Investigations on Selectivity of Gas-Liquid Reactions in Capillaries

Biocatalysis offers a broad spectrum of possible ecological and economic advantages over conventional chemical catalysis processes, e.g., lower energy consumption and high enantio selectivity. The focus of this work is on gas-liquid reactions. These are of great importance in the chemical and biochemical industry and subject of current research since they are often limited by mass transfer or show low selectivity. Different suitable biocatalytically gas-liquid reaction systems were tested in capillary reactor designs in order to obtain information about the interaction between reaction and fluid mechanics. Furthermore, an optical measuring method was established. The experiments were performed in batch mode in a glass beaker with a flow cuvette for UV/Vis measurement of product concentration.     

Epidemiology of Trauma and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Mexico.

Prevalence rates of trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were estimated from a probability sample of 2,509 adults from 4 cities in Mexico. PTSD was assessed according to Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 1994) criteria using the Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI; WHO, 1997). Lifetime prevalence of exposure and PTSD were 76% and 11.2%, respectively. Risk for PTSD was highest in Oaxaca (the poorest city), persons of lower socioeconomic status, and women. Conditional risk for PTSD was highest following sexual violence, but nonsexual violence and traumatic bereavement had greater overall impact because of their frequency. Of lifetime cases, 62% became chronic; only 42% received medical or professional care. The research demonstrates the importance of expanding the epidemiologic research base on trauma to include developing countries around the world. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Design considerations for wastewater treatment by reverse osmosis.

Reverse Osmosis is finding increasing use for the treatment of municipal and industrial wastewaters due to the growing demand for high quality water in large urban areas. The growing success of membranes in this application is related to improved process designs and improved membrane products. Key factors which have been determined to result in successful operation of large-scale plants will be discussed. Factors which play a key role in the use of RO membranes include ultra or microfiltration pretreatment, low fouling membranes, flux rate, recovery and control of fouling and scaling. In particular, high flux rates can be used when UF or MF pretreatment is used. These technologies remove most of the suspended particles that would normally cause heavy fouling of lead elements. Typically, fluxes in the range of 17-21 lmh lead to cleaning frequencies in the range of 3-4 months. By combining the use of membrane pretreatment and chloramination of the feed water through chlorine addition, two of the primary sources of RO membrane fouling can be controlled. The use of chloramine has become a proven means to control biofouling in a membrane for wastewater applications. The other significant problems for RO membranes result from organics fouling by dissolved organics and scaling due to saturation of marginally soluble salts. The former can be a significant problem for membranes, due to the strong attraction forces. To some extent, these can be mitigated by making the membrane surface more hydrophilic or changing the charge of the membrane surface. To minimize fouling, many plants are turning to low fouling membranes. Extensive studies have demonstrated that the membrane surface is hydrophilic, neutrally charged over a broad pH range, and more resistant to organic adsorption. Also, an analysis of the potential scaling issues will be reviewed. In particular, calcium phosphate has been found to be one of the key scalants that will limit RO system recovery rate. Calcium phosphate concentrations can reach high values in many wastewaters, and scaling of this compound is not often modeled in most RO projection software. Various process options will be presented to evaluate the most economic means of avoiding phosphate scaling. Finally, data from major RO wastewater treatment plants will be presented to show how the RO membranes operate under actual conditions, utilizing many of these design features. Long-term data from the 2.6 mgd Bedok demonstration Plant demonstrate that the RO membranes operate consistently on wastewater. Experiences from the 8.5 mgd (32,000 m3/day) Bedok and 10.5 mgd (40,000 m3/day) Kranji plants will also be presented. These large plants started operation in the fall of 2002 and have demonstrated an effective means to reclaim high quality water from difficult source waters, such as municipal wastewaters.     

Neuropsychological functioning and personality characteristics of migrainous and nonmigrainous female college students.

Examined the theory that chronic migraine headaches can lead to permanent changes in brain function in 71 female college students. Ss were 20 classic migraineurs, 27 common migraineurs, and 24 controls. No significant group differences were found on the Halstead Reitan Neuropsychological Test Battery and additional memory tests. Classic migraineurs had significantly higher scores than common migraineurs on the Hysteria and Paranoia scales of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) and significantly higher scores than the controls on Hypochondriasis and Hysteria scales. Explanations for the lack of cognitive deficits in this group are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emergency department status boards: user-evolved artefacts for inter- and intra-group coordination

Large, easily viewed status boards are commonly used in some healthcare settings such as emergency departments, operating theaters, intensive care units, and inpatient wards. Because these artefacts were developed by front-line users, and have little to no supervisory or regulatory control, they offer valuable insights into the theories of work and hazard held by those users. Although the status boards case were locally developed over many years for within-group coordination, they have also become useful for between-group coordination across organizational boundaries. In this paper, we compare and contrast the use of such status boards in two disparate settings: a US emergency department, and a UK pediatric ward, and note striking similarities in their form and usage, despite the large differences in setting.     

HIPAA's Effect on Web Site Privacy Policies

Healthcare institutions typically post their privacy practices online as privacy policy documents. We conducted a longitudinal study that examines the effects of HIPAA's enactment on a collection of privacy policy documents for a fixed set of organizations over a four-year period. We present our analysis of 24 healthcare privacy policy documents from nine healthcare Web sites, analyzed using goal mining, a content-analysis method that supports extraction of useful information about institutions' privacy practices from documents. We compare our results to our pre-HIPAA study of these same institutions' online privacy practices and evaluate their evolution in the presence of privacy laws     

Trusting the Electronic Edition

This paper discusses the contested role of images in electronic editions, and summarizes some of the chief arguments for their inclusion. I then argue that, to truly determine the importance of images to the function of electronic editions, we must understand the contribution the image makes to the form of textual knowledge provided by the edition. I suggest a distinction between editions which are primarily pedagogical in their aims, those which aim above all at scholarly authority, and those which attempt to provide textual information as high-quality data which can be analysed and processed. I conclude that the latter represents the most significant future trend in electronic editing. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.