Urban stormwater nutrient and metal removal in small-scale green infrastructure: exploring engineered plant biofilter media optimisation.

The present study evaluated engineered media for plant biofilter optimisation in an unvegetated column experiment to assess the performance of loamy sand, perlite, vermiculite, zeolite and attapulgite media under stormwater conditions enriched with varying nutrients and metals reflecting urban pollutant loads. Sixty columns, 30 unvegetated and 30 Juncus effusus vegetated, were used to test: pollutant removal, infiltration rate, particulate discharge, effluent clarity and plant functional response, over six sampling rounds. All engineered media outperformed conventional loamy sand across criteria, with engineered attapulgite consistently among the best performers. No reportable difference existed in vegetation exposed to different material combinations. For all media, the results show a net removal of NH3-N, PO43--P, Cd, Cu, Pb and Zn and an increase of NO3--N, emphasizing the importance of vegetation in biofilters. Growth media supporting increased rate of infiltration whilst maintaining effective remediation performance offers the potential for reducing the area required by biofilters, currently recommended at 2% of its catchment area, encouraging the use of small-scale green infrastructure in the urban area. Further research is required to assess the carrying capacity of engineered media in laboratory and field settings, particularly during seasonal change, gauging the substrate's potential moisture availability for root uptake.

Telecommuting and health care: a potential for cost reductions and productivity gains.

Health care administrators are striving to maintain positive operating margins while remaining responsive to community needs. As they look for ways to reduce costs and improve productivity, they may consider the benefits associated with telecommuting. Telecommuting refers to the work performed by organizational employees who use computers and telecommunication equipment to work at home or at remote sites one or more days a week. Benefits to the health care industry include release of valuable hospital space, reduced employee turnover, and increased productivity. The time away from the institution may provide administrators with valuable planning time, free from interruptions.

Decision support systems. Using computers to help manage.

Nurse executives often are encouraged to work smarter, not harder. Decision support systems offer methods for refining the decision-making process. The authors review the types of decisions that managers make and the ways that decision support systems can help nurse executives work smarter.

Applying just-in-time philosophy to healthcare.

Nurse executives need to review what is working in other industries to see if similar techniques and philosophies can help the healthcare industry. The authors review the manufacturing philosophy supporting the just-in-time method and apply some of its principles to healthcare to improve operations and operating margins.

Characterization of a rearrangement in the c-MYB promoter in the acute lymphoblastic leukemia cell line CCRF-CEM.

Despite the frequent description of 6q- structural abnormalities in human leukemias and lymphomas, rearrangements of the c-MYB locus have not been detected. We have detected a rearrangement in the c-MYB proto-oncogene in the cell line CCRF-CEM, an immature T-cell leukemia cell line which is not 6q-. Due to this rearrangement, a large portion of the c-MYB promoter conserved between the human and murine c-MYB genes is lost. The rearranged locus, which we have designated MRR (MYB rearranged region), has been cloned and mapped to chromosome 6. Field inversion gel electrophoresis (FIGE) studies reveal that the MRR sequence is linked to the c-MYB locus, suggesting that the rearrangement is due to a submicroscopic deletion. The rearrangement appears to have no effect on c-MYB promoter activity as analyzed in CCRF-CEM cells. The normal locus of the MRR sequence has been cloned from a human placental genomic library. Partial sequence analysis of this clone reveals that a portion of the DNA lost in the rearrangement shows a high degree of homology to a member of the myc family of oncogenes. Thus the characterization of this rearrangement has yielded a new set of probes for the study of chromosome 6q abnormalities in human leukemias and lymphomas and provides the first evidence for potential involvement of the c-MYB locus itself in submicroscopic deletions within chromosome 6.

Identification of a second promoter in the human c-myb proto-oncogene.

We have previously described an alternatively spliced cDNA clone of the human c-myb proto-oncogene which has been shown to enhance the differentiation of Friend murine erythroleukemia cells. This clone, pMbm-2, contains unique 5' sequences which replace exon 1. The human c-myb intron 1 was sequenced to determine the exact position of this unique sequence and to further characterize the role of intron 1 in the regulation of the human c-myb gene. Here we report that intron 1 of c-myb is highly conserved between human and mouse throughout the intron, while only those sequences directly adjacent to exons 1 and 2 are conserved between human and chicken. The unique sequence of pMbm-2 was located directly adjacent to exon 2, suggesting that it arose as a product of alternative transcription initiation within intron 1. RNAase protection analysis was used to map a cluster of transcription start sites at the 5' end of exon 2. Levels of messages utilizing these start sites are proportional to those arising from the primary promoter. Functional characterization of this region revealed that this region can function as a promoter. Deletion studies have revealed the presence of negative and positive regulatory elements within this region which are utilized with different efficiencies in different cell lines. These studies suggest that cis or trans factors acting in this region may serve a dual function in both attenuation and transcription initiation.