President\u27s Notes

Twenty-five years ago Rear Adm. Henry E. Eccles retired from active naval service. In the 30 years following his graduation from the U.S. Naval Academy, Admiral Eccles spent 12 years in submarines, and several years in battleships, cruisers, and destroyers before he took command of U.S.S. John D. Edwards in 1941. Attached to the Asiatic Fleet, Edwards saw considerable combat action including the battle of the Java Sea. During World War II, Commander, and later Captain, Eccles was deeply involved in base development and logistics planning and operations for the Pacific campaigns. He commanded the battleship U.S.S. Washington in 1946

Mental Illness: A Legal Fiction

Professor Hardisty examines the use of the term mental illness by the law, focusing upon competency and insanity defense tests. After determining that the term has no accepted medical definition, the author analyzes the necessity for legal usage of the term. Professor Hardisty concludes that the term mental illness should be deleted from the law

Latest recommendations for chemical thinning : an aid to apple crop regulation

FIELD trials and experience have shown that chemical thinning is a valuable aid to crop regulation in apple trees

Chemical thinning of apples

TWO important related problems of apple-growing in this State are biennial bearing and poor fruit size. Early thinning by chemical means, is providing a valuable and practical means of tackling these problems. With every prospect of heavy crops in most districts this year, many growers will be interested in the possibility of spray thinning

SERS Microsensors for the Study of pH Regulation in Cystic Fibrosis Patient-Derived Airway Cultures

Acidification of the airway surface liquid in the respiratory system could play a role in the pathology of Cystic Fibrosis, but its low volume and proximity to the airway epithelium make it a challenging biological environment in which to noninvasively collect pH measurements. To address this challenge, we explored surface enhanced Raman scattering microsensors (SERS-MS), with a 4-mercaptobenzoic acid (MBA) pH reporter molecule, as pH sensors for the airway surface liquid of patient-derived in vitro models of the human airway. Using air–liquid interface (ALI) cultures to model the respiratory epithelium, we show that SERS-MS facilitates the optical measurement of trans-epithelial pH gradients between the airway surface liquid and the basolateral culture medium. SERS-MS also enabled the successful quantification of pH changes in the airway surface liquid following stimulation of the Cystic Fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR, the apical ion channel that is dysfunctional in Cystic Fibrosis airways). Finally, the influence of CFTR mutations on baseline airway surface liquid pH was explored by using SERS-MS to measure the pH in ALIs grown from Cystic Fibrosis and non-Cystic Fibrosis donors