Declining gonadal function in elderly men

Ageing in men is accompanied by a progressive decline of gonadal function with, in particular, a decline of total and free testosterone (T) plasma levels resulting in a significant proportion of elderly men over age 60 years presenting with subnormal T levels compared with the levels in young adults. A great interindividual variation in T levels is observed in elderly men, a variability explained in part by physiological variables and differences in life style, while associated acute or chronic diseases may accentuate the age-related decline of T levels. The progressive decrease of plasma T levels has been shown to result from both primary testicular changes and altered neuroendocrine regulation of Leydig cell function. At present, little is known about the clinical relevance of the relative hypoandrogenism of elderly men and there is an urgent need for more longitudinal studies, which may clarify a possible role of decreased T levels in the modulation of the clinical consequences of ageing in men. In view of the lack of relevant controlled clinical trials having careful assessment of the risks and benefits of androgen replacement therapy in elderly men, this treatment should be reserved for selected patients with clinically and biochemically manifest hypogonadism, after careful screening for contraindications.     

Patterns of anesthesia and nursing care for interventional radiology procedures: a national survey of physician practices and preferences

Sera from randomly selected 49 professional blood donors, 617 pregnant women, 14 butchers, 528 slaughtered goats and 24 domestic cats in the district of Mymensingh were tested for the presence of T. gondii antibodies using a Latex agglutination test (LAT). Overall 12.4% blood donors, 11.18% pregnant women, 50.00% butchers, 12.88% slaughtered goats and 33.33% cats had diagnostically significant antibody titers (> or = 1:64) to T. gondii. Epidemiological studies on T. gondii infection with LAT were conducted in 25 family members with sero-positive cats and 9 family members with 2 sero-positive women without cats in the family. Significantly (p < 0.01) higher sero-positivity rate was recorded in the family members (24.00%) with positive cats in comparison to family members (11.11%) without cats. The epidemiologic study indicates that infected cats and goat meat might be significant sources of T. gondii infection for humans in Bangladesh.     

Real time discrete shading

A shading technique for voxel-based images, termedcongradient shading, is presented. As the surface information is not available in voxel representation, the surface normal must be recovered from the 3D discrete voxel map itself. The technique defines the normal as one of a finite set of neighborhood-estimated gradients and can thus employ precalculated look-up tables. Furthermore, a table-driven mechanism permits changing the light source parameters by merely redefining the look-up table. The technique uses only simple arithmetic operations and is thus suitable for hardware implementation. Since it has been implemented not as a post-processor, but as part of the projection pipeline of the cube architecture, congradient shading can be executed in real time. Two versions of the technique in real time. Two versions of the technique have been conceived and implemented:unidirectional shading, in which the gradient is estimated only from neighborhoods along the scan-lines;bidirectional shading, in which both horizontal and vertical components of the gradient are considered. In spite of the simplicity of the technique, the results are practically indistinguishable from images generated by conventional techniques.This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under grants DCR 8603603, CCR 8743478, CCR 8717016, and MIP 8805130     

Emotional intelligence as an aspect of general intelligence: What would David Wechsler say?

R. D. Roberts, M. Zeidner, and G. Matthews (see record 2001-10055-001) have carefully examined the controversial issue of whether emotional intelligence (EI) should be classified as an intelligence and whether EI's constructs meet the same psychometric standards as general intelligence's constructs. This article casts their efforts into the framework of both historical and modern IQ-testing theory and research. It details David Wechsler's attempts to integrate EI into his tests and how his conception of a good clinician would be that of an emotionally intelligent clinician. Current theories and research on IQ also have a role in EI beyond what Roberts et al. described, including J. L. Horn's (1989) expanded model and A. R. Luria's (1966) neuropsychological research, and better criteria than the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery should be used in future EI studies. The authors look forward to more research being conducted on EI, particularly in future performance-based assessments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A Recursive Approximation Technique for a Combined Source Queueing Model

The model studied in this paper captures the combined effects of finite and infinite source traffic-often used to model interactive and batch traffic, respectively-when they contend for a single server resource. The finite source traffic is modeled by heterogeneous finite sources, the infinite source traffic by a stationary Poisson process, and the single server is assumed to have exponentially distributed service times with distinct service rates for the different customer types. All customers share a common queue and are serviced in FIFO order. A special case of this model where theNfinite sources are identical combines two fundamental and widely used models (the repairman andM/M/1models) in a natural manner. Regardless of the homogeneous or heterogeneous nature of the finite sources, the combined source model is not product form due to the realistic assumption that service rates are distinct for different customer types (batch and interactive traffic typically have different CPU processing requirements). In this paper, we show how to recursively calculate all mean quantities of interest in an approximate but quite accurate manner for the general heterogeneous model. The accuracy of the recursive technique is established in part by contrasting the approximate solution to simulation results for a wide parameter range, and in part by studying the asymptotic behavior of the approximation.     

Large sticky traps for capturing house flies and stable flies in dairy calf greenhouse facilities

Large sticky traps were evaluated for stable fly, Stomoxys calcitrans (L.), and house fly, Musca domestica L., (Diptera: Muscidae) capture under field conditions in 5 dairy calf greenhouse facilities in New York. The farm with the highest stable fly capture had the highest house fly capture, and the farm with the lowest stable fly capture had the lowest house fly capture, suggesting that fly management practices greatly influenced trap captures. In general, stable fly populations, as reflected by increased trap capture, generally rose during the summer. Numbers of flies counted on calves did not increase, however, suggesting that the traps greatly reduced the potential stable fly pressure on the calves as the fly population increased. Estimated number of stable flies and house flies captured during this 10-wk study exceeded 142,000 and 900,000, respectively. Producers were generally pleased with the trap performance and most felt that these traps reduced flies in their calf greenhouses to acceptable levels.     

Identification of Russian coal on the basis of the swelling-index standard

The limitations of State Standard GOST 20330-91 for determining the swelling index are demonstrated in relation to coal with good clinkering properties. An expanded scale of standard profiles for coal identification is proposed.     

Using statistics of the extremes for software reliability analysis

This paper investigates the use of StEx (statistics of the extremes) [Castillo, Sarabia 1992; Gumbel 1958; Ang, Tang 1984; Castillo 1988; Castillo, Alvarez, Cobo 1993] for analyzing software failure data for highly reliable systems. StEx classifies most distributions into one of three asymptotic families. The asymptotic family to which a set of data belongs is derived graphically on Gumbel-type probability paper. From the resulting empirical Cdf (cumulative distribution function), the asymptotic family to which the data might belong is hypothesized. Once the asymptotic family for a particular data set is determined, the parameters required for an explicit representation of this asymptotic form are derived using known analytic techniques. Using this approach, actual field data from two software case studies [Musa 1979; Kenney 1993] are analyzed using conventional software reliability growth models and using StEx     

Rubral tremor associated with cavernous angioma of the midbrain

The insecticidal activity of five alkylfurans against the generalist insect herbivore beet armyworm, Spodoptera exigua, was examined. Two naturally occurring compounds, the avocadofurans 2-(pentadecyl)furan (1) and 2-(heptadecyl)furan (2), previously isolated from specialized avocado idioblast oil cells, and three homologues, 2-(tetradecyl)furan (3), 2-(hexadecyl)furan (4), and 2-(octadecyl)furan (5), were synthesized. Bioassays of alkylfurans 1-5 using a 9-day diet-incorporation initiated with neonates showed that all alkylfurans tested significantly increased S. exigua larval mortality and reduced larval weights, with maximal biological activity detected among the naturally occurring alkylfurans 1 and 2.