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.     

Recurrent Epstein-Barr virus-associated lesions in organ transplant recipients

This paper discusses the problem of violence and its expression upon mortality due to external causes. A few indicators are offered, which have been worked upon it to emphasise the importance of the theme. In a general way, the study demonstrates violent death has had its magnitude increased along the years, not only throughout Latin America but also in Brazil and in Santa Catarina.     

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)     

Glucocorticoids and aging

In this review we analyze the morphologic changes, hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis functions, glucocorticoid (GC) receptors, and steroidogenic enzyme activities in both animals and humans during aging. In rodent studies, older animals tend to show: 1) hypertrophy of adrenal zona fasciculata (ZF) cells; 2) neuronal loss in the hypothalamic area; 3) loss of GC receptors in the hippocampus; 4) raised circulating adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) and GC levels, and increased release of corticotropin-releasing hormone from the hypothalamus; 5) reduced suppression of endogenous GC secretion after administration of dexamethasone; 6) decreased attenuation of response to chronic stress; and 7) increased activity of P450scc and 21-hydroxylase. According to the GC cascade hypothesis, stress and GCs facilitate the aging process in rats. Stress induces downregulation of GC receptors in the hippocampus, then impairs GC feedback on stress-induced HPA axis activation. Finally, an increase in the basal level of corticosterone and extended GC secretion following stress occurs. Because activation of the hippocampus decreases HPA axis function, the unrestrained elevation of GC concentration and the reduction in the level of GC receptors in the hippocampus may gradually weaken the feedback mechanisms and halt the response to stress. In humans, there are conflicting reports of HPA axis function during aging, so it is difficult to make a final conclusion regarding the relationship between aging and HPA axis function.     

Variables affecting results of sodium chloride tolerance test for identification of rapidly growing mycobacteria

The sodium chloride tolerance test is often used in the identification of rapidly growing mycobacteria, particularly for distinguishing between Mycobacterium abscessus and Mycobacterium chelonae. This test, however, is frequently unreliable for the identification of some species. In this study we examined the following variables: medium manufacturer, inoculum concentration, and atmosphere and temperature of incubation. Results show that reliability is improved if the test and control slants are inoculated with an organism suspension spectrophotometrically equal to a 1 McFarland standard. Slants should be incubated at 35 degrees C in ambient air and checked weekly for 4 weeks. Growth on control slants should be critically evaluated to determine the adequacy of the inoculum; colonies should number greater than 50. Salt-containing media should be examined carefully to detect pinpoint or tiny colonies, and colonies should number greater than 50 for a positive reaction. Concurrent use of a citrate slant may be helpful for distinguishing between M. abscessus and M. chelonae. Molecular methodologies are probably the most reliable means for the identification of rapidly growing mycobacteria and should be used, if possible, when unequivocal species identification is of particular importance.     

Mutational analysis of the pea phytochrome A chromophore pocket: chromophore assembly with apophytochrome A and photoreversibility

Ten site-specific mutants of pea apophytochrome A were expressed in Saccharomyces cerevisiae and analyzed for chromophore assembly with apoprotein and photoreversible absorbance changes. The mutants constitute two specific changes for each of five conserved amino acid residues located in the microenvironment of the chromophore attachment residue, which is Cys-323 in pea phytochrome A. All mutant apophytochromes were autocatalytically able to covalently attach phycocyanobilin, indicating that there were no major structural perturbations in the apoproteins. However, the rate of chromophore ligation varied significantly among the mutants. Spectrally, the mutant holophytochromes are of three types: mutant phytochromes that are indistinguishable from the wild-type adduct, mutants with blue-shifted Pr and Pfr absorption maxima compared to the wild-type adduct, and mutants that are not photoreversible. From an analysis of the results, we concluded that the residues Asp-309, Arg-318, His-321, and Gln-326 are probably not catalytically involved in the chromophore ligation reaction, but some residues may play significant structural and stereochemical roles. Arg-318 might anchor the chromophore, as has been suggested [Partis, M. D., & Grimm, R. (1990) Z. Naturforsch, 45c, 987-998; Parker, W., et al. (1993) Bioconjugate Chem. (in press)]. The conserved Gln-326, three residues downstream from the chromophore attachment site, is not electrostatically critical for the spectral integrity and photoreversibility of phytochrome, but this residue is sterically important to the lyase activity. It appears that the role of the five amino acid residues in the N- and C-terminal vicinities of the chromophore binding Cys-323 is structural rather than catalytic for the ligation reaction.     

B7 blockade prevents activation-induced cell death of thymocytes

Although both B7 and its counter-receptor CD28 are expressed in the thymus, the role of B7 in thymic selection is not clear. We investigated the role of B7 in intrathymic deletion of antigen-specific T cells using a TCR transgenic model specific for antigen ovalbumin (OVA) and H-2Ad. Intraperitoneal injection of OVA induced apoptosis of thymocytes and drastic reduction of thymocyte numbers. This was significantly inhibited by co-injection of CTLA-4-Ig which blocks B7 co-stimulation. Deletion of T cells in the thymus following i.p. injection of OVA was associated with T cell pre-activation as demonstrated by T cell proliferation and cytokine production. Injection of CTLA-4-Ig blocked all these activation events and rescued thymocytes from activation-induced cell death. These results demonstrate that B7 is required for the activation-induced cell death of MHC class II-restricted thymocytes in vivo.