Economics of food irradiation

This article examines the cost competitiveness of the food irradiation process. An analysis of the principal factors — the product, physical plant, irradiation source, and financing — that impact on cost is made. Equations are developed and used to calculate the size of the source for planned product throughput, efficiency factors, power requirements, and operating costs of sources, radionuclides, and accelerators. Methods of financing and capital investment are discussed. A series of tables show cost breakdowns of sources, buildings, equipment, and essential support facilities for both a cobalt‐60 and a 10‐MeV electron accelerator facility. Additional tables present irradiation costs as functions of a number of parameters — power input, source size, dose, and hours of annual operation. The use of the numbers in the tables are explained by examples of calculations of the irradiation costs for disinfestation of grains and radicidation of feed.     

Vacuum Web Coating - State of the Art and Potential for Electronics

Going flexible seems to be a major trend for a variety of electronic applications such as displays, printed circuit boards, solar cells, and solid-state lighting. Driving forces, which may often include the function of "flexibility," are the potential to build units with less thickness and with less weight or the ability for very-large-area applications. Last but not least, there is the need for a remarkable reduction of production costs, which can be fulfilled by changing the production process from sheet processing to roll to roll. The first vacuum web coater was built 70 years ago, and vacuum web coating is currently used for a wide variety of applications. In the packaging industry, aluminum coating is primarily used for barrier improvement of plastic substrates. Such coatings are deposited with an evaporation process in machines of up to 4-m coating widths on rolls up to 60 000-m length and at coating speeds of more than 16 m/s. For capacitor production, thin webs with thicknesses down to the submicrometer range are vacuum-coated with aluminum, silver, or zinc layers, and uncoated stripes or patterns are also needed. Vacuum-coated web-shaped substrates can also be used for antireflective, antistatic function in the front of monitors, as window films for cars and architectural applications or as front electrodes for touch panels as a few examples. Different coating tools such as evaporation, sputtering, plasma-enhanced chemical-vapor deposition (PECVD), as well as pretreatment tools and inline layer measurement systems are available. Many of the currently available tools and processes existing in the web coating industry may become useful for upcoming electronic applications, but special demands for these new applications, such as exact area tracking, zero defects, roll-to-roll masking, and reduced substrate temperature during coating, require further development of machine design and process technology. This paper will summarize the state of the art of vacuum w     

ST segment elevation induced by class IC antiarrhythmic agents: underlying electrophysiologic mechanisms and insights into drug-induced proarrhythmia

Large-scale analyses of causes of neonatal deaths are usually based on death-certificate information. A new computer-based method has been introduced to define the cause of stillbirths and neonatal deaths in large amounts of material and to classify them according to two different models [Wigglesworth and Neonatal and Intrauterine death Classification according to (a)Etiology (NICE)]. The method is based on a combination of detailed information from health care registries and the death-certificate information. The present study aimed to compare these two classification models with a previously published method based solely on death certificate information [International Collaborative Effort (ICE)]. The study population comprised 2378 neonatal deaths in Sweden between 1987 and 1992. Cross-tabulation was made between the ICE classification and the other two classification models. In addition, case examples are presented in detail, exemplifying how classification errors arose. The ICE classification gives a rather low precision, notably for two important causes of death: asphyxia and immaturity. Among 328 infants dying from asphyxia according to computerized Wigglesworth classification, ICE classified 59% as asphyxia and 22% were labelled immaturity. When ICE classified the deaths as due to asphyxia, this was verified in only 50%. Among 792 infants dying from immaturity according to computerized Wigglesworth classification, 64% were classified as such by ICE. The findings cast doubts on the results of studies based exclusively on death-certificate information. Whenever possible in the analysis of neonatal deaths, death-certificate information should be supplemented with more detailed data. The computer-based method introduced here makes such analyses possible for large databases.     

Depolarization shifts the voltage dependence of cardiac sodium channel and calcium channel gating charge movements

In cardiac ventricular myocytes, membrane depolarization leads to the inactivation of the Na channel and Ca channel ionic currents. The inactivation of the ionic currents has been associated with a reduction of the gating charge movement ("immobilization") which governs the activation of Na channels and Ca channels. The nature of the apparent "immobilization" of the charge movement following depolarization was explored in embryonic chick ventricular myocytes using voltage protocols applied from depolarized holding potentials. It was found that although all of the charge was mobile following inactivation, the voltage dependence of its movement was shifted to more negative potentials. In addition, the shift in the distribution of the Na channel charge could be differentiated from that of the Ca channel charge on the basis of kinetic as well as steady-state criteria. These results suggest that the voltage-dependent activation of Na channel and Ca channel charge movements leads to conformational changes and charge rearrangements that differentially bias the movements of these voltage sensors, and concomitantly produce channel inactivation.     

Hybrid pharmacologic and ablative therapy: a novel and effective approach for the management of atrial fibrillation

PURPOSE: This paper presents a critical review of the literature on neurosensory disturbances associated with implant surgery. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The reviewed literature includes mainly retrospective implant studies and patients' surveys, as well as a few prospective psychophysical studies on sensory disorders following maxillofacial surgeries. RESULTS: The available data suggest that injury to the peripheral branches of the trigeminal nerve and subsequent sensory disturbances are potential complications following implant surgery. Cross-sectional studies suggest that gross tactile sensation was regained in the vast majority of patients. However, data on the spatial and temporal patterns of recovery of this and other somatic sensation such as fine touch, nociception, and temperature sense after implant surgery is still lacking. The prevalence of sensory disturbances depends on several factors: the site of implant placement, the type of surgical procedures adopted, the design of the studies, the sensitivity of the testing methods, the choice of the outcome measures, and the terminology used to describe sensory disturbances. Extreme variation in the reported prevalence of neurosensory disturbances (0% to 100%) suggest that these problems have not been adequately evaluated. CONCLUSION: Although sensory disturbances are transient in the majority of implant patients, their profound impact on the quality of life of the subjects affected and the possibility that they may persist clearly indicate that they should be identified and evaluated through prospective studies, using validated testing protocols and outcome measures.     

Going, going, gone? Plant species extinction in the 21st century

Prospects for halting it or even slowing its rate are bleak, but perhaps not hopeless.