An antinociceptive effect of the intraperitoneal injection of nifedipine in rats, measured by tail-flick test

The tail-flick (TF) technique was used to assess the antinociceptive properties of nifedipine (NIF) given intraperitoneally (i.p.). First, the most suitable intensity of the noxious stimulus (temperature of the bulb) has been ascertained and used in the main study. Male Sprague-Dawley rats received NIF, dissolved in dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) at the doses of 0.0, 0.5, 2, 5, 10 and 15 mg/kg, or control with no injection. For the main study, the noxious stimulus was limited to 15 sec (cut-off time) and TF latencies were recorded up to 120 min. The antinociceptive response was expressed as the area under the curve for each rat and analyzed by one-way ANOVA. The antinociceptive response to the lower doses of NIF (0.5 and 2 mg/kg) did not differ from control (no injection) and DMSO alone. Significance was found at 5, 10 and 15 mg NIF with no difference among the doses. However, there was an increasing tendency of the mean values from 0.5 to 15 mg NIF resulting in a positive correlation. The correlation coefficient was 0.32483 (p = 0.015) and regression equation Y = (19.37) x dose + 1320. Our data suggest that spinal mechanisms are involved in NIF-induced antinociception.     

Percutaneous balloon pericardiotomy for patients with recurrent pericardial effusion: using a novel double-balloon technique with one long and one short balloon

Percutaneous balloon pericardiotomy is effective and less invasive for the treatment of recurrent pericardial effusion. This study suggests that the double-balloon method with 1 longer and 1 shorter balloon is the procedure of choice for percutaneous balloon pericardiotomy.     

Collection of peripheral blood progenitor cells after the administration of cyclophosphamide, etoposide, and granulocyte-colony-stimulating factor: an analysis of 497 patients

BACKGROUND: There is great interpatient variability in the number of peripheral blood stem cells collected, as measured by CD34+ cell content, after the administration of chemotherapy and a growth factor. The ability to predict patients who fail to yield adequate quantities of CD34+ cells would be of value. However, very few reports include large numbers of patients treated in an identical fashion. STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS: Between 1991 and 1995, 497 consecutive patients with a variety of malignant diseases received cyclophosphamide (4 g/m2), etoposide (600 mg/m2), and granulocyte-colony-stimulating factor (6 micrograms/kg/day) for mobilization and collection of a target dose > or = 2.5 x 10(8) CD34+ cells per kg. Multivariate analyses were performed to determine the factors associated with failure to achieve this target harvest. RESULTS: A median of 14.71 x 10(6) CD34+ cells per kg (range, 0.08-137.55) was harvested with a median of 2 (range, 1-11) apheresis procedures. Ninety-one percent of patients yielded > or = 2.5 x 10(5) CD34+ cells per kg. Patients with Stage II-III breast cancer, who had pretreatment platelet counts > or = 150 x 10(9) per L and patients who underwent < or = 1 prior chemotherapy regimen had improved CD34+ cell yields. However, most patients with adverse risk factors yielded > or = 2.5 x 10(6) CD34+ cells per kg. CONCLUSION: A regimen of cyclophosphamide, etoposide, and granulocyte-colony-stimulating factor led to the successful collection of adequate numbers of CD34+ cells in most patients without excessive toxicity. These observations confirm previous reports that intense prior therapy adversely affects the quantity of CD34+ cells harvested. Pretreatment and posttreatment variables did not predict with any certainty the small fraction of patients who fail to yield > or = 2.5 x 10(6) CD34+ cells per kg via multiple apheresis procedures.     

On the algebraic formulation of certain geometry statements and mechanical geometry theorem proving

In this paper we analyze the algebraic formulations of certain geometry statements appearing in recent literature related to mechanical geometry theorem proving and give several examples to show that one of these formulations can cause serious problems. We clarify a formulation which is essentially due to W. T. Wu and, in our opinion, is the most satisfactory.This author was supported by NSF Grants DCR-8503498 and CCR-8702108.     

Sexual disorders: demographic and diagnostic profile during one year of a multidisciplinary project

Taking into consideration a study published 10 years ago on sexual disturbances of students at the University of S?o Paulo, the importance of the subject is discussed, along with the creation in 1993 of the Sexuality Project at the university hospital of the University of S?o Paulo School of Medicine. In its first year, this multidisciplinary project attended 140 patients with sexual dysfunctions (associated or not to other clinical manifestations); the majority were younger than 60 years-old, and 80 percent were male.     

Comparison of calcium phosphate cement mixture and pure calcium hydroxide as direct pulp-capping agents

This review reports the different genetic factors that have been identified either as risk factor for Alzheimer's disease (AD) or directly causing the disease. First are reviewed epidemiological data and biological mechanisms about the apoplipoprotein E gene allele epsilon 4 that is a major risk factor for Alzheimer's disease. The second part describes the mutations responsible for early-onset autosomal dominant AD found in three different genes. The gene located on chromosome 21 encodes the amyloid precusor protein (APP). The presenilin 1 and presenilin 2 genes, located on chromosome 14 and 1 respectively, encode not yet known membrane proteins.     

Multiclass Multiserver Threshold-Based Systems: A Study of Noninstantaneous Server Activation

In this paper, we consider performance evaluation of a system which shares K servers (or resources) among N heterogeneous classes of workloads, where server allocation and deallocation for class i is dictated by a class specific threshold-based policy with hysteresis control. In particular, the server activation time for class i is noninstantaneous. There are many systems and applications where a multiclass threshold-based queueing system can be of great use. One important utility of using threshold-based approaches is in situations where applications may incur server usage costs. In these cases, one needs to consider not only the performance aspects but also the resulting cost/performance ratio. The motivation for using hysteresis control is to reduce the unnecessary cost of server setup (or activation) and server removal (or deactivation) whenever there are momentary fluctuations in workload. Moreover, servers in such systems and applications are often needed by multiple classes of workloads and, hence, it is desirable to find good approaches to sharing server resources among the different classes of workloads, preferably without statically partitioning the server pool among these classes. An important and distinguishing characteristic of our work is that we consider the modeling and analysis of a multiclass system with noninstantaneous server activation. The main contributions of this work are: 1) in developing an efficient approximation method for solving such models; 2) in verifying the convergence of our iterative method, and 3) in evaluating the resulting accuracy of the technique for computing performance measures of interest, which can subsequently be used in making system design choices     

Analysis of a grating metal structure with broad back-scatteringfield pattern for applications in vehicle collision avoidancesystem

In this paper, grating metal structures with broad and flat back-scattering field patterns are studied for possible applications in a vehicle collision avoidance system. The two-dimensional TE scattering of a planar grating structure and a curved grating structure are analyzed at a frequency of 77 GHz. For the planar structure, the method of moments and Floquet's theorem are used to solve the induced current and the resultant back-scattering field. Based on the results of the planar structure, the scattering field of the curved grating structure is obtained by using a perturbation method. The influence on the field pattern of the curvature as well as other structure parameters, such as the width and geometry of each period in the grating structure, is investigated     

Growth temperature dependence of low-noise MESFET in molecular-beam epitaxy

The substrate growth temperature dependence of electrical properties for a low-noise MESFET fabricated on MBE-grown material has been demonstrated. The optimum noise figure and its associated gain were attributed to the higher epilayer quality and mobility at a growth temperature of 650°C between temperatures of 550°C and 700°C.