Antibodies in patients with inflammatory bowel disease and the apparent influence of medications

Patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) are known to have increased antibodies to several food and bacterial antigens. To assess selected isotype contributions in greater detail, we examined the concentrations of IgA, IgG, IgE, and IgG4 antibodies to five selected antigens, two of bacterial and three of food origin. Thirty patients with IBD and thirty matched healthy controls were studied. Most antibodies were increased in IBD patients compared to controls. Statistically significant increases were more frequent in Crohn's disease (CD) than in ulcerative colitis (UC). An unexpected finding was that IBD patients treated with sulfasalazine had statistically higher levels of most IgA antibodies than healthy controls, while steroid treated patients had lower levels. These findings suggest differing effects on the immune systems of IBD patients by each of these commonly used drugs.     

Spatial attention deficits in humans: A comparison of superior parietal and temporal-parietal junction lesions.

Although clinical evidence of spatial attention deficits, such as neglect and extinction, is typically associated with lesions of the right temporal-parietal junction, recent evidence has suggested an important role for the superior parietal lobe. Two groups of patients, selected for lesions at the temporal-parietal junction including the superior temporal gyrus (TPJ group), or for lesions involving the parietal but not the superior temporal region (PAR group), performed cued-target detection tasks in 2 experiments. An extinction-like response time pattern was found for the TPJ but not the PAR group. In addition, both groups were able to use expectancy information, in the form of cue predictiveness, suggesting that separate mechanisms mediate exogenous and endogenous processes during attention shifts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Challenges of Materials Technology for low Consumption Vehicle Concepts

The material strategy in the automobile industry is geared towards product features such as consumption reduction (lightweight design), performance gain in the powertrain, safety, improved comfort and enhanced driving pleasure, or towards new functions and effects achievable using materials, surfaces and layers. All of these features are required to meet the criteria of low‐cost and environmentally‐friendly producibility and resources recovery. Lightweight design has a key role to play in the development of vehicles with low consumption and emissions. Some examples and current trends are reviewed in this article.     

Supercritical CO2 extraction of lipid-bearing materials and characterization of the products

Supercritical fluid extraction has recently become a reality in the petroleum, coal and food industries and is rapidly increasing in importance as its advantages become known. Advantages of carbon dioxide as a supercritical fluid include its low toxicity, low cost, lack of flammability, lack of reactivity, wide range of solvent properties at different pressures and temperatures, and improved properties of separated components in certain cases. Disadvantages of such extractions include high capital costs for batch extraction and lack of engineering hardware technology for continuous operation. In the supercritical CO₂ extraction of oil from soybeans, equilibrium solubility and high flow rates are readily achieved in a short-path batch reactor. The oil has a lighter color, less iron and ca. 1/10 of the phosphorus contained in hexane-extracted oil. The lower phosphorus content results in lower refining losses. During extraction, some fractionation is observed to take place, with some more polar and/or higher molecular weight compounds having a tendency to increase in the later fractions. In a long cylindrical batch extractor, the flakes perform much like the stationary phase of a chromatographic column. The same advantages that result from extraction of soybeans also apply to the extraction of oil from cottonseed and corn germ. Cottonseed oil obtained by supercritical CO₂ extraction has a lower gossypol content and requires less alkali for refining. In the extraction of wheat germ and bran, the oil has a lighter color, a milder odor and less unsaponifiables than that obtained by hexane. Free fatty acid contents were comparable, but tocopherol was higher in the supercritical CO₂ extract.     

Röntgenographische Elastizitätskonstanten von Stählen bei erhöhter Probentemperatur

Messung der Gitterebenenabstände an der (211)-lnterferenz bei Raumtemperatur und 300°C an Zugproben der Stähle 15 Mo 3, 13 CrMo 44 und 34 CrMo 4. Ermittlung der Eigenspannungen, der thermischen Ausdehnungskoeffizienten und der röntgenographischen Elastizitätskonstanten. 1/2 s₂ (211) hat bei 300°C einen um rd. 20% kleineren Wert als bei Raumtemperatur. Die Ursache des Abfalls wird diskutiert.     

The safety of local anesthesia and outpatient treatment: a controlled study of induced abortion by vacuum aspiration

The safety of early vacuum aspiration performed as an outpatient procedure using local anesthesia was examined in a controlled study sponsored by the World Health Organization and undertaken in two centers in Yugoslavia and Singapore. The sample consisted of healthy women whose pregnancies were between 7 and 12 weeks in duration. Follow-up four weeks after abortion was nearly 100 percent in both centers. No important differences in complication rates were found between the different types of services and anesthesia, even though overall complication rates differed markedly between centers. Overnight postabortion observation was not associated with any decrease in complications.