University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown

Toxic-shock syndrome (TSS) is an acute onset, multiorgan illness which resembles severe scarlet fever. The illness is caused by Staphylococcus aureus strains that express TSS toxin-1 (TSST-1), enterotoxin B, or enterotoxin C. TSST-1 is associated with menstrual TSS and approximately one-half of nonmenstrual cases; the other two toxins cause nonmenstrual cases, 47% and 3%, respectively. The three toxins are expressed in culture media under similar environmental conditions. These conditions may explain the association of certain tampons with menstrual TSS. Biochemically, the toxins are all relatively low molecular weight and fairly heat and protease stable. Enterotoxins B and C, share nearly 50% sequence homology with streptococcal scarlet fever toxin A; they share no homology with TSST-1 despite sharing numerous biological properties. Numerous animal models for development of TSS have suggested mechanisms of toxin action, though the exact molecular action is not known. The toxins are all potent pyrogens, induce T lymphocyte proliferation, requiring interleukin 1 release from macrophages, suppress immunoglobulin production, enhance endotoxin shock, and enhance hypersensitivity skin reactions. The genetic control of the toxins has been studied and suggests the exotoxins are variable traits. Some additional properties of TSS S. aureus which facilitate disease causation have been clarified.

Abstract Research into avian vocal duets has revealed much about the social interactions of mated pairs, including how communication signals mediate important components of fitness such as reproductive success and resource‐holding ability. Excellent reviews have been written on avian duets, but none have quantified the prevalence of different duet features and functions, or tested for potential links between structure and function. Here we have compiled a thorough list of studies at the species level and investigated whether there are trends in duet form, trends in duet function and matches between form and function. We have also provided recommendations for reporting of duet structure to help standardize future data collection and facilitate comparative analyses. We found that duet vocalizations are typically tightly coordinated (69% of 33 species), initiated by both partners (80% of 35 species), and have sex‐specific contributions (73% of 48 species). Duets vary substantially in structure both across and within species, and this flexibility in duet form may contribute to their use in multiple contexts. Among the well‐studied species (functions well supported by experimental evidence and studied post‐1983), duets are usually multifunctional, with functions including joint resource defence, signalling commitment, maintaining contact, ensuring reproductive synchrony and mate‐guarding. Levels of support for different hypotheses have changed over time as theory within the field developed, but overall, the best‐supported function of duets across avian species (81% of 26 species) has been joint resource defence. In all but one of these 26 species, duets are sometimes cooperative (meaning that duet participation benefits both duetting partners), and they often produce multiple benefits. We found associations between form and function, in that duets directed to non‐pair individuals have higher amplitude and are more likely to have sex‐specific notes than duets directed within the pair. We see the field moving away from labelling duets as representing ‘cooperation’ or ‘conflict’ and moving towards a general multifunctionality framework within which researchers test multiple hypotheses for duet function under the assumption that both duet form and function can vary moment to moment and that such flexibility can provide multiple benefits.

BACKGROUND: Chronic, refractory low back pain is a common problem. Percutaneous adhesiolysis with hypertonic saline neurolysis was described in the management of chronic refractory low back pain, non-responsive to conservative modalities of management. OBJECTIVE: To determine the ability of percutaneous adhesiolysis and hypertonic saline administration to reduce pain and improve functional and psychological status in patients with chronic low back pain. DESIGN: Randomized, double-blind, controlled trial. METHODS: A total of 75 patients were studied, with 25 patients in each group. Three types of interventions were included, with Group I serving as control with catheterization without adhesiolysis, followed by injection of local anesthetic, normal saline, and steroid. Group II consisted of catheterization and adhesiolysis, followed by injection of local anesthetic, normal saline, and steroid. Group III consisted of adhesiolysis followed by injection of local anesthetic, hypertonic saline, and steroid. Statistical analysis incorporated intent-to-treat analysis. OUTCOME MEASURES: Visual Analogue Scale pain scores, Oswestry Disability Index, work status, opioid intake, range of motion measurement, and P-3 (R). Significant pain relief was defined as average relief of 50% or greater. RESULTS: Significant improvement was seen in patients in Group II and III, at 3 months, 6 months, and 12 months, compared to baseline measurements, as well as compared to Group I without adhesiolysis. Seventy-two percent of patients in Group III (adhesiolysis and hypertonic neurolysis), 60% of patients in Group II (adhesiolysis only), compared to 0% in Group I (control) showed significant improvement at 12-month follow up. The average number of treatments for one year were 2.76 in Group II and 2.16 in Group III. Duration of significant relief with the first procedure was 2.8 +/- 1.49 months in Group II and 3.8 +/- 3.37 months in Group III. CONCLUSION: Percutaneous adhesiolysis, with or without hypertonic saline neurolysis, is an effective treatment for chronic low back pain.

In this study, 121 office workers whose jobs required the use of video display terminals for varying proportions of their workdays were interviewed. A semistructured interview technique was used to determine the attitudes of the workers toward their work and toward office automation. A smaller subset of this group was examined more intensively for workweek, during which time optometric measurements were taken and a mood/physical symptom checklist was administered. Results indicated a relatively high level of incidence of eye fatigue symptoms, as well as complaints regarding glare and lighting. However, the patterning of these complaints appeared to be relatively independent of job pressure and hostility toward office computerization. No consistent pattern of optometric measurements was found to be related to subjective complaints.

ABSTRACT Many college instructors complain about class attendance, but few data have been gathered on when and why students miss class. In this study, I examined class attendance in 17 sections of undergraduate psychology classes and found that class attendance decreased from the beginning to the end of the semester and that attendance displayed moderate correlations with course grades. I also found that students missed classes most frequently because of the time needed to complete other course work, because the classes were boring, because of illness, and because classes interfered with their social life. Finally, I have attempted to explain attendance behavior in terms of self-regulatory theory.

The paper explores and initiates the examination and discussion of the cultural andpromotional power of weblogs and blogging. Travel blogging is a form of digitalstory-telling. In the past tourism was considered a luxury of a few select people.Travel narratives were published and publicised in the form of brochures, monologues, newspaper accounts, novellas, novels, sketches and paintings. As the worldevolved and travel became available to greater groups in society, these writtenstaples captivated and inspired generations. The later part of the 20th century hasear marked the coming of age of Internet technology and traditional forms oftourist communication are being transformed into a more modern electronicversion. The Internet has fostered a recent resurgence in journaling of travel adventures and self publication. Blogs are a visual and written descriptive of the day today excursion of a tourist society. The purpose of this paper is to examine this formof narrative in a modern age and initiate arguments of the discussion within threeinitial paradigms: (1) tourism as a language, (2) tourism as a place of experiences inspace and time and (3) the authenticity of tourism.

Simulation technologies are gaining widespread acceptance across a variety of educational domains and applications. The current research examines whether basic nursing procedure training with high-fidelity versus low-fidelity mannequins results in differential skill acquisition and perceptions of simulator utility. Fifty-two first-year students were taught nasogastric tube and indwelling urinary catheter insertion in one of two ways. The first group learned nasogastric tube and urinary catheter insertion using high-fidelity and low-fidelity mannequins, respectively, and the second group learned nasogastric tube and urinary catheter insertion using low-fidelity and high-fidelity mannequins, respectively. The dependent measures included student performance on nasogastric tube and urinary catheter insertion testing, as measured by observer-based instruments, and self-report questionnaires probing student attitudes about the use of simulation in nursing education. Results demonstrated higher performance with high-fidelity than with low-fidelity mannequin training. In response to a self-report posttraining questionnaire, participants expressed a more positive attitude toward the high-fidelity mannequin, especially regarding its responsiveness and realism.

Vocal dialects have fascinated biologists for over 50 years. This mosaic pattern of geographic variation in learned vocalisations was first described in a songbird, and since that time most studies investigating dialects have focused on songbird species. Here we examine patterns of geographic variation in the calls of a different group of vocal learning birds, the parrots (order Psittaciformes). We summarise the growing literature on vocal variation in parrots, and complement this review with a survey of variation in the genus Amazona using calls from sound libraries. We find strikingly similar patterns to those previously found in songbirds. Over 90% of parrots examined in the literature, and 69% of Amazona species surveyed, showed geographic variation consistent with a propensity to share local call types. This trait is evolutionarily labile and widespread; within Amazona most clades contained species with and without geographic variation, and most major lineages of parrots include representatives with dialects. We found little support for the long-standing hypothesis that dialects isolate populations and thus generate genetic differences among populations. Instead, most studies support the idea that dialects are maintained by social benefits of matching local call types, a finding that has implications for the management of captive and endangered populations. Considerable scope remains for studies that experimentally test hypotheses for the exact nature of these benefits, as well as studies that employ comparisons among species, to understand how the interplay between ecology, social dynamics and vocal learning capacities produces different patterns of variation across the parrots.

This article describes a pilot study testing some aspects of the integrated marketing communications concept. The study is timely and relevant to the field because it employs an empirical approach to addressing the heated controversy over the validity of the integrated marketing communications concept. This controversy is based upon doubt about the theoretical basis for integrated marketing communications and the lack of empirical research in the field identified in the integrated marketing communications literature. In an effort to address the conceptual validity controversy directly, the study adopted the first use of an experimental approach in the integrated marketing communications field. The results of the experiment suggest that messages employing some of the key aspects of an integrated marketing communications strategy (i.e. messages with a common theme that are executed across multiple media in a visually consistent manner) may prompt a stronger attitude towards the brand level than the same messages employing a more traditional strategy (executions with less visual consistency), although other dependent measures were not similarly impacted upon. The study is limited in its scope, but is intended to stimulate more empirical research in the integrated marketing communications field.

The engineering behavior of low-plasticity silts is more difficult to characterize than is the behavior of clay or sand. Due to their tendency to dilate during shear, establishing a consistent and practically useful failure criterion for low-plasticity silts can be very difficult. Consideration of how the undrained shear strength of silt is related to changes in pore pressure provides a more useful and practical framework for understanding the undrained strengths of these materials and for characterizing undrained strengths for practical purposes. Using a value of Skempton’s A¯ as a failure criterion has been found to result in very reasonable values of undrained strength and to reduce scatter in the results as compared to using other criteria. Using a failure criterion based on an appropriate value of A¯ results in consistent values of Su∕p, and tolerably small values of strain at failure. For low-plasticity, dilative silts that pose the greatest problems with respect to definition of “failure,” using A¯=0 as a failure criterion is an appropriate and simple choice.

The study of nonlinear damping in vibrations is motivated by the desire to represent and predict real responses more accurately than allowed by the limitations of linear analysis, since observed phenomena are, in general, actually nonlinear in nature. The scope of this paper is to compare the normal engineering methods of including the effects of nonlinear damping to more exact methods of solution so that the range of applicability of the normal methods may be known and the limitations of linear analysis more fully understood.

BACKGROUND: Paravertebral block (PVB) is an effective alternative to general anesthesia for breast cancer surgery. Continuous paravertebral block (CPVB) anesthesia may extend postoperative analgesia at home and improve quality of early postoperative recovery of breast cancer patients. PURPOSE: This double-blinded randomized trial was conducted to compare degree of pain, nausea, mood, level of symptom distress, and time to return to normal daily activity between PVB and PVB + CPVB in patients undergoing outpatient breast cancer surgery. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Between July 2003 and April 2008 we randomly assigned 94 (73 evaluable) patients in a 1:1:1 ratio with early breast cancer to single injection PVB followed by CPVB infusion of 0.1% or 0.2% ropivacaine vs placebo (saline) for 48 hours postoperatively for unilateral breast cancer surgery without reconstruction. The primary study endpoint was the degree of pain, nausea, mood state, level of symptom distress, and recovery time. RESULTS: Of the 468 patients assessed for eligibility, 94 consented and 21 with incomplete data or follow-up were excluded, leaving 73 subjects for analysis. There was no clinically significant difference in degree of postoperative pain, nausea, mood state, level of symptom distress, or return to normal activity among the three study groups. CONCLUSION: The current study does not support the routine use of continuous paravertebral catheter anesthesia in patients undergoing operative treatment for breast cancer.

Tests were performed of the selective neutrality of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) variants from geographic populations of Drosophila melanogaster in Argentina (ARG) and Central Africa (CAF). The two populations were completely reproductively compatible. The two distinct mtDNA haplotypes from the two populations were competed in replicate experimental populations on three nuclear genetic backgrounds: homozygous ARG, homozygous CAF, or hybrid ARG/CAF. Mitochondrial haplotype frequencies did not change significantly on either of the two homozygous nuclear backgrounds, and there was no change after experimental perturbation of haplotype frequencies. On the hybrid background, the ARG haplotype frequency increased significantly for the first two generations in all replicate populations but then did not change in subsequent generations. After perturbation, the ARG haplotype frequency increased in only one of four replicates. There is no evidence for selective differences among mtDNA variants in homozygous nuclear contexts or for nuclear-mitochondrial coadaptation. While some "fitness" difference among mtDNA variants is required to account for the observed frequency shifts, it appears that in these hybrid populations, mtDNA is hitchhiking on fitness variation among hybrid segregating nuclear genes. These results have implications for the use of mtDNA in the study of hybrid zones and gene flow.

Abstract In two experiments, memory distortions for voice pitch and speaking rate were examined. In both experiments, a significant distortion effect for voice pitch was observed, with listeners biased towards selecting voices lower in pitch than low‐pitch targets and selecting voices higher in pitch than high‐pitch targets. In contrast, for speaking rate there was little evidence for the production of memory distortions. The results are discussed in terms of transient surface properties of speech and how transience may be a factor in producing distortions. The results have implications for how errors arise during earwitness testimony for a suspect's voice. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Impacts of environmental parameters and dust deposition on the efficiency of solar panel have been scrutinized in this article. To gain thermal output, trapezoidal cooling channel has been attached in the bottom of the panel incorporating ternary nanofluid. To produce working fluid, water has been mixed with Fe3O4-TiO 2-GO nanoparticles. Also, the arrangement of fins has been conside to grow the cooling rate of the silicon layer. The existence of a thermoelectric layer above the cooling channel leads to higher electrical output. Efficacy of ambient temperature (Ta), speed of wind (Vwind) and inlet temperature (Tin) and velocity (Vin) of ternary nanofluid on performance of PVT has been assessed. As Tin increases, electrical efficiency declines about 3.63%. Increase of ambient temperature makes thermal performance enhance about 33.46%. The PVT efficiency decreases about 13.14% and 16.6% with augment of wind speed and dust deposition. CO2 mitigation has been uced about 15.49% in presence of dust while it increases about 17.38% with growth of ambient temperature.

BACKGROUND: The RNA helicase eIF4A1 is a key component of the translation initiation machinery and is required for the translation of many pro-oncogenic mRNAs. There is increasing interest in targeting eIF4A1 therapeutically in cancer, thus understanding how this protein leads to the selective re-programming of the translational landscape is critical. While it is known that eIF4A1-dependent mRNAs frequently have long GC-rich 5'UTRs, the details of how 5'UTR structure is resculptured by eIF4A1 to enhance the translation of specific mRNAs are unknown. RESULTS: Using Structure-seq2 and polysome profiling, we assess global mRNA structure and translational efficiency in MCF7 cells, with and without eIF4A inhibition with hippuristanol. We find that eIF4A inhibition does not lead to global increases in 5'UTR structure, but rather it leads to 5'UTR remodeling, with localized gains and losses of structure. The degree of these localized structural changes is associated with 5'UTR length, meaning that eIF4A-dependent mRNAs have greater localized gains of structure due to their increased 5'UTR length. However, it is not solely increased localized structure that causes eIF4A-dependency but the position of the structured regions, as these structured elements are located predominantly at the 3' end of the 5'UTR. CONCLUSIONS: By measuring changes in RNA structure following eIF4A inhibition, we show that eIF4A remodels local 5'UTR structures. The location of these structural elements ultimately determines the dependency on eIF4A, with increased structure just upstream of the CDS being the major limiting factor in translation, which is overcome by eIF4A activity.

Corneille, Huart, Becquart, & Brédart (2004) found that people remember ambiguous race faces as closer to a race prototype than they actually are. In three studies, we examined whether this memory bias generalizes to voice memory. In Studies 1 and 2, participants listened to synthesized male and female speech samples (high, moderate, or low pitch) and were asked to identify a voice target when paired against distracters higher or lower in pitch. The results showed that pitch distortions occurred, with the pattern consistent with assimilation toward low and high ends of the pitch continuum. Study 3 replicated this result with a wider voice pitch range. The results parallel those of Corneille et al. (2004). The implications of this work are discussed.

1,3-Butadiene (BD) is a more potent tumor inducer in mice than in rats. BD also shows striking differences in metabolic activation, with substantially higher blood concentrations of 1,2:3,4-diepoxybutane (butadiene diepoxide; BDE) in BD-exposed mice than in similarly exposed rats. The objective of this study was to develop a single mechanistic model structure capable of describing BD disposition in both species. To achieve this objective, known pathways of 1,2-epoxy-3-butene (butadiene monoepoxide; BMO) and BDE metabolism were incorporated into a physiologically based pharmacokinetic model by scaling rates determined in vitro. With this model structure, epoxide clearance was underestimated for both rats and mice. Improved simulation of blood epoxide concentrations was achieved by addition of first-order metabolism in the slowly perfused tissues, verified by simulation of data on the time course for BMO elimination after i.v. injection of BMO. Blood concentrations of BD were accurately predicted for mice and rats exposed by inhalation to constant concentrations of BD. However, if all BD was assumed to be metabolized to BMO, blood concentrations of BMO were overpredicted. By assuming that only a fraction of BD metabolism produces BMO, blood concentrations of BMO could be predicted over a range of BD exposure concentrations for both species. In vitro and in vivo studies suggest an alternative cytochrome P-450-mediated pathway for BD metabolism that does not yield BMO. Including an alternative pathway for BD metabolism in the model also gave accurate predictions of blood BDE concentrations after inhalation of BD. Blood concentrations of BMO and BDE observed in both mice and rats are best explained by the existence of an alternative pathway for BD metabolism which does not produce BMO.

Is computer-synthesized speech as persuasive as the human voice when presenting an argument? After completing an attitude pretest, 193 participants were randomly assigned to listen to a persuasive appeal under three conditions: a high-quality synthesized speech system (DECtalk Express), a low-quality synthesized speech system (Monologue), and a tape recording of a human voice. Following the appeal, participants completed a posttest attitude survey and a series of questionnaires designed to assess perceptions of speech qualities, perceptions of the speaker, and perceptions of the message. The human voice was generally perceived more favorably than the computer-synthesized voice, and the speaker was perceived more favorably when the voice was a human voice than when it was computer synthesized. There was, however, no evidence that computerized speech, as compared with the human voice, affected persuasion or perceptions of the message. Actual or potential applications of this research include issues that should be considered when designing synthetic speech systems.

Many species of typically diurnal songbirds experience sleep loss during the migratory seasons owing to their nocturnal migrations. However, despite substantial loss of sleep, nocturnally migrating songbirds continue to function normally with no observable effect on their behaviour. It is unclear if and how avian migrants compensate for sleep loss. Recent behavioural evidence suggests that some species may compensate for lost night-time sleep with short, uni- and bilateral 'micro-naps' during the day. We provide electrophysiological evidence that short episodes of sleep-like daytime behaviour (approx. 12s) are accompanied by sleep-like changes in brain activity in an avian migrant. Furthermore, we present evidence that part of this physiological brain response manifests itself as unihemispheric sleep, a state during which one brain hemisphere is asleep while the other hemisphere remains essentially awake. Episodes of daytime sleep may represent a potent adaptation to the challenges of avian migration and offer a plausible explanation for the resilience to sleep loss in nocturnal migrants.