Effect of muscular dysfunction on the development of shoulder joint in children with Erb's paralysis

In order to evaluate the disturbances of development of the shoulder joint in children with Erb's paralysis the authors conducted an X-ray examination of the shoulder girdle and the shoulder in the anterior-posterior projection. The assessment of the functional state of the muscles of the shoulder girdle was made with the aid of clinical EMG. It was established that there was a retardation of growth and ossification of the radial head of the humerus on the affected side, a decrease in the longitudinal and cross-sectional sizes of the humerus, a retardation in the development of the joint scopular cavity, disorders in spacial interrelationship in the components of the shoulder joint and internal rotation of the shoulder joint. The structural and anatomical changes in the components of the shoulder joint are associated with disorders of the neurotrophic processes in the bone tissue and the muscular dysbalance.     

Displacement currents of the sodium channels of the membranes of Ranvier's nodes

A method to record the displacement current in nodal membrane is described and results obtained on nerve fibres from the frog Rana ridibunda are presented. This current is shown to be due to displacement of charges from an initial state, associated with a large negative membrane potential, to a final state. The dependence of the charge displacement on the membrane potential and degree of inactivation of the sodium channels suggests that the displacement current observed in these experiments is associated with activation of m-gates of the sodium channels. The density of the sodium channels in nodal membrane of Rana ridibunda determined from the density of the charge displaced is about 5000 channels/mum2.     

Effect of climatic-weather conditions on the incidence of miscarriage

Two new methods for serological grouping of beta-hemolytic streptococci, the nitrous acid extraction procedure of El Kholy et al. and the slide agglutination method of Christensen et al., were compared with the Lancefield hot-hydrochloric acid extraction method in classifying 92 strains of groups A, B, C, and G. The nitrous acid extraction method was easily performed, specific, and sensitive when highly potent antisera were used. For the Christensen method these highly potent antisera had to be diluted to avoid cross-reactions between groups A and C and groups B and G, respectively. A few strains, most of them group B, could not be grouped by the latter method. Using these three grouping methods, two sets of commercial sera were compared with the more potent sera supplied by R. C. Lancefield. The low antibody content of these commercial sera, especially anti-group B and G sera, contributed to the inferior results obtained in some of the grouping reactions.     

Classification of petroleum origin and integrity by FTIR

A method was developed for classifying petroleum into four types according to their origin and integrity: marine, non-marine, degraded and thermally transformed. The method was based on the relative proportions of functional groups measured by FTIR spectroscopy. Twenty-one petroleum samples were used for model calibration and six for validation, which were pre-classified. Aliphatic functional group absorption maxima were used at 2919, 2856, 1457 and 1376 cm^?1, as well as at 1700  and 811 cm^?1 for aromatic groups, and at 1152 and 1030 cm^?1 for polar groups (sulphonyl and ether, respectively). Using hierarchical cluster and discriminate analyses, three canonic functions were obtained that classified the samples according to their origin and integrity, with a prediction efficiency of 100%, for both calibration and validation. The canonic functions derived from the discriminate analysis had correlation coefficients of 0.994, 0.900, and 0.867, among the variables studied and the classification factor. The method is efficient for the proposed classifications and can be useful for a range of applications.