Background: Minimally invasive hysterectomy is generally preferable to abdominal hysterectomy. The technicity index (TI) is the proportion of hysterectomies performed by minimally invasive surgery. Many centers globally have started to audit local TI as a quality indicator, but only a handful have published their results to help define international standards of care. <st...

Currently, Haze is one of the greatest environmental problems with serious impacts on human health in China, especially in capital region (Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region). To alleviate this problem, the Chinese government introduced a National Air Pollution Control Action Plan (NAPCAP) with air pollutants reduction targets by 2017. However, there is doubt whether these targets can be achieved onc...

Regional air qualitymodels arewidely used to evaluate control strategyeffectiveness. As such, it is important to understand the accuracy of model simulations to establish confidence in model performance and to guide further model development. Particulate matter with aerodynamic diameter less than 2.5 mm (PM2.5) is regulated as one of the criteria pollutants by the National Ambient Air Quality S...

Hebei is one of the most air polluted provinces in China. According to the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) for the severe fog-haze month of Jan. 2013, seven of the top ten most polluted cities in China are located in Hebei Province. In this study, the air pollution history and status of the Hebei Province are reviewed and discussed, using the governmental published Air Pollution Inde...

Today, about one-fourth of U.S. commercial service airports, including 41 of the busiest 50, are either in nonattainment or maintenance areas per the National Ambient Air Quality Standards. U.S. aviation activity is forecasted to triple by 2025, while at the same time, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is evaluating stricter particulate matter (PM) standards on the basis of documen...

Introduction: Academic institutions are the most importantorganizations for implementation of internationalization policiesand practices for integrating an international, intercultural andglobal dimension in higher education system. Also, a globallyincreasing demand for higher education has been seen in the pasttwo decades so that the number of students enrolled in highereducation institutions ...

Emissions of sulphur and oxidized nitrogen compounds in Europe have been reduced following a series of control measures during the last two decades. These changes have taken place during a period in which the primary gases and the wet deposition throughout Europe were extensively monitored. Since the end of the 1970s, for example land based sulphur emissions declined by between 90 and 70% depen...

Greenhouse gas emission limits are a major source of technical and policy uncertainty for electric power industry professionals. This paper tries to reduce some of this uncertainty by investigating the main forces that were responsible for the productivity gains made by the electric power sector with respect to SO2 emissions under the US SO2 cap and trade program. The SO2 cap and trade experien...

This study presents the mass concentrations of PM2.5, O3, SO2 and NOx at one urban, one suburban and two rural locations in the Changchun region from September 25 to October 27 2013. Major chemical components of PM2.5 at the four sites were daily sampled and analyzed. Most of daily concentrations of SO2 (7-82μg/m3), O3 (27-171μg/m3) and NOx (14-213μg/m3) were below the limits of the National Am...