Final call for reservations: Next month's corporate leadership awards dinner

Last call for next month's Corporate Leadership Awards Dinner in NYC honoring Microsoft Corp. and its general counsel, Brad Smith. Also, details about CPR's new website; the free International Dispute Negotiation podcasts, and a call for nominations for the 2008 CPR Institute Awards for Excellence in ADR.     

Lord Woolf leads 2007 list of CPR award winners

A full report on last month's CPR Awards for Excellence in ADR, along with Los Angeles and New York training dates for spring.     

A comparison of selected domestic arbitration rules

Alternatives provides another rules comparison table, focusing on last year's revisions to the CPR Institute, American Arbitration Association, and JAMS domestic arbitration rules.     

Registration open for next month's 30th anniversary annual meeting

More on the CPR Institute's Annual Meeting next month; an online continuing legal education program featuring ethics credit is scheduled for year‐end filers in December, and more.     

Impact of Chimney-draught Conditions on Combustion and Emission Behavior of a Wood-burning Stove

Pollutants from combustion in wood-burning stoves are influenced by many factors, including the exhaust gas system. This is responsible for the air supply due to the draught generated. Contrary to results reported in literature the experiments in this study show no effect on temperature related to increasing air supply and a total dust decreasing at higher draughts. The results also show no significant impact of the draught on gaseous emissions (CO/OGC/NO_x). The most significant loss was determined at thermal efficiency, which lost up to 13 % absolute with increasing draught.     

Reaction and Coloration of Glasses with Hydrogen

The reaction of NBS 710 glass with hydrogen at 500°C and the resulting coloration of the glass have been studied using optical spectroscopy. Initially the reaction leads to the reduction of iron from ferrous to ferric state which subsequently combines with sulfur resulting in the formation of FeS. The origin of the color centers is proposed to be related to the formation of FeS.     

Studies on the current 137Cs body burden of children in Belarus--can the dose be further reduced?

After the Chernobyl reactor accident wide areas of Belarus were contaminated with radioactive fallout. The verification and documentation of the long-term development of radiation doses is still going on. A population group of special concern are the children living in contaminated regions. The annual dose limit of 1 mSv is still exceeded in some cases, essentially due to high body burdens of (137)Cs as indicated by screening measurements with portable incorporation monitors. In this situation the evaluation of possible dose reduction measures in addition to the control of food contamination is being investigated. Special attention is given to the therapeutic application of a pectin preparation (Vitapect), for which a dose-lowering effect is presumed by Belarusian scientists. In a placebo-controlled double-blind study, several groups of contaminated children received a pectin compound named Vitapect for a two-week period during their stay in a sanatorium. For comparison the same number of control groups were given a placebo preparation. The (137)Cs body burden of the children was measured at the beginning and the end. The mean relative reduction of the specific activity within the Vitapect groups was found to be approximately 33%, whereas the specific activity of the children who received a placebo decreased only by approximately 14%, due to clean food supply. It is known that pectins chemically bind cations like caesium in the gastrointestinal tract and thereby increase faecal excretion. Theoretical calculations based on this assumption and considering metabolism processes are qualitatively consistent with the experimentally found retention of radiocaesium in the human body after pectin treatment.     

Scalable Parallel Algorithms for Geometric Pattern Recognition

This paper considers a variety of geometric pattern recognition problems on input sets of size n using a coarse grained multicomputer model consisting of p processors with Ω(n/p) local memory each (i.e., Ω(n/p) memory cells of Θ(log n) bits apiece), where the processors are connected to an arbitrary interconnection network. It introduces efficient scalable parallel algorithms for a number of geometric problems including the rectangle finding problem, the maximal equally spaced collinear points problem, and the point set pattern matching problem. All of the algorithms presented are scalable in that they are applicable and efficient over a very wide range of ratios of problem size to number of processors. In addition to the practicality imparted by scalability, these algorithms are easy to implement in that all required communications can be achieved by a small number of calls to standard global routing operations.     

Increased Systemic Antioxidant Power Ameliorates the Aging-Related Reduction in Oocyte Competence in Mice

Ovarian aging is associated with elevated oxidative stress and diminished oocyte developmental competence. We aimed to determine the impact of systemic antioxidant treatment in aged mice. Female outbred CF-1 mice were aged for 9 months prior to an 8-week 45 mg Euterpe oleracea (açaí) daily supplement. The açaí treatment induced a threefold increase in serum antioxidant power (FRAP) compared to both young and aged mice (p < 0.0001). Compared to young mice, aged mice had fewer oocytes and reduced blastocyst development (p < 0.0001); açaí did not affect the oocyte numbers, but improved blastocyst formation (p < 0.05). Additionally, açaí alleviated the aging-related decrease in implantation potential (p < 0.01). The aged mice showed evidence of elevated ovarian ER stress (increased whole-ovary PDIA4 expression, granulosa cell and oocyte GRP78 expression, and oocyte PDIA4 protein), reduced oocyte mitochondrial quality (higher PRKN activation and mitochondrial DNA oxidative damage), and dysregulated uterine glandular epithelium. Antioxidant intervention was sufficient to lessen these effects of ovarian aging, likely in part by the upregulation of NRF2. We conclude that açaí treatment is a promising strategy to improve ER and mitochondrial function in the ovaries, thereby ameliorating the decreased oocyte competence that occurs with ovarian aging.     

Short communication: Genomic prediction using imputed whole-genome sequence variants in Brown Swiss Cattle

The accuracy of genomic prediction determines response to selection. It has been hypothesized that accuracy of genomic breeding values can be increased by a higher density of variants. We used imputed whole-genome sequence data and various single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) selection criteria to estimate genomic breeding values in Brown Swiss cattle. The extreme scenarios were 50K SNP chip data and whole-genome sequence data with intermediate scenarios using linkage disequilibrium-pruned whole-genome sequence variants, only variants predicted to be missense, or the top 50K variants from genome-wide association studies. We estimated genomic breeding values for 3 traits (somatic cell score, nonreturn rate in heifers, and stature) and found differences in accuracy levels between traits. However, among different SNP sets, accuracy was very similar. In our analyses, sequence data led to a marginal increase in accuracy for 1 trait and was lower than 50K for the other traits. We concluded that the inclusion of imputed whole-genome sequence data does not lead to increased accuracy of genomic prediction with the methods.