Nursing Informatics 1997 postconference on patient guidelines and clinical practice guidelines: the state of our knowledge and a vision

This study involved 329 patients who had either a Caesarean section or a hysterectomy. A comparison has been made between 70 patients who were never catheterized and 251 who had a urethral catheter perioperatively. The absence of recognized urinary tract infections in those without a catheter was significant when compared with the 21 urinary infections identified in the catheterized group (p<0.05). The absence of urinary tract infections in the uncatheterized group clearly demonstrates the benefit of avoiding catheterization when possible.     

Protein Engineering of the Progesterone Hydroxylating P450‐Monooxygenase CYP17A1 Alters Its Regioselectivity

The CYP171 enzyme is known to catalyse a key step in the steroidogenesis of mammals. The substrates progesterone and pregnenolone are first hydroxylated at the C17 position, and this is followed by cleavage of the C17?C20 bond to yield important precursors for glucosteroids and androgens. In this study, we focused on the reaction of the bovine CYP17A1 enzyme with progesterone as a substrate. On the basis of a created homology model, active‐site residues were identified and systematically mutated to alanine. In whole‐cell biotransformations, the importance of the N202, R239, G297 and E305 residues for substrate conversion was confirmed. Additionally, mutation of the L206, V366 and V483 residues enhanced the formation of the 16α‐hydroxyprogesterone side product up to 40 % of the total product formation. Furthermore, residue L105 was found not to be involved in this side activity, which contradicts a previous study with the human enzyme.     

Use of a Brief Smoking Consequences Questionnaire for Adults (SCQ-A) in African American Smokers.

Purposes of the present study were to (a) examine psychometric properties of a brief Smoking Consequences Questionnaire-Adult (SCQ-A) among an African American sample and (b) explore differences in smoking expectancies across levels of smoking-nicotine dependence. Four hundred eighty-four smokers attending an urban health clinic completed the brief SCQ-A. Maximum likelihood factor extraction with a varimax rotation specifying 9 factors replicated 9 factors of the original SCQ-A. Evidence for the brief SCQ-A's reliability and validity was found. Heavier and/or more dependent smokers had significantly higher scores than lighter and/or less dependent smokers on positive expectancies SCQ-A subscales. Results suggest the brief SCQ-A may be a useful alternative to the full scale SCQ-A. Results also provide evidence for the SCQ-A's validity with African American smokers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

PANGAEA—an information system for environmental sciences

PANGAEA is an information system for processing, long-term storage, and publication of georeferenced data related to earth science fields. Essential services supplied by PANGAEA are project data management and the distribution of visualization and analysis software. Organization of data management includes quality control and publication of data and the dissemination of metadata according to international standards. Data managers are responsible for acquisition and maintenance of data. The data model used reflect the information processing steps in the earth science fields and can handle any related analytical data. The basic technical structure corresponds to a three tiered client/server architecture with a number of comprehensive clients and middleware components controlling the information flow and quality. On the server side a relational database management system (RDBMS) is used for information storage. The web-based clients include a simple search engine (PangaVista) and a data mining tool (ART). The client used for maintenance of information contents is optimized for data management purposes. Analysis and visualization of metainformation and analytical data is supported by a number of software tools, which can either be used as ‘plug-ins’ of the PANGAEA clients or as standalone applications, distributed as freeware from the PANGAEA website. Established and well-documented software tools are the mini-GIS PanMap, the plotting tool PanPlot, and Ocean Data View (ODV) for the exploration of oceanographic data. PANGAEA operates on a long-term basis. The available resources are sufficient not only for the acquisition of new data and the maintenance of the system but also for further technical and organizational developments.     

Absorbing-like boundaries for quantum field theoretical grid simulations

We introduce a computational method that permits us to increase the interaction time for quantum mechanical and quantum field theoretical simulations of multi-particle states on a finite space–time grid. In contrast to the usual approach where the unwanted portion of the wave function close to the grid boundaries is absorbed by a potential with a negative imaginary part, this method is unitary and therefore conserves the norm of the state. This technique is based on assigning particles close to the boundary a larger effective mass (or slower speed of light) such that the particles slow down and cannot re-enter the interaction zone. The method can therefore be applied to multi-particle states for which imaginary potential methods fail.     

A total-cost-of-ownership analysis of l2-enabled WDM-PONs - [Topics in optical communications]

Next-generation access networks must provide bandwidths in the range of 50-100 Mb/s per residential customer. Today, most broadband services are provided through copper-based VDSL or fiber-based GPON/EPON solutions. Candidates for next-generation broadband access networks include several variants of WDM-PONs. The total cost of ownership of these solutions is determined mainly by operational expenditures, where the cost of energy is one of the major contributors. We show that a combination of WDM-PON with active L2 switching can minimize the total cost of ownership while at the same time offering the highest scalability for future bandwidth demands.