Extracorporeal Blood Purification in the Intensive Care Units

peer reviewedMortality remains high in intensive care patients with renal failure requiring extra corporeal blood purification. This article reviews the recent data that have led to the improvement of the care for such patients. We will discuss the criteria to determine the choice of the technique (intermittent or continuous), of the membrane, of the prescribing dose, and the type of anticoagulation and when to initiate such a treatment

Determination of lightning characteristics through the use of electromagnetic field data

In this thesis we determine the electromagnetic fields of a current distribution located, in free space, above a perfectly conducting plane earth. Then we consider the inverse problem of determining the source distribution from the fields. Formulae are obtained for the volume integral (dipole moment) of the current density of a small current source in terms of the fields and known functions. If field data are measured (from lightning over sea water for example) the dipole moment of the current density producing the fields may be found. The validity of the small source approximation used in this work is also established. Finally, a method is developed for determining the average current at points on a vertical line current source, a common model for a lightning return stroke. We treat the source as a string of dipoles and apply a method of constrained inversion