Canada's RADARSAT missions improve the potential to study past flood events; however, existing tools to derive flood depths from this remote-sensing data do not correct for errors, leading to poor ...estimates. To provide more accurate gridded depth estimates of historical flooding, a new tool is proposed that integrates Height Above Nearest Drainage and Cost Allocation algorithms. This tool is tested against two trusted, hydraulically derived, gridded depths of recent floods in Canada. This validation shows the proposed tool outperforms existing tools and can provide more accurate estimates from minimal data without the need for complex physics-based models or expert judgement. With improvements in remote-sensing data, the tool proposed here can provide flood researchers and emergency managers accurate depths in near-real time.
The American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) formed the Plastic Surgery Workforce Task Force to study the size of the plastic surgery workforce and make recommendations about future workforce ...needs. The ASPS member workforce survey and two supplementary surveys of plastic surgery academic chairs and senior residents were developed to gain insights on current and projected demand for plastic surgery procedures and to find out more about plastic surgeons' current daily practice patterns and plans for the future.
The ASPS member workforce survey was mailed to 2500 randomly selected ASPS active members practicing in the United States, and a second mailing was sent to 388 unique members who practice in an academic setting; a total of 1256 surgeons responded (43.5 percent response rate). The survey of academic chairs was distributed to 103 attendees at the annual meeting of the Association of Academic Chairmen of Plastic Surgery, and 74 returned the survey (71.8 percent response rate). The survey of senior residents was e-mailed to 183 graduating residents, of whom 65 responded (35.5 percent response rate).
Useful demographic information regarding the current plastic surgery workforce was obtained from these surveys. In addition, insight into current trends in practice composition and procedural demand was gained.
The rapid growth of the U.S. population, combined with a significant number of plastic surgeons approaching retirement and an unchanged number of plastic surgery residency training positions, will lead to a discrepancy between the demand for plastic surgery procedures and the supply of appropriately trained physicians. Without an increase in the number of plastic surgeons trained each year, there will be a significant shortage in the next 10 to 15 years.
Immediate expander-implant breast reconstruction has been associated with postoperative complications, including infection and wound-healing problems. In extreme cases, these issues can lead to ...expander-implant loss. Little is known about the long-term reconstructive outcomes for patients who develop major complications threatening their expander-implant reconstructions.
A review of all patients who underwent mastectomy and immediate expander-implant reconstruction at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) from 2005 to 2007 was performed. A prospective database was queried for patients who developed a major postoperative complication related to infection or wound-healing problems requiring unplanned operative intervention. Only patients who had a minimum of 3 years' follow-up were included in the study.
Twenty-nine patients were identified who met study criteria. Mean follow-up time was 52.5 months (range, 41-71 months). Six of the 29 (20.7%) patients had received prior breast irradiation, and 9 patients (31%) underwent postoperative radiation therapy. Reasons for unplanned return to the operating room included infection (n = 11, 37.9%), expander-implant exposure (n = 5, 17.2%), nonhealing wounds without underlying exposure (n = 3, 1.3%), or >1 of these indications (n = 10, 34.5%). Unplanned operative intervention (such as wound debridement or expander-implant exchange or removal) was required once in 10 patients (34.5%), twice in 10 patients (34.5%), 3 times in 4 patients (13.8%), 4 times in 1 patient (3.4%), and 5 or greater times in 4 patients (13.8%). At the conclusion of all operative interventions, 15 patients (51.7%) had successful breast reconstruction using an expander-implant technique. Five additional patients (17.3%) ultimately achieved successful salvage reconstruction with either a transverse rectus abdominis myocutaneous (TRAM) or deep inferior epigastric perforator (DIEP) flap. Nine patients (31%) did not have successful breast reconstruction. Of these 9 patients, 5 elected to abandon reconstructive efforts after 1 unplanned return to the operating room for expander-implant removal, whereas the rest underwent at least 1 attempt at expander-implant salvage, with the overall rate of final successful reconstruction after attempt at salvage 83.3% (20 of 24 patients).
Even when unplanned operative intervention is required to address postoperative wound-healing or infectious complications after expander-implant reconstruction, the majority of patients can achieve successful reconstructive outcomes at long-term follow-up, including those patients requiring multiple operative interventions to treat their complication.
Quantitative estimates of cancer risks from ethylene oxide (ETO) residues were constructed based on 200 retail samples of various spices in New Zealand. Two samples of cinnamon contained detectable ...ETO. The highest value encountered was 15 ppm. ETO was not detected in the remaining 198 samples. However, 31 samples had detectable levels of ethylene chlorohydrin (ECH) and/or ethylene bromohydrin (EBH). A conservative estimate of ETO intake, based on average spice consumption, was 3.4×10
−6 mg/kg/day. Cancer potency factors for ETO ranging from 0.29 to 0.55 (mg/kg/day)
−1 were used to form cancer risk estimates. The resulting estimates of average lifetime excess cancer risk was 0.8×10
−6 to 1.7×10
−6. The US 97.5 percentile value for spice consumption (2.8 kg spices per year), gave an extreme upper-end estimate of lifetime cancer risk of approximately 1.4×10
−5. These risks are practically negligible considering the conservative assumptions used in estimating exposure to ETO. The exposures to ECH and EBH are 200–300-fold higher than to ETO. These compounds are of lesser potency to ETO in terms of mutagenicity or carcinogenicity in studies to date. However, the precise contribution of these compounds to the cancer risk estimate is uncertain due to large toxicological data gaps, including the absence of a 2-year cancer bioassay by the oral route.
Low-dose ultraviolet A-1 (UV-A1; 340-400nm) bodily irradiation significantly reduces clinical manifestations of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). As neuropsychiatric-likesymptoms respond ...prominently, a single patient was selected to undergo positron emission tomography (PET) before and after therapy to determine the effects of the therapy on the brain. The functional changes in 18F-deoxyglucose uptake as determined by PET imaging in this SLE patient indicated that improvement in brain function paralleled the reversal of cognitive deficits noted after the administration 160kJ of bodily UV-A1 irradiationadministeredthree times a week. Also of interest is that the UV-A1 irradiation, for the first time, ameliorated discoid lupus rashes, presumably due to a systemic action, as the lesions were for the first time covered during therapy.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Copper and iron concentrations in three brown algae,
Ascophyllum nodosum,
Fucus vesiculosus and
Laminaria digitata (and additionally Mn in
L. digitata) from the Irish west coast were determined using ...flame atomic absorption spectrophotometry. Metal concentrations in the three species were indicative of prevailing bioavailable metal concentrations in situ but varied greatly between functional tissue parts, between sites and over time. Cu concentrations in actively growing tips of
A. nodosum decreased over a 4-month period during autumn/winter, while Fe concentrations increased. Both Fe and Cu concentrations in different thallus sections of
A. nodosum and
F. vesiculosus increased with increasing age of thallus part in a clean site, but there was no consistent trend for
F. vesiculosus from an industrialized site. Within sites, concentrations of all Cu and Fe were similar in both fucoids, but concentrations at the industrialized site were about twice as high as at the pristine site. In
L. digitata, all three metals were highest in holdfasts, but had distinctly different distribution patterns in stipes and blade sections, which were most likely related to growth pattern and tissue function. Fe was lowest in meristematic and young blade regions, suggesting small-scale Fe limitation in actively growing tissue. Mn concentrations were higher in distal blade sections than in stipes, and Cu concentrations were highest in meristematic and young thallus parts.
PDF
