PubMed Health⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

J Simůnek

Publications and source records attributed to J Simůnek.

23 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

[Effectiveness of various barbiturates in chickens of different ages].

Phenobarbital, allobarbital, and pentobarbital in the doses of 40 and 80 mg per 1 kg body mass were applied intramuscularly to groups of the cockerels of the WL breed at the age of two days, one, two, and six weeks (each group had ten birds) and to eight-week-old WL cockerels in groups of five birds. The methods of clinical observation and repeated determination of the response of the animals to sonic stimuli and contact stimuli, and the evaluation of the quality of some reflexes (particularly the spontaneous position of the body and the correction of the lateral position) were used for the study of suppression evoked by the applied barbiturates. Sleep occurred first after the application of pentobarbital (sooner in younger age groups). The latest beginning of sleep was observed after phenobarbital; in the latter case, sleep was hard to evaluate because it was not very deep. The time of sleep had the longest duration after allobarbital (only in the eight-week-old sleep was longer after pentobarbital), and the shortest after phenobarbital; there were also differences in the duration of sleep between the age groups of birds. The pentobarbital dose of 80 mg kg-1 of body mass killed birds in the three youngest age groups )in the two-day-old it killed nine of ten birds, in the one-week-old eight of ten birds, and in the two-week-old two of ten birds). The differences in the effectiveness of the applied barbiturates in two doses per unit of body mass were related to the age of the animals, even in the cases of the shortest age intervals between individual groups. Very high interspecies differences ensue from a comparison with the doses of these barbiturates usually applied to man.

Age Factors↗

A modification to the Bouwer and Rice method of slug-test analysis for large-diameter, hand-dug wells.

The Bouwer and Rice method of estimating the saturated hydraulic conductivity (Ks) from slug-test data was evaluated for geometries typical of hand-dug wells. A two-dimensional, radially symmetric and variably saturated, ground water transport model was used to simulate well recovery given a range of well and aquifer geometries and unsaturated soil properties, the latter in terms of the van Genuchten parameters. The standard Bouwer and Rice method, when applied to the modeled recharge rates, underestimated Ks by factors ranging from 1.3 to 5.6, depending on the well geometry and the soil type. The Bouwer and Rice analytical solution was modified to better explain the recovery rates as predicted by the numerical model, which revealed a significant dependence on the unsaturated soil for the shallow and wide geometries that are typical of traditional wells. The modification introduces a new parameter to the Bouwer and Rice analysis that is a measure of soil capillarity which improves the accuracy of Ks estimates by tenfold for the geometries tested.

Computer Simulation↗

Aging effects on cadmium transport in undisturbed contaminated sandy soil columns.

Limited information is available on the effects of contaminant aging (i.e., the contact time of Cd with the soil) on Cd transport in soils. We conducted displacement experiments in which indigenous Cd and freshly applied Cd were leached simultaneously from undisturbed samples of three Spodosol horizons. Sorption of Cd was described using Freundlich isotherms, whereas transport was described as a convection-dispersion process. Parameter optimization analysis using a mobile-immobile transport model applied to nonsorbing tracer displacement data showed that 16 to 22% of the water in the columns was immobile. The low dimensionless mass transfer coefficients in the mobile-immobile model were indicative of diffusion-limited transfer between mobile and immobile water, and hence physical nonequilibrium. A two-site kinetic sorption model could be fitted closely to breakthrough curves of the non-aged Cd for three soil horizons. No conclusive evidence was found that contaminant aging in soil affects cadmium transport. On the one hand, predictions of aged Cd leaching, using parameters estimated from displacement experiments with nonaged Cd, differed from those for the aged Cd in the E horizon. On the other hand, no meaningful differences in transport behavior between aged and non-aged Cd were found for the humus Bh and Bh/C horizons. The two-site kinetic rate coefficient alphac was found to depend on water flux, further indicating that mass transfer between sorption sites and the liquid is limited by diffusion rather than by kinetic sorption.

Adsorption↗

Inverse analyses of transport of chlorinated hydrocarbons subject to sequential transformation reactions.

Chemical and biological transformations can significantly affect contaminant transport in the subsurface. To better understand such transformation reactions, an equilibrium-nonequilibrium sorption transport model, HYDRUS-1D, was modified by including inverse solutions for multiple breakthrough curves resulting from the transport of solutes undergoing sequential transformations. The inverse solutions were applied to miscible-displacement experiments involving dissolved concentrations of trichloroethylene (TCE) undergoing reduction and/or transformations in the presence of zero-valent metal porous media (i.e., iron or copper-coated iron filings) to produce ethylene. The inverse model solutions provided a reasonable description of the transport and transformation processes. Simultaneous fitting of multiple breakthrough curves of TCE and ethylene placed additional constraints on the inverse solution and improved the reliability of parameter estimates. Confidence intervals of optimized parameters were reduced significantly in comparison with those obtained by fitting TCE breakthrough curves independently. Further evidence for accurate parameter estimates was given when the parameter values agreed with previously reported values from independent batch and degradation experiments. Optimized values of the normalized degradation rates for the equilibrium (1.4 x 10(-4) to 7.2 x 10(-5) L h(-1)m(-2)) and nonequilibrium (1.2 x 10(-4) to 5.5 x 10(-5)L h(-1)m(-2)) models compared well with values (0.03 to 6.5 x 10(-5) L h(-1) m(-2)) obtained from previous studies. The estimated TCE-iron sorption coefficients (0.52 to 2.85 L kg(-1)) were also consistent with a previously reported value (1.47 L kg(-1)).

Biotransformation↗