Injury control in practice. Home radiator burns in inner-city children

OBJECTIVE: To describe thermal burns from radiators in the homes of children in the inner city and an intervention to decrease the risk for this pediatric injury. SETTING: Academic medical center in Chicago. PATIENTS: Case series of 10 radiator-related burns. RESULTS: The burns described were found to be clustered in an area of a public housing project served by steam radiators. No burns were associated with hot water radiators. Just 14% of housing units with young children had adequate radiator covers and radiator pipe insulation. Radiator covers and insulation have now been replaced or repaired in all units of the 11 housing project buildings served by steam radiators. CONCLUSIONS: Steam radiators in the home represent a particular childhood burn hazard. Community-based clinicians are in a unique position to recognize local patterns of injury and work with other agencies in injury control efforts.     

Dietary conjugated linoleic acid normalizes impaired glucose tolerance in the Zucker diabetic fatty fa/fa rat

Conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) is a naturally occurring fatty acid which has anti-carcinogenic and anti-atherogenic properties. CLA activates PPAR alpha in liver, and shares functional similarities to ligands of PPAR gamma, the thiazolidinediones, which are potent insulin sensitizers. We provide the first evidence that CLA is able to normalize impaired glucose tolerance and improve hyperinsulinemia in the pre-diabetic ZDF rat. Additionally, dietary CLA increased steady state levels of aP2 mRNA in adipose tissue of fatty ZDF rats compared to controls, consistent with activation of PPAR gamma. The insulin sensitizing effects of CLA are due, at least in part, to activation of PPAR gamma since increasing levels of CLA induced a dose-dependent transactivation of PPAR gamma in CV-1 cells cotransfected with PPAR gamma and PPRE X 3-luciferase reporter construct. CLA effects on glucose tolerance and glucose homeostasis indicate that dietary CLA may prove to be an important therapy for the prevention and treatment of NIDDM.     

Care tracker: a new approach to nursing care in ambulatory settings

It is becoming increasingly clear that mitochondrial Ca2+ uptake from and release into the cytosol has important consequences for neuronal and glial activity. Ca2+ regulates mitochondrial metabolism, and mitochondrial Ca2+ uptake and release modulate physiological and pathophysiological cytosolic responses. In glial cells, inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate-dependent Ca2+ responses are faithfully translated into elevations in mitochondrial Ca2+ levels, which modifies cytosolic Ca2+ wave propagation and may activate mitochondrial enzymes. The location of mitochondria within neurones may partially determine their role in Ca2+ signalling. Neuronal death due to NMDA-evoked Ca2+ entry can be delayed by an inhibitor of the mitochondrial permeability transition pore, and mitochondrial dysfunction is being increasingly implicated in a number of neurodegenerative conditions. These findings are illustrative of an emerging realization by neuroscientists of the importance of mitochondrial Ca2+ regulation as a modulator of cellular energetics, endoplasmic reticulum Ca2+ release and neurotoxicity.     

The number of glutamate transporter subtype molecules at glutamatergic synapses: chemical and stereological quantification in young adult rat brain

The role of transporters in shaping the glutamate concentration in the extracellular space after synaptic release is controversial because of their slow cycling and because diffusion alone gives a rapid removal. The transporter densities have been measured electrophysiologically, but these data are from immature brains and do not give precise information on the concentrations of the individual transporter subtypes. Here we show by quantitative immunoblotting that the numbers of the astroglial glutamate transporters GLAST (EAAT1) and GLT (EAAT2) are 3200 and 12,000 per micrometer3 tissue in the stratum radiatum of adult rat hippocampus (CA1) and 18,000 and 2800 in the cerebellar molecular layer, respectively. The total astroglial cell surface is 1.4 and 3.8 m2/cm3 in the two regions, respectively, implying average densities of GLAST and GLT molecules in the membranes around 2300 and 8500 micrometer-2 in the former and 4700 and 740 micrometer-2 in the latter region. The total concentration of glial glutamate transporters in both regions corresponds to three to five times the estimated number of glutamate molecules in one synaptic vesicle from each of all glutamatergic synapses. However, the role of glial glutamate transporters in limiting synaptic spillover is likely to vary between the two regions because of differences in the distribution of astroglia. Synapses are completely ensheathed and separated from each other by astroglia in the cerebellar molecular layer. In contrast, synapses in hippocampus (stratum radiatum) are only contacted by astroglia and are often found side by side without intervening glial processes.     

Lentil lectin enriched microsomes from the plasma membrane of the human B-lymphocyte cell line H2LCL carry a heavy load of type-1 porin

Using an established biochemical approach, five subcellular fractions of human B lymphocytes were prepared by differential centrifugation. Crude membranes were passed over a lentil lectin column to enrich carbohydrate-coated cell surface microsomes. The lectin-bound fraction contained a high amount of plasma membrane-derived microsomes as indicated by cell surface markers. All subcellular fractions in Western blots proved to contain distinct but variable amounts of porin. There was a strong increase in porin content from crude membranes to plasma membrane-derived vesicles. The porin content of this fraction appeared to be higher than that of mitochondria. In the final step the plasma membrane-derived microsome fraction proved to be devoid of contamination by outer mitochondrial membranes, as revealed by antibodies against the established markers MAO B and Tom20 applied in Western blots. These data prove the extramitochondrial expression of human type-1 porin/ type-1 VDAC.     

A neuronal ryanodine receptor mediates light-induced phase delays of the circadian clock

Circadian clocks are complex biochemical systems that cycle with a period of approximately 24 hours. They integrate temporal information regarding phasing of the solar cycle, and adjust their phase so as to synchronize an organism's internal state to the local environmental day and night. Nocturnal light is the dominant regulator of this entrainment. In mammals, information about nocturnal light is transmitted by glutamate released from retinal projections to the circadian clock in the suprachiasmatic nucleus of the hypothalamus. Clock resetting requires the activation of ionotropic glutamate receptors, which mediate Ca2+ influx. The response induced by such activation depends on the clock's temporal state: during early night it delays the clock phase, whereas in late night the clock phase is advanced. To investigate this differential response, we sought signalling elements that contribute solely to phase delay. We analysed intracellular calcium-channel ryanodine receptors, which mediate coupled Ca2+ signalling. Depletion of intracellular Ca2+ stores during early night blocked the effects of glutamate. Activators of ryanodine receptors induced phase resetting only in early night; inhibitors selectively blocked delays induced by light and glutamate. These findings implicate the release of intracellular Ca2+ through ryanodine receptors in the light-induced phase delay of the circadian clock restricted to the early night.     

A Multiple Motives Approach to Tobacco Dependence: The Wisconsin Inventory of Smoking Dependence Motives (WISDM-68).

The dependence construct fills an important explanatory role in motivational accounts of smoking and relapse. Frequently used measures of dependence are either atheoretical or grounded in a unidimensional model of physical dependence. This research creates a multidimensional measure of dependence that is based on theoretically grounded motives for drug use and is intended to reflect mechanisms underlying dependence. Data collected from a large sample of smokers (N = 775) indicated that all 13 subscales of the Wisconsin Inventory of Smoking Dependence Motives (WISDM-68) have acceptable internal consistency, are differentially present across levels of smoking heaviness, and have a multidimensional structure. Validity analyses indicated the WISDM-68 subscales are significantly related to dependence criteria such as smoking heaviness and to 4th edition Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders symptoms of dependence and relapse. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Expression of deletion-containing dystrophins in mdx muscle: implications for gene therapy and dystrophin function

The expression of full-length dystrophin and various dystrophin deletion mutants was monitored in mdx mouse muscle after intramuscular injection of dystrophin-encoding plasmid DNAs. Recombinant dystrophin proteins, including those lacking either the amino terminus, carboxyl terminus, or most of the central rod domain, showed localization to the plasma membrane. This suggests that there are multiple attachment sites for dystrophin to the plasma membrane. Only those constructs containing the carboxyl terminus were able to stabilize dystrophin-associated proteins (DAP) at the membrane, consistent with other studies that suggest that this domain is critical to DAP binding. Colocalization with DAP was not necessary for membrane localization of the various dystrophin molecules. However, stabilization and co-localization of the DAP did seem to be a prerequisite for expression and/or stabilization of mutant dystrophins beyond 1 wk and these same criteria seemed important for mitigating the histopathological consequences of dystrophin deficiency.     

One watt average power by second harmonic and sum frequencygeneration from a single medium scale copper vapor laser

Ultraviolet (UV) powers of over 1 W have been obtained by second harmonic and sum frequency generation from a single medium scale (20 W) copper vapor laser (CVL) using a new focal geometry in which the CVL beam is focused in only one direction to produce a line focus within a BBO crystal. High optical conversion efficiencies, 20 and 30%, are observed for the low divergence (~-10 times the diffraction limit) and diffraction-limited components of the CVL output, respectively. Wall-plug efficiencies for UV generation are up to 0.04%. Efficient frequency conversion has also been demonstrated for CVL operating conditions unsuited to the generation of diffraction limited output