Roles and Responsibilities in the Provision of Accredited Continuing Medical Education/Continuing Professional Development.

The Cologne Consensus Conference 2015 has focused on "Providers in accredited CME[continuing medical education]/CPD [continuing professional development]". As an outcome of the CCC 2015, the authors of this paper, who were part of the faculty, propose a contemporary definition of the roles and responsibilities of stakeholders involved in the different stages of planning, delivery and evaluation of CME/CPD.

Persistently elevated CKMB and negative troponin T in a patient at ischaemic risk with chest pain.

Analytical interference in laboratory assays is not only unpredictable but also an underestimated problem. Not recognising these interferences can lead to misdiagnosis and mismanagement of patients. We present a case of a patient with chest pain and ischaemic risk factors with incongruent biochemical results.

Validation of 3D simulations of reverse osmosis membrane biofouling.

The increasing demand for drinking water and its stricter quality requirements have resulted in an exponentially expanding industry of membrane filtration processes. Currently, reverse osmosis (RO) is the most common method of desalination, able to produce water that is virtually free of pollutants and pathogenic micro-organisms. Biofouling of these devices however is a significant limitation.

Modelling biofilm-modified hydrodynamics in 3D.

A simulation-based study to predict the impact of biofilm growth on displacement distributions for flow of water through a supporting packed bed is presented. The lattice Boltzmann method and a directed random walk algorithm are used, and are applied to the system with and without biofilm being present. The aim of this simulation study is to model the anomalous transport dynamics induced by biofilm, as reported in the literature, and thus to study the impact of observation time, delta, on the shape of the displacement distributions (propagators).

Dietary iron alters liver, erythrocyte and plasma antioxidant and nitrite levels, and also sensitizes the heart to ischemia/reperfusion.

The aim of the study was to determine whether dietary iron within the normal range is (i) responsible for oxidative changes in the liver, erythrocytes and plasma; and (ii) make the heart more susceptible to ischemia/reperfusion injury. Female rats were allocated to four groups according to diet supplemented with either 15, 35, 150, or 300 mg iron/kg diet. After 4 months the following statistical difference in the two higher dietary groups were observed compared to the lower ones: (i) decreased antioxidant concentrations in liver, plasma and erythrocytes (alpha-tocopherol and ascorbic acid); (ii) increased plasma nitrite concentration; (iii) ischemia/reperfusion elevated LMWI and MDA concentrations and decreased ascorbate concentrations.