Schools as healthful environments: prerequisite to comprehensive school health?

The development of healthy schools to support and nature the well-being of students, teachers, and staff is proposed as a first step toward the goal of comprehensive health education. A focus on healthy schools incorporates elements of an expanded concept of comprehensive health education that demands careful consideration of the physical, psychological, and social environment of the nation's schools--worksite to 51 million (students, teachers, and staff). The active participation of all stakeholders in environmental assessments, health and safety audits, and restructuring of schools is an essential part of the school reform movement. A healthy worksite concept supports the transformation of the school environment to increase "productivity" by enhancing the ability of teachers, staff, and students to function well.     

Steroid-responsive encephalomyelitis in childhood

The syndrome of parainfectious encephalomyelitis evolves from an antecedent infection. Several etiologic agents have been associated with this complication, although the pathogenesis in each instance may prove to be more uniform. Considerable evidence suggests that the syndrome is mediated immunologically. The seven cases reported here were clinically similar, although the infectious etiologies were diverse. Leptospirosis antedated the neurologic syndrome in two cases, and a "viral" illness preceded the other five cases. The evolution of the syndrome was slowly progressive in each case, and six patients had prominent involvement of rhombencephalic structures. The progressive course was reversed rapidly with eventual full recovery in each instance after initiation of corticosteroid therapy. Our experience with these cases coupled with a review of the literature suggests that corticosteroid therapy should be considered in the subacute or chronic cases of parainfectious encephalomyelitis.     

A new method for evaluating antiarrhythmic drug efficacy

To develop standards for distinguishing antiarrhythmic drug effect from spontaneous variability of premature ventricular complexes (PVCs), 21 males (mean age 56 +/- 8 years) with chronic ischemic heart disease and PVCs underwent symptom-limited treadmill exercise testing and 24-hour ambulatory monitoring before and after 2 weeks of placebo medication. Linear regression analysis was used to describe the relationship between baseline and placebo PVC frequency for various indexes of ventricular ectopic activity and to establish 95% and 99% one-tailed confidence intervals for this relationship within the group of 21 patients. The lower limit of baseline PVC frequency for which the procedure could distinguish a placebo from a true drug response, termed the "sensitivity threshold," was an average frequency of 2.2 PVCs/hour for ambulatory electrocardiographic monitoring and 1.2 PVCs/min for treadmill exercise testing. All patients exceeded the sensitivity threshold on baseline ambulatory ECGs, but only 38% of patients did so on baseline treadmill exercise tests. To establish antiarrhythmic efficacy with 95% confidence, the minimal percent reduction of PVCs between baseline and placebo visits was 68% for treadmill exercise testing and 65% for ambulatory electrocardiography. Although these standards were developed in patients with chronic ischemic heart disease, the model can be used to establish antiarrhythmic drug efficacy in any patient group.     

Grafting of enzymes on collagen films using Woodward''s reagent "K" and a water-soluble carbodiimide derivative

Two new methods of activation were developed to graft enzymes on collegen films. They involved chemical modifications of surface groups of collagen either by Woodward's reagent "K" or by EDC, a water-soluble derivative of carbodiimide. EDC was a better coupling agent and a detailed study was conducted with this agent. It could be used either in a global method of activation and coupling, or in a two-step procedure of activation of collagen, followed by spontaneous coupling of enzyme. All enzymes tested were successfully bound: malate dehydrogenase, lactate dehydrogenase, aspartate aminotransferase, urease, creatine kinase, hexokinase. The influence on the yield of grafted enzyme, of pretreatment of films, time and temperature of EDC activation, concentration of EDC and enzyme, protecting agents was studied. Stability of enzyme activity on storage was greatly increased after grafting. A co-grafted dual system creatine kinase/heoxkinase, was achieved which exhibited a good efficiency. A striking renaturing process at 0-4degreesC after thermal denaturation, was observed with hexokinase.     

三星投影机行业巡展圆满落幕

12月23日,由三星投影机携手神州数码联合举办“精英影像务实共赢”全国行业巡展最后一站活动在广州结束,同时,整个行业巡展活动也随之画上了一个圆满的句号。据了解,这场声势浩大的渠道推广活动在全国范围内掀起了一场有关“三星投影机”的追捧热潮,三星力推的几款机型获得了广大用户与渠道商的青睐而迅速成长为“投影明星”。     

Nonstationary Gaussian Process Models Using Spatial Hierarchical Clustering from Finite Differences

Modern digital data production methods, such as computer simulation and remote sensing, have vastly increased the size and complexity of data collected over spatial domains. Analysis of these large spatial datasets for scientific inquiry is typically carried out using the Gaussian process. However, nonstationary behavior and computational requirements for large spatial datasets can prohibit efficient implementation of Gaussian process models. To perform computationally feasible inference for large spatial data, we consider partitioning a spatial region into disjoint sets using hierarchical clustering of observations and finite differences as a measure of dissimilarity. Intuitively, directions with large finite differences indicate directions of rapid increase or decrease and are, therefore, appropriate for partitioning the spatial region. Spatial contiguity of the resulting clusters is enforced by only clustering Voronoi neighbors. Following spatial clustering, we propose a nonstationary Gaussian process model across the clusters, which allows the computational burden of model fitting to be distributed across multiple cores and nodes. The methodology is primarily motivated and illustrated by an application to the validation of digital temperature data over the city of Houston as well as simulated datasets. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.     

ePAD: Earthquake Probability‐Based Automated Decision‐Making Framework for Earthquake Early Warning

The benefits and feasibility of earthquake early warning (EEW) are becoming more appreciated throughout the world. An EEW system detects an earthquake initiation based on a seismic sensor network and broadcasts a warning of the predicted location and magnitude shortly before an earthquake hits a site. The typical range of this lead time is very short, for example, from a few seconds up to a minute in California, which is a huge challenge for applications taking advantage of EEW. As a result, a robust automated decision process about whether to initiate a mitigation action is essential. Recent approaches based on cost–benefit analyses to properly treat the trade‐off between false alarms and missed alarms still face challenges in practical use, such as the exclusion of an important factor, lead time, in the real‐time decision process. In this study, we lay out an earthquake probability‐based automated decision‐making (ePAD) framework to give a general decision criterion based on basic decision theory and an existing cost–benefit analysis procedure. The concepts of decision function, decision contour, and surrogate model are utilized to achieve fast computation and to allow comparison between various decision criteria. A value of information model is developed to handle the lead time of EEW and its uncertainty to reduce the “false response rate” in the cost–benefit trade‐off. An illustrative example is presented to demonstrate how this framework allows more flexibility for users to adapt ePAD to correspond to their desired rational decision behavior.     

Estimation of yellow starthistle abundance through CASI-2 hyperspectral imagery using linear spectral mixture models

The invasive weed yellow starthistle (Centaurea solstitialis) has infested between 4 and 6 million hectares in California. It often forms dense infestations and rapidly depletes soil moisture, preventing the establishment of other species. Precise assessment of its canopy cover, especially low-density abundance in the earlier growing season, is the key to effective management. Compact Airborne Spectrographic Imager 2 (CASI-2) hyperspectral imagery was acquired at the western edge of California's Central Valley grasslands on July 15, 2003. Four linear spectral mixture models (LSMM) were investigated from the original CASI-2 data. Band selections based upon residual analysis and feature extraction (PCA) were further explored to reduce the data dimension. All approaches, except four band-selection unconstrained LSMMs, provide consistent results. The uncertainty of the PCA-based LSMM was estimated through a Monte-Carlo simulation. The maximum standard deviation was approximately 11%. The results suggest that unmixing CASI-2 imagery could be used for estimating and mapping yellow starthistle for larger regional areas.     

Minimum sodium nitrite levels for pinking of various cooked meats as related to use of direct or indirect-dried soy isolates in poultry rolls

The relationship between sodium nitrite level and pinking was investigated in cooked meats, as measured by panel color score, acetone extraction of NO-hemochrome, and instrumental redness values. Beef was less susceptible than poultry breast meat to nitrite-induced pinking. Minimum sodium nitrite level for pinking was 14, 4, 2, and 1 ppm for beef round, pork shoulder, turkey breast, and chicken breast, respectively. By regression analysis, minimum ppm nitrite for pinking=0.092 (ppm total pigment)+0.53 (R(2)=0.99). High levels of nitrate (>250 ppm as sodium nitrate) and nitrite (>45 ppm as sodium nitrite) were found in direct-dried (DD) soy isolates. Chicken breast rolls formulated with >2% DD soy were pink, but control rolls with 156 ppm sodium nitrate were not pink. Thus, it was concluded that nitrite was the primary pinking agent in DD soy. Indirect-dried (ID) soy isolates contained <11 ppm sodium nitrite, which was insufficient for pinking in poultry rolls.     

The relationship of chronic mucin secretion to airway disease in normal and CFTR-deficient mice

In the cystic fibrosis (CF) patient, lung function decreases throughout life as a result of continuous cycles of infection, particularly with Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus. The mechanism underlying the pathophysiology of the disease in humans has not been established. However, it has been suggested that abnormal, tenacious mucus, resulting perhaps from improper hydration from loss of Cl- secretion via the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) protein, impairs clearance of bacteria from the CF airway and provides an environment favorable to bacterial growth. If this hypothesis is correct, it could explain the absence of respiratory disease in CFTR-deficient mice, since mice have only a single submucosal gland and display few goblet cells in their lower airways, even when exposed to bacteria. To test this hypothesis further, we induced allergic airway disease in CFTR-deficient mice. We found that induction of allergic airway disease in mice, unlike bacterial infection, results in an inflammatory response characterized by goblet cell hyperplasia, increased mucin gene expression, and increased production of mucus. However, we also found that disease progression and resolution is identical in Cftr-/- mice and control animals. Furthermore, we show that the presence of mucus in the Cftr-/- airway does not lead to chronic airway disease, even upon direct inoculation with S. aureus and P. aeruginosa. Therefore, factors in addition to the absence of high levels of mucus secretion protect the mouse from the airway disease seen in human CF patients.