Thermally Assisted Heterogeneous Cavitation through Gas Supersaturation.

We demonstrate that besides gaseous pockets also a gas supersaturated spot on a substrate can be a nucleus for cavitation. The supersaturation is achieved by either a formerly dissolved bubble or by heating locally the surface below the boiling temperature. The experiments are conducted in a thin film of water; one side of the water film is in contact with a gold coated substrate that is heated by a continuous laser through plasmonic heating.

Ion adsorption stabilizes bulk nanobubbles.

The mechanism leading to the extraordinary stability of bulk nanobubbles in aqueous solutions remains an outstanding problem in soft matter, modern surface science, and physical chemistry science. In this work, the stability of bulk nanobubbles in electrolyte solutions under different pH levels and ionic strengths is studied. Nanobubbles are generated via the technique of ultrasonic cavitation, and characterized for size, number concentration and zeta potential under ambient conditions.

How bulk nanobubbles are stable over a wide range of temperatures.

Hypothesis: Bulk nanobubbles are nanoscopic gaseous domains in an aqueous solution. Their surprising long-term stability remains controversial due to the widespread assumption that spherical bubbles cannot achieve stable equilibrium. To uncover the intrinsic mechanisms underlying stabilization, the thermodynamic behavior of nanobubbles in water over a wide range of temperatures is explored.

Spreading of soap bubbles on dry and wet surfaces.

The spreading of soap bubbles after forming contact with a substrate is experimentally studied. We find for dry glass substrate that the rim of the spreading soap bubble follows the well known scaling law for inertia dominated spreading [Formula: see text] [Eggers, J., Lister, J.

Prenatal screening for major congenital heart disease: assessing performance by combining national cardiac audit with maternity data.

Objective: Determine maternity hospital and lesion-specific prenatal detection rates of major congenital heart disease (mCHD) for hospitals referring prenatally and postnatally to one Congenital Cardiac Centre, and assess interhospital relative performance (relative risk, RR).

Methods: We manually linked maternity data (3 hospitals prospectively and another 16 retrospectively) with admissions, fetal diagnostic and surgical cardiac data from one Congenital Cardiac Centre. This Centre submits verified information to National Institute for Cardiovascular Outcomes Research (NICOR-Congenital), which publishes aggregate antenatal diagnosis data from infant surgical procedures.

COMPASS: a novel risk-adjustment model for catheter ablation in pediatric and congenital heart disease patients.

Background: Robust risk-adjustment algorithms are often necessary if data from clinical registries is to be used to compare rates of important clinical outcomes between participating centers. Although such algorithms have been successfully developed for surgical and catheter-based cardiac interventions in children, outcomes of pediatric and congenital catheter ablation have not been modeled with respect to case mix.

Methods: A working group was appointed by the Pediatric and Congenital Electrophysiology Society to develop a risk-adjustment algorithm for use in conjunction with a modernized, multicenter registry database.

Partitioning of dissolved chlorinated ethenes into vegetable oil.

Food-grade soybean oil (SoyOil) has been used to enhance in situ anaerobic bioremediation at sites contaminated with chlorinated ethenes (CEs). The abiotic interactions of SoyOil with the CEs may be significant and need to be better understood. The oil: water partition coefficients (Kp) of dissolved CEs into SoyOil were measured in batch tests and ranged from 22 to 1200 with increasing chlorination.