Arterial reactivity is enhanced in genetic males taking high dose estrogens

OBJECTIVES: We sought to assess whether high dose estrogen treatment is associated with enhanced arterial reactivity in genetic males. BACKGROUND: Although estrogens have been shown to enhance arterial reactivity in women, and are thereby thought to confer cardiovascular benefit, the vascular effects of long-term estrogen therapy in genetic males is unknown. METHODS: We studied the arterial physiology of 30 genetic males--15 male to female transsexuals receiving long-term high dose estrogen therapy and 15 healthy male control subjects matched for age, smoking history and vessel size. Using external vascular ultrasound, brachial artery diameter was measured at rest, after flow increase (causing endothelium-dependent dilation [EDD]) and after nitroglycerin (GTN), an endothelium-independent dilator. Blood pressure, cholesterol and testosterone levels were also measured in each subject. RESULTS: Total testosterone and free testosterone index levels were lower in the transsexuals compared with the control subjects (p < 0.001). In contrast, EDD was significantly higher in the transsexuals than in the control males (mean [+/-SD] 7.1 +/- 3.1% vs. 3.2 +/- 2.8%, p = 0.001), as was the GTN response (21.2 +/- 6.7% vs. 14.6 +/- 3.3%, p = 0.002). Total and high density lipoprotein cholesterol, blood pressure levels and baseline vessel size were similar in the two groups. On multivariate analysis, enhanced EDD was associated independently with estrogen therapy (p = 0.02) and with low total cholesterol (p = 0.04). An enhanced GTN response was also significantly associated with estrogen therapy (p = 0.03). CONCLUSIONS: Long-term treatment with high dose estrogens is associated with enhanced arterial reactivity in genetic males, which may be due to the effects of estrogen excess or androgen deprivation, or both.     

The effects of chronic high dose androgen or estrogen treatment on the human prostate [corrected

Prostate development and disease are androgen dependent. However, the nature of hormonal effects on the prostate of healthy young men is not clear. We, therefore, measured prostate size in males chronically exposed to high doses of androgens (AS; habitual anabolic steroid abusers; n = 15) or estrogens (E; male to female transsexuals; n = 11) and compared the results with those in age-matched healthy eugonadal men without known prostate disorders. Prostate size was measured by planimetric ultrasound as cross-sectional areas and maximal dimensions in three orthogonal dimensions with a 7.5-megahertz B-mode sector scanner biplane in a transrectal transducer at 2.5 mm steps from the base to the apex of prostate. Total prostate volume (TPV) was reconstructed from planimetric sections, central prostate volume (CPV) was calculated by the ellipsoidal formula from the appropriate three maximum dimensions, and peripheral prostate volume was determined by the difference between TPV and CPV. Compared with age-matched controls, TPV was normal (-2%) in AS (P = 0.752) and reduced by 31% in E (P = 0.002), whereas CPV was increased by 20% in AS (P = 0.002) and reduced by 46% in E (P = 0.002), and the ratio of CPV/peripheral prostate volume was increased by 77% in AS (P < 0.001) and decreased by 33% in E (P = 0.047). Blood sex hormone-binding globulin was elevated by nearly 500% in E (P < 0.001), but was reduced by 47% in AS (P = 0.003). Prostate-specific antigen was normal (-6%) in AS (P = 0.799) and decreased by 86% in E (P = 0.002). Prostatic acid phosphatase was increased by 26% in AS (P = 0.007), but was unchanged (-28%) in E (P = 0.106). Total and free testosterone levels were reduced to castrate levels in E, whereas LH, FSH, and total testosterone levels were significantly reduced in AS. We conclude that in the human prostate of young men, CPV is more hormonally sensitive than TPV, and during high dose treatment, CPV is preferentially increased by chronic androgen treatment and decreased by chronic estrogen treatment. The reduction of TPV by estrogens was less than expected if solely attributable to inhibition of endogenous gonadotropin and testosterone secretion, suggesting that estrogens also have a positive effect on the normal human prostate. The reversibility and long term significance of androgen-induced stimulation of CPV and, in particular, its relationship to the onset and severity of benign prostatic hyperplasia remain to be clarified.     

Collaborative test of determination of iodine value in fish oils. 1. Reaction time and carbon tetrachloride or cyclohexane as solvents

Twenty-two laboratories participated in a collaborative test to determine the iodine value (IV) of eight samples of fish oil (four with IV<150, four with IV>150) with either carbon tetrachloride (AOCS Official Method Cd 1–25) or cyclohexane (AOCS Recommended Practice Cd 1b-87) as solvent and either 1 or 2 h of reaction time. Laboratories received coded duplicate samples (hidden duplicates) and carried out duplicate determinations on each oil by each solvent-time combination (open duplicates). Replacing carbon tetrachloride with cyclohexane resulted in a lower IV (P<0.001). The decrease averaged 1.6 IV units for low-IV oils and 3.8 IV units for high-IV oils; this difference in response of 2.2 IV units between low- and high-IV oils was significant (P<0.001). Increasing the reaction time had a relatively small effect (0.34±0.18). There was no interaction of reaction time with solvent or oil type. Cyclohexane caused emulsions, which made it difficult to titrate residual iodine and thus increased the variability of the determination. The repeatability standard deviations (s _r ), based on hidden duplicates, for 1-h reaction time with carbon tetrachloride and cyclohexane were 2.17 and 3.35, respectively. The corresponding reproducibility standard deviations were 2.73 and 4.53.     

Using a virtual environment to assess cognition in the elderly

Early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is essential if treatments are to be administered at an earlier point in time before neurons degenerate to a stage beyond repair. In order for early detection to occur tools used to detect the disorder must be sensitive to the earliest of cognitive impairments. Virtual reality technology offers opportunities to provide products which attempt to mimic daily life situations, as much as is possible, within the computational environment. This may be useful for the detection of cognitive difficulties. We develop a virtual simulation designed to assess visuospatial memory in order to investigate cognitive function in a group of healthy elderly participants and those with a mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Participants were required to guide themselves along a virtual path to reach a virtual destination which they were required to remember. The preliminary results indicate that this virtual simulation has the potential to be used for detection of early AD since significant correlations of scores on the virtual environment with existing neuropsychological tests were found. Furthermore, the test discriminated between healthy elderly participants and those with a MCI.     

Effects of mite resistance mechanism of geraniums on mortality and behavior of foxglove aphid (Acyrthosiphon solani Kaltenbach)

Geraniums (Pelargonium xhortorum Bailey) possess a pest-resistance mechanism, based on glandular trichomes and the exudate they produce, that has been shown to be effective against the two-spotted spider mite (Tetranychus urticae Koch). Using an intact plant bioassay, the effectiveness of the resistance mechanism was determined for another potential pest, the foxglove aphid (Acyrthosiphon solani Kaltenbach). Comparisons were made between plant lines previously analyzed for their degree of resistance to mites, as well as their glandular trichome density and trichome exudate production. Over 100 aphid adults were bioassayed on each of the five plant lines used in the experiment. In addition to adult aphid survival, the production and survival of nymphs was determined in this bioassay. The results indicate that plant lines that are resistant to the two-spotted spider mite are also resistant to the foxglove aphid, while lines susceptible to mites are susceptible to the aphids. To evaluate the physical impediment features of the trichome exudate, the behavior of foxglove aphid nymphs was compared on two geranium lines, one a resistant line with high trichome densities and large quantities of exudate and the second a susceptible line with few trichomes and reduced exudate. A third leaf surface type was produced by washing the exudate from resistant leaves using a mildly basic buffer solution prior to the bioassay. Aphid behavior was divided into five categories: feeding or probing, resting, wandering, struggling, and immobilized. On both susceptible leaves and resistant leaves from which the exudate had been removed by washing, the aphids settled quickly and were observed with inserted stylets during most of the observation intervals. In contrast, aphids on the unwashed resistant leaf surfaces often became ensnared in the sticky trichome exudate and had difficulty in settling to probe the leaf. Physical entrapment by glandular trichome exudate appears to be an important aspect of aphid resistance in geraniums.     

Replication-Based Fault Tolerance for MPI Applications

As computational clusters increase in size, their mean time to failure reduces drastically. Typically, checkpointing is used to minimize the loss of computation. Most checkpointing techniques, however, require central storage for storing checkpoints. This results in a bottleneck and severely limits the scalability of checkpointing, while also proving to be too expensive for dedicated checkpointing networks and storage systems. We propose a scalable replication-based MPI checkpointing facility. Our reference implementation is based on LAM/MPI; however, it is directly applicable to any MPI implementation. We extend the existing state of fault-tolerant MPI with asynchronous replication, eliminating the need for central or network storage. We evaluate centralized storage, a Sun-X4500-based solution, an EMC storage area network (SAN), and the Ibrix commercial parallel file system and show that they are not scalable, particularly after 64 CPUs. We demonstrate the low overhead of our checkpointing and replication scheme with the NAS Parallel Benchmarks and the High-Performance LINPACK benchmark with tests up to 256 nodes while demonstrating that checkpointing and replication can be achieved with a much lower overhead than that provided by current techniques. Finally, we show that the monetary cost of our solution is as low as 25 percent of that of a typical SAN/parallel-file-system-equipped storage system.     

Atmospheric inner-scale effects on normalized irradiance variance

We have investigated five types of atmospheric optical-turbulence inner scales for their effects on normalized laser irradiance variance in the Rytov and early saturation regimes: (1) zero inner scale, (2) Gaussian inner scale, (3) Hill's viscous-convective enhancement inner scale, (4) Frehlich's parameterization of the viscous-convective enhancement, and (5) turbulence spectrum truncation because of the discrete grid representation. Wave-optics computer simulations yielded normalized irradiance variances within 2% of the results from numerical integrations of the Rytov-Tatarskii predictions. In the Rytov regime a Gaussian inner scale reduces the normalized irradiance variance compared with the zero-innerscale case, and the viscous-convective inner scale first raises, then lowers the irradiance variance as the inner-scale size increases. In the saturation regime all inner-scale models increase the intensity variance for a spherical wave.     

Flat-field postobjective polygon scanner

A general two-dimensional ray-trace analysis is presented for the motion of a geometric focal point over a flat surface provided by a postobjective rotating polygon laser beam scanner. The exact defocus equation is derived for any value of the neutral scan position deflection angle and the polygon rotation angle. The scan nonlinearity is derived for the special case of a zero neutral scan deflection angle. Geometric parameters were found that reduce the peak-to-peak defocus by more than an order of magnitude from that found in previous design approaches. Conditions were also found that reduce scan nonlinearity to less than 2 × 10(-4). Practical limitations, such as large polygons and beam obscurations, encountered in the implementation of postobjective scanning are discussed.     

The effect of antioxidants on the production, of volatile nitrosamines during the frying of bacon

Summary In model system studies simulating the frying of bacon a considerable variation in the production of N-nitrosopyrrolidine (NOPyr) has been observed, as occurs in sliced bacon fried conventionally. The inclusion of ascorbate or erythorbate (isoascorbate) has led consistently to a fall in or an elimination of NOPyr production up to an addition of 300 ppm (1,5 mM). Above this concentration of ascorbate, the elimination of NOPyr formation persisted in some instances but in others an increased production of the nitrosamine occurred. Using-tocopherol, a fall of NOPyr production during the simulated frying of bacon was obtained with increase of concentration of the antioxidant, there being a consistent elimination of the volatile nitrosamine following an addition of 500 ppm (1.16 mM). Whilst ascorbyl palmitate had a similar action in reducing or eliminating NOPyr production, no synergistic effect between it and a-tocopherol was noted in an experiment combining the two antioxidants. When bacon was fried in fat containing 400 or 800 ppm-tocopherol, the total production of NOPyr and DMN in the fried bacon, cooked out fat and condensate was markedly reduced but not completely eliminated as in the model system studies. Similarly, the curing of bacon with a brine containing a mixture of-tocopherol, ascorbyl palmitate and citric acid has led to considerable reductions in NOPyr and DMN output on frying when the combined concentrations of the two anti-oxidants were calculated to be 800 ppm.

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Der Einfluß von Antioxydantien auf die Entwicklung flüchtiger Nitrosamine während des Bratens von Speck

Zusammenfassung Bei Untersuchungen in Modell-Systemen, in denen das Braten von Speck simuliert wurde, stellte man eine nennenswerte Variation in der Entstehung von N-Nitrosopyrrolidin (NOPyr) fest, wie sie auch bei konventionell gebratenem Scheibenspeck auftritt. Der Zusatz von Ascorbat oder Isoascorbat hat bei einem Zusatz bis zu 300 ppm (1,5 mmol) regelmäßig zur Abnahme der NOPyr-Produktion geführt. Bei größerer Ascorbatkonzentration nahm die NOPyr-Bildung in einigen Fällen ab, in anderen setzte dagegen eine erhöhte Nitrosaminbildung ein. Bei Anwendung von-Tokopherol wurde eine Abnahme in der NOPyr-Bildung während des simulierten Bratens von Speck bei zunehmender Antioxydantien-Konzentration erreicht, wobei ein gleichbleibendes Verschwinden des flüchtigen Nitrosamins eine Folge des Zusatzes von 500 ppm (1,16 mmol) war. Während Ascorbylpalmitat eine ähnliche Wirkung in der Reduzierung der NOPyr-Bildung hatte, konnte bei einem Experiment, bei dem die beiden Antioxydantien zugegen waren, keine synergistische Wirkung festgestellt werden. Wenn Speck in 400 oder 800 ppm-Tokopherol enthaltendem Fett gebraten wude, war die Gesamtbildung von NOPyr und DMN in dem gebratenen Speck, dem ausgekochten Fett und im Kondensat wesentlich reduziert, aber nicht wie bei den Modell-System-Versuchen vollständig eliminiert. Ähnlich führte auch das Pökeln von Speck in Lake, die eine Mischung von-Tokopherol, Ascorbylpalmitat und Citronensäure enthielt, zu wesentlicher Reduzierung in NOPyr- und DMN-Produktion beim Braten, wenn die Konzentration der beiden Antioxydatien zusammen auf 800 ppm berechnet wurden.

     

Taxometrics, polytomous constructs, and the comparison curve fit index: A Monte Carlo analysis.

The taxometric method effectively distinguishes between dimensional (1-class) and taxonic (2-class) latent structure, but there is virtually no information on how it responds to polytomous (3-class) latent structure. A Monte Carlo analysis showed that the mean comparison curve fit index (CCFI; Ruscio, Haslam, & Ruscio, 2006) obtained with 3 taxometric procedures—mean above minus below a cut (MAMBAC), maximum covariance (MAXCOV), and latent mode factor analysis (L-Mode)—accurately identified 1-class (dimensional) and 2-class (taxonic) samples and produced taxonic results when applied to 3-class (polytomous) samples. From these results it is concluded that using the simulated data curve approach and averaging across procedures is an effective way of distinguishing between dimensional (1-class) and categorical (2 or more classes) latent structure. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)