Social deprivation of neonatal, adolescent, and adult rats has distinct neurochemical and behavioral consequences

This review examines the consequences of social deprivation on brain chemistry and behavior on rats. Although social deprivation produces wide-ranging behavioral and neurochemical effects, it appears that these effects are determined by a number of factors, the most critical factor being the age or developmental stage during the period of deprivation. Roughly, the effects examined in this review may be separated into three major developmental stages and each is related to deprivation of specific types of social interaction: preweaning/neonatal, postweaning/adolescent, and adult. The effects of social deprivation during each of these stages appears to be neurochemically and behaviorally specific. However, much of the research to date has failed to examine deprivation during specific stages, often combining deprivation of different types. Nonetheless, these modifications of experience produce animals of differing phenotypes, which could be characterized as pathological in nature in many instances, and may model particular aspects of human psychopathologies or perhaps the propensity to develop those phenotypic features.     

Computer protocol and torus maps

We investigate the dynamics of maps and flows which arise from a class of models of closed queueing networks in computer science theory. The network consists of n+/ servers, one of which is a central server with a queue of size n-1. A protocol or scheduling discipline must be specified in this server to define the queueing network. The standard model gives rise to a flow on an n-torus. We consider the service protocols first in-first out (FIFO) and last in-first out (LIFO) in dimension three, for which the state spaces are modifications of a 3-torus. We present a sufficient condition on the time it takes each call to complete one cycle for the FIFO protocol which guarantees that the set of periodic orbits which involve no waiting in the queue is a global attractorfor the associated semi-flow. We also investigate the dynamics for the LIFO service protocol via a return map derived from the associated area preserving flow.     

Disposition of phenol in rat after oral, dermal, intravenous, and intratracheal administration

The absorption and elimination of [14C]-phenol (63.5 nmol) after oral, dermal, intratracheal, or intravenous administration in rat was rapid and extensive. Urinary elimination of radioactivity predominated, with a range of 75-95% of the dose detected in urine by 72 h post-exposure. Washing the dermal site 72 h post-exposure removed 14% of the dose. Two per cent of the dose was detected in the skin. The urinary metabolites at 4 and 8 h after administration by the four routes included phenyl sulphate and lower amounts of phenyl glucuronide. Phenol was poorly retained in the body after administration by the four routes. Phenol remaining in the body was widely distributed, with accumulation primarily in the liver, lung, and kidney.     

Transient thermal performance of line traps

This paper develops a transient thermal model for line traps. The model was incorporated into a computer program that numerically integrates the governing nonlinear differential equation in time to predict critical temperatures and component short and long term ratings for a wide range of operating conditions. The model accounts for many factors including: variable air properties, variable material properties, environmental conditions, and a wide variety of component geometries and orientations. To verify the temperatures predicted by the thermal model, The Georgia Power Research Center carried out an extensive series of indoor laboratory tests to experimentally measure temperatures of energized line traps under transient loading conditions. Model predictions were within 8°C for 75 percent of the data. This paper presents the development of the governing equations and describes in detail the calculation of the convective and radiative components of heat transfer. Comparisons of the model predictions for two different line trap designs in different orientations to experimental data are presented to demonstrate the accuracy and flexibility of the thermal model     

Image modeling using inverse filtering criteria with application totextures

Statistical approaches to image modeling have largely relied upon random models that characterize the 2-D process in terms of its first- and second-order statistics, and therefore cannot completely capture phase properties of random fields that are non-Gaussian. This constrains the parameters of noncausal image models to be symmetric and, therefore, the underlying random field to be spatially reversible. Research indicates that this assumption may not be always valid for texture images. In this paper, higher- than second-order statistics are used to derive and implement two classes of inverse filtering criteria for parameter estimation of asymmetric noncausal autoregressive moving-average (ARMA) image models with known orders. Contrary to existing approaches, FIR inverse filters are employed and image models with zeros on the unit bicircle can be handled. One of the criteria defines the smallest set of cumulant lags necessary for identifiability of these models to date, Consistency of these estimators is established, and their performance is evaluated with Monte Carlo simulations as well as texture classification and synthesis experiments.     

Pulsed magnetization transfer contrast for MR imaging with application to breast

The relative populations and transverse relaxation times of the solid-like hydrogen pool (PB and T2B) and the magnetization transfer (MT) rates between the solid-like and liquid-like hydrogen pools (kappa) have been determined for three different agar gel concentrations (2%, 4%, and 8% by weight) as well as excised fibroglandular breast tissue specimens. PB was determined to be .003(.001), .01(.002), .02(.01), and .06(.01); T2B was determined to be 13.0(.2), 14.0(.1), 14.5(.1) and 15.2(1.3) microseconds; and kappa was determined to be 0.78(.01), 1.15(.02), 2.00(.02), and 3.55(1.5) sec-1 for the 2%, 4%, and 8% agar gels and the fibroglandular tissue, respectively. The image signal intensities of a pulsed MTC-prepared gradient-echo imaging technique are predicted using these MT parameters and are shown to agree well with experimental data obtained from a clinical MR imaging system. This technique is shown to suppress signal intensity of fibroglandular breast tissue by 40%-50% without exceeding SAR limits (< or = 8 W/kg) and is helpful for visualizing lesions and silicone implants.     

The desorption of O2 during NO and N2O decomposition on Cu- and Fe-zeolites

The decomposition of NO and of N₂O over a CuZSM-5 zeolite and a Fe-mordenite, respectively, has been studied using tracer techniques. The results demonstrate the high mobility of the lattice oxygen ions in self-diffusion. They afford a possible explanation for the problem of how two extralattice oxygens located at positions remote from each other may combine to form the O₂ molecules which are spontaneously desorbed in these redox reactions. They show that a portion of the lattice oxygen mixes into the O₂ released on decomposition. The data also show that N¹⁸O and N₂ ¹⁸O undergo exchange with the catalyst oxygen under reaction conditions.On leave from Central Research Institute for Chemistry, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, H-1525 Budapest, Hungary.     

Acquisition of the mental state verb know by 2- to 5-year-old children

The production of the cognitive internal state word know by four 2- to 5-year-old children and their parents was examined. The levels of meaning of cognitive words can be categorized hierarchically along the dimensions of conceptual difficulty and abstractness (see Booth & Hall, 1995). The present study found that children and their parents expressed low levels of meaning less frequently, whereas they expressed high levels of meaning more frequently as a function of age. The children's use of know was also correlated positively with (1) their number of different words produced suggesting that cognitive words are related to more general semantic processes, and (2) with parental use of those same cognitive words suggesting that parental linguistic input may be an important mechanism in cognitive word acquisition. Finally, young children tended to use know more to refer to themselves than to refer to others, whereas their parents tended to use know equally to refer to self and others. The importance of cognitive words in a theory of language acquisition is discussed.