The specific antibacterial proliferation of reactive arthritis synovial T cells is not due to their higher proportion of CD45RO+ cells compared to peripheral blood

OBJECTIVE: To determine the role of synovial fluid (SF) compared to peripheral blood (PB) CD45RO+ T cells in patients with reactive arthritis (ReA) and undifferentiated oligoarthritis. METHODS: We examined SF and PB of 8 patients with a specific lymphocyte proliferation to Yersinia enterocolitica (n = 5) and Chlamydia trachomatis (n = 3). After depletion of the CD45RA+ T cell subset by dynabeads, the remaining T cells (> 95% CD45RO+) from PB and SF of these patients were again stimulated with these bacterial antigens. RESULTS: The mean stimulation index (SI) of these 8 patients with ReA (n = 5) and undifferentiated oligoarthritis (n = 3) was 30.3 +/- 21.86 in SF compared to 1.36 +/- 0.75 in PB. The enrichment of CD45RO+ cells influenced the antigen specific proliferative response of T cells neither in PB (SI = 1.75 +/- 1.35) nor in SF (26.1 +/- 24.05); the initial difference remained unchanged. CONCLUSION: Our findings suggest that the antigen specific lymphocyte proliferation obtained with SF cells is not due to abundance of nonspecific CD45RO+ T cells but can rather be taken as an indication of specific recognition of local bacterial antigens in ReA.     

Sonographic detection of clinically unsuspected swallowed toothpicks and their gastrointestinal complications

We retrospectively analyzed the clinical presentation and imaging investigation in 4 cases of surgically (2 cases) or endoscopically (2 cases) proven toothpick-related gastrointestinal perforation. The toothpick perforated the stomach (2 cases), the sigmoid (1 case), and the ileum (1 case). Sonographic appearance of the toothpick was a linear, hyperechoic (3 cases) or hypoechoic (1 case) image of variable length (mean: 2.5 cm) with inconsistent posterior shadowing in the longitudinal axis. In transverse section a hyperechoic dot (4 cases) with clear, thin, sharp, posterior shadowing (3 cases) was seen. Following sonography (4 cases), CT scan (2 cases), and upper GI study (2 cases), the preoperative diagnosis of GI perforation by foreign body compatible with toothpick was made in all cases, although none of the patients was aware of having swallowed a toothpick. This information will be of help in making early sonographic diagnosis of toothpick-related GI perforation in patients with or without symptoms.     

Topical laryngo-tracheal anesthesia and intraocular pressure in anesthesia for ophthalmic surgery

OBJECTIVE: The reflex response to orotracheal intubation provokes an increase of arterial pressure accompanied by an increase of chorioides volume and a consequent ocular hypertone. There are several methods to reduce the reflex response due to intubation. One of the most effective is topical anaesthesia of larynx and trachea. Experiments were directed to evaluate the efficacy of topical anaesthesia to reduce the intraocular hypertone due to orotracheal intubation. DESIGN: A prospective randomized mask study was conduct on patients undergoing ophthalmologic (anterior segment) surgery at the Eye Clinic of Florence University. METHODS: Intraocular pressure was measured by a Goldman tonometer at four times: T0 = basal, T1 = 2' minutes after induction of general anaesthesia, T2 = 2' minutes after laryngoscopy, T3 = 2' minutes after orotracheal intubation. At the same moments, systolic blood pressure, heart rate, rate pressure pro duct were measured. Patients were randomly divided in two groups: Group L (n = 10) in which was evaluated the efficacy of laryngotracheal topical spray of lidocaine 4% (2 ml) and Group F (n = 10) in which saline was used instead of anesthetic. The filling of the LTA kit (Abbott) was made by a person not involved in the experiments. DATA ANALYSIS: Student's t test for unpaired data. RESULTS: Topical anaesthesia reduces the increase of intraocular pressure, hypertension and rate pressure product due to intubation. The intraocular pressure reduces to 13% less than basal value in Group L and increase to 50% more than basal value in Group F. CONCLUSION: The topical anaesthesia of larynx and trachea is effective to reduce the intraocular hypertension due to the reflex response evoked by orotracheal intubation.     

Hormonal intrauterine devices

Ligase chain reaction (LCR) is a ligation-mediated amplification technique of a target DNA sequence using oligonucleotides and thermostable ligase. LCR is useful for the detection of known DNA sequences and point mutations in a limited amount of DNA. We introduce the principle, development, and protocol of this simple and convenient technique for DNA analysis.     

Enantioselective antiplatelet actions of nipecotamides

This investigation retrospectively examined changes in marital satisfaction following stroke. The relationship between such changes and other pertinent factors were also examined, including severity of aphasia, knowledge of aphasia, number of months after stroke, and length of the marriage. The subjects were 40 spouses of patients with aphasia grouped according to severity of the aphasia (mild, moderate, severe). Spouses completed two different measures of marital satisfaction--the Marital Satisfaction Scale (MSS) and the Marital Comparison Level Index (MCLI). These measures were completed in both a prestroke (retrospective reporting) and a poststroke format to allow for change to be assessed. In addition, a Knowledge of Aphasia questionnaire was completed by the normal spouses to evaluate their understanding of the disorder of aphasia. There was a significant difference between prestroke and poststroke scores on both the MSS and the MCLI, indicating a lower level of satisfaction following the stroke. The amount of change between prestroke and poststroke MSS and MCLI scores was not related to either number of months poststroke or number of years married. Although there was no relationship between changes in prestroke and poststroke scores on the MCLI and Knowledge of Aphasia scores, there was a significant correlation between changes in these scores on the MSS and Knowledge of Aphasia scores. Hence, the more knowledge spouses had regarding aphasia, the less the negative impact the stroke had on marital satisfaction, as measured by the MSS. Results are discussed in terms of the interdisciplinary treatment needs of aphasic patients and the implications for future investigations.     

The structure and management of service level agreements innetworks

The paper proposes a structure for quality-of-service (QoS)-centered service level agreements (SLA), and a framework for their real-time management in multiservice packet networks. The SLA is structured to be fair to both parties, the service provider and their customer. The SLA considered here are for QoS assured delivery of aggregate bandwidth from ingress to egress nodes; however, the control and signaling is for the more granular flows or calls. A SLA monitoring scheme is presented in which revenue is generated by the admission of flows into the network, and penalty incurred when flows are lost in periods when the service provider is not SLA compliant. In the SLA management scheme proposed, the results of a prior off-line design are used, in conjunction with measurements taken locally at ingress nodes, to classify the loading status of routes. The routing and resource management are based on virtual partitioning and its supporting mechanism of bandwidth protection. The effectiveness of SLA management is measured by the robustness in performance in the presence of substantial diversity in actual traffic conditions. A simulation testbed called D'ARTAGNAN has been built from which we report numerical results for a case study. The results show that the SLA management scheme is robust, fair and efficient over a broad range of traffic conditions     

SAR-retrieved wind in polar regions-comparison with in situ data and atmospheric model output

European remote sensing (ERS) satellites synthetic aperture radar (SAR) wind retrievals using CMOD-IFR2 are, for the first time, retrieved in the marginal ice zone (MIZ) and in Arctic coastal areas and compared with in situ observations from reseach vessels (RVs) and output from a high-resolution atmospheric model. The root mean squares (rms) of the comparisons were 1.6 m s/sup -1/ and 2 m s/sup -1/, respectively. The spatial variation of the SAR wind fields established a decrease in wind speed close to the ice edge for the late summer situations where the wind was along the ice edge with the ice to the left. This decrease is believed to be due to changes in atmospheric stability, possibly through development of an internal boundary layer caused by the cold ice cover and melt water. Lower wind speed near the ice edge is confirmed by the atmospheric model and the in situ observations. Furthermore, good results are obtained from SAR wind retrieval in leads when compared with model output during a cold-air outbreak. Routine measurements in the MIZ are useful for estimating the wind stress, and therefore SAR may play an important role in this region. Finally, the identification of a jet out from Hinlopen Strait in the Svalbard region and low wind wakes along the coast in the SAR-retrieved wind field is confirmed by in situ observations as the RV moves through the region. The jet is also confirmed by the atmospheric model, which is able to reproduce the situation.     

Flicker noise in gate overlapped polycrystalline silicon thin-filmtransistors

A study of the noise performance of gate overlapped polycrystalline silicon thin-film transistors (TFTs) is presented. Low-frequency noise measurements were carried out on n- and p-type samples fabricated by excimer laser crystallization. It is shown that the carrier number fluctuation model applies not only to n-type but also to p-type devices. The density of oxide traps was extracted from the noise measurements and was of the order of 10¹⁸-10¹⁹ eV^-1 cm^-3