Comparison of alteplase (tissue plasminogen activator) high‐dose vs. low‐dose protocol in restoring hemodialysis catheter function: The ALTE‐DOSE study

Hemodialysis catheter (HDC) dysfunction due to thrombosis is common, and dysfunction incidence can reach up to 50% within 1 year of use. Although administration of intraluminal alteplase (tissue plasminogen activator [tPA]) is the standard of practice to pharmacologically restore HDC function, there are no evidence‐based guidelines concerning the optimal tPA dose. The purpose of this study was to compare the efficacy of 1.0‐mg vs. 2.0‐mg tPA dwell protocols in restoring the HDC function in thrombotic dysfunctional catheters. A retrospective, single‐center study was conducted on two independent cohorts of patients; the first (n = 129) received 2.0 mg tPA/catheter lumen, while the second (n = 108) received 1.0 mg tPA/catheter lumen. Kaplan–Meier and Cox regression analyses were performed to compare the catheter survival time between patients who received 1.0 mg tPA and those who received 2.0 mg tPA. Catheter removal occurred in 25 (19.4%) of those catheters treated with 1.0 mg tPA compared with 11 (10.2%) of catheters treated with 2.0 mg tPA (P = 0.05). The hazard ratio (HR) for catheter removal was 2.75 (95% confidence interval [^95%CI] = 1.25–6.04) for the 1.0‐mg tPA cohort compared with the 2.0‐mg tPA cohort. Correction added on 3 December 2012, after first online publication: The tPA cohort values were changed. Female gender (HR = 2.51; ^95%CI = 1.20–5.27) and age (HR = 0.96; ^95%CI = 0.94–0.98) were also associated with catheter survival. Our findings suggest that treatment of dysfunctional HDC with 2.0‐mg tPA dwells is superior to 1.0‐mg tPA dwells.     

Cultural Experience as a (Critical) Factor in Crisis Communication Planning

A key issue in crisis communication is the way people process crisis‐relevant information to minimize danger. This paper discusses the impact of previously experienced crises on the public's interpretation of warning messages. People may not have direct experience of a crisis, but they still have acquired mediated experiences of a variety of crises. The present study introduces the term cultural experience of crisis to label the synthesis of mediated crisis experiences, media and fictional narratives, collective memories of societal disasters, conversations, and immediate crisis experiences of witnesses and victims. The proposed model of cultural experience of crisis is elaborated on the basis of a qualitative text analysis derived from four qualitative interviews 16 focus groups interviews carried out in Estonia from 2008 to 2009.     

Catalytic coating of virus particles with zinc oxide

We show that the rod-shaped Tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) can be coated with the wide band gap semiconductor zinc oxide by electroless deposition under mild reaction conditions. The process involves pretreatment with aqueous Pd(II), followed by nucleation of ZnO, directed to palladium centers formed on the surface of TMV. The mechanism is based on the local pH change due to the reduction of nitrate by dimethylamine borane at the palladium. Morphology and chemical composition have been analyzed by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and by energy filtering TEM, respectively. The optical properties were elucidated by cathodoluminescence, which showed the desired near-band edge emission.     

Underdog or bulldog: introducing biogas technologies in Estonia

The production and use of biogas, along with corresponding sector-specific activities and technologies, is a relatively new subject in Estonia. This paper gives an instructive overview of main barriers behind the development incentives, policy support and technological innovation in terms of emerging market for biogas. The article examines the complexity of market-related, political, technological and social obstacles for introduction biogas technologies. There is a major gap between resource potential, technological capacity and practice in Estonia. About 2?% of the theoretical potential of biogas is being used, totalling around 11?million?Nm³, based primarily on landfill biogas. First, political setting for biogas innovation is still vague, however, consolidated and enhanced since 2010 to compete with other renewables and mainstream energy technologies. The article underlines the statement that the reason why Estonian biogas production has not followed the path of growth and technology transfer is the low renewable electricity feed-in tariff. However, there are many other legal and engineering factors that have held back biogas applications and sector development in general. Stakeholders have established the Estonian Biogas Association, increasing sector’s visibility, targeted lobby to support policy-making, technological and social innovation and professional networking. Though getting the biogas sector to succeed demands a comprehensive approach and involvement of more actors in demand side including local leaders and consumers, both enthusiasm and scepticism should be informed by a sound understanding of framework conditions and complexities for path-breaking transformations in energy systems. To promote biogas production, profitable and technologically feasible showcases should demonstrate benefits and issues to the target group and stakeholders. Instead agricultural and CHP development mode, the priority of using biogas in Estonia could be seen as green vehicle fuel for transport.     

Efficiency of granulated blast furnace slag replacement of cement according to the equivalent binder concept

The strength development of slag cement has a great consideration for the scheduling of formwork removal, prestressing operations, and other practical aspects of slag cement usage. The prediction of slag concrete strength, using the Feret’s model has been studied by introducing the concept of the equivalent binder. This has led to define an efficiency coefficient of slag which distinguishes the latter with the regard to the cement. Thus, this obtained coefficient characterizes well the slag and lets to predict the slag concrete strength from strength values of a normal concrete made without slag for a given age and replacement rate. At 90 days age, the test results show that for 15% replacement rate, the slag is activated completely and gives 67% of efficiency more than the cement. For higher replacement rate, the efficiency of the slag decreases and becomes similar to that of cement for 50% replacement rate.     

Wood fuel trade in European Union

Wood fuels are the most important alternatives of fossil fuel which is one of the reasons of the climate changes in the world and of global warming. Wood fuels, which have an important role in the cause of both providing energy requirement of production units and heating for household and healing energy deficit, disperse very less CO₂ than fossil fuels to atmosphere. Bio-fuels are used to provide energy requirement among EU countries like using in lots of developed countries. Resources having by lots developed countries and EU countries are not at enough level for bio-fuels. For this reason, trade of bio-fuels has been become in an important situation in recent years. In this study, import and export levels of bio-fuels of EU countries and Turkey, which is a candidate for union, were investigated between 2003 and 2006. The date is obtained from European Forest Institute (EFI) forest products trade flow database. As a result of the study, while rises were determined in years, it is determined that the most important exporters are Germany, Italy, Latvia and Poland and the most important importers are Germany, Italy, Belgium and UK. It is seen that Turkey has a low trade level in selected product groups.     

Training Sequence Aided Signature Waveform Estimation

In code division multiple access channels multiuser detection techniques are known to be effective strategies to counter the presence of multiuser interference towards improving spectral efficiency. Generally, multiuser detectors can provide excellent performance only when the signature waveforms of all users are precisely known. Hence, the estimation of signature waveforms is a challenging issue in mobile communication systems. In this paper, we compare the performance of two short training sequence aided signature waveform estimators. One is maximum likelihood type signature waveform estimator that requires the knowledge of spreading sequences and short training sequences. The other estimator is recently proposed based on subspace method and requires the knowledge of training sequences only. Through the simulations, we show the signature waveform estimation performance of both systems and the effect of the estimation error on the performance of a multiuser detector. The complexity comparisons of both systems are also given. We use the term “signature waveform” to refer to the convolution of the channel and the spreading code throughout the paper. Hasan AMCA was born in 1961 in Nicosia-Cyprus. He graduated from the Higher Technological Institute in Magosa – Cyprus (which is renamed later as Eastern Mediterranean University). He joined EMU in 1985 after receiving a M.Sc. (Digital Signal Processing) degree from the University of Essex in England (1985). He took his Ph.D. (Mobile Communications) from the University of Bradford where he was on a Commonwealth scholarship. He has been teaching in the Electrical and Electronic Engineering Department of Eastern Mediterranean University since 1993 where he also served as the Vice Chairman from Spring 1998 to Spring 2000. He has been appointed as the Director of the School of Computing and Technology of the EMU since Spring 2000. His research interests include Multi User Detection of CDMA signals, Adaptive Equalisation, Multi Carrier Systems, Mobile Radio Systems and Networks, Internet and Information Technology Applications in Education. Ahmet Rizaner was born in Larnaca, Cyprus, on January 31, 1974. He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the Eastern Mediterranean University, Famagusta, North Cyprus, in 1996 and 1998, respectively. He completed his PhD. degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering in Eastern Mediterranean University and joined Eastern Mediterranean University as a lecturer in 2004. He is lecturing in the School of Computing and Technology. His main research interests include CDMA communications, adaptive channel estimation, and multiuser detection technique. Kadri Hacioğlu was born in Nicosia, Cyprus. He received the B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical and electronic engineering from the Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey, in 1980, 1984, and 1990, respectively. After his two-year military service, in 1992, he joined the faculty of Eastern Mediterranean University, Magosa, North Cyprus, as an Assistant Professor, and became an Associate Professor in 1997. While there, he taught several classes on electronics, digital communications, speech processing and neural networks. During this time, he conducted research on applying fuzzy logic, neural networks, and genetic algorithms to signal processing and communications problems. From 1998 to 2000, he was a Visiting Professor in the Department of Computer Science, University of Colorado, Boulder. Here, he taught classes on neural networks and continued his research. Since 2000, he has been a Research Associate at the Center for Spoken Language Research, University of Colorado. He has authored or coauthored numerous papers and supervised a dozen M.Sc./Ph.D. theses. His current research interests are concept-based language modeling, speech understanding, natural language generation, and search methods in speech recognition/understanding. He also does research on multiuser detection and equalization in CDMA systems. Ali Hakan Ulusoy was born in Eskişehir, Turkey, on June 3, 1974. He graduated from the double major program of the department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and department of Physics in Eastern Mediterranean University as the first rank student of Faculty of Engineering in 1996. He received his M.S. degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering in Eastern Mediterranean University in 1998. He completed his Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering in Eastern Mediterranean University and joined Eastern Mediterranean University as a lecturer in 2004. He is lecturing in the School of Computing and Technology. His current research interests include receiver design, multi-user detection techniques, blind and trained channel estimation in Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA).