Marine textiles form a vital part of our cultural heritage. Some extant sails and surviving sail fragments in museum collections are hundreds of years old. The Victory sail, from the early 19th century, was not only subject to the ravages of the marine environment during its working life but has since suffered further deterioration during storage and display. To determine the optimum protocol f...

A plausible route for the spontaneous synthesis of an activated ribonucleotide that is poised for polymerization has been put forth (Powner et al. (2009) Nature, 459, 239-242). A key step in this route necessitates the regioselective phosphorylation of the secondary alcohol on C(3') of an anhydroarabinonucleoside in the presence of the primary alcohol on C(5'). Here, we propose that this regios...

Sophisticated mummification using chemical preservation was prevalent in ancient Yemeni civilization as noted in the 4th century B.C. mummies of the National Museum of Yemen, Sana'a, used in this study. Five of these mummies were used to evaluate hydrolytic enzymes produced as a result of fungal contamination. Forty-seven fungal species were isolated, thereby reflecting a high degree of contami...

Biocides are heavily used in the healthcare environment, mainly for the disinfection of surfaces, water, equipment, and antisepsis, but also for the sterilization of medical devices and preservation of pharmaceutical and medicinal products. The number of biocidal products for such usage continuously increases along with the number of applications, although some are prone to controversies. There...

Decisions on the conservation and display of a textile, including prioritisation for treatment, should be informed by objective knowledge of its current physical state. Measuring the tenacity and elasticity of yarns and fabric, however, generally requires sampling and is necessarily destructive. Bearing in mind the need to maintain the integrity of the artifact, an indirect approach requiring a...

Ulceration of the skin of the lower limb has been recorded as an affliction of the human race since the time of Hippocrates. It is almost certainly the price we pay for having emerged from the ocean and learned to stand erect. 1 The association between ulceration at the ankle and venous disorders of the lower limb has been known for over 2000 years and compression therapy is referred to in the ...

We study the regularity of the extremal solution of the semilinear biharmonic equation ∆u = λ (1−u)2 , which models a simple Micro-Electromechanical System (MEMS) device on a ball B ⊂ R , under Dirichlet boundary conditions u = ∂νu = 0 on ∂B. We complete here the results of F.H. Lin and Y.S. Yang [14] regarding the identification of a “pull-in voltage” λ∗ > 0 such that a stable classical soluti...

This systematic review considers the evidence supporting the use of prophylactic dressings for the prevention of pressure ulcer. Electronic database searches were conducted on 25 July 2013. The searches found 3026 titles and after removal of duplicate records 2819 titles were scanned against the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Of these, 2777 were excluded based on their title and abstract pri...

The archaeological evidence of flax cultivation dates back to >6000 BC and it is considered as one of the oldest and most useful crops. Components of flax have diverse uses. Cultivar development of flax is currently focused on enhancing the oil content and nutritional value to meet the demand of nutraceutical market supply, as an alternate source of fish oil, a rich source of eicosapentaenoic a...