The Tonle Sap is the largest wetland in South-east Asia and the heart of the largest inland fishery in the world. Its unique flood pulse system and annual flow reversal is a hotspot for biodiversity and productivity, as well as an essential habitat for many endangered fishes and birds. Despite predicted changes to the wetland's hydrology due to climate change and hydropower development in the Mekong, the consequent impacts on the fauna of the lake are poorly understood. A spatial modelling framework was developed to simulate the impact of potential scenarios of change using relationships between fauna and biophysical characteristics. Potential impacts on 61 animal species with documented nutritional, conservation or ecological value were examined. A large number of species rely on gallery forest to provide important habitats for their life history, yet this area is likely to be highly impacted by permanent inundation. There is a strong synchronicity between life histories and the flood pulse; consequently continued hydrological disruptions will have a significant impact on ecosystem dynamics, imposing further challenges to conservation. Protecting areas that may become suitable for gallery forests and shrublands under a modified flood regime will be crucial to management planning and the maintenance of a diverse and healthy ecosystem.

The tribunals system in England and Wales has been transformed by the entry into force of the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007; among other things, tribunals are now located more firmly and explicitly than ever before within the judicial branch. Questions concerning the relationship between tribunals and regular courts fall to be confronted afresh within this new institutional landscape. Those questions form the focus of this article, which is particularly concerned with the issue recently considered by the Supreme Court in Cart whether, and if so to what extent, decisions taken within the tribunals system (by the Upper Tribunal) should be susceptible to judicial review by the High Court. In Cart, emphasis was placed upon the concept of “proportionate dispute resolution” as a means by which to delimit regular courts' oversight of tribunals' decisions, raising fundamental questions both of legal doctrine (relating to the relevance of the orthodox doctrinal tools of administrative law) and legal policy (concerning the degree of error on the part of a tribunal that a higher court should tolerate in the interests of the efficient, or proportionate, use of judicial resources).

Hydroxyapatite (HA) is a bone-like ceramic used as a coating for dental and orthopedic implants. It is well known for its good cytocompatibility properties, but is limited in use due to its high solubility within the body and mechanical properties that differ from surrounding tissue and bone. The present in vitro study investigated a variety of dopants as a way to further enhance the good cytocompatibility properties of HA as well as address these problematic properties. The dopants investigated were divalent (magnesium and zinc) and trivalent (yttrium, lanthanum, indium, and bismuth) ions. Of the trivalent ions, yttrium and indium have smaller ionic radii than calcium. The present study showed osteoblast adhesion to be statistically greater (p < 0.1) on yttrium-doped HA and indium-doped HA than on undoped HA. Since yttrium and indium are both trivalent ions of a smaller ionic radius than calcium, and other ions of different size and charge did not show significant changes in osteoblast adhesion, these results suggest that substituting divalent calcium with a trivalent ion of smaller size encourages osteoblast adhesion.

Low-temperature chemical vapor deposition of M(allyl)3 (M = Rh, Ir; allyl = η3 -C3H5) in the presence of H• yields thin, crystalline metal films of greater than 97% metal composition. Depositions using H2 result in the formation of materials which are amorphous and contain a significant amount of residual carbon (14%). The composition of these materials does not differ significantly from that obtained from the vacuum thermal deposition of M(allyl)3.

Plasma spray deposition of hydroxyapatite (HA) onto a titanium implant involves high temperatures that may alter HA crystallinity and induce cracks in the coating. For this reason, the objective of this study was to design a novel HA coating material and method. Titanium was coated with HA, titania, and Poly (dl-lactic-glycolic acid) (PLGA) using sol-gel processing. The biocompatibility of the HA coating in the present study was compared to that of a plasmasprayed HA coating. Results of this study showed that osteoblast adhesion was promoted more in the HA coating proposed in this study than on the plasma-sprayed HA coating. In addition, hydrothermal treatment of the coating appeared to improve the biocompatibility of the HA coating. Since osteoblast adhesion is a necessary requirement for increased bonding of an implant to juxtaposed bone, these results support that hydrothermally sol-gel processed HA may be an optimal implant coating material and method.

Much work is needed in the design of more effective bone tissue engineering materials to induce the growth of normal bone tissue. Nanotechnology offers exciting alternatives to traditional bone implants since bone itself is a nanostructured material composed of nanofibered hydroxyapatite well-dispersed in a mostly collagen matrix. For this purpose, poly-lactic-co-glycolic acid (PLGA) was dissolved in chloroform and nanometer grain size titania was dispersed by various sonication powers from 0 W to 166 W. Previous results demonstrated that the dispersion of titania in PLGA was enhanced by increasing the intensity of sonication and that greater osteoblast (bone-forming cells) adhesion correlated with improved nanophase titania dispersion in PLGA. However, adhesion of osteoblasts to material surfaces, alone, is not adequate to determine long-term functions of implant materials. For this reason, and as a next step to determine the efficacy of nanocomposites in bone applications, subsequent functions of osteoblasts on nanophase titania/PLGA composites were investigated in vitro in this study. For the first time, results correlated better osteoblast long-term functions, specifically the deposition of calcium-containing mineral, with improved nanophase titania dispersions in PLGA.In this manner, the present study demonstrated that PLGA composites with well-dispersed nanophase titania can improve osteoblast functions necessary for the further investigation of these materials in orthopedic applications.

Bone substitutes are often required to replace damaged tissue due to injuries, diseases and genetic malformations. Traditional bone substitutes, such as autografts, allografts, xenografts and metal implants, are far from ideal as each have their own specific problems and limitations. Bone tissue engineering offers a promising opportunity for bone regeneration in a natural way. However, currently the scientific challenges of bone tissue engineering lie in the development of suitable scaffold materials that can improve bone cell adhesion, proliferation and differentiation. The design of nanophase titania/polymer composites offers an exciting approach to combine the advantages of a degradable polymer with nano-size ceramic grains that optimize biological properties for bone regeneration. Importantly, nanophase titania mimics the size scale of constituent components of bone since bone itself is a nanostructured composite composed of nanometer hydroxyapatite crystals well-dispersed in a mostly collagen matrix. Previous studies have shown significant improvement in protein adsorption, osteoblast (bone-forming cell) adhesion and long-term functions on nano-grain ceramic materials compared to traditional micron-grain ceramic materials. This study used nanometer grain size titania dispersed in a model polymer (PLGA or poly-lactic-co-glycolic acid) matrix by using various sonication powers to increase osteoblast adhesion. The surface characteristics of the composites, such as topography, titania surface area coverage and surface roughness, were studied by scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy. Of all the composites formulated in this study, osteoblast adhesion was the greatest on nanophase titania/PLGA (30/70 wt.%) sonicated at 118.75 for 10 minutes; this composite was the closest in terms of nanometer surface roughness compared to bone of all the composites formulated. In this manner, this study suggests that nanophase titania sonicated in PLGA under these conditions should be further studied for orthopedic applications.

Titanium is broadly used in orthopedic and dental applications mainly because of its optimal mechanical properties in load-bearing applications. However, insufficient new bone formation is frequently observed on titanium which sometimes leads to implant loosening and failure. For this reason, the objective of the present in vitro study was to modify the surface of conventional titanium to include nanostructured surface features that promote the functions of osteoblasts (bone-forming cells). This study focused on creating nanostructured titanium surfaces since bone itself has a large degree of nanostructured roughness that bone cells are accustomed to interacting with. In this study, the surface of titanium was modified by anodic oxidation techniques. The electrolyte used for anodization was hydrofluoric acid. Depending on acid concentration and anodization time, two kinds of different nano-architectures, either particulate or tube-like structures, were formed on the titanium surface. X-ray diffraction results confirmed that the titanium oxide formed on the surface of titanium was amorphous. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) were used to characterize the surface morphology. Cell adhesion studies showed that the anodized nanostructured titanium surface promoted osteoblast adhesion compared to non-anodized titanium. This result indicated that anodization may be a simple method to modify the surface of titanium implants to enhance bone-forming cell function thereby increasing orthopedic implant efficacy.