Laboratory millimeter wave measurements of atmospheric aerosols

Measurements made in an untuned resonator by Fourier Transform Spectroscopy of atmospheric aerosols are explained by a pumped phonon model due to Fröhlich.     

Accelerating entry into supported employment for persons with severe psychiatric disabilities.

Tested the hypothesis that Ss with severe mental illnesses would achieve better vocational outcomes with an accelerated approach to supported employment (AASE), as compared to gradual approaches (GA) with prevocational training. 86 Ss (mean age 35.1 yrs) with a diagnosis of a serious mental illness, were randomly assigned to either the AASE, or the GA, which included a minimum of 4 mo prevocational training. Data were obtained on indicators of vocational outcomes over 2 yrs, and for a limited number of Ss (n=36), during the 4th yr of inception into the program. Initially, only 5% of Ss preferred prevocational training. After 1 yr, AASE Ss showed better outcomes for a range of indicators, including achievement of competitive employment, duration of employment and mean earnings. During the 4th yr, 59% of these Ss were competitively employed, as compared to only 6% of GA Ss. Rehabilitation is more effective using AASE than GA. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Incorporating social support into a community-wide smoking-cessation contest

Exposure to foreign particles sometimes causes inflammatory reactions through production of cytokines and chemoattractants by phagocytic cells. In this study, we focused on macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) to evaluate its pathophysiological role in the phagocytic process. Immunohistochemical analysis of human pseudosynovial tissues retrieved at revision of total hip arthroplasty showed that infiltrating mononuclear and multinuclear cells were positively stained by both an anti-CD68 antibody and anti-human MIF antibody. For in vitro study, MIF was released from murine macrophage-like cells (RAW 264.7) in response to phagocytosis of fluorescent-latex beads in a particle dose-dependent manner. Northern blot analysis showed marked elevation of the MIF mRNA level in the phagocytic macrophage-like cells. Moreover, pretreatment of RAW 264.7 cells with rat recombinant MIF increased the extent of phagocytosis by 1.6-fold compared with the control. Taken together, these results suggest that MIF plays an important role by activating macrophages in autocrine and paracrine fashion to phagocytose foreign particles.     

Ultrastructural studies of the ileum neobladder

Of 101 women, 15-50 years of age, presenting with vaginal discharge, 34 had bacterial vaginosis and were randomly assigned to a seven-day course of oral treatment with either erythromycin (0.5 g b.i.d.) or metronidazole (0.4 g b.i.d.) in a single-blind, cross-over study. Treatment failure (> or = three clinical signs of bacterial vaginosis) occurred in 13 (81%) of 16 patients given erythromycin, as compared with three (17%) of 18 women treated with metronidazole (p < 0.001). Persistence of Gardnerella vaginalis, Mobiluncus species and/or Mycoplasma hominis was found in 14 of 16 patients treated with erythromycin, and in four of 16 patients treated with metronidazole. Treatment with metronidazole was successful (< or = two clinical signs of bacterial vaginosis) in eight of 10 cases of erythromycin treatment failure. Neither of two cases of metronidazole treatment failure was cured with erythromycin. At three-month follow-up of 31 women, persistence or recurrence of bacterial vaginosis was diagnosed in 11 cases (36%).     

RNA tertiary structure mediation by adenosine platforms

The crystal structure of a group I intron domain reveals an unexpected motif that mediates both intra- and intermolecular interactions. At three separate locations in the 160-nucleotide domain, adjacent adenosines in the sequence lie side-by-side and form a pseudo-base pair within a helix. This adenosine platform opens the minor groove for base stacking or base pairing with nucleotides from a noncontiguous RNA strand. The platform motif has a distinctive chemical modification signature that may enable its detection in other structured RNAs. The ability of this motif to facilitate higher order folding provides one explanation for the abundance of adenosine residues in internal loops of many RNAs.     

Camcorders

The author explains from an engineering standpoint, how some of the camcorder components work. He discusses the solid-state image sensor, the photodetector, scanning, the shutter frame rate, optics, the recording mechanism, the viewfinder, special effects, and automatic features. Motion detection, discrimination, and compensation are also covered. Recommendations as to which features are most useful are made     

Optimal discrimination and classification of neuronal actionpotential waveforms from multiunit, multichannel recordings usingsoftware-based linear filters

Describes advanced protocols for the discrimination and classification of neuronal spike waveforms within multichannel electrophysiological recordings. The programs are capable of detecting and classifying the spikes from multiple, simultaneously active neurons, even in situations where there is a high degree of spike waveform superposition on the recording channels. The protocols are based on the derivation of an optimal linear filter for each individual neuron. Each filter is tuned to selectively respond to the spike waveform generated by the corresponding neuron, and to attenuate noise and the spike waveforms from all other neurons. The protocol is essentially an extension of earlier work (S. Andreassen et al., 1979; W.M. Roberts and D.K. Hartline, 1975; R.B. Stein et al., 1979). However, the protocols extend the power and utility of the original implementations in two significant respects. First, a general single-pass automatic template estimation algorithm was derived and implemented. Second, the filters were implemented within a software environment providing a greatly enhanced functional organization and user interface. The utility of the analysis approach was demonstrated on samples of multiunit electrophysiological recordings from the cricket abdominal nerve cord