Increase in leukocyte adhesiveness and aggregation with stress: a model of human congestive heart failure

Stress has a significant influence on the function of the human organism. A simple, rapid, inexpensive, and reliable marker for stress would therefore be of great value. We have recently noted that stress increases the state of leukocyte adhesiveness and aggregation in the peripheral blood. We evaluated 64 patients who had various degrees of congestive heart failure, a condition known to induce a state of physiologic stress, to verify whether a relation exists between the intensity of the stress response and the magnitude of leukocyte adhesiveness. Included in the 64 were 53 patients without congestive heart failure, 23 with compensated failure, 22 with significant congestive heart failure, and 19 with florid pulmonary edema. The percentage of aggregated leukocytes in these four group was 6% +/- 4%, 6% +/- 4%, 10.5% +/- 5%, and 15% +/- 14%. Values for the third and fourth group differed in a statistically significant way. Thus, with further investigation into additional stress-inducing conditions, the state of leukocyte adhesion and aggregation may prove to be a reliable marker for the detection of stress and an inexpensive tool for quantifying its severity.     

An analysis of pH tolerance and substrate preference of isolated skeletal muscle mitochondria from Bufo marinus and Rana catesbeiana

1. The effects of varying pH and substrate on isolated skeletal muscle mitochondria from Bufo marinus and Rana catesbeiana were investigated. 2. For both species, VO2 max significantly decreased at all pH < 7.3 (P < 0.05), while maximum values were observed at a pH range of 7.3-7.6 with B. marinus maintaining a greater VO2 max than R. catesbeiana. 3. Respiratory control values (RCR) decreased significantly at all pH < 6.9 for both species (P < 0.05). 4. Isolated mitochondria from both species were maintained at pH = 7.2 and O2 consumption measured under five separate substrate conditions. 5. A rank preference was established based upon state 3 and RCR values. 6. Substrate preference was identical for both species and interspecific comparisons revealed differences in state 3 respiration and coupling.     

In situ13C NMR study of tert-butanol interaction with moderately concentrated sulfuric acid

An in situ NMR study of tert-butanol dehydration in 95 and 85% sulfuric acid did not indicate the formation of tert-butyl cations as active reaction intermediates. Instead, only NMR lines from oxonium ions under the condition of fast exchange with water and the acid were observed. It is most likely that, in the concentrated acid, the active intermediates of this reaction are represented by tert-butyl sulfuric ester which probably is a precursor of invisible tert-butyl carbenium ions representing short-lived excited or transition states.     

Practical accuracy analysis of some existing effective channellength and series resistance extraction methods for MOSFET's

A method to analyze the accuracy of the extracted values for the channel length (L_eff) and series resistance (R_s) of MOSFET devices is presented. The analysis is based on a statistical argument being the variance σ of the extracted results. This variance is found to be a good measure for the accuracy of the particular extraction method used. It is shown that, in the case of deep submicron technologies, errors as large as 200 nm for ΔL can be made for these extraction methods depending on the process design and the process control. The use of a single transistor method is suggested as a possible solution to the low accuracy of the L-array methods     

Amore Address Mapping with Overlapped Rotating Entries

A memory management unit that supports demand paging is implemented with standard logic and fast-access RAM chips, resulting in much faster address translation that that provided by the standard Motorola MC68451 MMU.     

Developing Mature Internet Strategies

Although the banking industry plays a central role in the world economy and has traditionally been an innovative user of information technology, banks are struggling to develop mature Internet strategies. A model used to analyze the type of Internet activities among a sample of banks as well as their level of sophistication and customization is useful not only for revealing unexploited opportunities in the banking sector but also for guiding the strategy-building process of organizations in other industries.