Hormonal sensitivity of human breast tumors in vitro: pentose-shunt activity

Recent studies indicated that response to endocrine therapy might be predicted in human breast carcinomas using the sensitivity of the pentose-shunt pathway to hormones in organ culture. Thirty breast tumors were examined using this histochemical method, and three independent assessments were made. There was poor agreement between the observers, and we consider that this test is not reproducible in its present form.     

A study of the accuracy of the Precision Q.I.D. glucometer

The Precision Quantum-in-dium (Q.I.D.) Glucometer was used to determine the glucose concentrations of 38 human blood samples. The same samples were also run on the OPERA Chemistry Autoanalyzer 2010 system. More than 44% of the glucometer reports had a difference of greater than 15% from the respective autoanalyzer reports. The calibration of the glucometer could be the source of the error and an improvement is recommended.     

A requirement for the rac1 GTPase in the signal transduction pathway leading to cardiac myocyte hypertrophy

We have used adenoviral-mediated gene transfer of a constitutively active (V12rac1) and dominant negative (N17rac1) isoform of rac1 to assess the role of this small GTPase in cardiac myocyte hypertrophy. Expression of V12rac1 in neonatal cardiac myocytes results in sarcomeric reorganization and an increase in cell size that is indistinguishable from ligand-stimulated hypertrophy. In addition, V12rac1 expression leads to an increase in atrial natriuretic peptide secretion. In contrast, expression of N17rac1, but not a truncated form of Raf-1, attenuated the morphological hypertrophy associated with phenylephrine stimulation. Consistent with the observed effects on morphology, expression of V12rac1 resulted in an increase in new protein synthesis, while N17rac1 expression inhibited phenylephrine-induced leucine incorporation. These results suggest rac1 is an essential element of the signaling pathway leading to cardiac myocyte hypertrophy.     

Analysis of the etiologic structure of urinary tract infection and antibiotic-resistance of its pathogens

The main pathogens of inflammatory diseases of the kidneys and upper urinary tracts in inpatients of an urological unit were gramnegative organisms of the family Enterobacteriaceae while the pathogens of the infection of the lower urinary tracts (nonspecific urethritis) and male genitalia were grampositive cocci. Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Enterobacter agglomerans and Proteus spp. (indole positive) were the chief causative agents of the hospital infections. The analysis of the materials revealed a tendency towards an increase in the microflora resistance to the most widely used antibiotics: aminoglycosides, cephalosporins and fluoroquinolones. This especially applied to the "problem" pathogen P.aeruginosa. Thus, in 1987 the portion of the P.aeruginosa gentamicin susceptible strains amounted to 52 per cent whereas in 1996 it was 13 per cent. The strains susceptible to ofloxacin equaled 79 per cent in 1988 and 44 per cent in 1995. At present the drugs of choice in the treatment of urinary tract infections due to P.aeruginosa are ceftazidime, cefpirome and amikacin (65, 64 and 62 per cent of the susceptible strains respectively). The importance of permanent microbiological monitoring and the respective correction of the therapy are indicated.     

ReliaCloud‐NS: A scalable web‐based simulation platform for evaluating the reliability of cloud computing systems

This paper discusses the implementation, architecture, and use of a graphical web‐based application called ReliaCloud‐NS that allows users to (1) evaluate the reliability of a cloud computing system (CCS) and (2) design a CCS to a specified reliability level for both public and private clouds. The software was designed with a RESTful application programming interface for performing nonsequential Monte Carlo simulations to perform reliability evaluations of a CCS. Simulation results are stored and presented to the user in the form of interactive charts and graphs from within a web browser. The software contains multiple types of CCS components, simulations, and virtual machine allocation schemes. ReliaCloud‐NS also contains a novel feature that evaluates CCS reliability across a range of varying virtual machine allocations and establishes and graphs a CCS reliability curve. This paper discusses the software architecture, the interactive web‐based interface, and the different types of simulations available in ReliaCloud‐NS and presents an overview of the results generated from a simulation.