Monitoring the autonomic nervous system in the ICU throughcardiovascular variability signals

Studies the usefulness of cardiovascular variability parameters for monitoring intensive-care unit (ICU) patients, and discusses assessing ICU patient status using spectral analysis parameters. Both short-term and long-term spectral parameters were employed for the assessment of patient status in the ICU. Short-term parameters were sensitive to the airway suction (AWS) and may also be employed to monitor the response to different therapeutic interventions. Long-term parameters showed significantly increased α-slope values in nonsurviving patients. This result suggests that the α-slope value on 24-hour RR spectra obtained from the ECG signal may be a relevant prognostic index     

Controlling vancomycin-resistant enterococci

After controlling an epidemic of vanB-type vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium (VRE), we contained a subsequent vanA E faecium outbreak by using prospective laboratory-based surveillance, placing patients with VRE in private rooms, requiring the use of both gowns and gloves by all personnel entering the patients' rooms, and conducting prevalence surveys of patients on affected wards.     

PROTOB: An object-oriented case tool for modelling and prototyping distributed systems

The PROTOB object-oriented methodology for the executable specification of large-scale event-driven systems is introduced and described. Two supporting features of PROTOB are also presented: the graphic and textual language that formally describes the behaviour of objects, which is based on high-level Petri nets called “PROT nets” and which is demonstrated to be more powerful than SA/RT dataflows; and a CASE environment with tools for specification, modelling, simulation and prototyping. Use of PROTOB is illustrated by discussion of the automated generation of distributed systems running on a network of VMS and UNIX computers.     

Lipids and phenols in table olives

The olive fruit is essentially constituted by the epicarp, or skin, mesocarp, or pulp, and the endocarp, or stone, and the latter includes the seed. Table olives (also called eating olives) are prepared from healthy, specifically cultivated, olive varieties picked at the right maturation stage and whose quality, after appropriate processing, corresponds to that of an edible well preserved product. The most important industrial preparations of table olives are the Spanish (or Sevillian) for green olives, the Californian for oxidised black olives, and the Greek for naturally black olives. In the Spanish and Californian procedures, olives are treated with a diluted aqueous NaOH solution, that brings about several changes in the susceptible classes of compounds in the fruit. Note, however, that the composition of the triglycerides remain unaffected by these procedures. After the treatment the olives are rinsed to remove the alkali, and the fruit is then left to ferment in brine for several months. The production of naturally black olives in brine, according to the Greek traditional method, is a simple, natural process which does not use chemicals. The main phenols in the olive are oleuropein, hydroxytyrosol (β(3‐4‐dihydroxyphenyl)ethanol), tyrosol (β(4‐hydroxyphenyl) ethanol) and verbascoside; the major polycyclic triterpenes are the oleanolic and maslinic acids. The NaOH treatment hydrolysed oleuropein into β(3‐4‐dihydroxyphenyl) ethanol, oleoside 11‐methylester and oleoside. These last glucosides and the oleuropein itself, in acidic medium, yielded glucose and a number of compounds called, collectively, oleuropein aglycones. During the fermentation process phenols diffuse from the pulp into the brine. Also, even during the alkaline treatment, there is the rapid diffusion of the pentacyclic oleanolic and maslinic acids salts into the brine.