BACKGROUND Current professional guidelines recommend a maximum hang time for reprocessed duodenoscopes of 5-14 days. We sought to study the association between hang time and risk of duodenoscope contamination. METHODS We analyzed cultures of the elevator mechanism and working channel collected in a highly standardized fashion just before duodenoscope use. Hang time was calculated as the time ...

The Local Cosine Decomposition of Coifman and Wickerhauser 1] is modiied by incorporating two degrees of freedom that increase the adaptability of the best basis. These are relative shifts between resolution levels and adaptive polarity foldings. The resultant expansion is shift-invariant, and yields adaptive time-frequency distributions which are characterized by high resolution, high concentr...

The Mighan playa/lake is characterized as a closed catchment. In the recent years, the rapid industrialization and urbanization has resulted in a pollution area in the city of Arak. In this work, we focus on six regions around the playa/lake to study the distribution of heavy metals in the waters and their contamination risk. A total of 32 water samples are analyzed to determine the conta...

The contents of nine elements (As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Hg, Ni, Pb, Sb and Zn) have been assayed in the farming soils of Suszec commune (southern Poland). This area is affected by the main industrial centre of Poland (the Upper Silesian Industrial Region), the Czech Republic (Trzyniec smelter) and local contamination sources (coal mine). The contamination of the soils was assessed on the basis of geoacc...

Trace metals (Cd, Cr, Cu, Ni and Pb) concentrations in benthic sediments were analyzed through multi-step fractionation scheme to assess the levels and sources of contamination in estuarine, riverine and freshwater ecosystems in Niger Delta (Nigeria). The degree of contamination was assessed using the individual contamination factors (ICF) and global contamination factor (GCF). Multivariate sta...

In abiotic degradation the action of light radiation is one of the most important parameters, because polymers undergo degradation due to the action of light (natural or artificial). The aim of this study was to investigate the degradation rate for samples of polypropylene (PP) modified with an organic pro-degradant submitted to ageing in a natural environment and to accelerated ageing test. Th...