Marriage and the spiritual realm: The role of proximal and distal religious constructs in marital functioning.

Ninety-seven couples completed questionnaires about their involvement in joint religious activities and their perceptions regarding the sanctification of marriage, including perceived sacred qualities of marriage and beliefs about the manifestation of God in marriage. In contrast to individual religiousness and religious homogamy (distal religious constructs), these proximal religious variables directly reflect an integration of religion and marriage, and they were associated with greater global marital adjustment, more perceived benefits from marriage, less marital conflict, more verbal collaboration, and less use of verbal aggression and stalemate to discuss disagreements for both wives and husbands. The proximal measures also added substantial unique variance (adjusted R2 change ranged from .06 to .48) to specific aspects of marital functioning after controlling demographic factors and distal religious variables in hierarchical regression analyses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Coeliac disease in primary care: case finding study

OBJECTIVES: To provide evidence of underdiagnosis of coeliac disease and to describe the main presenting symptoms of coeliac disease in primary care. DESIGN: Case finding in a primary care setting by testing for coeliac disease by using the endomysial antibody test. SETTING: Nine surgeries in and around a market town in central England, serving a population of 70 000. PARTICIPANTS: First 1000 patients screened from October 1996 to October 1997. OUTCOME MEASURES: Determination of endomysial antibody titre of patients fulfilling the study criteria, followed by small intestine biopsy of those with positive results. RESULTS: The 30 patients (out of 1000 samples) with positive results on the endomysial antibody test all had histological confirmation on small intestine biopsy. The commonest mode of presentation (15/30) was anaemia of varying severity. Most patients (25/30) presented with non-gastrointestinal symptoms. Specificity of the endomysial antibody test was 30/30. CONCLUSIONS: Underdiagnosis and misdiagnosis of coeliac disease are common in general practice and often result in protracted and unnecessary morbidity. Serological screening in primary care will uncover a large proportion of patients with this condition and should be made widely available and publicised. Coeliac disease should be considered in patients who have anaemia or are tired all the time, especially when there is a family history of the disease.     

Image Capture and Analysis for Macromolecular Crystal Growth Using RoboMicroscope™II

The RoboMicroScope II is an image capture and analysis system, which enables the automated analysis of protein crystallization trials. The RoboMicroscope II couples robust hardware with intuitive software that tracks and assigns an objective score to each instance of a crystallization experiment. This machine can also be used in a manual mode, to increase the reliability, objectivity and efficiency of human scoring of crystallization trials.     

Electric utility experience with solar photovoltaic generation

A review of electric utility experience with solar photovoltaic (PV) generation is presented, covering both central stations and smaller commercial and residential systems. Design and operational difficulties and their solutions are included. The author summarizes the experiences of PV power plant operations in the Carolinas, Georgia, California, Texas, New England, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Alabama and by the Tennessee Valley Authority     

The requirements for databases for sensory analysis

The large volume and complex organisational structure of sensory analysis data places particular demands on any database management system. Key advantages of a sensory database include independence of file structure, data organisation and data type, metadata, the ability to form multiple relationships and a standardised interface which allows interaction with a variety of sensory software packages. This paper discusses these issues in some detail.     

Effect of Water Content on the Electrical Conductivity of Sodium Trisilicate Glasses

The effect of variations in water content on the direct-current electrical conductivity of Na₂O · 3SiO₂ glass was measured. Increasing the water content of this glass from 10 to 500 wt ppm of H₂O results in an increase in the resistivity of a factor of 2 to 3. The increase in resistivity is accompanied by an increase in the activation energy for conduction. Increasing resistivity with increasing water content is attributed to decreasing molar volume. Under identical annealing conditions, "wetter" glasses relax to a smaller molar volume (greater density) because of the presence of a larger number of "terminal" hydroxyl species that allow structural relaxation to continue to lower temperatures.     

Mitochondrial enzyme pathways and their possible role during curing

European Food Research and Technology - The velocity of oxidation of exogeneous ferrocytochrome c by nitrite under anaerobic conditions in the presence of skeletal muscle mitochondria is dependent...     

Biomaterials as Tools to Decode Immunity

The immune system has remarkable capabilities to combat disease with exquisite selectivity. This feature has enabled vaccines that provide protection for decades and, more recently, advances in immunotherapies that can cure some cancers. Greater control over how immune signals are presented, delivered, and processed will help drive even more powerful options that are also safe. Such advances will be underpinned by new tools that probe how immune signals are integrated by immune cells and tissues. Biomaterials are valuable resources to support this goal, offering robust, tunable properties. The growing role of biomaterials as tools to dissect immune function in fundamental and translational contexts is highlighted. These technologies can serve as tools to understand the immune system across molecular, cellular, and tissue length scales. A common theme is exploiting biomaterial features to rationally direct how specific immune cells or organs encounter a signal. This precision strategy, enabled by distinct material properties, allows isolation of immunological parameters or processes in a way that is challenging with conventional approaches. The utility of these capabilities is demonstrated through examples in vaccines for infectious disease and cancer immunotherapy, as well as settings of immune regulation that include autoimmunity and transplantation.     

Top-surface-emitting GaAs four-quantum-well lasers emitting at 0.85 mu m

Room temperature CW and pulsed lasing of top-surface emitting, vertical-cavity, GaAs quantum-well lasers was achieved at approximately 845 nm. The active gain medium was four 100 AA thick GaAs quantum wells. The whole structure was grown by molecular beam epitaxy. Deep H/sup +/-ion implantation followed by annealing as used to control a vertical profile of resistivity for an efficient current injection at the active region. The threshold current was 2.2 mA for CW and pulsed operation using 10 mu m diameter lasers. Differential quantum efficiency was about 20%. Minimum threshold current density per quantum well of 360 A/cm/sup 2/ was obtained.<>     

Cholestatic hepatocellular injury with azathioprine: a case report and review of the mechanisms of hepatotoxicity

PURPOSE: The goal of this study is to describe asymmetrical forms of primary open angle glaucomas in black african originated patients. MATERIAL AND METHOD: Data of 514 glaucomatous patients (1022 eyes) followed between 1993 and 1997, and attending our hospital eye department are retrospectively analysed. All the participants were diagnosed as primary open angle glaucomas; asymetry was defined as a difference of 0.2 at least between the vertical cup disc ratio of the same patient. RESULTS: The mean age of all 514 glaucoma patients was 34.52 +/- 15.55 years; 254 patients (49.40%) had no differences between cup disc values while 260 remaining others had asymmetric glaucomas (50.58%). Of them, 189 (72.69%) had a difference of 0.2 between both eyes; 49 (18.8%) had 0.3 difference; 7 (2.69%) had 0.4 difference; 4 (1.53%) had 0.5 difference, and 11 (4.23%) a difference of 0.6. Besides, 114 eyes (11.15%) had a vertical ratio of 0.9 at the first diagnosis. CONCLUSION: Carefully recognition of asymmetric cup disc ratios is of great diagnostic value in the the early stages of primary open angle glaucoma because 50% of all patients presented with this clinical form in our experience. This strategy would improve early diagnosis of glaucoma in our areas.