The Value of Coastal Wetlands for Flood Damage Reduction in the Northeastern USA.

As exposure to coastal hazards increases there is growing interest in nature-based solutions for risk reduction. This study uses high-resolution flood and loss models to quantify the impacts of coastal wetlands in the northeastern USA on (i) regional flood damages by Hurricane Sandy and (ii) local annual flood losses in Barnegat Bay in Ocean County, New Jersey. Using an extensive database of property exposure, the regional study shows that wetlands avoided $625 Million in direct flood damages during Hurricane Sandy.

A Review of Flood Loss Models as Basis for Harmonization and Benchmarking.

Risk-based approaches have been increasingly accepted and operationalized in flood risk management during recent decades. For instance, commercial flood risk models are used by the insurance industry to assess potential losses, establish the pricing of policies and determine reinsurance needs. Despite considerable progress in the development of loss estimation tools since the 1980s, loss estimates still reflect high uncertainties and disparities that often lead to questioning their quality.

Two-year clinical performance of Clearfil SE and Clearfil S3 in restoration of unabraded non-carious class V lesions.

This study was undertaken to evaluate the two-year clinical performance of a self-etching primer and a self-etching adhesive, both of which employ the same acidic monomer. Forty pairs of restorations of AP-X hybrid resin composite (Kuraray Co, Ltd, Osaka, Japan) were placed in caries-free cervical erosion/abfraction lesions. Based on insensitivity to air, the dentin in 62% of these lesions was considered to be sclerotic.

Activation of nucleoplasmin, an oligomeric histone chaperone, challenges its stability.

Nucleoplasmin (NP) is a pentameric, ring-shaped histone chaperone involved in chromatin remodeling processes such as sperm decondensation at fertilization. Monomers are formed by a core domain, responsible for oligomerization, that confers the protein a high stability and compactness and a flexible tail domain, that harbors a polyglutamic tract and the nuclear localization signal. Fully activated NP presents multiple phosphorylated residues in the tail and in flexible regions of the core domain.

Thermodynamic characterization of nucleoplasmin unfolding: interplay between function and stability.

The unfolding equilibrium of recombinant (rNP) and natural variants of nucleoplasmin (NP) from Xenopus laevis has been analyzed using biochemical and spectroscopic techniques. In the presence of denaturing concentrations of guanidinium salts (GuHCl and GuSCN), both domains, core and tail, of the rNP pentamer unfold as proven using single-carrying tryptophan mutants, whereas urea is remarkably unable to fully unfold rNP. Chemical unfolding is reversible and can be described well as a two-state transition in which the folded pentamer is directly converted to unfolded monomers, with no evidence of (partially) folded monomers.

The effect of process control on the incidence of central venous catheter-associated bloodstream infections and mortality in intensive care units in Mexico.

Purpose: To ascertain the effect of an infection control program including process control on intensive care unit (ICU) rates of intravascular device (IVD)-associated bloodstream infection (BSI).

Setting: Two level III adult ICUs in one public university hospital in Mexico: one medical surgical ICU and one neurosurgical ICU. POPULATION STUDY: All adult patients admitted to study units who had a central venous catheter (CVC) in place for at least 24 hrs.

Eighteen-month clinical performance of a self-etching primer in unprepared class V resin restorations.

This study evaluated the clinical performance of unprepared Class V resin composites, placed using a self-etching primer and a single-bottle adhesive, over a period of 18 months. Thirty-eight pairs of restorations of Renew hybrid resin composite (BISCO, Inc) were placed using adhesives from the same manufacturer in caries-free cervical erosion/abfraction lesions. Based on insensitivity to air, the dentin in 76% of these lesions was considered to be sclerotic.