Water treatment with metallic iron (Fe) is still based on the premise that Fe is a reducing agent. An alternative concept stipulates that contaminants are removed by adsorption, co-precipitation and size-exclusion in a reactive filtration process. This article underlines the universal validity of the alternative concept. It is shown that admixing non-expansive material to Fe as a pre-requisite ...

A fiber loop ringdown (FLRD) concrete crack sensor is described for the first time. A bare single mode fiber (SMF), without using other optical components or chemical coatings, etc., was utilized to construct the sensor head, which was driven by a FLRD sensor system. The performance of the sensor was evaluated on concrete bars with dimensions 20 cm × 5 cm × 5 cm, made in our laboratory. Cracks ...

When each voter rates or ranks several candidates for a single office, a strong Condorcet winner (SCW) is one who beats all others in two-way races. Among 21 electoral systems examined, 18 will sometimes make candidate X the winner even if thousands of voters would need to change their votes to make X a SCW while another candidate Y could become a SCW with only one such change. Analysis support...

While there has been growing interest in the use of Prolog for database applications, the size of these applications is limited by the capabilities of current Prolog systems for handling disk resident clauses. A major impediment is the inordinate amount of time required for retrieval and urujication of clauses from a large set stored on disk. Indexing is commonly used in conventional database s...

Rat adjuvant (AA) and collagen-induced (CIA) polyarthritis models, and more recently the monoarticular streptococcal cell wall (SCW) model have been used to evaluate novel therapeutic approaches to treat Rheumatoid Arthritis. All three models share mechanistic and pathologic features with each other, as well as with human RA. Most notably, they are all T cell and macrophage mediated. All have b...

Liquid scintillation spectroscopy (LSC) is a widely used laboratory method for measuring radioactive especially low-energy alpha and beta emitter isotopes in solutions. Since the cocktails (SCs) contain large amounts of aromatic hydrocarbon compounds after LSC measurement, sample usually becomes organic waste, which challenging to manage dispose of. The most common effective waste treatment inc...

OBJECTIVES To determine the feasibility of evaluating the subarachnoid space by measuring two novel sonographic parameters in axial section using transabdominal ultrasound, in addition to the parameters previously defined in coronal section, and to construct a normal range for the subarachnoid space width in singleton healthy fetuses. METHODS Healthy pregnant women between 20 and 29 weeks wer...

The dorsal ectoderm of the Drosophila embryo is subdivided into different cell types by an activity gradient of two TGF(&bgr;) signaling molecules, Decapentaplegic (Dpp) and Screw (Scw). Patterning responses to this gradient depend on a secreted inhibitor, Short gastrulation (Sog) and a newly identified transcriptional repressor, Brinker (Brk), which are expressed in neurogenic regions that abu...

The IL-1R/Toll-like receptor (TLR) superfamily of receptors has a key role in innate immunity and inflammation. In this study, we report that streptococcal cell wall (SCW)-induced joint inflammation is predominantly dependent on TLR-2 signaling, since TLR-2-deficient mice were unable to develop either joint swelling or inhibition of cartilage matrix synthesis. Myeloid differentiation factor 88 ...