The 50th anniversary of dialysotherapy celebrated by nephrologists around the world in 2012 provided an opportunity for discussion on the role of clinical experience in relation to technological progress in the evolution of dialysis, especially of recently observed inadequate decrease in mortality/morbidity rates of patients on chronic dialysis. My report, based on almost 50 years of career in ...

‘... I have a client who is now 22 weeks pregnant whose appeal for asylum was rejected last year, I understand on grounds of being 2 days overdue in her application. She is very vulnerable, has no partner, speaks little English, has no means of income, and is living in very poor conditions in a ‘flat’ above a derelict factory in Hackney. The premises has no electricity, or hot water, and is not...

Field-collected 4th-instar Glyptotendipes paripes larvae from a natural lake in central Florida preferred small-sized (< 0.84-1.99-mm-diam) grains of sand to burrow in and make cases in the laboratory. The larvae buried or formed cases within 3 h of introduction into 120-ml paper cups containing 80 ml tap water and 20 g of the small-diameter sand. When placed in sand with grains of different si...

We provide the first formal foundation of SAND attack trees which are a popular extension of the well-known attack trees. The SAND attack tree formalism increases the expressivity of attack trees by introducing the sequential conjunctive operator SAND. This operator enables the modeling of ordered events. We give a semantics to SAND attack trees by interpreting them as sets of series-parallel g...

We have performed an experimental study on the evolution of sand ripples formed under the action of an oscillatory flow. An annular sand-water cell was used in order to investigate a wide range of parameters. The sand ripples follow an irreversible condensation mechanism from small to large wavelength until a final state is reached. The wavelength and the shape of these stable sand patterns are...

Instability of liquefaction is one of the major reasons which results in the failure of earth structure such as dam. The present study focuses on the simulation of static liquefaction behavior for granular materials such as sand and sand-silt mixtures. Based on micromechanical analysis of inter-particle behavior, a simple one-scale model is proposed to simulate the stress-strain response of san...

The presence of lizards in bromeliads has been widely documented. Nevertheless, the possibility of some type of preference or specificity among lizards for particular bromeliad species has not yet been investigated. Therefore, this study aims to document the presence of Abronia oaxacae in six species of tank bromeliads found in pine forests, pine-live oak forests, and live oak groves during bot...

Recent studies of beach sand fecal contamination have triggered interest among scientists and in the media. Although evidence shows that beach sand can harbor high concentrations of fecal indicator organisms, as well as fecal pathogens, illness risk associated with beach sand contact is not well understood. Beach visitors at 7 US beaches were enrolled in the National Epidemiological and Environ...

A novel hydrophilic polyurethane (abbreviated as W-OH) was developed and applied as a sustainable sand-fixing material. This paper on the chemical sand fixation mechanism of W-OH discusses the adhesive force between the W-OH solid and sand particles. The solidification mechanism was investigated and the solidifying time was tested. And then the thickness and porosity of the W-OH sand-fixing lay...

Surgical management of symptomatic benign and malignant effusive pericarditis is often required. Twenty-two patients with medically recalcitrant effusive, nonconstrictive pericarditis underwent pericardial resection by a video-assisted thoracoscopic surgical (VATS) technique (9 malignant, 13 benign). Pericardiectomy, resulting in complete drainage of the pericardial space and control of patient...