An Ecological Study of the Sabine and Neches Valleys, Texas

During the winter of 1902-3, and again during the winter of 1903-4, the writer was one of a party sent by the United States Bureau of Forestry to take stem analysis and valuation surveys on the holdings of the Kirby Lumber Company preparatory to making a working plan for the use of the company in the future treatment of its timber lands. The holdings of this company lie in Hardin, Orange, Newton, Jasper, Angelina, Sabine and San Augustine counties, and include the largest continuous area of virgin Longleaf pine existing in the United States at the present time. Incidentally to the work in hand, occasion was taken to make a few observations on the ecology of the region, and these observations will be presented in the present article

Preliminary List of the Flowering Plants of Adair County

The collections on which this report is based were made chiefly during the summer of the year 1900, some of the work, however, having been done some years earlier. It is the hope of the author that he may in the course of time be able to supply a complete account of the flora of the county —one which will be exhaustive to the last detail. Heretofore such an undertaking has not been possible for him. The work has been done in the intervals of other work and has taken into account chiefly the more common species. It is here presented as preliminary to the more complete report which, it is hoped, will follow it. The grasses and sedges have been purposely reserved for a separate report

Effects of a Sleet Storm on Timber

On the night of the 9th and the morning of the 10th of February, 1898, a heavy sleet storm passed over Adair County, Iowa. The storm began not very long after midnight with a brisk rain which froze as it fell and adhered tenaciously to trees and other objects with which it came in contact. The wind at the time was slightly west of north and was not blowing at all briskly. The day preceding the storm had been unusually warm, for the time of year, with a cloudy sky, a slight breeze from the north and a very humid atmosphere. About 3 o\u27clock on the morning of the 10th the trees, which had become heavily laden with ice, began to break. Had there been a heavy wind at the time, the damage to the trees would have been immense; as it was, the damage was very great and in the town of Greenfield the people were very generally awakened by the crashing of the breaking trees, which lasted almost continuously from 3 o\u27clock until daylight

Forest Trees of Adair County, Iowa

In order to understand the forestry conditions of Adair County, a short description of the lay of the land and the nature of the soil is first necessary. The county lies along the crest of the grand divide, between the Mississippi and the Missouri, so that a line drawn along the crest of the ridge traverses it diagonally from northwest to southeast. The land is undulating enough to secure an easy natural drainage, but not so undulating as to be difficult of cultivation, except in a few isolated localities. The soil is a rich, black loam, varying in thickness from a few inches to ten or fifteen feet and under lain by a stiff, yellow clay

Skulls of the prosauropod dinosaur Massospondylus carinatus Owen in the collections of the Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontological Research

Description of the skull of Massospondylus (Prosauropoda, Anchisauridae) is largely unnecessary since excellent descriptions now exist of Plateosaurus (Galton 1984, 1985a) which, though larger and of slightly different proportions, is anatomically almost identical. This paper presents comprehensive illustrations of the Massospondylus skulls in the Bernard Price Institute collections and discusses only those aspects of this material in which Massospondylus differs from Plateosaurus, or which further add to our knowledge of the prosauropod skull. It is shown that Attridge et al. ( 1985) give spurious reasons for considering the recently discovered Massospondylus skull from Arizona to differ from the southern African taxon, and that the suggestion of Crompton and Attridge ( 1986) that this animal may have had a horny beak on the tip of the lower jaw is unnecessary and improbable

Heterogeneous Trimetallic Nanoparticles as Catalysts

The development and application of trimetallic nanoparticles continues to accelerate rapidly as a result of advances in materials design, synthetic control, and reaction characterization. Following the technological successes of multicomponent materials in automotive exhausts and photovoltaics, synergistic effects are now accessible through the careful preparation of multielement particles, presenting exciting opportunities in the field of catalysis. In this review, we explore the methods currently used in the design, synthesis, analysis, and application of trimetallic nanoparticles across both the experimental and computational realms and provide a critical perspective on the emergent field of trimetallic nanocatalysts. Trimetallic nanoparticles are typically supported on high-surface-area metal oxides for catalytic applications, synthesized via preparative conditions that are comparable to those applied for mono- and bimetallic nanoparticles. However, controlled elemental segregation and subsequent characterization remain challenging because of the heterogeneous nature of the systems. The multielement composition exhibits beneficial synergy for important oxidation, dehydrogenation, and hydrogenation reactions; in some cases, this is realized through higher selectivity, while activity improvements are also observed. However, challenges related to identifying and harnessing influential characteristics for maximum productivity remain. Computation provides support for the experimental endeavors, for example in electrocatalysis, and a clear need is identified for the marriage of simulation, with respect to both combinatorial element screening and optimal reaction design, to experiment in order to maximize productivity from this nascent field. Clear challenges remain with respect to identifying, making, and applying trimetallic catalysts efficiently, but the foundations are now visible, and the outlook is strong for this exciting chemical field

Surgical protocol violations in children with renal tumors provides an opportunity to improve pediatric cancer care: a report from the Children’s Oncology Group

BackgroundThe purpose of this study was to evaluate the frequency and characteristics of surgical protocol violations (SPVs) among children undergoing surgery for renal tumors who were enrolled on the Children’s Oncology Group (COG) renal tumor biology and classification study AREN03B2.MethodsAREN03B2 was opened in February 2006, and as on March 31, 2013, there were 3,664 eligible patients. The surgical review forms for 3,536 patients with unilateral disease were centrally reviewed for SPVs. The frequency, type, number of violations, institutional prevalence, and quartiles for SPVs were assessed.ResultsOf the 3,536 patients, there were a total of 505 with at least one SPV (564 total SPVs reported), for an overall incidence of 14.28%. The types of SPVs included a lack of lymph node sampling in 365 (64.7%), avoidable spill in 61 (10.8%), biopsy immediately before nephrectomy in 89 (15.8%), an incorrect abdominal incision in 32 (5.7%), and unnecessary resection of organs in 17 (3.0%). The SPVs occurred in 163 of 215 participating institutions (75.8%). For centers with at least one SPV, the mean number of SPVs reported was 3.10 ± 2.39 (mean ± standard deviation). The incidence of protocol violation per institution ranged from 0 to 67%. Centers with an average of ≤1 case/year had an incidence of SPVs of 12.2 ± 3.8%, those with an average of >1 to 0.05).ConclusionsSPVs that potentially result in additional exposure to chemotherapy and radiation therapy are not uncommon in children undergoing resection of renal malignancies.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/134088/1/pbc26083.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/134088/2/pbc26083_am.pd

Characterising the impact of sex on severe asthma (SA) in the UK Severe Asthma Registry (UKSAR)

Peer reviewedPostprin

Rapid prototyping Lab-on-Chip devices for the future: A numerical optimisation of bulk optical parameters in microfluidic systems

Nuclear reactor process control is typically monitored for pure β-emitting radionuclides via manual sampling followed by laboratory analysis, leading to delays in data availability and response times. The development of an in situ microfluidic Lab on Chip (LoC) system with integrated detection capable of measuring pure β-emitting radionuclides presents a promising solution, enabling a reduction in occupational exposure and cost of monitoring whilst providing improved temporal resolution through near real-time data acquisition. However, testing prototypes with radioactive sources is time-consuming, requires specialist facilities/equipment, generates contaminated waste, and cannot rapidly evaluate a wide range of designs or configurations. Despite this, modelling multiple design parameters and testing their impact on detection with non-radioactive substitutes has yet to be adopted as best practice. The measurement of pure β emitters in aqueous media relies on the efficient transport of photons generated by the Cherenkov effect or liquid scintillators to the detector. Here we explore the role of numerical modelling to assess the impact of optical cell geometry and design on photon transmission and detection through the microfluidic system, facilitating improved designs to realise better efficiency of integrated detectors and overall platform design. Our results demonstrate that theoretical modelling and an experimental evaluation using non-radiogenic chemiluminescence are viable for system testing design parameters and their impact on photon transport. These approaches enable reduced material consumption and requirement for specialist facilities for handling radioactive materials during the prototyping process. This method establishes proof of concept and the first step towards numerical modelling approaches for the design optimisation of microfluidic LoC systems with integrated detectors for the measurement of pure β emitting radionuclides via scintillation-based detection

Novel insights into host-fungal pathogen interactions derived from live-cell imaging

Acknowledgments The authors acknowledge funding from the Wellcome Trust (080088, 086827, 075470 and 099215) including a Wellcome Trust Strategic Award for Medical Mycology and Fungal Immunology 097377 and FP7-2007–2013 grant agreement HEALTH-F2-2010-260338–ALLFUN to NARG.Peer reviewedPublisher PD