Goodpasture syndrome involving overlap with Wegener's granulomatosis and anti-glomerular basement membrane disease

A 68-year-old Caucasian woman presented to the hospital with nodular pulmonary infiltrates and acute renal failure. Wegener's granulomatosis was initially considered to be most likely because of the presence of increased serum levels of c-anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic antibodies (c-ANCA). A consultation through the Internet after a renal biopsy demonstrated crescentic, necrotizing glomerulonephritis and linear deposits of immunoglobulin G (IgG) and complement C3, typical of anti-glomerular basement membrane (GBM) disease. Hemodialysis was instituted; however, the patient suddenly developed a massive cerebral hemorrhage and died before full therapy could take effect. Postmortem analysis of the patient's sera revealed high titers of IgG against the alpha 3 NC1 domain of type IV collagen. Serologic evidence of both p-ANCA and anti-GBM antibodies are becoming more frequently recognized in the setting of rapidly progressive glomerulonephritis. The patient reported here had the unusual combination of c-ANCA antibodies with anti-GBM disease, and this association raises complex questions regarding the pathogenesis of this type of renal injury.     

The Macintosh Programmer's Workshop

The authors discuss the Macintosh Programmer's Workshop (MPW), a Macintosh development environment that includes a comprehensive set of programming tools and handles several languages. It also combines the graphical interface common to all Macintosh applications, a command language similar to the Unix shell languages, and Smalltalk's immediate execution of commands in any window. They focus on the program-development environment rather than on the tools in that environment. They give the history of MPW, and describe its design goals. The bulk of the article is a discussion of MPW's design     

Establishment of human parotid pleomorphic adenoma cells in culture: morphological and biochemical characterization

This study reports the establishment of alpha-amylase-producing human parotid pleomorphic adenoma cell lines (2HP and 2HP1) which have been maintained in culture for over 1 yr. The procedures required preparation of cellular clumps from tumor tissue and plating them on plasma clot or precoated dishes. During the initial phase of growth they required modified MCDB-153 medium without serum. When cells showed signs of degeneration they were changed to MCDB-153 medium containing first 2% and then 10% heat inactivated fetal bovine serum. Although cells grew well in MCDB-153 containing 10% serum, the epithelial cell morphology was not distinct. Therefore, the growth and morphology of cells grown in MCDB-10% serum were compared with those in RPMI growth medium containing 10% fetal bovine serum and F12 containing 10% agammaglobulin newborn bovine serum. Although the growth of cells was a little slower in F12 medium than those in MCDB and RPMI, the epithelial cell morphology was maintained better than in other growth media. The cells of 2HP and 2HP1 produce low levels of alpha-amylase and relatively high levels of alpha-amylase mRNAs of 1176 and 702 bp and contain neurofilament-160, a neuronal-specific marker. The cells of 2HP1 are tumorigenic when tested in athymic mice, but the cells of 2HP are not. The establishment of amylase-producing human parotid adenoma cell lines of different characteristics in culture provides a new opportunity to study the mechanisms of differentiation and transformation, and regulation of alpha-amylase in these cells.     

Hot dynamic consolidation of hard ceramics

Diamond and cubic boron nitride powders were shock compacted at high temperature (873 and 973 K) by using a planar impact system at 1.2 and 2.0 km s^–1. Silicon, graphite or a mixture of titanium and carbon powders were added to enhance the bonding of these superhard materials. Hot-consolidated specimens exhibited fewer surface cracks as compared with the specimens shock consolidated at room temperature. Diamond compacts having microhardness values over 55 GPa were obtained by subjecting porous mixtures of diamond crystals (4-8 m) plus 15 wt% graphite (325 mesh) to an impact velocity of 1.2 km s^–1 at 873 K. Well-consolidated c-BN samples, with microhardnesses (starting powders with 10–20 and 40–50 (m) over 53 GPa were obtained.     

Effect of time/temperature treatment parameters on depolymerization of chitosan

Depolymerization of the biopolymer chitosan by an autoclaving process at 121°C and 15 psi was investigated using various treatments. Acetic acid was found to be the most effective solvent in decreasing chitosan viscosity among the six organic acids tested. The rate of viscosity decrease increased with increasing chitosan concentration. The viscosity of 1% chitosan in 1% acetic acid decreased rapidly to 91% of the initial viscosity following the initial 15 min of autoclaving. This decreased gradually to 93% and 94% in 30 and 60 min, respectively, without being adversely affected by the chitosan solution volume. The degree of deacetylation was comparable before and after autoclaving for 60 min. Chitosan at three molecular weights (M_r = 1597, 1110, and 789 kDa) decreased in molecular weight by 46%–51% in the 15‐min treatment, 55%–60% in the 30‐min treatment, and 60%–62% in the 60‐min treatment. The addition of 0.1%–1.0% (v/v) concentrations of hydrogen peroxide to the chitosan solution autoclaved for 15 min decreased viscosity by 94%–98% and molecular weight by 69%–83%. This process is a simple, timesaving, homogeneous depolymerization procedure, and it is possible to prepare partially hydrolyzed chitosan with specified molecular weights by regulating the time of treatment. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 87: 1890–1894, 2003     

Globally conservative high-order filters for large-eddy simulation and computational aero-acoustics

In computational aero-acoustics, large-eddy simulations (LES) or direct numerical simulations (DNS) are often employed for flow computations in the source region. As part of the numerical implementation or required modeling, explicit spatial filters are frequently employed. For instance, in LES spatial filters are employed in the formulation of various subgrid-scale (SGS) models such as the dynamic model or the variational multi-scale (VMS) Smagorinsky model; both in LES or DNS, spatial high-pass filters are often used to remove undesired grid-to-grid oscillations. Though these type of spatial filters adhere to local accuracy requirements, in practice, they often destroy global conservation properties in the presence of non-periodic boundaries conditions. This leads to the incorrect prediction of the flow properties near hard boundaries, such as walls. In the current work, we present globally conservative high-order accurate filters, which combine traditional filters at the internal points with one-sided conservative filters near the wall boundary. We test these filters to remove grid-to-grid oscillations both in a channel-flow case and in 2D cavity flow. We find that the use of a non-conservative filter leads to erroneous predictions of the skin friction in channel flows up to 30%. In the cavity-flow simulations, the use of non-conservative filters to remove grid-to-grid oscillations leads to important shifts in the Strouhal number of the dominant mode, and a change of the flow pattern inside the cavity. In all cases, the use of conservative high-order filter formulations to remove grid-to-grid oscillations lead to very satisfactory results. Finally, in our channel-flow test case, we also illustrate the importance of using conservative filters for the formulation of the VMS Smagorinsky model.     

The course of geriatric depression with "reversible dementia": a controlled study

OBJECTIVE: The goals of this longitudinal investigation were 1) to study the rate of development of irreversible dementia in elderly depressed patients with a dementia syndrome that subsided after improvement of depression and 2) to compare it with that of depressed, never-demented patients. METHOD: The subjects were 57 elderly patients consecutively hospitalized for major depression. At entry into the study, 23 subjects also met criteria for "reversible dementia," while 34 were without dementia. After a systematic clinical evaluation, the subjects were followed up at approximately yearly intervals for an average of 33.8 months. RESULTS: Irreversible dementia developed significantly more frequently in the depressed group with reversible dementia (43%) than in the group with depression alone (12%). Survival analysis showed that the group with reversible dementia had a 4.69-times higher chance of having developed dementia at follow-up than the patients with depression alone. No clinical characteristics at entry into the study were found to discriminate the subjects who developed irreversible dementia during the follow-up period from those who remained nondemented. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that geriatric depression with reversible dementia is a clinical entity that includes a group of patients with early-stage dementing disorders. Therefore, identification of a reversible dementia syndrome is an indication for a thorough diagnostic workup and frequent follow-ups in order to identify treatable neurological disorders.