Serum antioxidants as predictors of the adult respiratory distress syndrome in septic patients

Adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) can develop as a complication of various disorders, including sepsis, but it has not been possible to identify which of the patients at risk will develop this serious disorder. We have investigated the ability of six markers, measured sequentially in blood, to predict development of ARDS in 26 patients with sepsis. At the initial diagnosis of sepsis (6-24 h before the development of ARDS), serum manganese superoxide dismutase concentration and catalase activity were higher in the 6 patients who subsequently developed ARDS than in 20 patients who did not develop ARDS. These changes in antioxidant enzymes predicted the development of ARDS in septic patients with the same sensitivity, specificity, and efficiency as simultaneous assessments of serum lactate dehydrogenase activity and factor VIII concentration. By contrast, serum glutathione peroxidase activity and α1Pi-elastase complex concentration did not differ at the initial diagnosis of sepsis between patients who did and did not subsequently develop ARDS, and were not as effective in predicting the development of ARDS. Measurement of manganese superoxide dismutase and catalase, in addition to the other markers, should facilitate identification of patients at highest risk of ARDS and allow prospective treatment

Fixing the Johnson Amendment Without Totally Destroying It

The so-called Johnson Amendment is that portion of Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code that prohibits charities from intervening in electoral campaigns. The intervention has long been understood to include both contributing charitable funds to campaign coffers and communicating the charity\u27s views about candidates\u27 qualifications for office. The breadth of the Johnson Amendment potentially brings two important values into conflict: the government\u27s interest in preventing tax-deductible contributions to be used for electoral purposes (called nonsubvention ) and the speech rights or interest of charities. For many years, the IRS has taken the position that the Johnson Amendment\u27s prohibition on electoral communications includes the content of a religious leader\u27s speech in an official religious service -- a minister may not express support or opposition to a candidate from the pulpit. For at least as many years, some commentators and legislators have found this application of the Johnson Amendment especially problematic, since it implicates directly the freedom of houses of worship speech and religious exercise. These Johnson Amendment critics sought to provide some carveout from the Johnson Amendment\u27s general application to permit speech that includes ministers pulpit speech without creating a massive loophole for the Johnson Amendment\u27s generalprohibitionon campaign intervention. Other commentators have long argued that a limited carve-out for certain types of speech is not possible--that permitting any communication of the organization\u27s views, even in pulpit speech, would provide too large a loophole in the overall treatment of campaign contributions and expenditures. This Article reviews the leading proposals to fix the Johnson Amendment, and finds them all lacking. It then proposes four types of modifications that could be used to properly balance the speech interests of charities (including churches) with the government\u27s interest in a level playing field for campaign expenditures (nonsubvention). These proposed modifications include: (i) a non-incremental expenditure tax, (ii) a reporting regime, (iii) a disclosure regime, and (iv) a governance regime. The Article concludes that in order to properly balance nonsubvention with speech interests of charities, a modification of the Johnson Amendment should include some version of all four types of interventions

EITC for All: A Universal Basic Income Compromise Proposal

Much has been written about a concept called universal basic income (UBI). With a UBI, the government gives every person a certain amount of money each year, or even each month. The UBI has broad appeal with thinkers on both the right and the left, but the appeal is partially because different thinkers have different visions of what the current state of affairs is with respect to government welfare policies and different theories about why these existing policies are inadequate or damaging. Reforming existing programs, rather than making a radical break with the past, could satisfy at least some of the interests that motivate support for a UBI. The purpose of this Article is to explore the possibility of modifying the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), the largest and arguably most popular U.S. anti-poverty government transfer program, in order to capture at least some of the benefits associated with the UBI. This Article explores four problematic aspects of the EITC, each of which could be modified to make it function more like a UBI. These four aspects are: (1) the EITC creates disincentives to work for the so-called “nearly poor” because the credit phases out at moderately low income levels; (2) the EITC is fundamentally dependent on family structure, which is potentially unfair, invasive, and affects incentives to marry, divorce, and cohabitate; (3) receipt of the EITC benefit is temporally mismatched with recipient need, expensive for recipients to collect, and difficult for the IRS to administer because the EITC is integrated with the tax system; and, finally, (4) the EITC is too small to fully function as a hedge against underemployment and poverty. Modifying the EITC would make it more like a UBI and would make it more effective at achieving the goal of supporting financially struggling workers and their families while minimizing perverse incentives

Information erasure without an energy cost

Landauer argued that the process of erasing the information stored in a memory device incurs an energy cost in the form of a minimum amount of mechanical work. We find, however, that this energy cost can be reduced to zero by paying a cost in angular momentum or any other conserved quantity. Erasing the memory of Maxwell's demon in this way implies that work can be extracted from a single thermal reservoir at a cost of angular momentum and an increase in total entropy. The implications of this for the second law of thermodynamics are assessed.Comment: 8 pages with 1 figure. Final published versio

Parallel fabrication and single-electron charging of devices based on ordered, two-dimensional phases of organically functionalized metal nanocrystals

A parallel technique for fabricating single-electron, solid-state capacitance devices from ordered, two-dimensional closest-packed phases of organically functionalized metal nanocrystals is presented. The nanocrystal phases were prepared as Langmuir monolayers and subsequently transferred onto Al-electrode patterned glass substrates for device construction. Alternating current impedance measurements were carried out to probe the single-electron charging characteristics of the devices under both ambient and 77 K conditions. Evidence of a Coulomb blockade and step structure reminiscent of a Coulomb staircase is presented

Guidance in breast-conserving surgery: tumour localization versus identification

In breast-conserving surgery (BCS), the tumour is removed with the goal of preserving as much healthy breast tissue as possible. Breast conservation comes with a risk of positive resection margins, an independent predictor of ipsilateral tumour recurrence, necessitating reoperation1. Contemporary data from the UK Get it Right First Time1 suggest high average reoperation rates of around 19 %. Current tumour localization techniques can only guide surgeons to the tumour epicentre, but fail to provide identification of the boundary between tumour and normal tissue. Imaging techniques, such as intraoperative ultrasonography (IOUS), intraoperative MRI (iMRI) or fluorescence-guided surgery (FGS), enable visualization of the tumour in its entirety and may provide improved operative precision2–5