Atypical acute dystonia

Acute dystonia is a common adverse effect following anti-psychotic medication, which mainly appears shortly after beginning treatment or increasing the dosage. Laryngeal dysfunction may carely occur as part of the picture of acute dystonia and, if so, usually with dyspnoea. We describe a case of acute dystonia with atypical onset without relation to changes in dosage and with laryngeal involvement with aphonia, but without dyspnoea.     

Selecting software subcontractors

Large-scale software projects place special demands on the developing organization and can require much greater participation by outside companies. The authors describe their methods for selecting subcontractors for a large project in which outside companies are supplying 90 percent of the code     

Pharmacological properties of homomeric and heteromeric GluR1o and GluR3o receptors

Homomeric and heteromeric alpha-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionate (AMPA) receptor subunits GluR1o and GluR3o were expressed in Spodoptera frugiperda (Sf9) insect cells. Membranes containing the recombinant receptors showed a doublet of bands of the expected size (99-109 kDa) after western immunoblotting which was shifted to a single band upon deglycosylation. In (R,S)-[3H]AMPA binding experiments, high expression was seen (Bmax = 0.8-3.8 pmol/mg protein) along with high affinity binding to a single site (Kd, nM+/-S.D.): GluR1o, 32.5+/-2.7; GluR3o, 23.7+/-2.4; GluR1o + GluR3o, 18.1+/-2.9. The pharmacological profiles of these receptors resembled that of native rat brain AMPA receptors: AMPA analogues > L-glutamate > quinoxaline-2,3-diones > kainate. In the Xenopus oocyte expression system we had previously shown that the agonist (R,S)-2-amino-3-(3-carboxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolyl)propionate (ACPA) exhibited an 11-fold selectivity for GluR3o vs. GluR1o. In this study, it was found that ACPA has 3-fold higher affinity at homomeric GluR3o and heteromeric receptors than at homomeric GluR1o, suggesting that its efficacy and/or desensitisation properties are different at GluR1o vs. GluR3o.     

Pair breaking and charge relaxation in superconductors

We present a general formalism based on the quasiclassical Green's function for calculating charge imbalance in nonequilibrium superconductors. Our discussion is sufficiently general that it applies at arbitrary temperatures, and under conditions when the width of quasiparticle states are appreciable due to pair breaking processes, and when strong coupling effects are significant. As a first application we demonstrate in detail how in the limit of small pair breaking and for a weak coupling superconductor the collision term in the formalism reduces to the one in the quasiparticle Boltzmann equation. We next treat the case of charge imbalance generated by tunnel injection, with pair breaking by phonons and magnetic impurities. Over the range of temperatures investigated experimentally to date, the calculated charge imbalance is rather close to that evaluated using the Boltzmann equation, even if pair breaking is so strong as almost to destroy superconductivity. Finally we consider charge imbalance generated by the combined influence of a supercurrent and a temperature gradient. We give calculations for a dirty superconductor with scattering by phonons as the pair breaking mechanism, and the results give a reasonable account of the experimental data of Clarke, Fjordbøge, and Lindelof. We carry out calculations for the case of impurity scattering alone which are valid not only in the clean and dirty limits, but also for intermediate situations. These enable us to see how the large contribution to the charge imbalance found for energies close to the gap edge in the clean case is reduced with increasing impurity scattering.The research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation grant NSF DMR-78-21068.     

Petri nets,event structures and domains,part I

The general aim of this paper is to find a theory of concurrency combining the approaches of Petri and Scott (and others).In part I we introduce our formalisms. To connect the abstract ideas of events and domains of information, we show how casual nets induce certain kinds of domains where the information points are certain sets of events. This allows translations between the languages of net theory and domain theory. Following the idea that events of causal nets are occurrences, we generalise causal nets to occurrence nets, by adding forwards conflict. Just as infinite flow charts unfold finite ones, so transition nets can be unfolded into occurrence nets. Next we extend the above connections between nets and domains to these new nets. Event structures which are intermediate between nets and domains play an important part in all our work. Finally, as an example of how concepts translate from one formalism to the other, we show how Petri's notion of confusion ties up with Kahn and Plotkin's concrete domains.In part II we shall continue the job of connecting up notions within net theory and the theory of domains. In particular, we shall examine the idea of states of computations.     

Psychological significance of pupillary movements.

Pupillary dilation, the light reflex, and spontaneous fluctuations in pupil size have been used as dependent variables in psychological investigations. A review of these studies provides evidence for the effectiveness of the pupil as an index of autonomic activity in psychophysiological research. Methodological problems in the pupillary literature are discussed, and directions for further research are suggested. (105 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Water filtration of the forearm in short- and long-term diabetes mellitus

Blood flow and capillary filtration coefficient (CFC) were measured by strain-gauge plethysmography on the upper and lower third of the forearm in 9 normal subjects and 29 well regulated patients with diabetes mellitus of varying duration (less than 10 years, 10 to 20 years, and more than 20 years). There was no difference in blood flow in the four groups, but CFC was significantly increased in long-term diabetes (duration above 20 years) when measured at the distal part of the forearm near the wrist. Calculations showed that this was probably due to the relatively high contribution of connective tissue in this part of the forearm. Increased water filtration in connective tissue in long-term diabetics is in accordance with earlier findings of a lowered subcutaneous interstitial fluid albumin concentration in long-term diabetics, this being explained by an increase in net water outflux from the microcirculation.