The aims of this study were to assess the repeatability of two pairs of protected specimen brushes (PSB) done successively in the same lung area and either processed at the bedside or in the laboratory, and to provide a description of the bacteriological findings in 39 cases of suspected nosocomial pneumonia occurring in nonventilated patients. Four PSB were divided into two pairs. One pair of ...

The collective interactions of many partons in the first stage of the collisions is the usual accepted explanation of the sizable elliptical flow. The clustering of color sources provides a natural framework of partonic interactions. In this scheme, we show a reasonable agreement with RHIC data in both the dependence of v 2 on transverse momentum and in the shape of the nuclear modified factor ...

Piezoelectrics have widespread use in today's sensor and actuator technologies. However, most commercially available piezoelectric materials, e.g., Pb [Zr(x)Ti(1-x)] O(3) (PZT), are comprised of more than 60 weight percent lead (Pb). Due to its harmful effects, there is a strong impetus to identify new lead-free replacement materials with comparable properties to those of PZT. This review highl...

We calculate nuclear effect in Drell-Yan massive lepton-pair production in terms of parton multiple scattering in Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). We present the nuclear modification to inclusive Drell-Yan cross section dσ/dQ2 in terms of multiparton correlation functions. By extracting the size of the correlation functions from measured Drell-Yan transverse momentum broadening in nuclear medium, ...

A Prussian blue (PB) biosensor chip with the nanocubic crystals was fabricated in batch by a screen printing technique for the general detection of various physiological substances. Through a low-speed chemical synthesis approach, the nanostructure of PB slurry was well controlled to be a 100 nm nanocube by the synthesis temperature and reactant concentration. Then, PB slurry was screen-printed...

A method for in situ U–Pb isotopic analyses by secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) has been developed for uranium minerals with a range of chemical compositions. This method combines the advantages of conventional U–Pb dating (i.e., use of concordia) and in situ analysis, and therefore is ideally suited for the study of chemically complex and fine-grained uranium oxides associated with urani...

Chelates have been shown to enhance phytoextraction of Pb from contaminated soil. Mechanisms behind this phenomenon, however, remain largely unexplored. In this paper we examine chelate effect on Pb dissolution, plant Pb uptake, and internal plant Pb translocation. EDTA was found to be the most efficient in increasing watersoluble Pb concentration in our test soil. Unfortunately, PbEDTA is high...

Isotopically resolved cross sections and velocity distributions have been measured in charge-pickup reactions of 1 A GeV Pb with proton, deuterium and titanium target. The total and partial charge-pickup cross sections in the reactions Pb + H and Pb + H are measured to be the same in the limits of the error bars. A weak increase in the total charge-pickup cross section is seen in the reaction o...

Zircon (ZrSiO4) is the most commonly used geochronometer, preserving age and geochemical information through a wide range of geological processes. However, zircon U-Pb geochronology can be affected by redistribution of radiogenic Pb, which is incompatible in the crystal structure. This phenomenon is particularly common in zircon that has experienced ultra-high temperature metamorphism, where io...

Road transport is a ubiquitous source of lead contamination in the soil near highways with direct and indirect impacts on human health. Accumulation of traffic-induced lead in the soils depends on gasoline lead content, traffic volume, as well as meteorological conditions. To evaluate the effect of traffic on soil lead concentration, 113 samples from the topsoil (0-15 cm) were collected in a re...