In vitro effect of canine hyperimmune sera on TNFa activity

[Introduction]: Septic shock in dogs is caused by cardiovascular and vasomotor failure associated with an uncontrolled intrinsic release of inflammatory mediators [1–5]. The syndrome is characterized by cardiovascular dysfunction, vascular permeability alterations, pulmonary oedema and tissue hypoxia resulting from microthrombi which may culminate in disseminated intravascular coagulation and catastrophic multiple organ failure [6,7]. Systemic bacterial infection, particularly by Gram-negative enterobacteria, haemorrhagic trauma, gastric dilation/volvulus and pancreatitis are the major underlying causes leading tosepsis [8,9]. Because of haemodynamic instability and associated hypovolemia, fluid replacement therapy is generally applied to restore effective circulating volume. The use of fresh frozen plasma has been recommended in cases of coagulopathies as it has been recognized to assist restoration of haemodynamic stability [1,5,10,11]. There is increasing evidence that the drivers of the haemodynamic instability are inflammatory mediators (particularly TNFa) activated primarily by bacterial endotoxin [3,4,12,13]

On some non-conformal fractals

This paper presents a simple method of calculating the Hausdorff dimension for a class of non-conformal fractals

Future wave climate over the west-European shelf seas

In this paper, we investigate changes in the wave climate of the west-European shelf seas under global warming scenarios. In particular, climate change wind fields corresponding to the present (control) time-slice 1961–2000 and the future (scenario) time-slice 2061–2100 are used to drive a wave generation model to produce equivalent control and scenario wave climate. Yearly and seasonal statistics of the scenario wave climates are compared individually to the corresponding control wave climate to identify relative changes of statistical significance between present and future extreme and prevailing wave heights. Using global, regional and linked global–regional wind forcing over a set of nested computational domains, this paper further demonstrates the sensitivity of the results to the resolution and coverage of the forcing. It suggests that the use of combined forcing from linked global and regional climate models of typical resolution and coverage is a good option for the investigation of relative wave changes in the region of interest of this study. Coarse resolution global forcing alone leads to very similar results over regions that are highly exposed to the Atlantic Ocean. In contrast, fine resolution regional forcing alone is shown to be insufficient for exploring wave climate changes over the western European waters because of its limited coverage. Results obtained with the combined global–regional wind forcing showed some consistency between scenarios. In general, it was shown that mean and extreme wave heights will increase in the future only in winter and only in the southwest of UK and west of France, north of about 44–45° N. Otherwise, wave heights are projected to decrease, especially in summer. Nevertheless, this decrease is dominated by local wind waves whilst swell is found to increase. Only in spring do both swell and local wind waves decrease in average height

Modelling Extreme Wave Overtopping at Aberystwyth Promenade

The work presents a methodology to assess the coastal impacts during a storm event which caused significant damage along the promenade at Aberystwyth, Wales on the 3 January 2014. Overtopping was analysed in detail for a section of promenade by downscaling offshore wave conditions to force a surf zone hydrodynamic model, NEWRANS. Overtopping discharges are computed and were in qualitative agreement with published discharges for the level of damage observed along the promenade. Peak storm conditions were observed to arrive just before and during high tide at Aberystwyth, which in addition to a storm surge and wave-setup, contributed to the damage observed. A high frequency of overtopping occurs during peak high tide, with overtopping also occurring in the hour leading up to and following high tide. Finally, comparisons to design methods for the estimation of overtopping discharge were made. Current empirical formulae underestimated the peak overtopping event at high tide. The methodology applied is generic and applicable to any location