The influence of season, photoperiod, and pineal melatonin on immune function.

In addition to the well-documented seasonal cycles of mating and birth, there are also significant seasonal cycles of illness and death among many animal populations. Challenging winter conditions (i.e., low ambient temperature and decreased food availability) can directly induce death via hypothermia, starvation, or shock. Coping with these challenges can also indirectly increase morbidity and mortality by increasing glucocorticoid secretion, which can compromise immune function. Many environmental challenges are recurrent and thus predictable; animals could enhance survival, and presumably increase fitness, if they could anticipate immunologically challenging conditions in order to cope with these seasonal threats to health. The annual cycle of changing photoperiod provides an accurate indicator of time of year and thus allows immunological adjustments prior to the deterioration of conditions. Pineal melatonin codes day length information. Short day lengths enhance several aspects of immune function in laboratory studies, and melatonin appears to mediate many of the enhanced immunological effects of photoperiod. Generally, field studies report compromised immune function during the short days of autumn and winter. The conflict between laboratory and field data is addressed with a multifactor approach. The evidence for seasonal fluctuations in lymphatic tissue size and structure, as well as immune function and disease processes, is reviewed. The role of pineal melatonin and the hormones regulated by melatonin is discussed from an evolutionary and adaptive functional perspective. Finally, the clinically significance of seasonal fluctuations in immune function is presented. Taken together, it appears that seasonal fluctuations in immune parameters, mediated by melatonin, could have profound effects on the etiology and progression of diseases in humans and nonhuman animals. An adaptive functional perspective is critical to gain insights into the interaction among melatonin, immune function, and disease processes

Tribological Studies on Scuffing Due to the Influence of Carbon Dioxide Used as a Refrigerant in Compressors

The refrigeration and air conditioning industry has expressed a great interest in the use of carbon dioxide (CO2) as a refrigerant. CO2 is anticipated to replace HFC refrigerants, which are known to have a negative effect on the environment. The reason behind the interest in CO2 is the fact that it is a natural refrigerant, thus environmentally acceptable. Of course, such a replacement raises concerns regarding design criteria and performance due to the different thermodynamic properties of CO2 and the very different range of pressures required for the CO2 refrigeration cycle. So far, work related to CO2 has been done from a thermodynamics point of view and researchers have made significant progress developing automotive and portable air-conditioning systems that use the environmentally friendly carbon dioxide as a refrigerant. The purpose of this work is to develop an understanding of how CO2 plays a role from a tribology standpoint. More specifically, the goal of this work is to gain an understanding on how CO2 influences friction, lubrication, wear and scuffing of tribological pairs used in compressors. Work in the area of tribology related to CO2 is very limited. Preliminary work by Cusano and coworkers showed that consistent data for tests using CO2 could not be acquired nor could a satisfactory explanation be offered for the inconsistency. Their results triggered the initiation of the work presented here. In this first attempt to understand the tribological behavior of CO2 several problems were encountered. During this work we noted that its behavior, unlike conventional refrigerants, could not always be predicted. We believe that this can be attributed to the thermodynamic properties of CO2, which cannot be ignored when studying its tribological behavior. Thermodynamic Properties such as miscibility are very important when tribological testing is performed. A limiting factor with our tester was that it was not designed for CO2 testing, but for other conventional refrigerants and therefore made previously developed testing protocols non-applicable with CO2. Through a different approach and some modifications to our tester we were able to establish a protocol for testing under the presence of CO2. CO2 was then compared to R134a and the experimental results showed that it performs equally well.Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Project 13

Breve Reflexão Sobre a Vinculação entre Criatividade, Improvisação musical como Elementos Importantes na Formação do Musicoterapeuta

O presente trabalho é uma breve reflexão sobre a vinculação entre criatividade e improvisação musical como elementos importantes na formação do musicoterapeuta. Indicando, portanto, nessa direção, o objetivo central deste trabalho. Para responder as questões levantadas iniciou-se o desenvolvimento deste estudo que adotou o seguinte procedimento metodológico: trata-se de um ensaio teórico com abordagem qualitativa que foi realizado através de uma revisão bibliográfica a partir de consultas em livros, artigos publicados em periódicos, e impressos diversos; foram adotadas fontes bibliográficas que constassem os seguintes descritores: Música. Criatividade. Improvisação. Musicoterapia Ao final deste ensaio teórico pretende-se, a partir de uma breve reflexão, compreender diferentes conceitos e pontos-de-vista em relação à improvisação, criatividade como elementos importantes na formação do musicoterapeuta e sua relação com outros temas afins

Validation of a Predictive Model for Survival in Patients With Advanced Cancer: Secondary Analysis of RTOG 9714.

BackgroundThe objective of this study was to validate a simple predictive model for survival of patients with advanced cancer.MethodsPrevious studies with training and validation datasets developed a model predicting survival of patients referred for palliative radiotherapy using three readily available factors: primary cancer site, site of metastases and Karnofsky performance score (KPS). This predictive model was used in the current study, where each factor was assigned a value proportional to its prognostic weight and the sum of the weighted scores for each patient was survival prediction score (SPS). Patients were also classified according to their number of risk factors (NRF). Three risk groups were established. The Radiation Therapy and Oncology Group (RTOG) 9714 data was used to provide an additional external validation set comprised of patients treated among multiple institutions with appropriate statistical tests.ResultsThe RTOG external validation set comprised of 908 patients treated at 66 different radiation facilities from 1998 to 2002. The SPS method classified all patients into the low-risk group. Based on the NRF, two distinct risk groups with significantly different survival estimates were identified. The ability to predict survival was similar to that of the training and previous validation datasets for both the SPS and NRF methods.ConclusionsThe three variable NRF model is preferred because of its relative simplicity

Rancang Bangun Mesin Pemintal Agel

Industri kerajinan agel telah ada dan berkembang di beberapa wilayah di Indonesia. Sentra industri tali (tampar) agel berada di Desa Kapasan, Kecamatan Nguling, Kabupaten Pasuruan, sedangkan sentra industri kerajinan agel berada di Kecamatan Sentolo, Kabupaten Kulonprogo. Industri ini menghasilkan berbagai macam produk kerajinan bernilai ekonomi tinggi seperti; tas, topi, furnitur, noken dan masih banyak lagi produk kerajinan lainnya. Permasalahan yang dihadapi industri kerajinan agel adalah proses produksi dilakukan secara manual dengan keterbatasan pada kapasitas produksi dan ketidakstabilan kualitas produk bahan baku tali agel. Tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk membuat prototype mesin pintal agel yang dapat mempersingkat tahapan proses dan meningkatkan kapasitas produksi industri kerajinan agel. Metode yang digunakan yaitu pengumpulan data melalui survey literatur dan lapangan, perancangan desain, penyiapan bahan dan alat, pembuatan mesin, uji coba dengan variabel kecepatan putaran dan panjang agel, analisa dan pembahasan hasil uji coba. Penelitian ini menghasilkan satu unit mesin pemintal agel dengan spesifikasi panjang: 110 cm, lebar: 46 cm, tinggi: 90 cm, kapasitas produksi : 47 m/jam, penggerak motor listrik 1 phase, 220 volt, 250 watt, 1400 rpm

A versatile standard for bathochromic fluorescence based on intramolecular FRET.

A perylene and a terrylene tetracarboxylic bisimide dyad was prepared in which an efficient energy transfer from the former to the latter is observed. The absorption spectrum of this compound covers a broad range. Bathochromic fluorescence with a high quantum yield was obtained independent of excitation wavelengths (λ < 655 nm). The dyad can be recommended for the use of calibrating fluorescence spectrometers, as well as a fluorescence standard in the bathochromic region

Genetically identified suppressed-by-contrast retinal ganglion cells reliably signal self-generated visual stimuli

Spike trains of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) are the sole source of visual information to the brain; and understanding how the ∼20 RGC types in mammalian retinae respond to diverse visual features and events is fundamental to understanding vision. Suppressed-by-contrast (SbC) RGCs stand apart from all other RGC types in that they reduce rather than increase firing rates in response to light increments (ON) and decrements (OFF). Here, we genetically identify and morphologically characterize SbC-RGCs in mice, and target them for patch-clamp recordings under two-photon guidance. We find that strong ON inhibition (glycine > GABA) outweighs weak ON excitation, and that inhibition (glycine > GABA) coincides with decreases in excitation at light OFF. These input patterns explain the suppressive spike responses of SbC-RGCs, which are observed in dim and bright light conditions. Inhibition to SbC-RGC is driven by rectified receptive field subunits, leading us to hypothesize that SbC-RGCs could signal pattern-independent changes in the retinal image. Indeed, we find that shifts of random textures matching saccade-like eye movements in mice elicit robust inhibitory inputs and suppress spiking of SbC-RGCs over a wide range of texture contrasts and spatial frequencies. Similarly, stimuli based on kinematic analyses of mouse blinking consistently suppress SbC-RGC spiking. Receiver operating characteristics show that SbC-RGCs are reliable indicators of self-generated visual stimuli that may contribute to central processing of blinks and saccades. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT This study genetically identifies and morphologically characterizes suppressed-by-contrast retinal ganglion cells (SbC-RGCs) in mice. Targeted patch-clamp recordings from SbC-RGCs under two-photon guidance elucidate the synaptic mechanisms mediating spike suppression to contrast steps, and reveal that SbC-RGCs respond reliably to stimuli mimicking saccade-like eye movements and blinks. The similarity of responses to saccade-like eye movements and blinks suggests that SbC-RGCs may provide a unified signal for self-generated visual stimuli