Turning Point for Measurement System Although the current performance measurement system has served VA well, we are at a turning point. The Executive Career Field (ECF) plan for 2008 is the beginning of a new use of performance measurement. In 1995, when measures became a formalized part of the ECF plan by which all Senior Executives in the Veterans Health Administration are evaluated, all VA p...

Energy-coupling factor (ECF) transporters are a new family of ABC transporters that consist of four subunits, two cytoplasmic ATPases EcfA and EcfA' and two transmembrane proteins namely EcfS for substrate-specific binding and EcfT for energy coupling. Here, we report the 3.2-Å resolution crystal structure of the EcfS protein of a folate ECF transporter from Enterococcus faecalis-EfFolT, a clos...

Fluid penetration. Given that distribution in extracellular fluid (ECF) is important, a variety of methods have been applied to the collection and study of data on ECF distribution. Antibiotic concentrations have been measured in the lymphatic drainage of organs and tissues (95, 96), fluids obtained from tissue cage reservoirs (82, 90), chemically or mechanically induced skin blisters (1, 81), ...

for pulp and paper manufacture. The science, a proven environmental track record, and strong market demand demonstrate that ECF is without rival in terms of pollution prevention, resource conservation, and product quality. "Chlorine dioxide is a solution to dioxin and other persistent, bio-accumulative, toxic substances in mill waste water." [1] Dr. Robert Huggett, former U.S. EPA Assistant Adm...

The fate of lipophilic extractives from several nonwoody species (flax, hemp, sisal and abaca) used for the manufacturing of cellulose pulps, was studied during soda/anthraquinone (AQ) pulping and totally chorine free (TCF) and elemental chlorine free (ECF) bleaching. With this purpose, the lipophilic extracts from the raw materials and their unbleached and bleached industrial pulps, were analy...

Today’s embedded systems are pervasive, mobile, and in many cases, permanently connected. Yet, they are tightly integrated with their environment and barely coordinated. The next generation of distributed applications requires more decentralized and more dynamic interaction schemes, which the classic request/response communication paradigm can not accommodate. The Executable Choreography Framew...

About 60% of the adult human body is fluid. The most of this fluid is inside the cells and called intracellular fluid (ICF) and one third is in the space out side the cells and called extracellular fluid (ECF) (1). Evaluation of the two components of ECF and ICF is important in various disease conditions. The standard method for this purpose in clinical practice is dilution principle using a tr...

We constructed a Bacillus subtilis Marburg strain that harbors deletion mutations in all seven extracytoplasmic function (ECF) sigma genes. The strain shows wild-type growth at 37 degrees C both in a complex and in a synthetic medium and exhibits wild-type sporulation. ECF sigma genes of B. subtilis are dispensable as long as no stress is imposed, although they seem to be required for quick res...

This paper addresses point stabilization for the extended chained form (ECF), a control system that may be used to model a number of mechanical underactuated systems. A control law is proposed, based on well-known hybrid open-loop/feedback techniques, which exponentially stabilizes the origin of a dynamic extension of the ECF and ensures a degree of robustness to additive disturbance terms that...

We have evaluated a five-compartment model of [18F]fluoride kinetics in rats. The initial fluoride distribution was found to be similar to that of [77Br]bromide, a known extracellular-fluid (ECF) tracer, in agreement with the hypothesis underlying the model, and the measured uptake rate in rat bones compared well with the digital computer solution. Simpler models did not give a better fit. In d...