Search

We examine patterns of county participation in immigration enforcement across the Obama and Trump administrations and responses to the Trump administration’s efforts to mandate local compliance with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) directives. We focus on the policy that directly speaks to local discretion in enforcing federal law—namely, the willingness of local officials to render immigrant detainees to ICE. We find that underlying patterns of detainee transfers from counties to ICE were largely consistent between the Obama and Trump administrations. Nonetheless, the rate of detainee transfers increased during the Trump administration, an outcome associated with county support for Trump in the 2016 election. The findings suggest that partisanship is an entrenched source of diverging county enforcement practices, increasing intergovernmental conflict and undermining the “steam valve” potential of immigration federalism.

Angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors are known to precipitate angioedema. Drug-induced angioedema is rare in the perioperative setting. Even fewer cases described hours following a minor procedure. In this case report, we present a 45-year-old female who developed drug-induced angioedema hours following an obstetric procedure.

Background Vascular closure devices have been used to achieve hemostasis of percutaneous access sites following endovascular procedures, with reported decreased time for arterial control as well as decreased time to ambulation. We sought to determine rates and risk factors of postoperative bleeding complications and failures using these devices from a single institution experienced in the use of vascular closure devices. Methods All patients undergoing arterial endovascular procedures with percutaneous access between March 2010 and October 2015 at a single institution were identified and analyzed (n = 894). Patients undergoing endovascular aneurysm repair, open access, venous procedures, or upper extremity access were excluded. Comparison groups were formed between those using the Mynxgrip® (Mynx), Angio-Seal™, Perclose® vascular closure devices and manual pressure (MP). Patient demographics, intraoperative data, and postoperative complications were compared. Results A total of 615 (69%) patients received Mynx, 165 other vascular closure devices (VCD) ([14%] Perclose, 44 [4%] Angio-Seal), and 114 (13%) MP. MP patients were more likely to be diagnostic angiogram with smaller sheaths, while VCD patients were more likely to be interventions with larger sheaths. Univariate analysis identified age, atrial fibrillation, intervention (as opposed to diagnostic), and sheath size >5F associated with postoperative bleeding (P Conclusions Use of vascular closure devices has a low rate of bleeding complication, device failure, and need for operative repair. Bleeding is associated with increased age, interventional procedure, and end-stage renal disease. Mynx, Perclose, and Angio-Seal have similar rates of complications. Use of these devices are a safe option for groin vessel closure.

Patients with acute decompensated heart failure are usually critically ill and require immediate treatment. However, most are not volume overloaded. Emergency department (ED) management is based on rapid initiation of noninvasive positive-pressure ventilation and aggressive titration of nitrates. Afterload reduction with an angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor can be considered. A diuretic should not be administered before optimal preload and afterload reduction has been achieved. Short-term inotropic therapy can be considered in select patients with cardiogenic shock and acute decompensated heart failure (ADHF) who fail to respond to standard therapy.

Shock is a physiologic state associated with high morbidity and mortality rates. The clinician has several tools available to evaluate volume status. Each modality has its benefits and limitations but, to date, no one test can indicate with 100% accuracy which patients will be truly volume responsive. Although the search for the Holy Grail of a perfect intravascular monitor continues, we must remember the importance of early, aggressive, and goal-directed interventions for patients in shock. Finally, there is no substitute for the most important intervention-the frequent presence of the physician at the patient's bedside.

Purpose Emergency department (ED) patients are at high risk for the acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Settings only 1 mL/kg above recommended tidal volumes confers harm for these patients. The purpose of this study was to determine whether ED physicians routinely initiate mechanical ventilation with low tidal volumes in patients at risk for ARDS. Materials and Methods We retrospectively reviewed the charts of all adult patients who were intubated in an urban, academic ED. The charts were analyzed to identify patients in whom ARDS developed within 48 hours after ED admission. Patients were eligible for inclusion if they had bilateral infiltrates on imaging, had a Pa o 2 /F io 2 ratio less than 300 mm Hg and did not have heart failure contributing to their presentation. The tidal volumes set in the ED were then compared with the recommended tidal volume of 6 mL/kg of predicted body weight. Results The initial tidal volumes set in the ED were higher than recommended by an average of 80 mL (95% confidence interval, 60-110, P Conclusions In an academic, tertiary hospital, newly intubated ED patients in whom ARDS developed within 48 hours after intubation were ventilated with tidal volumes that exceeded recommendations by an average of 1.5 mL/kg.

Sepsis is a heterogeneous clinical syndrome that encompasses infections of many different types and severity. Not surprisingly, it has confounded most attempts to apply a single definition, which has also limited the ability to develop a set of reliable diagnostic criteria. It is perhaps best defined as the different clinical syndromes produced by an immune response to infection that causes harm to the body beyond that of the local effects of the infection.

This paper presents the design of a scalable, high power battery system for pulsed power operations. The battery system is modular in design, with each module containing four Lithium Ion Polymer (LiPo) cells and a custom designed cell management board that actively monitors the voltage and temperature of each cell and also provides cell balancing functionality. The system is designed to be scalable by adding up to 25 modules in a series configuration. While the battery management system should be compatible with any lithium ion cells, this implementation uses 8 Ah capacity dual-core LiPo cells, rated for a 150 C discharge rate; allowing for a peak current output of 1,200 A. With 25 modules (96 LiPo cells) the system would have an open circuit voltage of 385 V and be capable of providing up to 1,200 A at 355 V for a peak output power of 420 kW. Special attention has been placed on safety features including overvoltage, undervoltage and temperature monitoring of every cell in the system. The charging/balancing system is capable of automatically shutting down if any of the voltages or temperatures exceeds established limits. The management circuitry is designed to have a low off-state power draw in order to maximize battery life when the system is not in use.

A 42 J, 10-stage pulse forming network (PFN) Marx generator capable of producing a 500 kV, 50 ns full-width-half-max (FWHM), ∼5 ns rise time pulse into an open load at a rep-rate of 500 Hz has been designed for use as a pulsed power source for a reflex triode virtual cathode oscillator (vircator). Rayleigh PFNs are used in place of discrete capacitors for each stage of the 10-stage Marx generator. Effort was taken to minimize parasitic inductance such that the quality of the pulse shape is maintained as much as possible. In order to rep-rate the Marx generator, a trigatron-based triggering scheme is used to initiate erection of the Marx generator. A 20 ns risetime, 24 kV solid-state pulse trigger generator capable of operating at high repetition rates is used to drive the trigatron. The required charge rate for a 500 Hz pulse repetition frequency (PRF) for the Marx generator is 24 kW. Repetitive operation requires additional design considerations that would be irrelevant to single pulse firing. Pressurized air is jetted across the spark gaps by means of built-in gas manifolds to remove remaining ionized gas between each pulse and prevent premature erection during the subsequent charging cycle. The built-in gas manifolds were designed using a hydrodynamic simulation to ensure equal flow rate across each of the spark gaps and equal pressure along the length of the tube chamber.

tion for patients intubated in the ED. We believe the editorial misstates our main conclusion. We primarily found that, in the subset of patients in whom the ARDS developed, initial tidal volumes were higher than the recommended tidal volume of 6 mL/kg of ideal body weight (IBW) [1]. Our study was not designed to show causality between higher initial ventilator settings and the subsequent development of ARDS. Rather, we selected the subset of patients in whom ARDS later developed because they are the patients in whom tidal volumes are felt to be most important. Lung-protective ventilation with a recommended tidal volume of 6 mL/kg has been commonly adopted for all comers since the And Respiratory Management in ARDS (ARMA) trial from the ARDS Network [1] .I n that prospective, randomized trial, the patients seeing a mortality benefit from lung-protective tidal volume ventilation were those who had ARDS. We therefore chose to look at this specific population by including only patients who developed ARDS within 48 hours after intubation. We sought to determine if the ED-initiated ventilator settings in this subset adhered to the goal of 6 mL/kg IBW and found that the volumes were set higher by approximately 1.5 mL/kg of IBW. Importantly, the assertion that the ARMA trial protocol called for an initial tidal volume of 8 mL/kg IBW is somewhat misleading. The protocol does call for an “initial” tidal volume of 8 mL/kg IBW but then states that this tidal volume “will be reduced by 1 mL/kg IBW at intervals of less than or equal to 2 hours until tidal volume equals to 6 mL/kg IBW,” at which point further adjustments would be made for acidosis, hypoxia, and plateau pressures. We did not findthat this titration occurredin our cohort. For patientswho were eventually ventilated at 6 mL/kg IBW, an average of 14 hours passed before they reached this goal. Furthermore, the same protocol states that the tidal volume could be increased above 6 mL/kg only in the setting of severe acidosis (pH b7.15) that persisted despite a respiratory rate of 35

Self-patterned SrBi2Ta2O9 thin films were successfully fabricated from photo-sensitive solutions by means of UV irradiation through photo masks. After conventional baking and wet etching the films were annealed. The photo-sensitive SrBi2Ta2O9 solutions give high resolution negative-pattern of the mask image down to 1 μm line width by deep UV irradiation at 900 mJ/cm2. The capacitor characteristics of the 210 nm thick films fabricated on the Pt/Ti/SiO2/Si substrates by this process showed 2Pr values of 17 μC/cm2, 2Ec of 89 kV/cm, and leakage current densities of 5×10−9 A/cm2 at 5 V. The films showed no fatigue after 1×1011 switching cycles.

Recently there has been a paradigm shift in nonvolatile computer memories from silicon-technology-based EEPROMs (electrically erasable, programmable read-only memories) to devices in which the stored information is coded into + and − polarizations in thin-film ferroelectric capacitors. Such devices have read and erase/rewrite speeds of the order of 1–35 ns, many orders of magnitude faster than the erase/rewrite speeds of the best EEPROMs (Table I). However, fundamental questions concerning their lifetimes had delayed full commercialization. Because ferroelectrics normally have extremely large dielectric constants, their use as nonswitching capacitors in dynamic random-access memories (DRAMs) is also rapidly evolving. The majority of studies to date have emphasized lead zirconate titanate (PZT)-based capacitors for nonvolatile ferroelectric random-access memories (NVFRAMs) and barium strontium titanate-based capacitor DRAMs (see Table II).

The transmission electron microscope (TEM) is one of the most useful tools available to the materials scientist. Yet both the complexity and expense of the equipment, and the huge investment in time necessary to become proficient in specimen preparation and image acquisition and analysis, mean that it is difficult for most industrial institutions to maintain a state-of-the-art TEM facility. How can industry overcome this problem? One solution is to set up a collaboration with a university, an industrial partner, or a government research laboratory. Such collaborations can be extremely valuable to the company, which gains access to microscopes, specimen-preparation equipment and the expertise of professional microscopists, and to the research laboratory, which benefits from the industrial perspective and the private sector's proficiency in materials preparation and processing.Such collaborations exist, and they can produce excellent results. In this article, we present three case studies in which successful collaboration has occurred between industry and one of the Department of Energy's scientific user facilities, the National Center for Electron Microscopy (NCEM-see sidebar). Our aim is not only to describe results that we hope will be of scientific interest but also to encourage industrial researchers to consider collaborations with institutes such as NCEM.

In 1991 we demonstrated the use of a deposition machine that injected liquid sol-gel material into a vacuum chamber at room temperature for the production of high quality lead zirconate titanate (PZT) thin films. This year we have modified the machine to produce strontium titanate and barium strontium titanate films of sufficient quality for DRAM applications.

We present a study of breakdown fields in BaxSr1−xTiO3 ceramics as functions of thickness, temperature, applied voltage ramp rate, electrode material and cross-sectional area. The data show evidence of Zener-like breakdown mechanisms. The d.c. leakage currents at voltages below breakdown are dominated by tunneling injection and image forces at low voltages (≤3 V), Schottky behavior at intermediate voltages V a (3 V ≤ V a ≤ 6 V; 150 kV/cm ≤ E ≤ 300 kV/cm), and Fowler-Nordheim tunneling at high voltages; it is shown that both the Schottky emission regime and the ultimate breakdown arise from inter-grain effects rather than the BST/electrode interface, in accord with the theory of Neumann and Arlt and of Waser and Klee. In contrast to PbZrxTi1−xO3 (PZT), which displays avalanche breakdown and space-charge limited d.c. leakage currents at normal 5 V silicon IC voltages, BST exhibits Schottky-dominated leakage currents in this 5 V regime, and is dominated by Fowler-Nordheim tunneling in its breakdown ...

A SIGNIFICANT fraction of the computer memory industry is at present involved in the manufacture of non-volatile memory devices1—that is, devices which retain information when power is interrupted. For such applications (and also for volatile memories), the use of capacitors constructed from ferroelectric thin films has stimulated much interest1. In such structures, information is stored in the polarization state of the ferroelectric material itself, which should in principle lead to lower power requirements, faster access time and potentially lower cost1. But the use of ferroelectrics is not without problems; the memories constructed to date have generally suffered from poor retention of stored information and degradation of performance ('fatigue') with use1–3. Here we describe the preparation and characterization of thin-film capacitors using ferroelectric materials from a large family of layered perovskite oxides, exemplified by SrBi2Ta2O9, SrBi2NbTaO9 and SrBi4Ta4O15. The structural flexibility of these materials allows their properties to be tailored so that many of the problems associated with previous ferroelectric memories are avoided. In particular, our capacitors do not show significant fatigue after 1012 switching cycles, and they exhibit good retention characteristics and low leakage currents even with films less than 100 nm thick.

The current-voltage and capacitance-voltage characteristics of fine-grained, ceramic BST thin films for ULSI (ultralarge-scale integrated) DRAM (dynamic random-access memory) applications are examined. A model and pertinent data for integrated BST capacitors used in 16/64-Mb DRAM cells are presented. The results confirm in detail the conclusion of R. Waser and M. Klee (1991, 1992) that conduction in ceramic SrTiO/sub 3/ is Schottky-dominated and that the Schottky barriers arise from depletion regions at grain boundaries and not only at the ferroelectric/electrode interface. >

review is given, emphasizing electron microscopy, XPS, heavy-ion scattering, and very high frequency (1 MHz) hysteresis data, of the materials characteristics of thin films of SrBi2NbTaO9, SrBi2Ta2O9, and related titanates.

The Air Force Phillips Laboratory Gyro-BWO experiment is utilizing the RAMBO pulser, with electron beam parameters of: VD equals 300-800 kV; ID equals 1-50 kA; pulselength equals 1-3 microsecond(s) . An annular electron beam of approximately 1-3 kA is produced by an annular aluminum cathode. The interaction cavity is designed to radiate in the frequency range of 4.2-5.5 GHz in a TE01 mode. The interaction cavity has a radius of 4.37 cm and a length of 15 cm. A diode magnetic field is used for a field immersed diode, and is tunable from 0-2 kG. The interaction region magnetic field is tunable from 2-7 kG. The diode and interaction magnetic fields are used together to provide a magnetic compression of the electron beam. C-band bevel-cut antennas located at the diode end of the experiment are used to extract the backward wave. Experiments have given microwave output pulselengths of 40-500 ns, on a voltage pulselength of 200-1400 ns. Extracted power range from 0.1 to 4 MW, and is voltage dependent. Nearly constant rf power can be extracted from 4.2-5.0 GHz in small passband filters. Breakdown of the air in the C-band waveguide has been observed during operation in the TE21 mode. Evidence of mode competition exists in the form of two different frequency values appearing at the same time. A (lambda) /4 slotted cavity has been designed, as well as a helical slotted cavity, in an effort to suppress the TEn1 modes, n does not equal 0. Analysis and numerical simulations from the 2 1/2-D PIC code MAGIC are presented, as well as the latest experimental results.© (1995) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

The Electromagnetic Sources Division of the Advanced Weapons and Survivability Directorate at the Phillips Laboratory is dedicated to the development of HPM sources. This paper will report on the recent work done on a magnetically insulated line oscillator (MILO). The MILO is a linear magnetron type device with the bias magnetic field applied by the current flowing through the tube, hence no externally applied magnetic field is required. This work concentrates on the axial extraction of the microwave power in contrast to most of the previous work which concentrated on the radial extraction of power. Theory has predicted and experiments have shown that a number of parameters, including but not limited to, the boundaries at the ends of the slow wave structure, the location of the emission region, the method of launching the beam, the anode-cathode gap, and the number of cavities, all have a significant effect on the operation of the tube. A number of tests at diode voltages from 150 kV to over 500 kV have been conducted to gain a better understanding of the mechanisms controlling the operation of the device. To data RF powers over 1 GW for short pulses (< 100 ns) have been achieved with the goal of further experiments and corresponding simulations are reported here.

Summary form only given, as follows. The Air Force Phillips Laboratory Gyro-BWO experiment is utilizing the RAMBO pulser, with electron beam parameters of: V/sub D/=300-800 kV; I/sub D/=1-50 kA; pulselength=1-3 /spl mu/s. An annular electron beam of /spl sim/1-3 kA is produced by an annular aluminum cathode. The interaction cavity is designed to radiate in the frequency range of 4.2-5.5 GHz in a TE/sub 01/ mode. The interaction cavity has a radius of 4.37 cm and a length of 15 cm. A diode magnetic field is used for a field immersed diode, and is tunable from 0-2 kG. The interaction region magnetic field is tunable from 2-7 kG. The diode and interaction magnetic fields are used together to provide a magnetic compression of the electron beam. C-Band bevel-cut antennas located at the diode end of the experiment are used to extract the backward wave. Experiments have given microwave output pulselengths of 40-500 ns, on a voltage pulselength of 200-1400 ns. Extracted power range from 0.1 to 4 MW, and is voltage dependent. Nearly constant rf power can be extracted from 4.2-5.0 GHz in small passband filters. Breakdown of the air in the C-Band waveguide has been observed during operation in the TE/sub 21/ mode. Evidence of mode competition exists in the form of two different frequency values appearing at the same time. A /spl lambda//4 slotted cavity has been designed,as well as a helical slotted cavity, in an effort to suppress the TE/sub n1/ modes, n=0. Analysis and numerical simulations from the 2 1/2-D PIC code MAGIC will be presented, as well as the latest experimental results.