Phylogenetic stratigraphy in the Guerrero Negro hypersaline microbial mat.

The microbial mats of Guerrero Negro (GN), Baja California Sur, Mexico historically were considered a simple environment, dominated by cyanobacteria and sulfate-reducing bacteria. Culture-independent rRNA community profiling instead revealed these microbial mats as among the most phylogenetically diverse environments known. A preliminary molecular survey of the GN mat based on only ∼1500 small subunit rRNA gene sequences discovered several new phylum-level groups in the bacterial phylogenetic domain and many previously undetected lower-level taxa.

Knowledge-assisted visualization and segmentation of geologic features.

A 3D visualization environment contains domain information about geologic features in seismic data and lets users interactively steer segmentations on the basis of visual sources of information and knowledge. A user study demonstrates this approach's ability to transfer domain knowledge to non experts.

Modeling 3-D compliant blood flow with FOSLS.

Blood flow in large vessels is typically modeled using the Navier-Stokes equations for the fluid domain and elasticity equations for the vessel wall. As the wall deforms, additional complications are introduced because the shape of the fluid domain changes, necessitating the use of a re-mapping or re-griding process for the fluid region. Typically, this system (fluid, solid, mapping) is solved using an iterative approach in which the fluid, elastic, and mapping equations are solved in series until the iterations converge.

Establishing a quality improvement process for identification of psychosocial problems in a primary care practice.

Objectives: A quality improvement process that will significantly increase the rate of identification of psychosocial problems through routine use of case-finding instruments can be established in a general medicine practice.

Design: Two groups of patient examination reports written by physicians were retrospectively compared with the patients' responses on the case-finding database instrument. The samples were obtained by sequential selection in four time periods.