CD-ROM technology helps marketers Hanson, Derek; Turmelle, Tim
Grand Rapids business journal,
08/1994, Letnik:
12, Številka:
35
Journal Article
Upjohn Co. used to send mounds of sales literature promoting its pharmaceutical products to each of its subsidiaries in 55 countries worldwide. The result? Some subsidiaries got literature they never ...used. To eliminate this inefficiency, Upjohn turned to one of the newest technologies available for sales and marketing applications. The company compiled images, videos and descriptions of all its sales materials into a special catalog, then transferred the catalog itself into CD-ROM. Now, subsidiaries merely insert their copies of the disk into their computers, select the sales materials they need from the electronic catalog, and place their orders--often via modem right from their field offices. (excerpt)
What Children Like to Read Hanson, Derek
New Society,
05/1973, Letnik:
24, Številka:
554
Journal Article
Some educators believe that children should read about familiar situations, others that the reading should provide an escape into exotic, imaginative adventure. A perhaps more pertinent question is ...what children themselves prefer to read about. The research presented tries to determine if there are differences in reading preference between Wc, mixed, & Mc groups of children, as well as between the sexes & different ages. Findings show that reading preference is based more on sex than on age, with class background counting for nothing at all. Unfortunately, the data are no help in explaining why this is the case: have the children internalized parents' values, or are they reacting to their perception of what the teacher expects? The most important issue is that, given a child's particular reaction to given fiction, one perhaps deviating from the norm of reading interest shared by his peers, does the teacher encourage this special interest, or ignore it? It would be unfortunate & ironic to see children in a supposedly child-oriented education system geared toward adult values of a certain kind. 4 Tables. E. Holland.
Does less class time lead to improved teaching? Author says yes, and suggests several ways in which the classroom teacher's burden could be eased. (Author/SP)
Molybdenum dithiocarbamates (MDTCs) are indispensable lubricant additives. Although their role as antiwear agents is well established, they have also been attributed antioxidant properties that are ...not understood. MDTCs do not inhibit autoxidation, but they markedly enhance the capacity of diphenylamines (DPAs)ubiquitous radical-trapping antioxidants (RTAs)to do so. We find this synergy to be evident not only at elevated temperatures (160 °C in n-hexadecane) but also at moderate temperatures, where autoxidations can be continuously monitored and kinetics more easily interpreted (100 °C in squalane). Interestingly, the synergy disappeared in an unsaturated hydrocarbon (n-hexadec-1-ene), where the RTA activity of the DPA is known to result from the diarylnitroxide derived therefrom. Autoxidations of squalane carried out in the presence of the diarylnitroxidewherein it is a poor inhibitorwere much better inhibited in the presence of MDTC, suggesting that it converts the nitroxide to (a) more competent RTA(s). Indeed, preparative experiments revealed two species: DPA and a DPA dimer into which a single oxygen atom had been incorporated. This conversion is accelerated by the oxidation of MDTC to a dioxo molybdenum species. A mechanism is proposed to account for these observations, and the implications of our findings and their interpretation are discussed.
Lipid peroxidation (LPO) is associated with a variety of pathologies and drives a form of regulated necrosis called ferroptosis. There is much interest in small-molecule inhibitors of LPO as ...potential leads for therapeutic development for neurodegeneration, stroke, and acute organ failure, but this has been hampered by the lack of a universal high-throughput assay that can identify and assess candidates. Herein, we describe the development and validation of such an approach. Phosphatidylcholine liposomes loaded with ∼10% phospholipid hydroperoxide and STY-BODIPY, a fluorescent signal carrier that co-autoxidizes with polyunsaturated phospholipids, are shown to autoxidize at convenient and constant rates when subjected to an optimized Fe2+-based initiation cocktail. The use of this initiation system enables the identification of each of the various classes of LPO inhibitors which have been shown to rescue from cell death in ferroptosis: radical-trapping antioxidants (RTAs), peroxidase mimics, and iron chelators. Furthermore, a limited dose–response profile of inhibitors enables the resolution of RTA and non-RTA inhibitorsthereby providing not only relative efficacy but mechanistic information in the same microplate-based experiment. Despite this versatility, the approach can still be used to estimate rate constants for the reaction of RTAs with chain-propagating peroxyl radicals, as demonstrated for a representative panel of RTAs. To illustrate the utility of this assay, we carried out a preliminary investigation of the ‘off-target’ activity of several ferroptosis suppressors that have been proposed to act independently of inhibition of LPO, including lipoxygenase inhibitors, cannabinoids, and necrostatins, the archetype inhibitors of necroptosis.
Salting our freshwater lakes Dugan, Hilary A.; Bartlett, Sarah L.; Burke, Samantha M. ...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS,
04/2017, Letnik:
114, Številka:
17
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The highest densities of lakes on Earth are in north temperate ecosystems, where increasing urbanization and associated chloride runoff can salinize freshwaters and threaten lake water quality and ...the many ecosystem services lakes provide. However, the extent to which lake salinity may be changing at broad spatial scales remains unknown, leading us to first identify spatial patterns and then investigate the drivers of these patterns. Significant decadal trends in lake salinization were identified using a dataset of long-term chloride concentrations from 371 North American lakes. Landscape and climate metrics calculated for each site demonstrated that impervious land cover was a strong predictor of chloride trends in Northeast and Midwest North American lakes. As little as 1% impervious land cover surrounding a lake increased the likelihood of long-term salinization. Considering that 27% of large lakes in the United States have >1% impervious land cover around their perimeters, the potential for steady and long-term salinization of these aquatic systems is high. This study predicts that many lakes will exceed the aquatic life threshold criterion for chronic chloride exposure (230 mg L−1), stipulated by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in the next 50 y if current trends continue.
•Methane emissions and flux from seven approaches concurrently used at one landfill.•New modeling framework for estimating emissions using ground-based CRDS measurements.•Variable methane flux and ...emissions at one landfill from different analysis methods.•Analysis methods have inherent advantages and limitations.•Recommendations for emissions reductions through cover-specific analysis.
Methane flux and emissions were obtained at a California landfill concurrently using field measurements, inventory analyses, and modeling. Measured fluxes ranged from −3.7 to 828 g/m2-day and generally decreased from daily to intermediate to final covers. Soil covers with high-plasticity clay had the lowest fluxes. Whole-site emissions ranged from 406 to 47,414 tonnes/year (11,368 to 1,327,592 tonnes CO2-eq./year), and were dominated by intermediate covers with high relative surface area. Emissions estimates from flux chamber tests and California Landfill Methane Inventory Model (CALMIM) with oxidation were similar and low, whereas emissions from aerial measurements and CALMIM without oxidation were similar and high. The inventory analyses provided intermediate emissions and a new Gaussian plume model based on ground cavity ring-down spectrometer measurements provided the highest emissions. The assumptions used and the inherent strengths and limitations of the different approaches resulted in the flux and emissions differences. With varied attributes (experimental/modeling; flux/emissions; whole-site/cover-specific, top-down/bottom-up), the approaches provide envelopes of methane emissions and can be used selectively for the two main purposes of landfill methane emissions analysis: to mechanistically determine the factors that control/limit surface emissions and to provide data for atmospheric methane analysis. To reduce emissions, progression from temporary to permanent cover areas can be accelerated and covers with coarser materials can be amended with plastic fines.
MicroRNAs (miRs) are short non-coding RNAs that bind complementary sequences in mRNA resulting in translation repression and/or mRNA degradation. We investigated expression of the reported ...metastasis-associated miRs-335, 206, 135a, 146a, 146b, 10b, 21, let7a and let7b in normal mucosa, non-metastatic and metastatic colorectal cancer (CRC). Expression of target miRs in micro-dissected paraffin embedded tissues was evaluated in 15 primary tumours with adjacent normal tissue from patients that were disease-free at 4 years (cohort A) and 19 paired primary tumours with corresponding liver metastases (cohort B) by quantitative real-time PCR. Increased expression of miR-21, mir-135a and miR-335 was associated with clinical progression of CRC, while miR-206 demonstrated an opposite trend. The levels of mir-21 did not associate with the expression of PTEN, an important tumour suppressor in CRC and one of many putative targets of miR-21, but interestingly was associated with stage of disease in the PTEN expressing tumours. Surprisingly, let7a, a KRAS-targeting miR, showed elevated expression in metastatic disease compared to normal mucosa or non-metastatic disease, and only in KRAS mutation positive tumors. Finally, a prognostic signature of miR 21,135a, 335, 206 and let-7a for detecting the presence of metastases had a specificity of 87% and sensitivity of 76% for the presence of metastases. In summary, we have shown stage-associated differential expression of five out of nine tested metastasis-associated miRs. We have further found that an analysis of these five miRs expression levels in primary tumors significantly correlates with the presence of metastatic disease, making this a potential clinically useful prognostic tool.
Treatment decisions commonly have to be made in intensive care units (ICUs). These decisions are difficult for surrogate decision makers and often lead to decisional conflict, psychological distress, ...and treatments misaligned with patient preferences.
To determine whether a decision aid about prolonged mechanical ventilation improved prognostic concordance between surrogate decision makers and clinicians compared with a usual care control.
Multicenter, parallel, randomized, clinical trial. (ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT01751061).
13 medical and surgical ICUs at 5 hospitals.
Adult patients receiving prolonged mechanical ventilation and their surrogates, ICU physicians, and ICU nurses.
A Web-based decision aid provided personalized prognostic estimates, explained treatment options, and interactively clarified patient values to inform a family meeting. The control group received information according to usual care practices followed by a family meeting.
The primary outcome was improved concordance on 1-year survival estimates, measured with the clinician-surrogate concordance scale (range, 0 to 100 percentage points; higher scores indicate more discordance). Secondary and additional outcomes assessed the experiences of surrogates (psychological distress, decisional conflict, and quality of communication) and patients (length of stay and 6-month mortality). Outcomes assessors were blinded to group allocation.
The study enrolled 277 patients, 416 surrogates, and 427 clinicians. Concordance improvement did not differ between intervention and control groups (mean difference in score change from baseline, -1.7 percentage points 95% CI, -8.3 to 4.8 percentage points; P = 0.60). Surrogates' postintervention estimates of patients' 1-year prognoses did not differ between intervention and control groups (median, 86.0% interquartile range {IQR}, 50.0% vs. 92.5% IQR, 47.0%; P = 0.23) and were substantially more optimistic than results of a validated prediction model (median, 56.0% IQR, 43.0%) and physician estimates (median, 50.0% IQR, 55.5%). Eighty-two intervention surrogates (43%) favored a treatment option that was more aggressive than their report of patient preferences. Although intervention surrogates had greater reduction in decisional conflict than control surrogates (mean difference in change from baseline, 0.4 points CI, 0.0 to 0.7 points; P = 0.041), other surrogate and patient outcomes did not differ.
Contamination among clinicians could have biased results toward the null hypothesis.
A decision aid about prolonged mechanical ventilation did not improve prognostic concordance between clinicians and surrogates, reduce psychological distress among surrogates, or alter clinical outcomes. Decision support in acute care settings may require greater individualized attention for both the cognitive and affective challenges of decision making.
National Institutes of Health.
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