Auditory–visual responsiveness in full-term and preterm infants.

Compared older preterm and full-term infants in their response to objects in a dynamic multimodal context. In Study I, 67 12-wk-old full-term infants and 29 preterm infants (mean age 90 days) served as Ss. After familiarization with a silent moving object, full-term Ss recognized the object when it was stationary. When sound accompanied the moving object during familiarization, full-term Ss showed increased attention to the object but no subsequent recognition of that object. Neither high- nor low-risk preterms, at a comparable conceptional age, recognized the objects under any condition, but the low-risk preterms did show greater attention to the moving objects with sound. In Study II, 43 preterm Ss were tested approximately 6 mo after their estimated term date. The performance of the low-risk preterms was the same as that of full-terms; that is, through differential responding, they demonstrated association of an object and sound. In contrast, the high-risk preterms showed no differential looking. Thus both low- and high-risk preterms showed less differential responding than did normal full-terms at 3 mo, but at 6 mo only the high-risk preterms were different from the full-terms. Results suggest that the high-risk preterms are at a disadvantage for learning about the dynamic and multimodal aspects of their environment. (13 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Retail alcohol monopolies, underage drinking, and youth impaired driving deaths

OBJECTIVE: To explore associations of state retail alcohol monopolies with underage drinking and alcohol-impaired driving deaths. DATA: Surveys on youth who drank alcohol and binge-drank recently and their beverage choices; census of motor vehicle fatalities by driver blood alcohol level. METHODS: Regressions estimated associations of monopolies with under-21 drinking, binge drinking, alcohol-impaired driving deaths, and odds a driver under 21 who died was alcohol-positive. RESULTS: About 93.8% of those ages 12-20 who consumed alcohol in the past month drank some wine or spirits. In states with a retail monopoly over spirits or wine and spirits, an average of 14.5% fewer high school students reported drinking alcohol in the past 30 days and 16.7% fewer reported binge drinking in the past 30 days than high school students in non-monopoly states. Monopolies over both wine and spirits were associated with larger consumption reductions than monopolies over spirits only. Lower consumption rates in monopoly states, in turn, were associated with a 9.3% lower alcohol-impaired driving death rate under age 21 in monopoly states versus non-monopoly states. Alcohol monopolies may prevent 45 impaired driving deaths annually. CONCLUSIONS: Continuing existing retail alcohol monopolies should help control underage drinking and associated harms.     

Opaganib Protects against Radiation Toxicity: Implications for Homeland Security and Antitumor Radiotherapy

Exposure to ionizing radiation (IR) is a lingering threat from accidental or terroristic nuclear events, but is also widely used in cancer therapy. In both cases, host inflammatory responses to IR damage normal tissue causing morbidity and possibly mortality to the victim/patient. Opaganib, a first-in-class inhibitor of sphingolipid metabolism, has broad anti-inflammatory and anticancer activity. Opaganib elevates ceramide and reduces sphingosine 1-phosphate (S1P) in cells, conditions that increase the antitumor efficacy of radiation while concomitantly suppressing inflammatory damage to normal tissue. Therefore, opaganib may suppress toxicity from unintended IR exposure and improve patient response to chemoradiation. To test these hypotheses, we first examined the effects of opaganib on the toxicity and antitumor activity of radiation in mice exposed to total body irradiation (TBI) or IR with partial bone marrow shielding. Oral treatment with opaganib 2 h before TBI shifted the LD₇₅ from 9.5 Gy to 11.5 Gy, and provided substantial protection against gastrointestinal damage associated with suppression of radiation-induced elevations of S1P and TNFα in the small intestines. In the partially shielded model, opaganib provided dose-dependent survival advantages when administered 4 h before or 24 h after radiation exposure, and was particularly effective when given both prior to and following radiation. Relevant to cancer radiotherapy, opaganib decreased the sensitivity of IEC6 (non-transformed mouse intestinal epithelial) cells to radiation, while sensitizing PAN02 cells to in vitro radiation. Next, the in vivo effects of opaganib in combination with radiation were examined in a syngeneic tumor model consisting of C57BL/6 mice bearing xenografts of PAN02 pancreatic cancer cells and a cross-species xenograft model consisting of nude mice bearing xenografts of human FaDu cells. Mice were treated with opaganib and/or IR (plus cisplatin in the case of FaDu tumors). In both tumor models, the optimal suppression of tumor growth was attained by the combination of opaganib with IR (± cisplatin). Overall, opaganib substantially protects normal tissue from radiation damage that may occur through unintended exposure or cancer radiotherapy.     

Infant visual attention: Relation to birth status and developmental outcome during the first 5 years.

This study examined the relation of infant attention and memory to later cognition in two groups of low socioeconomic status (SES) subjects: 45 full-terms and 46 high-risk preterms (rs?=?.37–.65). A sum of dichotomized novelty scores was less strongly related to outcome, indicating that variation in the actual magnitude of the novelty score is important. Ability to sustain attention during familiarization also related to outcome: Infants who took longer to reach a looking criterion had lower MDI/IQ scores. By contrast, the 7-month Bayley MDI was significantly related to later MDI/IQ only in preterms and then mostly at younger ages. Novelty scores related to later MDI/IQ independently of 7-month MDI, SES, maternal education, and medical risk. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Second-generation RISC floating point with multiply-add fused

A 440000-transistor second-generation RISC (reduced instruction set computer) floating-point chip is described. The pipeline latency is only two cycles, and a double-precision result is produced every cycle. System throughput and accuracy are increased by using a floating-point multiply-add-fused unit, which carries out a double-precision accumulate as a two-cycle pipelined execution with only one rounding error. While the cycle time (40 ns) is competitive with other CMOS RISC systems, the floating-point performance stretches to the range of bipolar RISC systems (7.4-13 MFLOPS LINPACK). Leading zero anticipation makes the two-cycle pipeline possible by nearly eliminating the additional postnormalization time, and it allows for reduced overall system latency. Partial decode shifters allow complete time sharing for the multiply and data alignment. Improved design techniques for logarithmic addition and higher order counters for multiplication complete this second-generation RISC floating-point unit design     

Practical Strategies for Power-Efficient Computing Technologies

After decades of continuous scaling, further advancement of silicon microelectronics across the entire spectrum of computing applications is today limited by power dissipation. While the trade-off between power and performance is well-recognized, most recent studies focus on the extreme ends of this balance. By concentrating instead on an intermediate range, an $sim!hbox{8}times$ improvement in power efficiency can be attained without system performance loss in parallelizable applications—those in which such efficiency is most critical. It is argued that power-efficient hardware is fundamentally limited by voltage scaling, which can be achieved only by blurring the boundaries between devices, circuits, and systems and cannot be realized by addressing any one area alone. By simultaneously considering all three perspectives, the major issues involved in improving power efficiency in light of performance and area constraints are identified. Solutions for the critical elements of a practical computing system are discussed, including the underlying logic device, associated cache memory, off-chip interconnect, and power delivery system. The IBM Blue Gene system is then presented as a case study to exemplify several proposed directions. Going forward, further power reduction may demand radical changes in device technologies and computer architecture; hence, a few such promising methods are briefly considered.      

Taking the national guideline for care of acute myocardial infarction to the bedside: developing the guideline applied in practice (GAP) initiative in Southeast Michigan.

BACKGROUND: The Guideline Applied in Practice (GAP) program was developed in 2000 to improve the quality of care by improving adherence to clinical practice guidelines. For the first GAP project, the American College of Cardiology (ACC) partnered with the Southeast Michigan Quality Forum Cardiovascular Subgroup and the Michigan Peer Review Organization (MPRO) to develop interventions that might facilitate the use of the ACC/AHA Acute Myocardial Infarction (AMI) guideline in the practice setting. Ten Michigan hospitals participated in implementing the project, which began in March 2000. DESIGNING THE PROJECT: The project developed a multifaceted intervention aimed at key players in the care delivery triangle: the physician, nurse, and patient. Intervention components included a project kick-off presentation and dinner, creation and implementation of a customized tool kit, identification and assignment of local nurse and physician opinion leaders, grand rounds site visits, and measurement before and after the intervention. IMPLEMENTING THE PROJECT: The GAP project experience suggests that hospitals are enthusiastic about partnering with ACC to improve quality of care; partners can work together to develop a program for guideline implementation; rapid-cycle implementation is possible with the GAP model; guidelines and quality indicators for AMI are well accepted; and hospitals can adapt the national guideline for care into usable tools focused on physicians, nurses, and patients. DISCUSSION: Important structure and process changes--both of which are required for successful QI efforts--have been demonstrated in this project. Ultimately, the failure or success of this initiative will depend on an indication that the demonstrated improvement in the quality indicators is sustained over time.     

加拿大风景园林的起源与发展

加拿大园林设计师的工作在国内外都产生了重要的影响.通过加拿大风景园林行业的产生、行业组织的发展、市政园林部门的形成过程、专业教育的形成与发展以及当前的行业动态,阐述了加拿大风景园林行业起源与发展的历程.     

Portable Accelerometer Device for Measuring Human Energy Expenditure

We have developed and tested a portable device that measures energy expenditure per unit time of a human subject. A modified ceramic phonocartridge senses the acceleration of the body. After amplification and rectification a Curtis 120 CP3 elapsed time meter integrates the output. This may prove to be useful in providing an objective measurement of the level of physical activity of human subjects and can be used in studying habitual and leisure time activities in a large population setting. It is worn on the waist, weighs 400 g, measures 14 X 8 X 4 cm, costs $ 30 plus 5 h assembly time, and runs 10 days on two 9 V transistor batteries.