Fatal home accidents--a product database

A computer-based "Home Accident Deaths Database" has been developed to permit analysis of the consumer products and articles or features of the home involved in fatal domestic accidents in England and Wales. It makes use of information already recorded for other purposes, which is either manually coded or converted by computer to a standard format. Rapid interrogation and analysis (in the form of tables or easily readable case listings) is possible, and the format of the database permits direct comparison with statistics for nonfatal hospital-treated accidents recorded by the Home Accident Surveillance System. Such comparison reveals considerable differences between the products and articles most frequently involved in fatal accidents and those most common in nonfatal cases, so that neither provides an adequate indication of hazards on its own. There are some limitations, including a variation in the level of detail recorded between different types of accident, less than perfect matching of sources for deaths in fires, and a long delay in getting cases onto the database, but with the experience that has now been gained it is hoped to develop a new reporting system that will overcome these problems and will, additionally, cover "leisure" accidents.     

Influence of craniofacial surgery on the social attitudes toward the malformed and their handling in different cultures and at different times: a contribution to social world history

A historic overview including the European, American, Asian, and African continents is given on attitudes toward and the handling of humans with congenital malformations in ancient cultures and on pertinent customs in some prehistoric peoples. Figures of early works of art showing malformed individuals are presented testifying to this worldwide and timeless problem of humankind. In parallel, analogous patient photographs from our hospital before and after reconstructive surgery are shown. Philosophies of ancient Greece, rome, and China on the subject of malformed infants essentially did not differ from the known attitudes of the less developed tribes in Europe and pre-Columbian America, although the means of elimination of unwanted offspring were rather passive (exposure) than active (manual killing). A radical change in attitudes and practices occurred with the spread of the Christian religion and its political installment in Europe. The care for the underprivileged including the malformed ones was considered a Christian duty to be performed with compassion and love. In our century, the clocks have been and apparently are turned back again. Atheistic and Darwinian influences, political atheism, and the belief in "higher ethics" issued by "superman" have led to a relapse into barbarism, also within the medical system. We, as craniofacial surgeons, are privileged to have the means to turn the clocks forward again by rehabilitating the physically most underprivileged: those with conspicuous craniofacial malformations. The necessary techniques exist and are applied, as the figures of patients from our hospital demonstrate, but the will and the emotional strength for their consequent application require more than our hands.     

Comparison of autochthonous and allogeneic breast-tumour cells in tests for lymphocyte immunity to human tumours

Lymphocytes from 10 patients with breast carcinoma were seeded in autologous serum, on autochthonous tumour cells and allogeneic tissue-cultured breast tumour cell lines. In 4 patients, the anti-tumour cell cytotoxicity against at least one of 3 breast tumour cell lines differed significantly from that against autochthonous tumour cells. Further study of these 4 individuals (using their previously frozen lymphoid cells and sera) showed that these differences occurred because serum which decreased ("blocked") lymphocyte anti-tumour cytotoxicity when applied to one tumour cell line, could either have no effect or potentiate it when applied to another, without any consistent pattern vis-à-vis target-cell susceptibility to these different humoral effects.     

Effect of skin hydration on the dynamics of fingertip gripping contact

The dynamics of fingertip contact manifest themselves in the complex skin movements observed during the transition from a stuck state to a fully developed slip. While investigating this transition, we found that it depended on skin hydration. To quantify this dependency, we asked subjects to slide their index fingertip on a glass surface while keeping the normal component of the interaction force constant with the help of visual feedback. Skin deformation inside the contact region was imaged with an optical apparatus that allowed us to quantify the relative sizes of the slipping and sticking regions. The ratio of the stuck skin area to the total contact area decreased linearly from 1 to 0 when the tangential force component increased from 0 to a maximum. The slope of this relationship was inversely correlated to the normal force component. The skin hydration level dramatically affected the dynamics of the contact encapsulated in the course of evolution from sticking to slipping. The specific effect was to reduce the tendency of a contact to slip, regardless of the variations of the coefficient of friction. Since grips were more unstable under dry skin conditions, our results suggest that the nervous system responds to dry skin by exaggerated grip forces that cannot be simply explained by a change in the coefficient of friction.     

Effect of cure temperature on the structure and water absorption of epoxy/amine thermosets

Dielectric and rheological measurements are reported on the effect of cure temperature on the water absorption of tris[(2,3-epoxypropoxy)phenyl] methane cured with a 1 : 1 stoichiometric ratio of 4,4′-diaminodiphenylsulphone. Analysis of the water absorption characteristics of these materials using a combination of dielectric and gravimetric measurements has indicated that water molecules can be found in two distinctly different types of environments. There are water molecules which are strongly interacting with polar groups and water molecules clustered together into sub-micro-scale cavities within the matrix structure. Changes in the final cure temperature have the effect of changing both the extent and distribution of the types of water molecules present in the matrix. Validation of the diffusion coefficients obtained from the dielectric analysis is based on a comparison with gravimetric data and the implications are discussed. Differences observed between these two different types of measurement are related to peculiarity in the dielectric method and its extreme sensitivity to interfacial phenomena.     

Clinical biochemistry and pathology of mature beef cattle following ante-mortem intravenous administration of a commercial papain preparation

Ten healthy beef cattle in a commercial abbatoir were treated intravenously before slaughter with a commercial papain-based tenderising injection (Pro Ten). Animals were observed for behavioural and clinical abnormalities following treatment. Serum enzyme activities were measured pre-treatment and post-treatment immediately pre-slaughter < 6 min later to detect liver and muscle damage. Carcases were examined grossly post mortem. Histological examination of liver, kidney and muscle followed. Nine contemporary, age-matched controls were similarly examined. It was concluded that ProTen treatment did not cause any detectable hepatocellular or renal damage and there was no significant difference in the parameters examined between treated and untreated cattle. A decision to ban the use of ProTen in cattle could not therefore be based on the premise that it interfered with the animal's welfare in the period following injection under the conditions pertaining in this experiment.     

Genome-Wide Association Analysis and Genomic Prediction of Thyroglobulin Plasma Levels

Thyroglobulin (Tg) is an iodoglycoprotein produced by thyroid follicular cells which acts as an essential substrate for thyroid hormone synthesis. To date, only one genome-wide association study (GWAS) of plasma Tg levels has been performed by our research group. Utilizing recent advancements in computation and modeling, we apply a Bayesian approach to the probabilistic inference of the genetic architecture of Tg. We fitted a Bayesian sparse linear mixed model (BSLMM) and a frequentist linear mixed model (LMM) of 7,289,083 variants in 1096 healthy European-ancestry participants of the Croatian Biobank. Meta-analysis with two independent cohorts (total n = 2109) identified 83 genome-wide significant single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within the ST6GAL1 gene (p<5×10−8). BSLMM revealed additional association signals on chromosomes 1, 8, 10, and 14. For ST6GAL1 and the newly uncovered genes, we provide physiological and pathophysiological explanations of how their expression could be associated with variations in plasma Tg levels. We found that the SNP-heritability of Tg is 17% and that 52% of this variation is due to a small number of 16 variants that have a major effect on Tg levels. Our results suggest that the genetic architecture of plasma Tg is not polygenic, but influenced by a few genes with major effects.     

Curcumin induces apoptosis in immortalized NIH 3T3 and malignant cancer cell lines

Curcumin, which is a widely used dietary pigment and spice, has been demonstrated to be an effective inhibitor of tumor promotion in mouse skin carcinogenesis. We report that curcumin induces cell shrinkage, chromatin condensation, and DNA fragmentation, characteristics of apoptosis, in immortalized mouse embryo fibroblast NIH 3T3 erb B2 oncogene-transformed NIH 3T3, mouse sarcoma S180, human colon cancer cell HT-29, human kidney cancer cell 293, and human hepatocellular carcinoma Hep G2 cells, but not in primary culture of mouse embryonic fibroblast C3H 10T1/2, rat embryonic fibroblast, and human foreskin fibroblast cells in a concentration- and time-dependent manner. Many cellular and biochemical effects of curcumin in mouse fibroblast cells have been reported, such as inhibition of protein kinase C (PKC) activity induced by phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate treatment, inhibition of tyrosine protein kinase activity, and inhibition of arachidonic acid (AA) metabolism. Treatment of NIH 3T3 cells with the PKC inhibitor staurosporine, the tyrosine kinase inhibitor herbimycin A, and the AA metabolism inhibitor quinacrine induces apoptotic cell death. These results suggest that, in some immortalized and transformed cells, blocking the cellular signal transduction might trigger the induction of apoptosis.     

Evaluation of Vitek GPS-SA card for testing of oxacillin against borderline-susceptible staphylococci that lack mec

Fifty-one Staphylococcus aureus strains lacking mec for which oxacillin MICs were 1 to 8 micrograms/ml were tested against oxacillin and the combination of oxacillin and clavulanic acid with the Vitek GPS-SA card, the reference broth microdilution method, and the oxacillin agar screen plate. Of the 51 strains, 44 (86%) did not grow on the oxacillin agar screen plate, broth microdilution MICs were 1 to 2 micrograms/ml, and GPS-SA card MICs were < or = 2 micrograms/ml, with the exception of 3 strains that failed to grow in the card on repeated attempts. Another seven strains did grow on the oxacillin agar screen plate. For four of the latter group of strains, oxacillin broth microdilution MICs were > 4 micrograms/ml and GPS-SA card MICs were > or = 4 micrograms/ml; for the other 3 strains, corresponding MICs were 4 and < or = 2 micrograms/ml, respectively. The GPS-SA card classified 86% of strains as oxacillin susceptible.     

Oscillatory behaviour during the oxidation of methane over palladium metal catalysts

Oscillatory reactions over palladium foil and wire catalysts during the oxidation of methane have been investigated over a wide range of reaction temperatures and argon/methane/oxygen feed gas compositions. Characterisation of the catalyst has also been carried out using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) techniques, which revealed the presence of a porous surface. This suggested that the metal surface has undergone a change since the reaction commenced, and using X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) techniques the palladium phase was shown to be the dominant phase present. Hysteresis phenomena were observed in the activity of the reaction as the temperature was cycled up and down, showing that the metal surface was continually changing throughout the reaction. The activation energies of the reaction during the high reactivity mode, PdO, and low reactivity mode, Pd, were also calculated. Oscillation rates were observed to depend on the dominant surface. Oscillations were frequent when the high reactivity mode was dominant while the activation energy of this mode was found to be low. When the low reactivity mode was dominant, the oscillations were slower and the activation energy was three times larger. The results obtained imply that the behaviour of the palladium surface, switching back and forth from the reduced state to the oxidised state, is responsible for the oscillatory behaviour seen in this system.