Conventional vs. formulated foods in school lunches. II. Cost of food served, eaten, and wasted

School lunches containing all conventional foods were designed to provide one-third or one-half the recommended allowances for elementary students. The same nutrient levels were planned in meals containing some formulated items. Each type of meal was served for five days, and total food costs and costs of food served, consumed, and wasted were calculated. At the same nutritional level, mean preparation costs of partially formulated meals were lower than for meals composed of all conventional foods. Meals providing one-half the allowances and containing formulated items cost slightly less than totally conventional meals which provided one-third of the allowances. Cost of waste was lower with partially formulated meals.     

A microcantilever-based pathogen detector

The ability to detect small amounts of materials, especially bacterial organisms, is important for medical diagnostics and national security issues. Engineered micromechanical systems provide one approach for constructing multifunctional, highly sensitive, real-time, immunospecific biological detectors. We present qualitative detection of specific Salmonella enterica strains using a functionalized silicon nitride microcantilever. Detection is achieved due to a change in the surface stress on the cantilever surface in situ upon binding of a small number of bacteria. Scanning electron micrographs indicate that less than 25 adsorbed bacteria are required for detection.     

Transient scattering from conducting cylinders

A method for determining the fields scattered by arbitrarily shaped cylindrical conducting structures with a transient incident wave is described. The transient scattering problem is reduced to the solution of a time domain integral equation which in turn is solved directly in the time domain by means of a digital computer. The approximate electromagnetic impulse response for a number of cylindrical scatterers is calculated using this method.     

Action-centred attention in virtual environments.

A recent action-centred model of selective attention holds that attention depends upon the relation between the intended target, distracting stimuli, and the action to be performed (S. P. Tipper et al; see record 1993-12302-001). In contrast to many earlier studies, where perception and action seem to be dissociated, an action-centred approach stresses that what is perceived depends on how we intend to interact with the environment (R. J. Bootsma; see record 1990-06529-001). Consequently, selective attention is best studied under conditions analogous to the three-dimensional, real-world action in which humans typically engage (Tipper et al). In this study, three experiments were conducted to assess the predictions of this model when participants are required to direct action to intended targets located within a computer-generated virtual environment. Taken together, the results suggest that human selective attention is predominately influenced by the degree to which perception and action space is aligned. Specifically, unless a reasonably direct spatial alignment of perception and action is evident, any competing response afforded by irrelevant stimuli is less likely to impede either movement preparation or execution. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of Porphyrin Doping on Thermodynamic Parameters of Pentaerythritol Tetranitrate (PETN) Single Crystals

The search for ways to enhance the stability of PETN against sublimation and coarsening, as well as controlling its thermodynamic properties, is of great interest. In this article, the possibility to use biological molecules to enhance the stability of the important explosive PETN was investigated using thermogravemitric analysis (TGA). Doping PETN with free and metallated porphyrins result in the formation of more stable crystals. Hydrogen bonding between free porphyrins and metal coordination of metallated porphyrins is most likely to play an important role in the crystallization process of PETN. The results indicate the ability of porphyrins molecules to affect/control the thermodynamic properties of PETN inducing a desired higher stability against sublimation. This study opens the door to investigate the use of polymers to enhance the stability of energetic materials.     

Patient-reported symptoms after primary therapy for early prostate cancer: results of a prospective cohort study

Phosphoribosyl-ATP pyrophosphohydrolase (PRA-PH) and phosphoribosyl-AMP cyclohydrolase (PRA-CH) are encoded by HIS4 in yeast and by hisIE in bacteria and catalyze the second and the third step, respectively, in the histidine biosynthetic pathway. By complementing a hisI mutation of Escherichia coli with an Arabidopsis cDNA library, we isolated an Arabidopsis cDNA (At-IE) that possesses these two enzyme activities. The At-IE cDNA encodes a bifunctional protein of 281 amino acids with a calculated molecular mass of 31,666 D. Genomic DNA-blot analysis with the At-IE cDNA as a probe revealed a single-copy gene in Arabidopsis, and RNA-blot analysis showed that the At-IE gene was expressed ubiquitously throughout development. Sequence comparison suggested that the At-IE protein has an N-terminal extension of about 50 amino acids with the properties of a chloroplast transit peptide. We demonstrated through heterologous expression studies in E. coli that the functional domains for the PRA-CH (hisI) and PRA-PH (hisE) resided in the N-terminal and the C-terminal halves, respectively, of the At-IE protein.     

Is epidural anesthesia in labor associated with chronic low back pain? A prospective cohort study

The aim of this prospective study was to compare differential blood cultures and quantitative catheter tip cultures for the diagnosis of catheter-related sepsis. Over a period of 2 years, 283 central venous catheters were inserted in 190 adult patients. Catheters were removed when they were no longer needed or when infection was suspected. Immediately before removal of the central venous catheters, blood cultures were performed, with blood drawn simultaneously from the catheter and the peripheral vein. After removal, quantitative catheter culture was performed according to the Brun-Buisson modified Cleri technique. Fifty-five quantitative catheter cultures were positive. They were classified as contaminated (n = 18), colonized (n = 23), or infected (n = 14). Differential blood cultures correctly identified 13 infections. With a catheter/peripheral cfu ratio of 8, differential blood cultures had a sensitivity of 92.8% and a specificity of 98.8%. When the catheters were removed because of suspected infection, differential blood cultures had a sensitivity of 92.8% and a specificity of 100%. Differential blood culture, a technique that does not necessitate catheter removal, seems effective in the diagnosis of catheter-related sepsis in patients in the intensive care unit.     

Effects of lexical frequency and syntactic complexity in spoken-language comprehension: Evidence from the auditory moving-window technique.

In 2 experiments, a new technique called the auditory moving window was used to investigate aspects of spoken-language processing. Participants paced their way through spoken sentences divided into word or wordlike segments, and their processing time for each segment was recorded. The 1st experiment demonstrated that high-frequency words in spoken sentences require less time to process than do low-frequency words. The 2nd experiment demonstrated that words in syntactically demanding contexts (i.e., the disambiguating word of so-called garden-path sentences) are processed longer than the same words in syntactically simpler contexts. Helpful prosodic information appeared to facilitate reanalysis of garden-path structures but did not seem to prevent the misanalysis. The implications of these findings for issues in spoken-language comprehension are discussed. The authors conclude that the auditory moving-window technique provides a useful tool for addressing largely unexplored issues in spoken-language comprehension. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Obstructive sleep apnea during pregnancy resulting in pulmonary hypertension

Obesity is known to increase maternal morbidity and mortality. We describe a case of obstructive sleep apnea due to obesity and discuss our treatment of the resulting pulmonary hypertension. A patient was transferred to our hospital at 29 weeks' gestation with severe anasarca and more than a 100-pound weight gain during pregnancy. Pulmonary hypertension due to obstructive sleep apnea was diagnosed. The patient was treated with nasal continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) during sleep and remained in the hospital the remainder of her pregnancy. She had a massive spontaneous diuresis during her hospital stay and lost more than 100 pounds. She was delivered at term via cesarean section because of transverse lie. Preoperative hemodynamic monitoring confirmed the diagnosis of pulmonary hypertension. This represents the first case in the literature of obstructive sleep apnea leading to pulmonary hypertension in pregnancy. This patient responded well to nasal CPAP as evident by the massive diuresis and good maternal outcome.