Dose-titration to confirm the level of fenbendazole for control of Raillietina cesticillus in broiler chickens

A total of 452 broiler chickens, naturally infected with Raillietina cesticillus, were allotted into six treatment groups. One group was fed unmedicated broiler ration (Group 1), and the other five groups were fed broiler ration containing fenbendazole at 180 ppm for 3 days (38.5 mg/kg body weight [BW]), 240 ppm for 3 days (50.9 mg/kg BW), 120 ppm for 6 days (52.2 mg/kg BW), 180 ppm for 6 days (79.9 mg/kg BW), or 240 ppm for 6 days (104.3 mg/kg BW). Fenbendazole was 100.0% efficacious against R. cesticillus when administered in the diet at 240 ppm for 6 days; 99.9% at 240 ppm for 3 days and at 180 ppm for 6 days; 99.5% at 120 ppm for 6 days; and 96.9% at 180 ppm for 3 days. Fenbendazole treatment had no adverse effect on weight gain or feed intake.     

Embedded processes in stochastic Petri nets

Embedded discrete time processes are used to study a class of SPNs (stochastic Petri nets) which have a closed-form equilibrium distribution. These SPNs have probabilistic output bags, colored tokens, and alternating periods of arbitrarily distributing enabling and firing times (periods of time between transitions becoming enabled and absorption of tokens and between transitions absorbing tokens and depositing them in output places, respectively). In addition, an aggregation procedure is proposed which, in certain nets, not only reduces a complex SPN to a much simpler skeleton SPN but also obtains results for the skeleton SPN with are exact marginal distributions for the original SPN     

A computer-based outpatient medical record for a teaching hospital.

We developed a computer-based outpatient medical record system to facilitate direct physician interaction with the clinical computing system at the Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. During the 2 years since the medical record system was installed, 20 staff physicians, 5 fellows, 64 residents, and 11 nurse practitioners have entered 15,121 active problems and 1996 inactive problems for 3524 patients, as well as 12,651 active medications and 1894 discontinued medications for 3430 patients. Another 20,321 items were entered on health-promotion and disease-prevention screening sheets, and with the help of automatic updating by the computer, an additional 21,897 entries on screening sheets were made for 8686 patients. Clinicians wrote 10.9 +/- 12.8 (mean +/- SD) words per problem when they were working at the computer, as compared with 4.3 +/- 2.5 words per problem when they were writing in the paper medical record. We conclude that physicians will readily enter data directly into a computing system when they are given appropriate tools, and that they consider the computer-based problem list to be a valuable improvement over its paper counterpart. Use of a computer-based medical record system has obvious benefits for data management and patient care.     

Ionization-induced refractive index and polarization effects inLiNbO3:Ti directional coupler waveguides

Exposure of an LiNbO₃:Ti directional coupler to pulsed 16-MeV electrons was observed to nonequivalently affect the transverse electric-transverse magnetic (TE-TM) polarized transmission of a continuous wave 1300-nm optical signal through the channel waveguides. Two distinct ionization-induced attenuation responses were observed to depend on the magnitude of the optical power in the guides and on the polarization states. An hypothesis for these phenomena is advanced based on the presence of localized space charge fields arising from ionization-induced transient color centers, free carriers within or near the light guiding regions, and polarization conversion initiated through decreased mode confinement and scattering. Transient space charge fields causing localized changes to the refractive indexes in and near the guiding regions are believed to have caused both the loss of guiding and the onset of photorefractive-like processes     

Experimental investigation of microwave-optoelectronic interactionsin a microstrip ring resonator

Microwave optoelectronic mixing on a semi-insulating gallium arsenide substrate performed by monolithically integrating Schottky diode photodetectors into a microstrip ring resonator is discussed. When operated in the resistive mixing mode, a low frequency difference signal is extracted from the bias pad of the circuit. In the parametric mode, both degenerate and non-degenerate parametric amplification of an optical carrier signal takes place. The circuit shows good potential for application in wide-band fiberoptic systems     

Tritium in the DIII-D carbon tiles

The amount of tritium in the carbon tiles used as a first wall in the DIII-D tokamak was measured recently when the tiles were removed and cleaned. The measurements were made as part of the task of developing the appropriate safety procedures for processing of the tiles. The surface tritium concentration on the carbon tiles was surveyed and the total tritium released from tiles samples was measured in test bakes. The total tritium in all the carbon tiles at the time the tiles were removed for cleaning is estimated to be 15 mCi and the fraction of tritium retained in the tiles from DIII-D operations has a lower bound of 10%. The tritium was found to be concentrated in a narrow surface layer on the plasma facing side of the tile, was fully released when baked to 1000°C, and was released in the form of tritiated gas (DT) as opposed to tritiated water (DTO) when baked.     

Short-wavelength color visual fields in glaucoma suspects at risk

Glaucoma suspect eyes were seen during a five-year study on color visual fields that used a 440-nm test on a bright-yellow background (96 normal eyes, 55 suspect eyes, and 110 eyes that developed glaucoma). The predictive ability of the test was assessed in 25 eyes followed up for more than one year, five of which developed glaucoma. These five eyes and those at high risk showed higher mean defect (P < .0001) and number of defective points (P < .0001) than the other suspect groups, which were not significantly different from normal eyes. The mean defects (+/- standard deviations) and average number of defective points were 1.4 +/- 2.3 dB with 8.9 points (low-risk eyes), 1.1 +/- 1.2 dB with 8.0 points (medium-risk eyes), 6.7 +/- 2.8 dB with 27.7 points (high-risk eyes), and 9.3 +/- 1.8 dB with 39.4 points (eyes that developed glaucoma). Normal eyes had an average of 3.4 defective points. These results were similar when all 55 suspect eyes were analyzed. Color visual fields identify early functional loss in eyes at greatest risk for primary open-angle glaucoma.     

Dietary patterns associated with a low-fat diet in the national health examination follow-up study: identification of potential confounders for epidemiologic analyses

To identify systematically the nutrient and food group intakes associated with a low-fat diet, the authors used the detailed dietary information collected from 10,306 individuals aged 32-86 years in the 1982-1984 National Health Epidemiologic Follow-up Study. Intakes of vitamin C and percentages of calories from carbohydrates, dietary fiber, poultry, low-fat dairy products, fruits, vegetables, cereals, and whole grains were markedly higher, while intakes of protein, total fat, saturated fat, oleic and linoleic acids, cholesterol, sodium, all red meats, high-fat dairy products, eggs, nuts, white bread, fried potatoes, desserts, fats, and oils were much lower in the quartile with the lowest percentage of calories from fat. These dietary patterns associated with a low-fat diet were essentially constant across strata of age, sex, race, and socioeconomic status. This study suggests that individuals on a low-fat diet substitute certain carbohydrate-rich foods such as fruits and vegetables for fat. Given these associations between low-fat diets and other dietary factors independently associated with certain cancers, these dietary factors should be considered potential confounders in studies of dietary fat and these cancers.