sugars (0.12 mg/g fresh weight) content was observed at treatments of -12 bar polyethylene glycol. Also the least proline (0.04 \ub5m/g fresh weight) and soluble sugars (0.06 mg/g fresh weight) content was achieved at treatments of drought non-stress