ABSTRACT The California Department of Fish and Game Office of Spill Prevention and Response (CA OSPR) is utilizing oil-spill fate and transport modeling to develop the time and spatial scales, and equipment needs, for a formal Dispersed Oil Monitoring Plan (DOMP). When fully implemented, the DOMP will aid in documenting hydrocarbon concentrations in the water column, potentially exposed organisms (zooplankton), and the impacts of entrained oil and dissolved hydrocarbons with and without dispersant applications. Fluorescein dye studies off San Diego, California (USA) have been completed to test the operational framework for repeated sampling of dispersed oil plumes as outlined in the DOMP, to allow evaluation of high-frequency radar (HP-Radar) for providing surface current input data to oil spill models, and to provide verification of model-predicted movement of subsurface oil (dye) by comparison with drogue movement and measured dye concentrations over three dimensions and time. Aerial photodocumentation, subsurface drogues, dye transport, and HF-Radar were used to measure near-surface current fields at varying depths. High-resolution subsurface dye-plume structure was mapped using an in situ GPS-coupled towed fluorometer equipped with pressure sensors to provide dye concentration data as a function of time, position, and depth. In addition, data from the more traditional Special Monitoring of Applied Response Technology (SMART) protocols utilized by the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) were compared with the in situ towed-fluorometer measurements, and conventional CTD data were collected to determine the mixed layer depth, an important variable in monitoring dispersion of oil in the water column. As a result of these efforts, significant progress has been made on developing and testing sampling protocols for the DOMP, and nearly continuous and synoptic data have been obtained from seven cruises conducted over a 12-month period. These data sets (available on-line through the Coastal Response Research Center (CRRC) website: http://www.crrc.unh.edu/) are being analyzed and integrated to support oil spill model development and verification with direct applicability to spill response decision making, net environmental benefit analysis, natural resource damage assessments, and educating the spill community and public.

It has been reported that in vitro measurement of food-specific IgE can be used to accurately predict food allergy and reduce the risk associated with double-blinded placebo-controlled food challenges (DBPCFC). Our objective was to assess the performance characteristics of the Hycor Turbo-MP quantitative radioimmunoassay for food-specific IgE and to determine this method's comparability to another assay, the Pharmacia ImmunoCAP fluorescence enzyme immunoassay (FEIA). The dynamic range of the Turbo-MP assay is 0.05 to 100 IU/ml, compared to 0.35 to 100 IU/ml for the FEIA. Performance characteristics of the Turbo-MP assay (ie, reproducibility of the calibration curve, within-run precision, total precision, parallelism, and linearity) were determined using samples from the Hycor serum bank. The precision ( CV) of IgE calibrator replicates was < 10%. The total precision ( CV) of the Turbo-MP assay ranged from 8.8% to 18.4% for specific IgE concentrations between 0.28 to 31.4 IU/ml. Testing of serial dilutions of sera with IgE specificities for egg white, cow's milk, codfish, wheat, peanut, and soybean showed that the assay is linear over the entire dynamic rang e. Serial dilution data ( slopes of 1.01 to 1.10) showed parallelism to serial dilutions of the IgE calibrator ( slope of 0.96). The Turbo-MP and FEIA methods were both used for quantitative assays of food-specific IgE in 457 serum samples obtained from a clinical reference laboratory. Comparison of specific IgE results by the Turbo-MP and FEIA methods for 6 major food allergens exhibited a slope of 0.99 (0.92 to 1.03) with a correlation coefficient of 0.81.

Business-to-business e-commerce has become an important issue, and the emergence of B2B e- marketplaces has been very fast paced. More that 1000 B2B e-marketplaces have been created and many companies try to take advantage of from such marketplaces. Therefore, this paper provides a comprehensive review of e-procurement practice and discusses the fundamental issues that directly and indirectly affect the adoption of e-procurement.

The traditional providers-users' model may present a real tension between the need of national security and the citizen privacy. In this presentation, we will design the detailed protocol that can be coordinated among security enforcement, encryption providers, and users. It will protect the privacy of users and also provide the needed information for the security enforcement. With this new protocol, security enforcement will be updated without any need to catch the fast changing of the encryption technology, and the civil liberties' demand on strong personal privacy will also be satisfied.

The objective of this study was to determine the efficacy of the rectal administration of dextrose in raising the serum glucose in a hypoglycemic rat model. A randomized, prospective, controlled experimental study was performed using 18-h fasted, acutely anesthetized Harlan Sprague-Dawley rats made hypoglycemic by the intravenous infusion of insulin at 3 U/kg/h for 2 h. At 1 h into the infusion, study rats received 1, 2, or 3 g/kg of 50% dextrose solution infused into the rectum using a balloon tipped catheter. Control animals received an equivolume, equi-osmolar (as compared to the 3 g/kg dose) amount of polyethylene glycol (PEG)-400 by rectum. Blood glucose (BG) measurements were made using blood obtained from the portal vein and a femoral artery. Intravenous insulin administered at 3 U/kg/h consistently produced BG levels 60% of baseline at 60 min and 80% of baseline at 120 min. BG levels in portal and arterial circulation increased after rectal dextrose. In general, portal venous values were greater than arterial after rectal dextrose. The greatest increase was seen 30 min after dextrose by rectum in animals receiving 3 g/kg. A 50% dextrose administered by rectum in hypoglycemic rats is absorbed in quantities sufficient to raise BG in the arterial and portal circulation.

Bifurcated hydrogen bonds are involved in the short range solvation of amines by electron donating solvents. Further, six-membered ring cyclic diethers involve interaction of both oxygens of the diether with the amine proton. We report the expansion of these results to include 2,2-dimethyl-1,3-dioxane and trioxane. The results suggest that the latter is involved in a trifurcated hydrogen bond.