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.     

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     

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)     

Future directions for the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research

The Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (AHCPR) plays a leading role in health services research. Research efforts to develop practice guidelines, outcomes research, and computer applications have led to improvements in the delivery of care and reduced health care costs. These efforts aid consumers, providers, purchasers, and policy makers in health care decision making. This article cites numerous examples of AHCPR's efforts to increase quality of care and reduce costs.     

1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine as a substrate of cytochrome P450 2D6: allosteric effects of NADPH-cytochrome P450 reductase

1-Methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP), a neurotoxin that produces Parkinsonism symptoms in man, has been examined as a substrate of recombinant human cytochrome P450 2D6. When cumene hydroperoxide is used as an oxygen and electron donor, a single product is formed, identified as 4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine. The K(m) for formation of this product (130 microM) is in agreement with the dissociation constants for MPTP binding to the enzyme determined by optical and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. When the reaction is carried out with nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (reduced) (NADPH) and recombinant human NADPH-cytochrome P450 reductase, a second product, identified as 1-methyl-4-(4'-hydroxyphenyl)-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine, is formed in addition to 4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine. The K(m) values for formation of these two products are 19 microM and 120 microM, respectively. Paramagnetic relaxation experiments have been used to measure distances between the protons of bound MPTP and the heme iron, and these have been used to construct models for the position and orientation of MPTP in the active site. For the cytochrome alone, a single mode of binding was observed, with the N-methyl close to the heme iron in a position appropriate for the observed N-demethylation reaction. In the presence of the reductase, the data were not consistent with a single mode of binding but could be explained by the existence of two alternative orientations of MPTP in the active site. One of these, characterized by a dissociation constant of 150 microM, is essentially identical to that observed in the absence of the reductase. In the second, which has a K(d) of 25 microM, the MPTP is oriented so that the aromatic ring is close to the heme iron, in a position appropriate for p-hydroxylation leading to the formation of the product seen only in the presence of the reductase. In the case of codeine, another substrate for cytochrome P450 2D6, the addition of reductase had no effect on the nature of the product formed, the dissociation constant, or the orientation in the binding site. These observations show that NADPH-cytochrome P450 reductase has an allosteric effect on the active site of cytochrome P450 2D6 that affects the binding of some substrates but not others.     

Purification and partial characterization of 76 kDa transglutaminase in the egg envelope (chorion) of rainbow trout, Oncorhynchus mykiss

Transglutaminase (TGase), responsible for crosslinking between proteins, is known to be localized exclusively in the egg envelope (chorion) of rainbow trout, Oncorhynchus mykiss, and probably participates in the post-fertilization chorion hardening. We purified the TGase from unfertilized egg chorions by sequential chromatography using SP-Sepharose, Q-Sepharose, and TSK-gel G3000SWXL columns. The purified enzyme was a monomeric protein having the molecular mass of 76 kDa. It promoted incorporation of monodansyl-cadaverine into chorion protein and catalyzed the polymerization of chorion subunit proteins. The effect of various reagents suggested that the chorion TGase is a Ca2+-dependent SH-enzyme similar to the well-characterized TGases of various animals. The highest activity was observed at pH 6.0. The amines examined in the present study inhibited the TGase activity of the purified enzyme. However, they did not necessarily cause effective inhibition of its activity. These properties of the chorion TGase were essentially consistent with our previous observations on polymerization of chorion proteins, resulting in chorion hardening. We compared the amino acid composition of the purified TGase with those of the previously characterized TGases of fishes, such as chum salmon and red sea bream. The results suggest that the chorion 76 kDa TGase is not homologous with those liver TGases in terms of amino acid composition.     

Fetus-in-fetu with malignant recurrence

Fetus-in-fetu is an unusual condition in which a vertebrate fetus is enclosed within the abdomen of another fetus. These occurrences are usually benign. This report describes an instance of malignant recurrence after resection of a fetus-in-fetu.