Fish intake and serum levels of organochlorines among Japanese women

This study evaluates background serum levels of selected organochlorine compounds among Japanese women of reproductive age and investigates whether lifestyle factors, especially dietary factors, may be associated with these levels. A cross-sectional study was performed on 80 Japanese women, aged 26-43 years, who complained of infertility and were confirmed not to have endometriosis. The serum levels of total toxic equivalency (TEQ), 18 polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins (PCDDs)/polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDFs), 4 coplanar polychlorinated biphenyls (cPCBs), 36 ortho-substituted polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and 13 chlorinated pesticides or their metabolites were measured and data were collected on the women's age, residence, occupation, body mass index (BMI), smoking and alcohol habit and 6 dietary intakes (fish, meats, rice, vegetables, fruits and dairy products). The serum median level of total TEQ was 25.1 pg TEQ/g lipid, that of PCDDs/PCDFs/cPCBs was 11.5 pmol/g lipid, that of PCBs was 0.46 nmol/g lipid, and that of total pesticides was 1.32 nmol/g lipid. The serum levels of total TEQ, PCDDs/PCDFs/cPCBs, PCBs and pesticides were positively associated with age (P for trend=0.003, 0.01, 0.005 and 0.01, respectively) and frequent fish consumption (P for trend=0.002, 0.003, 0.0003 and 0.006, respectively). Other lifestyle factors were not associated with serum organochlorine levels. The present study suggests that Japanese women who consume fish frequently in their reproductive period tend to accumulate organochlorines in their bodies.     

Lightening grey literature: Making the invisible visible

Technical reports are an important and unique source of engineering information. This has been recognised in the US where federal technical reports are freely available via the Internet. UK reports are hard to identify, locate and obtain. Within the context of new initiatives promoting cross‐sectoral partnership and collaboration, the Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP) and British Library Co‐operation and Partnership Programme (BLCCP) have funded the MAGiC project. MAGiC aims to provide the UK engineering community with a greater awareness of, and access to, key collections of technical reports by: mapping UK report collections; developing a methodology for prioritising digitisation of reports; providing an entry point to search and browse widely distributed resources; developing a core electronic archive of engineering report literature; evaluating the feasibility of creating a commercial service based on the supply of electronic documents. An exposition of work in progress is given with a projection of how the demonstrator service will operate. A call for help with the project in locating report collections within academia, industry, and government, and contact details, are given.     

The Concept of Planned Development: A Presentation and Commentaries on the Contribution of Nathaniel Lichfield

This article and the commentaries which accompany it centres on a reflection by consultant-academic Nathaniel Lichfield on his work on planned development and the evaluation of the impacts of such development, over a career spanning the past 60 years. His work, in the UK and across the world, had a formative influence on generations of planners brought up on his texts. In this presentation, David Adams sets the context of his contribution. The heart of the article is a reflective synthesis by Lichfield on his own work from his first major contribution in 1956, to its evolution in the 1960s into the technique of the Planning Balance Sheet, and later, Community Impact Evaluation. His starting point is that there can be urban and regional planning which does not lead to physical development on the ground and there can be such development on the ground that has not been influenced by government led urban and regional planning. Neither of these is planned development. This takes place when the two are fused together in practice: the development and the government led planning. It is this simple concept, with particular emphasis on its economics, which was treated at length in the Economics of Planned Development (1956). In order to fully describe the concept, the book's contents are summarized in the first half of this article following an introduction of the background. Following the publication of the book, Lichfield's professional and academic work took him in many directions, much of which fell loosely under the ambit of the economics of planned development. His contributions were not written up as sequels to the book but rather in related books, papers and articles under an array of topics. He terms these 'the children of EPD'. They are described in the second half of the article, grouped in relation, as appropriate, to each of the main themes of the 1956 book and extensions of it. Lichfield's article is followed by three commentaries. The first, by Mike Teitz, positions his work and its later development in the changing context of the times. The second, by Barrie Needham, provides some critical thoughts on how well the concept of 'planned development' travels transnationally into different institutional contexts. The third, from consultant-planner Alan Wenban-Smith, himself working on policy evaluation in the UK, explores the practical and methodological robustness of Lichfield's concepts. Overall, the piece provides an input to reflections on the relation between state and market in the development process and on the evaluative stance the state should take to its interventions.     

International coordination of operational instruments on the NASAand ESA space station polar orbiting platforms

The roles played by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the international community in coordinating plans to fly operational instruments on NOAA polar orbiting satellites are discussed, as is how this coordination has assisted in the planning for the flight of similar instruments on the proposed NASA and ESA polar orbiting platforms in the mid-to-late-1990s. Details on the operational sensor complements on the polar platforms are provided     

Serum concentrations of polyfluoroalkyl compounds in Faroese whale meat consumers

To learn the extent of human exposure to polyfluoroalkyl compounds (PFCs) in a remote fishing population, we measured, in Faroese children and pregnant women, the serum concentrations of nine PFCs, including perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), perfluorooctanoate (PFOA), and perfluorononanoate (PFNA), by using online solid-phase extraction coupled to isotope dilution high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. The serum samples analyzed had been collected between 1993 and 2005 from 103 children 7 years of age, 79 of these children at 14 years of age, and from 12 pregnant women and their children 5 years later. PFOS was detected in all samples analyzed, and both PFOA and PFNA were detected in all but one of the samples. The concentrations found are comparable tothose reported elsewhere. Correlations between paired concentrations were poor. However, PFOS and PFNA concentrations correlated well with the frequency of pilotwhale dinners and with concentrations of mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls. One whale meal every two weeks increased the PFOS concentration in 14-year-olds by about 25% and PFNA by 50%. The high frequency of detection of most PFCs suggests widespread exposure in the Faroe Islands already by the early 1990s, with whale meat being an important source.     

Learning about tools in infancy.

These experiments explored the role of prior experience in 12- to 18-month-old infants' tool-directed actions. In Experiment 1, infants' use of a familiar tool (spoon) to accomplish a novel task (turning on lights inside a box) was examined. Infants tended to grasp the spoon by its handle even when doing so made solving the task impossible (the bowl did not fit through the hole in the box, but the handle did) and even though the experimenter demonstrated a bowl-grasp. In contrast, infants used a novel tool flexibly and grasped both sides equally often. In Experiment 2, infants received training using the novel tool for a particular function; 3 groups of infants were trained to use the tool differently. Later, infants' performance was facilitated on tasks that required infants to grasp the part of the tool they were trained to grasp. The results suggest that (a) infants' prior experiences with tools are important to understanding subsequent tool use, and (b) rather than learning about tool function (e.g., hammering), infants learn about which part of the tool is meant to be held, at least early in their exposure to a novel tool. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Insecticidal activity of pyrethrins and related compounds: II.—Relative toxicity of esters from optical and geometrical isomers of chrysanthemic,pyrethric and related acids and optical isomers of cinerolone and allethrolone

Department of Insecticides and Fungicides, Rothamsted Experimental Station, Harpenden, Herts. The relative toxicities of esters related to the natural pyrethrins and to allethrin were evaluated against Phaedon cochleariae (mustard beetle), Tenebrio molitor (yellow mealworm beetle), Dysdercus fasciatus (cotton stainer) and Plutella maculipennis (diamond-back moth) and the results were compared with those of workers who used Musca domestica (housefly). With the insect species used here there were no outstanding reversals of the toxicity ratings established in the studies with M. domestica. However, the toxicities of the esters depended more on the nature of the alcohol when two acids were compared and on the acid component with different alcohols. (+)-Allethrolone and (+)-cinerolone gave more toxic esters than their optical isomers but there was less difference than had been found with other insect species between esters from trans-and cis-chrysanthemic acids.     

A comparative study of prothrombinase and thrombin inhibitors in a novel rabbit model of non-occlusive deep vein thrombosis

A quantitative and non-occlusive deep vein thrombosis model was developed in rabbits. We used this model to test the antithrombotic activity of the prothrombinase complex inhibitors factor rXai and its chemical analog glutamyl-glycyl-arginyl chloromethyl ketone inactivated human factor Xa (EGR-Xai), along with the thrombin inhibitors D-phenylalanyl-prolyl-arginyl chloromethyl ketone (PPACK) and heparin. Dose dependent effects of the inhibitors during constant infusion were monitored. Measurements included thrombus weights, hemostatic parameters and both cuticle and ear bleeding times. In this model, factor rXai and EGR-Xai had comparable in-vivo efficacy, and showed 80%-93% inhibition at plasma levels of 6.5 nM (rXai) and 8 nM (EGR-Xai). Effects on ex-vivo clotting times varied among the inhibitors. At 80-100% thrombus inhibition, factor rXai and EGR-Xai had no statistically significant effect, while PPACK extended thrombin clotting time (TCT) times 2.3-fold, and heparin prolonged both activated partial thromboplastin time (APTT), prothrombin time (PT) and TCT ex-vivo clotting times 6.9-, 1.2-, and 7-fold respectively. At these dosages, cuticle and ear bleeding times were prolonged for all inhibitors and showed increases of 177%-389% (cuticle) and 45%-129% (ear). Our results demonstrate that direct inhibition of prothrombinase complex assembly is effective in arresting venous thrombosis.     

Autonet: a high-speed, self-configuring local area network usingpoint-to-point links

Autonet is a self-configuring local area network composed of switches interconnected by 100 Mb/s, full-duplex, point-to-point links. The switches contain 12 ports that are internally connected by a full crossbar. Switches use cut-through to achieve a packet forwarding latency as low as 2 ms/switch. Any switch port can be cabled to any other switch port or to a host network controller. A processor in each switch monitors the network's physical configuration. A distributed algorithm running on the switch processor computes the routes packets are to follow and fills in the packet forwarding table in each switch. With Autonet, distinct paths through the set of network links can carry packets in parallel, allowing many pairs of hosts to communicate simultaneously at full link bandwidth. A 30-switch network with more than 100 hosts has been the service network for Digital's Systems Research Center since February 1990