Achondrogenesis type 2 diagnosed by transvaginal ultrasound at 12 weeks' gestation

Ultrasound examination at 12 weeks' gestation revealed severe generalised subcutaneous oedema in a pregnancy at risk for achondrogenesis type II. Transvaginal scanning confirmed the oedema and suggested abnormal limb development. The prenatal diagnosis was confirmed by X-ray examination after transvaginal termination.     

Expanding multiple marker screening for Down's syndrome to include Edward'S syndrome

Information on maternal age and maternal serum alpha-fetoprotein, unconjugated oestriol (uE₃), and human chorionic gonadotrophin (hCG) levels was used to investigate retrospectively the effect of estimating Edward's syndrome risk in women having multi-marker screening for Down's syndrome. The screened population comprised 15 pregnancies affected by Edward's syndrome, 15 with Down's syndrome and 5472 unaffected pregnancies. The use of all three markers to estimate Edward's syndrome risk would have led to the detection of 10–12 (67–80 per cent) cases with a false-positive rate of 0.3–0.6 per cent depending on the risk cut-off. A further case would have been detected as a result of screening for Down's syndrome alone. Similar results were obtained when the Edward's syndrome risk was based on uE₃ and hCG only. These data suggest that extending Down's syndrome screening to include Edward's syndrome risk will yield a high detection rate with only a small increase in the false-positive rate.     

二沉池漂泥原因及控制措施

二级污水处理厂二沉池漂泥有反硝化漂泥、活性污泥老化漂泥、生物泡沫导致的漂泥。最终的解决办法是：分析漂泥原因、对症下药、改善工艺运行状况、采取有效的控制措施.     

Serum PAPP-A measurements in first-trimester screening for Down syndrome

Serum PAPP-A measurements taken from 254 women in the first trimester are reported. Eleven chromosomal abnormalities were detected. The mean serum PAPP-A levels in cases of Down syndrome were 0.44 MOM at 9 weeks gestation, 0.15 MOM at 10 weeks, and 0.29 MOM at 11 weeks. The PAPP-A level at 10 weeks was below those of pregnancies which aborted spontaneously. At 11 weeks, the pregnancies with Down syndrome recorded the lowest PAPP-A levels at that gestation. On this small sample, offering chorionic villus sampling to women with singleton pregnancies and a PAPP-A level below 0.3 MOM (approximately 6.5 per cent of this at-risk group) would have detected all the Down syndrome fetuses at 10 weeks and 50 per cent at 11 weeks without selecting those cases destined to abort. This suggests that serum PAPP-A should continue to be investigated as a potential first-trimester screening test for Down syndrome.     

High-performance permanent magnets

 High-performance permanent magnets (pms) are based on compounds with outstanding intrinsic magnetic properties as well as on optimized microstructures and alloy compositions. The most powerful pm materials at present are RE–TM intermetallic alloys which derive their exceptional magnetic properties from the favourable combination of rare earth metals (RE=Nd, Pr, Sm) with transition metals (TM=Fe, Co), in particular magnets based on (Nd,Pr)₂Fe₁₄B and Sm₂(Co,Cu,Fe,Zr)₁₇. Their development during the last 20 years has involved a dramatic improvement in their performance by a factor of >15 compared with conventional ferrite pms therefore contributing positively to the ever-increasing demand for pms in many (including new) application fields, to the extent that RE–TM pms now account for nearly half of the worldwide market. This review article first gives a brief introduction to the basics of ferromagnetism to confer an insight into the variety of (permanent) magnets, their manufacture and application fields. We then examine the rather complex relationship between the microstructure and the magnetic properties for the two highest-performance and most promising pm materials mentioned. By using numerical micromagnetic simulations on the basis of the Finite Element technique the correlation can be quantitatively predicted, thus providing a powerful tool for the further development of optimized high-performance pms.