Biobank: Who'd bank on it?

The document attached has been archived with permission from the editor of the Medical Journal of Australia. An external link to the publisher’s copy is included

Pan American Climate Studies (PACS) data report

The surface mooring component of the NOAA Pan American Climate Study (PACS) took place from April 1997 to September 1998 in the eastern tropical Pacific. PACS was a NOAA funded study with the goal of investigating links between sea surface temperature variability in the tropical oceans near the Americas and climate over the American continents. Two air-sea interaction surface moorings were deployed along 125°W, spanning a strong meridional sea-surface temperature gradient. One mooring site was located in the cold tongue south of the equator, and the other site was in the region of warm ocean found north of the equator, near the northernmost summer location of the Intertropical Convergence Zone. The moorings were deployed to improve our understanding of air-sea fluxes and the procsses that control the evolution of the sea surface temperature field in the region. Four air-sea interaction buoys were deployed to occupy two sites for a period of 17 months. The sites were along 125°W near 3°S and 10°N. The Upper Ocean Processes Group at WHOI deployed the first two moorings in April 1997. These moorings were replaced with a second pair of moorings in December 1997. The final recovery occurred in September 1998. Each of these buoys on these moorings were equipped with meteorological instrumentation, including a Vector Averaging Wind Recorder (VAWR) and an Improved METeorological (IMET) system. The moorings also carried Vector Measuring Current Meters (VMCMS), single point temperature recorders and a few conductivity sensors on the mooring line to monitor the upper 200m of the ocean. In addition to the traditional instruments, several other experimental instruments were deployed with limited success on the mooring line including acoustic current meters, acoustic rain gauges and bio-optical instrument packages. This report describes the instrumentation deployed on the PACS surface moorings, along with information on the processing and quality control of the returned data. It presents a detailed overview of the meteorological and physical oceanographic data including time series plots, statistics and spectra of key parameters. It also presents analysis of the estimated air-sea heat, moisture and momentum fluxes.Funding was provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Contract No. NA96GP0428

An observational prospective study of topical acidified nitrite for killing methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in contaminated wounds

Background Endogenous nitric oxide (NO) kills bacteria and other organisms as part of the innate immune response. When nitrite is exposed to low pH, NO is generated and has been used as an NO delivery system to treat skin infections. We demonstrated eradication of MRSA carriage from wounds using a topical formulation of citric acid (4.5%) and sodium nitrite (3%) creams co-applied for 5 days to 15 wounds in an observational prospective pilot study of 8 patients. Findings Following treatment with topical citric acid and sodium nitrite, 9 of 15 wounds (60%) and 3 of 8 patients (37%) were cleared of infection. MRSA isolates from these patients were all sensitive to acidified nitrite in vitro compared to methicillin-sensitive S. aureus and a reference strain of MRSA. Conclusions Nitric oxide and acidified nitrite offer a novel therapy for control of MRSA in wounds. Wounds that were not cleared of infection may have been re-contaminated or the bioavailability of acidified nitrite impaired by local factors in the tissue

Exploring Level Statistics from Quantum Chaos to Localization with the Autocorrelation Function of Spectral Determinants

The autocorrelation function of spectral determinants (ASD) is used to characterize the discrete spectrum of a phase coherent quasi- 1- dimensional, disordered wire as a function of its length L in a finite, weak magnetic field. An analytical function is obtained depending only on the dimensionless conductance g= xi/L where xi is the localization length, the scaled frequency x= omega/Delta, where Delta is the average level spacing of the wire, and the global symmetry of the system. A metal- insulator crossover is observed, showing that information on localization is contained in the disorder averaged ASD.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

APO010, a synthetic hexameric CD95 ligand, induces human glioma cell death in vitro and in vivo

Death receptor targeting has emerged as one of the promising novel approaches of cancer therapy. The activation of one such prototypic death receptor, CD95 (Fas/APO-1), has remained controversial because CD95 agonistic molecules have exhibited either too strong toxicity or too little activity. The natural CD95 ligand (CD95L) is a cytokine, which needs to trimerize to mediate a cell death signal. Mega-Fas-Ligand, now referred to as APO010, is a synthetic hexameric CD95 agonist that exhibits strong antitumor activity in various tumor models. Here, we studied the effects of APO010 in human glioma models in vitro and in vivo. Compared with a cross-linked soluble CD95L or a CD95-agonistic antibody, APO010 exhibited superior activity in glioma cell lines expressing CD95 and triggered caspase-dependent cell death. APO010 reduced glioma cell viability in synergy when combined with temozolomide. The locoregional administration of APO010 induced glioma cell death in vivo and prolonged the survival of tumor-bearing mice. A further exploration of APO010 as a novel antiglioma agent is warranted

Anisotropic Superparamagnetism of Monodispersive Cobalt-Platinum Nanocrystals

Based on the high-temperature organometallic route (Sun et al. Science 287, 1989 (2000)), we have synthesized powders containing CoPt_3 single crystals with mean diameters of 3.3(2) nm and 6.0(2) nm and small log-normal widths sigma=0.15(1). In the entire temperature range from 5 K to 400 K, the zero-field cooled susceptibility chi(T) displays significant deviations from ideal superparamagnetism. Approaching the Curie temperature of 450(10) K, the deviations arise from the (mean-field) type reduction of the ferromagnetic moments, while below the blocking temperature T_b, chi(T) is suppressed by the presence of energy barriers, the distributions of which scale with the particle volumes obtained from transmission electron microscopy (TEM). This indication for volume anisotropy is supported by scaling analyses of the shape of the magnetic absorption chi''(T,omega) which reveal distribution functions for the barriers being also consistent with the volume distributions observed by TEM. Above 200 K, the magnetization isotherms M(H,T) display Langevin behavior providing 2.5(1) mu_B per CoPt_3 in agreement with reports on bulk and thin film CoPt_3. The non-Langevin shape of the magnetization curves at lower temperatures is for the first time interpreted as anisotropic superparamagnetism by taking into account an anisotropy energy of the nanoparticles E_A(T). Using the magnitude and temperature variation of E_A(T), the mean energy barriers and 'unphysical' small switching times of the particles obtained from the analyses of chi''(T,omega) are explained. Below T_b hysteresis loops appear and are quantitatively described by a blocking model, which also ignores particle interactions, but takes the size distributions from TEM and the conventional field dependence of E_A into account.Comment: 12 pages with 10 figures and 1 table. Version accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. B . Two-column layou

Regulating Clothing Outwork: A Sceptic's View

By applying the strategies of international anti-sweatshop campaigns to the Australian context, recent regulations governing home-based clothing production hold retailers responsible for policing the wages and employment conditions of clothing outworkers who manufacture clothing on their behalf. This paper argues that the new approach oversimplifies the regulatory challenge by assuming (1) that Australian clothing production is organised in a hierarchical ‘buyer-led’ linear structure in which core retail firms have the capacity to control their suppliers’ behaviour; (2) that firms act as unitary moral agents; and (3) that interventions imported from other times and places are applicable to the contemporary Australian context. After considering some alternative regulatory approaches, the paper concludes that the new regulatory strategy effectively privatises responsibility for labour market conditions – a development that cries out for further debate

Quality, morale and the new contract with GPs

In UK general practice the goodwill that has sustained the GP workforce is waning