Weakening Water Rights and Efficient Transfers 1

For more than half a century, in nearly all western states, the regulatory agencies (the State Engineer or equivalent) used impairment of other water rights as the primary criterion for approving or rejecting change applications to move water to higher-valued uses. In recent years, however, protests to change applications have been brought by 'stakeholders' who do not own water rights, but who argue that they are affected by water transfers. Under the impairment rule, these parties do not have statutory standing to protest successfully. But they have brought legal suits to block transfers, and the courts have considered whether additional criteria involving 'impacts on social welfare' are needed to evaluate transfers. State Supreme Court rulings on such suits in Utah and Nevada are reviewed as prototype cases. The Utah court held that additional 'social welfare' criteria must be utilized by the State Engineer in evaluating change applications, whereas the Nevada court held that such criteria were already incorporated in existing water statutes and administrative practice. The critical question raised in the paper is whether existing state regulatory agencies can effectively implement a real 'social welfare' criterion to evaluate change applications. The conclusion is that they probably cannot, and that if they try, water allocations will be politicized to a much greater extent than they are now, and efficient market transfers will be impeded if not completely prevented.     

Temporary leukocyte depletion reduces ventricular dysfunction during prolonged postischemic reperfusion

Leukocyte depletion improves early postischemic ventricular performance in neonatal models of global myocardial ischemia. However, the rate of leukocyte reaccumulation after cardiopulmonary bypass and its subsequent impact on myocardial function is not known. This laboratory study examined the effect of leukocyte depletion on myocardial performance during the initial 6-hour period after bypass in an in situ, in vivo porcine model of neonatal cardiac surgery. Fifteen 3- to 5-day-old piglets (eight control and seven leukocyte depleted animals) were instrumented by placement of left ventricular short-axis sonomicrometry crystals and an intraventricular micromanometer catheter. Mechanical leukocyte depletion was achieved with Pall RC100 filters (Pall Biomedical, Inc., Fajardo, Puerto Rico) in the cardiopulmonary bypass circuit. Neonatal hearts were subjected to 90 minutes of hypothermic ischemia after a single dose of cold crystalloid cardioplegia. Two control animals died after the operation and were excluded from data analysis. Leukocyte filtration reduced the granulocyte count during initial myocardial reperfusion to 0.8% of control values. However, circulating granulocyte counts increased in leukocyte depleted animals throughout the postoperative period, reaching 68% of control values by 6 hours. Despite this rapid return of circulating granulocytes, animals subjected to leukocyte depletion had significantly better preservation of left ventricular performance (measured by preload recruitable stroke work, p < or = 0.02), left ventricular systolic function (measured by end-systolic pressure-volume relationship, p < or = 0.05), and ventricular compliance (p < or = 0.04) during the experiment. These changes in ventricular function were associated with a significant increase in left ventricular water content (p < or = 0.02) and tissue myeloperoxidase activity (p < or = 0.005) in control animals compared with leukocyte depleted animals. This study demonstrates that leukocyte depletion during initial reperfusion results in sustained improvement in postischemic left ventricular function despite the rapid return of granulocytes to the circulation.     

Live animal performance, carcass traits, and meat palatability of calf- and yearling-fed cloned steers

Two groups of Brangus steers produced by nuclear transplantation cloning were used in parallel studies investigating the impact of calf- and yearling-feeding. The first group (n = 8) were fed as calves (CF; n = 4) or yearlings (YF; n = 4) to a constant age end point of 16 mo. The second group (n = 10) were fed as calves (CF; n = 5) or yearlings (YF; n = 5) to a constant live weight end point (530 kg). When slaughtered at the same age, CF and YF steers did not differ (P > .05) in feedlot ADG, but the CF steers were heavier and had higher dressing percentages, numeric yield grades, and quality grades (P < .05). Top loin steaks from the groups of steers did not differ (P > .05) in palatability traits. When fed to a constant live weight, the YF steers gained more rapidly (P < .05) and had lower (P < .05) numeric yield grades than did CF steers. Again CF steers had higher (P < .05) dressing percentages. There was no difference (P > .05) between the treatments in carcass quality grade or meat palatability characteristics. Thus, when finished to a constant weight end point, YF steers gained more rapidly, with no adverse effects on carcass quality grade or palatability traits; however, CF steers consistently produced higher dressing percentages, largely due to greater external fatness.     

Bounding completion times of jobs with arbitrary release times,variable execution times and resource sharing

The workload of many real time systems can be characterized as a set of preemptable jobs with linear precedence constraints. Typically their execution times are only known to lie within a range of values. In addition, jobs share resources and access to the resources must be synchronized to ensure the integrity of the system. The paper is concerned with the schedulability of such jobs when scheduled on a priority driven basis. It describes three algorithms for computing upper bounds on the completion times of jobs that have arbitrary release times and priorities. The first two are simple but do not yield sufficiently tight bounds, while the last one yields the tightest bounds but has the greatest complexity     

The pharmacokinetics and protein-binding of fusidic acid in patients with severe renal failure requiring either haemodialysis or continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis

Antibiotic treatment options for Burkholderia cepacia infection are limited because of high intrinsic resistance. The problem is complicated by development of cross-resistance between antibiotics of different classes. We isolated antibiotic-resistant mutants by stepwise exposure to chloramphenicol (Chlor) and to trimethoprim/sulphamethoxazole (T/S) for four B. cepacia strains: ATCC13945, Per (clinical isolate), Cas and D4 (environmental isolates). Chlor(r) mutants did not produce chloramphenicol acetyl-transferase. Cross-resistance, defined as greater than four-fold increase in MIC by microtitre dilution method, was consistently seen in both types of mutants. For chloramphenicol-resistant (Chlor[r]) and trimethoprim/sulphamethoxazole-resistant (Tr/Sr) mutants of B. cepacia ATCC13945 and Cas, no MIC change was seen for piperacillin, ceftazidime, rifampicin, gentamicin, tobramycin, polymyxin B or azithromycin. B. cepacia-Per and -D4 mutants showed cross-resistance to ceftazidime and to piperacillin. Comparison of outer membrane protein (OMP) profiles of B. cepacia and their mutants by SDS-PAGE revealed Tr/Sr) mutants to be deficient in a major OMP (molecular weight 39-47 kDa). Tr/Sr mutants also expressed additional OMPs not found in wild type strains at 75-77 kDa for B. cepacia-ATCC13945 and -Cas, and 20-21 kDa in B. cepacia-D4 and -Per. No OMP changes occurred in Chlor(r) mutants. Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) profiles of each type of mutant showed new high and low molecular weight LPS bands. Cross-resistance seems to be mediated by alterations in porin and LPS for Tr/Sr mutants, but only by LPS in Chlor(r) mutants.     

The rationale for cementless total hip replacement

Current cementing techniques of distal plugging, pulsatile water cleaning of the canal, and retrograde filling with PMMA in a low-viscous state prepared using porosity reduction techniques and then pressurized have been shown to give excellent results at 10 or more years after operation. However, physical and aging characteristics of PMMA do not guarantee that those results will hold up in the 20- to 30-year time frame. Fifteen-year experience with bony ingrowth systems indicate the development of a durable interface without PMMA, although the interface does appear more vulnerable to attack by the biologic reaction to HMWPE debris. Bone remodeling appears more favorable around proximally fixed bone ingrowth prostheses than around distally fixed prostheses. Softening of the physical characteristics of the stem tip may reduce the incidence of thigh pain. Patients with high activity potential and a life expectancy of greater than 25 years should be strongly considered for a proximally fixed bone ingrowth or ongrowth prosthesis.     

Methods for the analysis of parallel streams of continuously recorded social behaviors.

Presents a strategy for analyzing social interactive behaviors occurring simultaneously in parallel streams. The standard strategy for representing such data has been interval coding. Interval coding converts the behavioral stream into a sequence of codes representing the behaviors observed in equal length intervals. This strategy is problematic because statistics calculated from interval coded data depend on the arbitrary choice of interval length. An alternative strategy is to represent the behavioral stream in a continuous-time format, using both the sequence of behaviors and their durations. A continuous-time model for social interactive data was applied to observations of mutual gaze between a husband and wife. The analysis uncovered different distributions of event durations in the two partners: The wife looked primarily at the husband and responded sensitively to his gaze behavior, whereas the husband looked primarily away, unresponsive to the wife. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)