Attenuation mechanisms and key parameters to enhance treatment performance in vegetation filters: A review.

In times when environmental concerns are on the rise and the search of ways to reduce waste generation and to create a circular economy is booming, Nature Based Solutions (NBSs) play a very important role. Vegetation Filters (VFs) are a type of Land Application System (LAS) in which wastewater is used to irrigate a forestry plantation to treat the water and produce biomass. VFs show multiple benefits that render this technology a suitable solution for wastewater treatment, especially for scattered populations or isolated buildings that lack of connection to sewer systems. This review aims to provide a comprehensive state of the art of VF implementation, highlighting the do's and don'ts for a successful performance focusing on those factors that are essential to water treatment. Results show that VFs have a great treatment capacity when all involving factors are considered, and their efficiency tends to increase with time, as the VF develops and "gets older". Indeed, the presence of fine-textured soils, the selection of a proper vegetation species, the use of pre-treated wastewater and a water balance-based irrigation schedule alternating wetting and -drying cycles are all factors that help to achieve the best performance. However, it is necessary to design and follow a simple but rigorous operation and maintenance schedule to avoid system failure, which could lead to NO3-N leaching towards groundwater.

Dcm-ar: a fast flash-based Web-PACS viewer for displaying large DICOM images.

Using Web-PACS has become an attractive option that brings access to medical imaging databases from remote hosts. However, the big size of the medical images to be transmitted impacts negatively on the teleradiologist experience by increasing the dead times elapsed between study request and visualization on the screen. In this context, it is of the upmost interest to implement strategies to optimize image transmission. In this work a system (Dcm-Ar) for remote visualization of DICOM files is presented, which strongly reduces the time-to-display (TTD), thus improving the teleradiologist comfort. Dcm-Ar is made up of a Server interacting with a PACS and a remote Client. The Client is a DICOM viewer, which is based on the Adobe Flash virtual machine. This fact ensures easy and costless dissemination of the technology.

Aseptic loosening of 2 rim-fix, hydroxyapatite-coated acetabular cups.

Two cases of aseptic loosening in the 11th and 12th year of follow-up of the same acetabular component of a fully hydroxyapatite (HA)-coated total hip arthroplasty are presented. The acetabular cup was a rim-fix type, HA-coated, titanium hemispherical shell secured to the bony acetabulum with titanium screws at the peripheral polyethylene rim. The short-term and midterm results were good with HA-coated total hip arthroplasties, but further studies are needed to investigate whether the >10-year survival of these cups is as good as the survival of cemented ones.