Modern technologies used in the sea, poles, or aerospace require reliable batteries with outstanding performance at temperatures below zero degrees. However, commercially available lithium-ion (LIBs) show significant degradation under low-temperature (LT) conditions. Broadening application area of LIBs requires an improvement their LT characteristics. This review examines current challenges for...

Soaked seeds of Vicia faba were exposed to fractionated doses of x-rays or x-rays and fast neutrons. When the two-hit (exchange) chromosome aberrations were scored at the first mitosis of the root tip, it was observed that with short fractionation times the radiation-induced breaks from the two x-ray doses could rejoin with one another to form exchanges in proportion to the square of the total ...

The role of potential factors limiting bacterial growth was investigated along vertical and longitudinal gradients across the South Eastern Pacific Gyre. The effects of glucose, nitrate, ammonium and phosphate additions on heterotrophic bacterial production (using leucine technique) were studied in parallel in unfiltered seawater samples incubated under natural daily irradiance. The enrichments...

This paper provides an analysis of microfluidic techniques for the production of nanoscale lipid-based vesicular systems. In particular we focus on the key issues associated with the microfluidic production of liposomes. These include, but are not limited to, the role of lipid formulation, lipid concentration, residual amount of solvent, production method (including microchannel architecture), ...

The Santa Barbara County Oak Restoration Program was initiated in 1994 to determine the major factors limiting recruitment of valley oak (Quercus lobata) and coast live oak (Q. agrifolia). At Sedgwick Reserve in Santa Barbara County, California, we have replicated large-scale planting experiments in four different years to determine the effects of cattle and other ecological factors on oak seed...

Adequately managing wetlands on private property in the rural areas of the United States has been a regulatory challenge. Voluntary and incentivized programs such as the Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP) have been an effective and efficient tool for starting to ensure the health of necessary watersheds; however, the WRP is a state ran program that has experienced inconsistent policy success. This ...

Sulfolane, a water-soluble organosulfur compound, is used industrially worldwide and is associated with one of the largest contaminated groundwater plumes in the state of Alaska. Despite being widely used, little is understood about the degradation of sulfolane in the environment, especially in cold regions. We conducted aerobic and anaerobic microcosm studies to assess the biological and abiot...

BACKGROUND Several studies have shown that outpatient preoperative evaluation by anaesthetists increases quality of care and is cost-effective. The aim of this study was to gain insight into the factors that positively or negatively influence the implementation of outpatient preoperative evaluation clinics (OPE clinics). METHODS After an extensive literature study and pilot interviews, we con...

BACKGROUND Timor-Leste's immunization coverage is among the poorest in Asia. The 2009/2010 Demographic and Health Survey found that complete vaccination coverage in urban areas, at 47.7%, was lower than in rural areas, at 54.1%. The city of Dili, the capital of Timor-Leste, had even lower coverage (43.4%) than the national urban average. OBJECTIVE To better understand the service- and user-re...

Achieving the highest possible resolution using scanning-electron-beam lithography SEBL has become an increasingly urgent problem in recent years, as advances in various nanotechnology applications F. S. Bates and G. H. Fredrickson, Annu. Rev. Phys. Chem. 41, 525 1990 ; Black et al., IBM J. Res. Dev. 51, 605 2007 ; Yang et al., J. Chem. Phys. 116, 5892 2002 have driven demand for feature sizes ...