A corpus of Schlieren photography of speech production: potential methodology to study aerodynamics of labial,nasal and vocalic processes

Language Resources and Evaluation - This report presents a corpus of articulations recorded with Schlieren photography, a recording technique to visualize aeroflow dynamics for two purposes. First,...     

L-thiocitrulline. A stereospecific, heme-binding inhibitor of nitric-oxide synthases

Nitric-oxide synthase (NOS) catalyzes the oxidation of L-arginine to citrulline and nitric oxide (NO). The enzyme is inhibited by a variety of N omega-monosubstituted L-arginine analogs, and some of these compounds are useful in reversing pathologies associated with the overproduction of NO (e.g. the hypotension of septic shock). We report here that L-thiocitrulline (gamma-thioureido-L-norvaline) is a potent, stereospecific inhibitor of the constitutive brain and endothelial isoforms of NOS as well as the isoform induced in vascular smooth muscle cells by lipopolysaccharide and interferon-gamma. Steady state kinetic studies show L-thiocitrulline inhibition is competitive with L-arginine (Ki approximately 4-20% of KArgm), indicating that initial binding is as a substrate/product analog. In contrast to L-arginine and N omega-methyl-L-arginine, the prototypic NOS inhibitor, L-thiocitrulline binding elicits a "Type II" difference spectrum, indicating a high spin to low spin transition of the iron in the heme cofactor. This finding suggests that L-thiocitrulline is contributing the sixth ligand to heme iron, probably through the thioureido sulfur. Such interaction with heme iron neither stimulates nor inhibits the direct flavin-mediated cytochrome c reduction activity of the enzyme, but it does inhibit heme-dependent superoxide formation. In vivo, L-thiocitrulline is a potent pressor agent in both normal and endotoxemic rats, the latter finding suggesting utility in treating the hypotension of septic shock.     

Renal amyloidosis in a drug abuser

Drug abusers, particularly those who inject drugs s.c. ("skin popping"), may develop amyloidosis. Chronic infections are thought to play a pathogenetic role in this setting. A patient is presented who had a history of "skin popping" cocaine and heroin and developed nephrotic syndrome, with an elevated serum creatinine and a creatinine clearance of 61 mL/min. Renal biopsy demonstrated amyloidosis. Treatment with colchicine was initiated, and proteinuria decreased to near normal levels after 12 months. Concomitant with the decrease in proteinuria, creatinine clearance improved, although a repeat renal biopsy failed to show any significant improvement in amyloid burden. These observations suggest that colchicine may be a useful treatment in reversing the proteinuria of renal amyloidosis associated with drug abuse. Furthermore, clinical improvement may occur before any demonstrable regression in the amyloidosis.     

Treatment of pulmonary hypertension with inhaled nitric oxide during hepatic transplantation in an adolescent: reversibility of pulmonary hypertension after transplantation

Accusations of rape or sexual harassment are currently very high-profile in the military. This article discusses rape allegations in the military legal system from a psychiatric perspective. The original definition of "rape trauma syndrome" and subsequent psychiatric thinking about the diagnosis are briefly outlined. Common reactions seen in military victims in this era are described. A prototypical military case is presented. An adequate evaluation of an alleged victim is outlined. Credentials and preparation of an expert witness are also briefly discussed, with cautions about the use of expert testimony in cases of alleged sexual assault and rape trauma syndrome.     

Assessment of the nutritional state of dialysis patients

Obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS) has been associated with a higher than normal cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. Some OSAS patients lack the sleep-related, nocturnal decrease, or "dip," in blood pressure which is seen in normal individuals. These subjects, called "non-dippers," may be at greater risk for cardiovascular problems. We studied 40 OSAS patients (including 3 women) and 6 control subjects, all identified by polysomnography, for nocturnal blood pressure "dipping." We performed a second nocturnal polysomnogram to determine their apnea and hypopnea indices, (A + H)I, and oxygen saturation levels at the beginning of the study and then initiated 48 hours of ambulatory blood pressure monitoring, with data points collected every 30 minutes. Controls, which included one hypertensive subject, were all dippers. Nineteen OSAS subjects (48% of OSAS individuals) were systolic non-dippers and only 9 of them (22.5%) were diastolic non-dippers. We considered the following clinical variables as potential predictors of non-dipping: age, body mass index, respiratory disturbance index, years of reported loud snoring by bed partners, lowest oxygen saturation during nocturnal sleep, and percentage of sleep time spent with oxygen saturation below 90%. Multiple regression analyses indicated respiratory disturbance index as the only significant variable for systolic (p = 0.04) and diastolic (p = 0.03) blood pressure non-dipping. When we forced the following two nonsignificant variables into the model, they showed a very meager impact: number of years with reported loud snoring (p = 0.4 and p = 0.5, respectively for systolic and diastolic blood pressure non-dipping) and age (p = 0.5 and p = 0.6). The calculated model explained only a low percentage of the variance with an r2 of 0.25 and 0.26 for systolic and diastolic blood pressure non-dipping, respectively. Analysis of hypertension/normotension and dipping/non-dipping failed to show a significant relationship in the studied population. Fifty percent of the normotensive OSAS subjects were non-dippers and 43% of the hypertensive OSAS subjects were also non-dippers. We found a relationship between increasing respiratory disturbance index and increasing average 24-hour systolic blood pressure only when OSAS subjects were non-dippers and hypertensive.     

Liver-directed gene transfer and application to therapy

OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study was to determine the validity of a self-reported periodontal disease measure for use in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study. METHODS: Participating dentists responded to the question "Have you had periodontal disease with bone loss?" Radiographs obtained from 140 participants were evaluated for bone loss at 32 posterior sites and used as the standard. A site was positive if it had bone loss > 2 mm and/or complete loss of crestal lamina dura. To avoid falsely classifying participants as positive, three blinded examiners independently evaluated each participant's radiographs. An a priori decision rule was used to classify a participant positive if all examiners independently assessed the same two or more sites positive. RESULTS: The validity of the self-reported measure was good among dentists, with positive and negative predictive values of 0.76 and 0.74, respectively. Among nondentists, the self-reported measure showed discriminatory power by confirming associations with known risk factors such as age and smoking. CONCLUSIONS: Dentists have a good perception of their periodontal status, and there is reasonable consensus among dentists regarding the threshold for defining periodontal disease. Self-reported measures might have potential for use in studies of other populations with substantial cost reduction, and deserve further evaluation.     

Importance of participation rate in sampling of data in population based studies, with special reference to bone mass in Sweden

OBJECTIVE: To study the effects of participation rate in sampling on "normative" bone mass data. DESIGN: This was a comparison between two randomly selected samples from the same population. The participation rates in the two samples were 61.9% and 83.6%. Measurements were made of bone mass at different skeletal sites and of muscle strength, as well as an assessment of physical activity. SETTING: Malm?, Sweden. SUBJECTS: There were 230 subjects (117 men, 113 women), aged 21 to 42 years. RESULTS: Many subjects participated in both studies (163). Those who took part only in the study with the higher participation rate (67) almost invariably had higher values for bone mass density at the sites measured (up to 7.6% for men) than participants in the study with the lower participation rate. No differences in muscle strength were recorded. CONCLUSION: A high degree of compliance is important to achieve a reliable result in determining normal values in population based studies.     

Atom-Aid: Detecting and Surviving Atomicity Violations

Hardware can play a significant role in improving reliability of multithreaded software. Recent architectural proposals arbitrarily group consecutive dynamic memory operations into atomic blocks to enforce coarse-grained memory ordering, providing implicit atomicity. The authors of this article observe that implicit atomicity probabilistically hides atomicity violations by reducing the number of interleaving opportunities between memory operations. They propose Atom-Aid, which creates implicit atomic blocks intelligently instead of arbitrarily, dramatically reducing the probability that atomicity violations will manifest themselves.