The use of enzymes in treating patients with malignant lymphoma with a large tumor mass]

Systemic enzymes (wobenzime and wobe-mugos) were approved, that had been prescribed as part of polychemotherapy to 24 patients with malignant lymphomas, who presented with large masses of lymphatic nodes poorly resorbable against the background of polychemotherapy and who were assigned for a high-total dose irradiation, which fact would undoubtedly entail sclerosing of adjacent intact tissues. The use of the enzymes made for the optimum realization of the polychemotherapy effect and permitted avoiding a good many of undesirable side events and complication thereof. The above systemic enzymes are well tolerated by patients; they induce no significant changes in the cellular composition or in blood biochemical indices.     

Perceptions of caring. Comparison of antepartum and postpartum patients

An exploratory, comparative survey design was used to describe and compare similarities and differences in perception of caring behaviors between hospitalized antepartum and short-stay postpartum patients. Forty-two patients completed the 63-item Caring Behavior Assessment instrument (CBA). The scale, based on Watson's theory of caring, contains seven categories. There were no statistically significant differences in age, education, gravida, or para between the two groups. Significantly more women in the postpartum group were married. There were no statistically significant differences or correlations in the total CBA scores and the demographic variables. No statistically significant differences in total CBA scores were found between antepartum participants and postpartum participants. These findings corroborate the results of "caring" studies in other patient populations, that satisfying basic needs--that is, evidence of technical knowledge and skills--is more important to patients than meeting higher order needs.     

Biosynthesis of progesterone derived neurosteroids by developing avian CNS: in vitro effects on the GABAA receptor complex

Although enthusiasm for measuring health-related quality of life (HRQL) in clinical trials exists, information is limited on the meaning of scores. We examined the relation between scores from the 34-item Medical Outcomes Study HIV Health Survey (MOS-HIV) and the more detailed HIV Overview of Problems-Evaluation System (HOPES) using the responses of 318 HIV-infected outpatients being treated in Los Angeles and Baltimore. With the HOPES problem statements as independent variables, statistically significant predictors of the variation in MOS-HIV scores for the Physical Function, Mental Health, and Energy/Fatigue scales were identified using stepwise regression. Approximately 60% to 70% of the variation in each of the scores was explained by five to seven different HOPES problem statements, with a single item explaining 47% to 59% of the variation. We created illustrative profiles for each of the three MOS-HIV scales using the HOPES items identified in the regressions. Independent of the scale, persons scoring in the top MOS-HIV quartile tended to report few if any problems, whereas a decline in score to the next quartile was characterized by functional difficulties (e.g., "HIV interferes with work"). The onset of specific problems might trigger further evaluation and potential intervention from health care providers to help maintain patient functioning.     

Evaluation of two commercial kits for serum gastrin assay, and comparison with a conventional radioimmunoassay procedure

We compared two gastrin radioimmunoassay kits ("Immutope" kit, Squibb & Co.; "Gastrin R.I.A." kit, Schwarz/Mann) to the conventional gastrin radioimmunoassay of Yalow and Berson [Gastroenterology 58, 1 (1970)] as run by us and by a second reference laboratory. Although both kits were found to effectively discriminate above-normal and normal values for serum gastrin, they significantly underestimated very high values (greater than 1500 ng/liter). The Schwarz/Mann kit clearly had a superior quality label (lower nonspecific binding and higher specific activity) and a shorter incubation time. However, the 90-min incubation period cited for their kit caused overestimation of gastrin values in the lower range (5-300 ng/liter), which could be corrected by prolonging the incubation to 24 h. The Squibb antibody had fairly good cross reactivity to all gastrin species tested; the Schwarz/Mann antibody had poor affinity for natural human gastrin G34-II. Good correspondence was found for sera run by both reference laboratories (y = 0.96x + 10, r = 0.997), and values obtained with the Schwarz/Mann kit correlated best (+ 0.815) with those from the conventional radioimmunoassay procedure.     

Morphology of pneumopathies and their role in the development of asphyxia neonatorum

Histories of deliveries and development records of 44 newborns with penumopathies who had died on the first days of life in the presence of phenomena of the syndrome of respiratory disorder were analysed and the newborns' lungs were morphologically investigated. The investigation made it possible to single out the following forms of pneumopathy in newborns: edematous-hemorrhagic, hyaline, atelectatic, aspirated, and mixed. In the majority of cases the syndrome of respiratory disorder was a sequela of hypoxia of the intrauterine origin which continued during the first hours and days of life after birth. Such "primary asphyxia" may lead to the development of pneumopathy in a neonate. On the other hand, "secondary asphyxia" in many cases represent sequelae of penumopathy destructural and functional immaturity of the pulmonary tissue, hypoxia, a higher permeability of vessels of the microcirculatory bed, spasm of small pulmonary arteris contributed considerably to the development of penumopathies.     

Probabilistic inference of multijoint movements, skeletal parameters and marker attachments from diverse motion capture data

This paper describes a comprehensive solution to the problem of reconstructing the multijoint movement trajectories of the human body from diverse motion capture data. The problem is formulated in a probabilistic framework so as to handle multiple and unavoidable sources of uncertainty: sensor noise, soft tissue deformation and marker slip, inaccurate marker placement and limb measurement, and missing data due to occlusions. All unknown quantities are treated as state variables even though some of them are constant. In this way, state estimation and system identification can be performed simultaneously, obtaining not only the most likely values but also the confidence intervals of the joint angles, skeletal parameters, and marker positions and orientations relative to the limb segments. The inference method is a Gauss-Newton generalization of the extended Kalman filter. It is adapted to the kinematic domain by expressing spatial rotations via quaternions and computing the sensor residuals and their Jacobians analytically. The ultimate goal of this project is to provide a reliable data analysis tool used in practice. The software implementation is available online.     

Engineering the Losses and Beam Divergence in Arrays of Patch Antenna Microcavities for Terahertz Sources

We perform a comprehensive study on the emission from finite arrays of patch antenna microcavities designed for the terahertz range by using a finite element method. The emission properties including quality factors, far-field pattern, and photon extraction efficiency are investigated for etched and non-etched structures as a function of the number of resonators, the dielectric layer thickness, and period of the array. In addition, the simulations are achieved for lossy and perfect metals and dielectric layers, allowing to extract the radiative and non-radiative contributions to the total quality factors of the arrays. Our study shows that this structure can be optimized to obtain low beam divergence (FWHM <10°) and photon extraction efficiencies >50% while keeping a strongly localized mode. These results show that the use of these microcavities would lead to efficient terahertz emitters with a low divergence vertical emission and engineered losses.     

Characterization of a 3944 Da bacteriocin, produced by Enterococcus mundtii ST15, with activity against Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria

Strain ST15, isolated from soy beans, and identified as Enterococcus mundtii, produces a 3944 Da bacteriocin that inhibits the growth of Lactobacillus sakei, Enterococcus faecalis, Bacillus cereus, Propionibacterium sp., Clostridium tyrobutyricum, Acinetobacter baumanii, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus pneumoniae and Streptococcus caprinus. Bacteriocin ST15 is inactivated by proteinase K, pronase, pepsin, protease and Triton X-114, but not when treated with catalase, alpha-amylase, Triton X-100, SDS, Tween 20, Tween 80, urea and EDTA. No change in activity was recorded after 2 h at pH values between 2.0 and 12.0, and after treatment at 100 degrees C for 90 min. Activity was, however, lost after treatment at 121 degrees C for 20 min. The mode of activity is bactericidal. The highest level of activity (51200 AU ml(-1)) was recorded when cells were grown in MRS broth, pH 6.5. Bacteriocin ST15 differs from other broad-spectrum bacteriocins described for Enterococcus spp. by being active against Gram-negative bacteria and by being smaller.