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We used cross-sectional data from 226 patients with monkeypox virus to investigate the association between anatomic exposure site and lesion development. Penile, anorectal, and oral exposures predicted lesion presence at correlating anatomic sites. Exposure site also predicted the first lesion site of the penis and anus.

Plague is a rare but potentially life-threatening fleaborne zoonotic disease caused by Yersinia pestis. Public health agencies in the United States use multiple concurrent epidemiologic and ecologic strategies to determine Y. pestis exposure sites. We reviewed 196 plague case files from 1991-2018 to describe effort and yield of implemented strategies. All files included an epidemiologic component, and 71% were followed up with environmental investigations. Environmental samples were collected for laboratory testing in 88% of investigations. The percentages of investigations yielding laboratory evidence of local transmission varied from 28% for testing live-trapped rodents to 50% for pet serology. We suggest that collection and laboratory testing of samples should be prioritized when epidemiologic investigations implicate potential exposure in an unusual setting, in areas where many people could be at risk of exposure to Y. pestis, or in situations where prevention activities extend beyond educational outreach and incur greater costs.

This guideline prescribes the technical requirements for the design and operation of long-term exposure sites in marine environments. The technical content includes the design of exposure site, the monitoring of environmental conditions, the monitoring of exposed specimens, the data management and the maintenance of exposure facilities. The design of exposure site covers the choice of exposure sites, the exposure infrastructure and facilities, exposure specimens and their placing and protection. Then, the guideline defines the environmental factors to be monitored and the corresponding monitoring methods. For the exposed specimens, the guideline specifies the target performance to monitor, the sampling, the testing and the reporting of exposure results. The data management deals with such aspects as the data storage, data transmission and the data sharing. At the end, the guideline gives the principles for the maintenance of the exposure facilities. This guideline summarizes the best practice of long-term exposure in marine environments, and it is expected to support the normalization of exposure practice and to generate more added values from this practice.

In this study, I investigated the print exposure and website exposure of undergraduates in relation to their scores on a text comprehension test. Print exposure was measured with a national version of the author recognition test, whereas a new website recognition test was developed to measure students’ exposure to texts on the internet. The participants’ reading attitudes and number of years in higher education were included as control variables. Exploratory factor analysis suggested that three factors are measured by the website recognition test: (1) lifestyle topics; (2) news and culture; and (3) social activity. The results showed that only print exposure predicted text comprehension significantly and positively, but not for students with a high score on the website recognition test. Moderation analyses indicated that the pattern was clearest for the social activity factor of the website recognition measure. Hence, high activity on social media seems to diminish or remove the positive relationship between print exposure and text comprehension. The results confirm that print exposure relates positively to important aspects of students’ literacy, while further studies should be carried out to investigate the potential negative relationship between website exposure and literacy.

Reinforcing steel corrosion, caused by chloride ingress into concrete, is the leading cause of reinforced concrete deterioration. One of the main findings in the literature for reducing chloride ingress is the improvement of the durability characteristics of concrete by the addition of supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) and/or chemical agents to concrete mixtures. In this study, standard ASTM tests—such as rapid chloride permeability (RCPT), bulk diffusion and sorptivity tests—were used to measure concrete properties such as porosity, sorptivity, salt diffusion, and permeability. Eight different mixtures, prepared with different SCMs and corrosion inhibitors, were tested. Apparent and effective chloride diffusion coefficients were calculated using bound chloride isotherms and time-dependent decrease in diffusion. Diffusion coefficients decreased with time, especially with the addition of SCMs and corrosion inhibitors. The apparent diffusion coefficient calculated using the error function was slightly lower than the effective diffusion coefficient; however, there was a linear trend between the two. The formation factor was found to correlate with the effective diffusion coefficient. The results of the laboratory tests were compared and benchmarked to their counterparts in the marine exposure site in the Arabian Gulf in order to identify laboratory key tests to predict concrete durability. The overall performance of concrete containing SCMs, especially fly ash, were the best among the other mixtures in the laboratory and the field.

Determining and understanding the target-site exposure in clinical studies remains challenging. This is especially true for oral drug inhalation for local treatment, where the target-site is identical to the site of drug absorption, i.e., the lungs. Modeling and simulation based on clinical pharmacokinetic (PK) data may be a valid approach to infer the pulmonary fate of orally inhaled drugs, even without local measurements. In this work, a simulation-estimation study was systematically applied to investigate five published model structures for pulmonary drug absorption. First, these models were compared for structural identifiability and how choosing an inadequate model impacts the inference on pulmonary exposure. Second, in the context of the population approach both sequential and simultaneous parameter estimation methods after intravenous administration and oral inhalation were evaluated with typically applied models. With an adequate model structure and a well-characterized systemic PK after intravenous dosing, the error in inferring pulmonary exposure and retention times was less than twofold in the majority of evaluations. Whether a sequential or simultaneous parameter estimation was applied did not affect the inferred pulmonary PK to a relevant degree. One scenario in the population PK analysis demonstrated biased pulmonary exposure metrics caused by inadequate estimation of systemic PK parameters. Overall, it was demonstrated that empirical modeling of intravenous and inhalation PK datasets provided robust estimates regarding accuracy and bias for the pulmonary exposure and pulmonary retention, even in presence of the high variability after drug inhalation.

This paper presents a new algorithm that predicts the service life of concrete contains supplementary cementitious materials, SCMs, and determines time of corrosion initiation. The algorithm drives effective diffusivity from an apparent diffusion model, using experimental binding data performed in the lab, temperature, free ion concentration, and carbonation, and generates free chloride profiles for concrete with and without SCMs by using Fick’s law in a finite element model. Adjusting diffusion coefficient at each step of the solution, by addressing the impact of different parameters, simplifies the algorithm and reduces calculation time without jeopardizing the results’ quality. Results generated by the model compare well to the performance of concrete blocks constructed in an exposure site on the east coast of Saudi Arabia. The exposure site hosted five different mixes of Portland cement and SCMs, and the concrete blocks were exposed to harsh weather over the period of two years. Linear polarization and chloride profiling assessed the performance of the mixes against corrosion activities. Lab work identified the performance of the mixes through binding capacity and chloride profiling. Statistical analysis evidenced the accuracy of the model through correlation and regression analysis. Furthermore, a new proposed binding model, produced from binding data in different studies, alters the experimental binding data in the algorithm to decouple the solution from experimental values. The algorithm proves its accuracy when compared to the experimental free chloride profile. The proposed transport model proves that using effective diffusion and binding capacity are enough to generate reliable results, and the effective diffusion can be calibrated with environmental conditions such as temperature, age, and carbonation. Finally, the algorithm presents its features in an object-oriented programming using C# and user friendly web interface.

Forty-four indoor and outdoor dust samples were collected from e-waste workshops and were analyzed to characterize the heavy metals and brominated flame retardants (BFRs) as well as on-site human exposure. The results showed that the most abundant Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE) congener from three sites was deca-BDE, and it was penta-BDE for the other site. A significant and positive association was found between BDE-209 and decabromodiphenyl ethane (DBDPE). The high percentage of nona-BDE indicated the debromination of deca-BDE during e-waste recycling. The ratio comparison of BDE-47 to (BDE-100 + BDE-99) indicated that the outdoor dust went through more physiochemical processes. The enrichment factors for Cu and Pb were high in both the indoor and outdoor samples. Cd significantly exceeded the Chinese soil guideline grade III. The PCA results combined with the enrichment factor (EF) values suggested common sources and behaviours of Cu, Pb and Sb in the indoor dust. Co, Cr, Ni, Zn and Mn in the outdoor samples were more likely affected by crust. Strong correlations were found only for Pb and Sb with polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs). The hazard index for on-site human exposure to Pb was at a chronic risk. Despite the low deleterious risk of BFRs, concern should be given to DBDPE; the chronic toxicity of which is not known.

A concrete durability site in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia that exposes Saudi concrete to harsh marine conditions on the Arabian Gulf and salty air conditions was constructed. The site contains 32 concrete blocks formed from eight different mixtures made with Cement Type I, Cement Type V, Cement Type I with 6% silica Fumes, 25% fly Ash, 70% Ground-granulated blast-furnace slag (GGBFS), Migrate Corrosion Inhibitors (MCI), Calcium Nitrite based inhibitors (CNI) and Caltite. Each mixture formed 4 blocks; 2 were reinforced with black steel and two were plain concrete. The concrete blocks were 1200 mm high, 460 mm wide and 230 mm thick placed vertically. The concrete blocks were placed at three zones to achieve different exposure conditions which are atmospheric, splash or spray zone and tidal zone. Samples will be taken periodically to measure the rate of chloride ingress in each concrete mixture under the different exposure conditions. Embedded steel reinforcement in specimens in atmospheric zone have not recorded corrosion activities at six months of exposure. The steel bars in three zones will be monitored for corrosion activity through linear polarization test. The measured chloride profiles in the exposure site will be compared to the measured concrete transport properties from the companion laboratory specimens. Standard compressive test and bulk diffusion test were conducted for 150x300 mm and 75x150 standard cylinders, respectively. All of the cylinders’ strength exceeded the designed compressive strength of 28 MPa. Whereas for 35 days standard bulk diffusion test, mix contained 100% cement type I had the least chloride concentration, and mix 5 that had 70% GGBFS and 30% cement type I had the highest surface chloride concentration. Overall chloride profiles for all the mixes were within ranges reported in literature. Further tests of chloride binding capacity and bulk diffusion for different intervals will be undertaken.

Gas-involving electrochemical reactions, like oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), oxygen evolution reaction (OER), and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), are critical processes for energy-saving, environment-friendly energy conversion and storage technologies which gain increasing attention. The development of according electrocatalysts is key to boost their electrocatalytic performances. Dramatic efforts have been put into the development of advanced electrocatalysts to overcome sluggish kinetics. On the other hand, the electrode interfaces-architecture construction plays an equally important role for practical applications because these imperative electrode reactions generally proceed at triple-phase interfaces of gas, liquid electrolyte, and solid electrocatalyst. A desirable architecture should facilitate the complicate reactions occur at the triple-phase interfaces, which including mass diffusion, surface reaction and electron transfer. In this review, we will summarize some design principles and synthetic strategies for optimizing triple-phase interfaces of gas-involving electrocatalysis systematically, based on the electrode reaction process at the three-phase interfaces. It can be divided into three main optimization directions: exposure of active sites, promotion of mass diffusion and acceleration of electron transfer. Furthermore, we especially highlight several remarkable works with comprehensive optimization about specific energy conversion devices, including metal-air batteries, fuel cells, and water-splitting devices are demonstrated with superb efficiency. In the last section, the perspectives and challenges in the future are proposed.