Abstract:The prediction of berm and dune erosion during a storm is essential for storm damage assessment. Simple and transparent formulas for the cross-shore and longshore transport rates of suspended sediment and bed load on beaches are proposed and incorporated into a combined wave and current model to predict the berm and dune erosion under normally and obliquely incident irregular waves. Two small-scale experiments for two different berm profiles were conducted for the calibration of the developed numerical model. The calibrated numerical model is shown to predict the measured berm and dune erosion in these experiments as well as dune erosion measured in three large-scale tests with errors less than a factor of two. The numerical model is used to examine the effects of the wave period and incident wave angle on the berm and dune erosion. These effects are computed to be within a factor of two.

Heparin is widely used for anticoagulation, often requiring the subsequent administration of a reversal agent. The only approved reversal agent for heparin is protamine sulfate, which induces well described adverse reactions in patients. Previously we reported a novel class of heparin antagonists based on the bacteriophage Qβ platform, displaying polyvalent cationic motifs which bind with high affinity to heparin. Here we report heparin reversal by the most effective of these virus-like particles (VLP) in samples from patients who were administered heparin during cardiac procedures or therapeutically for treatment of various thrombotic conditions. The VLP consistently reversed heparin in these samples, including those from patients that received high doses of heparin, with greater efficiency than a negative control VLP and with significantly less variability than protamine sulfate. These results provide the first step towards validation of heparin antagonist VLPs as viable alternatives to protamine.