Development of a scoring system to assess disability in an Italian elderly population. Evaluation of a disability questionnaire

Patients with idiopathic and symptomatic restless legs syndrome (RLS) suffer from "dyskinesia while awake" or "daytime myoclonus" when at rest preceded by sensory symptoms. In order to characterise the RLS either as reflex movement or as voluntary movement we measured movement-related cortical potentials in 5 idiopathic and 8 uraemic RLS patients. Movements from both legs were polygraphically recorded concomitantly with cortical activity 2000 msec before to 500 msec after onset of EMG activity. These data were compared with a voluntary simulation of each patient's movement pattern and with 5 age-matched controls performing dorsiflexion of the right, left and both feet. Cortical activity preceding daytime myoclonus was absent in RLS patients whereas self-initiated leg movements in patients elicited onset times (1180-1380 msec) and amplitudes of Bereitschaftspotential (readiness potential) not significantly different from readiness potentials in control subjects (P > 0.05). Lack of movement-related potentials in myoclonus and/or dyskinesias during daytime in RLS patients is compatible with an involuntary mechanism of induction and points towards a subcortical or spinal origin of RLS.     

Congenital diseases of the equine head

Many questions concerning heritability arise when a veterinarian is asked to supervise and treat disease of congenital origin. Genetic counseling, ethics, and legality are often confronted in discussions between animal health professionals and laymen in animal industry. Guidelines have been offered as in the 1984 statement of the Judicial Council of the American Veterinary Medical Association: "Performance of surgical procedures in all species for the purpose of concealing genetic defects in animals to be shown, raced, bred, or sold as breeding animals is unethical. However, should the health or welfare of the individual patient require correction of such genetic defects, it is recommended that the patient be rendered incapable of reproduction." The Australian Veterinary Law, Ethics, Etiquette and Convention declares it fraud to alter a defect for sale purposes and unethical for a veterinarian to perform such treatments. It is permissible to correct defects causing discomfort or inconvenience, but the veterinarian is required to advise appropriate breeding counseling. Genetic counseling has progressed significantly in human medicine. This has been supported by better diagnostic methods for genetic disorders, greater acceptance of preventive measures, and extended screening programs to identify carriers of specific abnormal genes or chromosomal aberrations. Congenital diseases in veterinary medicine are constantly under investigation. The veterinary practitioner must continue to operate with an appreciation of the incomplete understanding of most of these abnormalities and act in accordance with personal ethical judgment and the guidance of the American Veterinary Medical Association when treating the affected individual animal patient.     

Alliance for destiny: education and practice

As the whole context of nursing continues to change radically in the face of unmet societal needs, nothing short of total revolution will suffice. Nurses must take control of nursing practice and be critical of the nation's inadequate "sick-care" system in order to effect sweeping changes in the scope, availability and efficacy of healthcare in the U.S. To do this requires an acknowledgment that true nursing education cannot exist without nursing practice. The transformation of curriculum must center on caring, which characterizes what nurses really do in a medically dominated system focused exclusively on curing.     

Ulcerative systematized porokeratosis (Mibelli)

An unusual clinical variant of porokeratosis (Mibelli's disease) appeared in a patient soon after birth; the lesions were widely distributed mostly on the right half of the body. Spontaneous recurrent ulcerations occurred over certain sites. The right foot was grossly deformed as a result of atrophic scarring after ulcerations. Biopsy specimens of the classical lesion showed cornoid lamella. It is suggested that the term "ulcerative systematized porokeratosis" be used to describe this clinical variant of porokeratosis.     

Potential of Modern Data Types for Future Water Resources Management

Abstract

Presently a change of paradigm in the field of planning and operation of water management schemes can be observed. The introduction of the principle of sustainable development by the United Nations and the principle of integrated river basin management postulated by the European Union play a major role in this context. Introduction of these new principles requires development of new planning tools, which in turn require a much better data basis than available hitherto. This paper deals with new data types already partly available now, partly to be expected to be developed in the medium-range future. The present data situation is discussed, along with the obvious deficits of conventional data. New data types will not be limited to point measurements, but rather must comprise information covering large areas with a higher resolution in time and space than presently available. Remote sensing data will play a more important role in the future. Furthermore, digital maps, digital elevation models, etc. are also of growing importance and will be processed, together with remote sensing and other data, within Geographical Information Systems of future generations also exposing the potential for working with multi-temporal imagery. In the paper it is shown that in the future more accurate data will be available, not only in terms of data quality, but also resolution in time and space. It is shown how the new types of hydrometeorological data postulate new types of hydrological models. Here, distributed system models are of growing importance. Furthermore, it is shown how the combination of remote sensing with other information leads to new data types that allow integrated planning of water resources systems. The potential of real time data is highlighted, particularly in the context of real time operation of water resources systems, especially for flood control. The potential of large-scale data schemes in the context of regional and continental water management schemes is discussed. Global atmospheric models coupled to hydrological models are discussed, and their potential to consider long-distance effects of certain phenomena (e.g., El Niño) are mentioned. For sustainable development of water resources, the potential of long-term data prediction scenarios is evaluated, and an example of this principle for planning future water supply systems is presented. The paper ends with a vision of future developments in planning water management schemes on the basis of new data types     

Force Curve Measurements with the AFM: Application to the In Situ Determination of Grafted Silicon-Wafer Surface Energies

The atomic force microscope (AFM) can be used to perform surface force measurements in the quasi-static mode (cantilever is not oscillating) to investigate nanoscale surface properties. Nevertheless, there is still a lack of literature proposing a complete systematic and rigorous experimental procedure that enables one to obtain reproducible and significant quantitative data. This article focuses on the fundamental experimental difficulties arising when making force curve measurements with the AFM in air. On the basis of this AFM calibration procedure, quantitative assessment values were used to determine, in situ, SAM (or Self Assembled Monolayer)-tip thermodynamic work of adhesion at a local scale, which have been found to be in good agreement with quoted values. Finally, determination of surface energies of functionalised silicon wafers (as received, CH₃, OH functionalised silicon wafers) with the AFM (at a local scale) is also proposed and compared with the values obtained by wettability (at a macroscopic scale). In particular, the effect of the capillary forces is discussed.     

Managing a Y2K project-starting now

As the year 2000 draws near, solutions to the Year 2000 (Y2K) problem seem both abundant and elusive. At this late date, Y2K problems require fast, flawless solutions. This article sets forth a practical work plan for assessing and correcting problems in existing application programs     

Windows 2000 security: A postmortem analysis

Introduction

After initially releasing Windows 2000 (W2K) in February 2000, Microsoft touted it as a secure operating system, one that was far improved over its predecessor, Windows NT(WNT). Yet even before Microsoft released W2K the software giant announced that it would release Service Pack 1 (SP1) for this operating system. The information security community immediately wondered whether the claims about the much improved security in W2K were true; many events and findings since then have reinforced this doubt. After a reign of three years as Microsoft's flagship operating system, last year Microsoft rolled out its newest server operating system, Windows Server 2003 (WS2003), signaling the end of an era for the W2K operating system. Windows XP (WXP) had already supplanted W2K Professional as the newest workstation operating system several years before. This is not to say that nobody uses W2K any more—to the contrary. But as W2K continues to increasingly take a proverbial back seat to newer Microsoft operating systems, now is a good time to take a retroactive look at W2K from a security viewpoint. Was it a success from a security perspective? What were its major failings and why? This paper addresses these issues.     

Minimizing L max for large-scale,job-shop scheduling problems

The academic literature in 2000 presented a procedure for solving the job-shop-scheduling problem of minimizing L _max. The iterative-adaptive simulation-based procedure is shown here to perform well on large-scale problems. However, there is potential for improvement in closing the gap between best-known solutions and the lower bound. In the present paper, a simulated annealing post-processing procedure is presented and evaluated on large-scale problems. A new neighbourhood structure for local searches in the job-shop scheduling problem is developed. The procedure is also evaluated using benchmark problems and new upper bounds are established.