National standards for general practice

A set of standards for Australian general practices has been developed through a 4 year project conducted by The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners. An orderly, iterative process was adopted to ensure comprehensive consultation with general practitioners, other health professionals, consumers and governments. The draft standards were field tested in 199 randomly selected urban and rural practices. Results of this field testing showed that the standards have content validity, that they can be measured reliably and that the practice visit protocol is feasible. The standards are calibrated to define the minimum acceptable features of general practices expected for the mid 1990s. The standards have been adopted by Australian General Practice Accreditation Limited as the basis for a voluntary system of practice accreditation.     

Measurement of inerting concentrations

A method has been developed for the measurement of peak concentrations of extinguishing agents. The values will be used to provide design data for total flooding automatic systems. The values obtained are outside the true limits of flammability and therefore contain a built-in safety factor. The significance of these measurements is discussed in relation to the protection provided by an automatic system.     

Ultrasound findings in hepatitis

A retrospective study of ultrasound images of the liver in patients with hepatitis was undertaken. Two distinct ultrasound patterns were detected. In acute hepatitis, the predominant findings were accentuated brightness and more extensive demonstration of the portal vein radicle walls and overall decreased echogenicity of the liver. Chronic hepatitis primarily revealed decreased brightness and number of portal vein radicle walls and verall increased liver echogenicity. In addition, the pathological severity closely paralleled these ultrasound patterns. A prospective study confirmed the same acute hepatitis ultrasound findings with close correlation to the clinical severity. These distinct ultrasound patterns will help to evaluate patients with suspected acute and chronic hepatitis and more accurately define intrahepatic causes of jaundice.     

Eyedness

Study of the activities of hyaluronidase, lactate dehydrogenase isoenzyme-X and the dehydrogenases of sorbitol, alpha-glycerophosphate, glucose-6-phosphate, malate, glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate and isocitrate in the testes of mice of different ages showed that the changes were correlated with the stages of spermatogenic cell differentiation. The first 4 enzymes had activities which were low in newborn mice and high in adults; this pattern was reversed for the other enzymes.     

Crambe seed processing: Decomposition of glucosinolates (thioglucosides) with chemical additives

Crambe meal was cooked with a variety of bases and metal salts to study decomposition of the undesirable glucosinolate (thioglucoside),epi-progoitrin. Salts of iron and copper were preferred because they were the most active decomposers and because they did not reduce the lysine content as did the alkalies. An unsaturated hydroxy nitrile, representing about 25 mole per cent of the decomposedepi-progoitrin, was the major reaction product left in the cooked meal. A thionamide product, representing about 7 mole per cent of the decomposedepi-progoitrin, was also observed in meals cooked with metallic salts. The thionamide was relatively unstable in moist, hot crambe meal, especially at basic pH, and may therefore be an intermediate in a complex decomposition path. Rats fed ferrous sulfate-treated crambe meal as 30% of a protein sufficient diet gained 70% compared with a basal control. Enlargement of thyroid, liver and kidneys was about 1.5 times that of the control organs. A crambe meal heated under the same conditions but without ferrous sulfate and fed at the same diet level caused 100% mortality within two weeks. Presented at AOCS Meeting, Houston, Texas, May 1971. Northern Marketing and Nutrition Research Division, ARS, USDA.     

Visualizing protein conformational changes on a personal computer--alpha carbon pseudo bonding as a constraint for interpolation in internal coordinate space

A Java program has been developed to produce animations and movies of protein conformation changes. The animations, primarily intended for teaching purposes, are produced by visualizing a series of aligned structures interpolated between two forms of the same protein. To produce plausible intermediate structures, the interpolation is performed in internal coordinate space and uses a simple constraint to avoid the production of artifactual movements of the protein backbone. This constraint involves the introduction of 'pseudo' bonds linking the protein alpha carbon atoms. All of the steps from alignment of initial structures to the production of AVI movies can be performed on readily available personal computers.     

An Observational Study of Dual Display Usage in University Classroom Lectures

We report a study of how dual display screens were used in classroom lectures for university-level courses across a variety of disciplines during five academic terms over a 2-year period. Our goal was to understand the pedagogical consequences of using more than a single electronic display screen to support classroom lectures. We deployed an in-house software system (MultiPresenter) in real classrooms. We examined the use of MultiPresenter by 8 university instructors who taught 15 courses with a total of 1,147 students during 13-week regular terms or 6-week summer terms. We observed classroom lectures, interviewed instructors, collected screen images and log files of MultiPresenter usage, and administered questionnaires to students about their subjective impressions. Based on these data, we analyzed how instructors used MultiPresenter in order to identify examples of how multiple display screens might best be used for educational purposes. The analysis revealed that the following practices are beneficial: the ability to keep information persistent for extended periods, the increased flexibility in where and when information is shown, capability for side-by-side comparison of full screens of information, simultaneous visibility of both overview (“roadmap”) and detailed (“content”) information, and extra space to annotate information. Possible hazards include difficulty focusing on specific information amidst a large amount of information and too much information changing too quickly without proper indication of the changes.