Radiation-induced myeloid leukaemia in CBA/H mice: a non-immunogenic malignant disease in syngeneic mice.

In vivo growth characteristics of myeloid leukaemia induced by whole-body irradiation of CBA/H male mice were examined in the strain of origin by procedures expected to enhance or depress immunological responses. Syngeneic growth in vivo (survival time and frequency of takes) was not modified by attempted active immunization with radiation-inactivated cells or by sublethal whole-body irradiation of recipients before inoculation of small numbers of clonogenic cells. Since the growth stimuli involved in in vivo repair of severely damaged normal haemopoietic tissue also did not modify the growth of the radiation-induced leukaemia cells in syngeneic passage, their growth in vivo in the irradiated primary hosts can be regarded as autonomous by the stage at which leukaemia was diagnosed. Challenge inocula in the "immunization" experiments were 1-9 clonogenic cells from 4 different passaged lines and in the whole-body radiation experiments, 1-10(3) clonogenic cells derived from 11 different primary hosts and 4 different passaged lines

Is attending a mental process?

The nature of attention has been the topic of a lively research programme in psychology for over a century. But there is widespread agreement that none of the theories on offer manage to fully capture the nature of attention. Recently, philosophers have become interested in the debate again after a prolonged period of neglect. This paper contributes to the project of explaining the nature of attention. It starts off by critically examining Christopher Mole’s prominent “adverbial” account of attention, which traces the failure of extant psychological theories to their assumption that attending is a kind of process. It then defends an alternative, process-based view of the metaphysics of attention, on which attention is understood as an activity and not, as psychologists seem to implicitly assume, an accomplishment. The entrenched distinction between accomplishments and activities is shown to shed new light on the metaphysics of attention. It also provides a novel diagnosis of the empirical state of play

A method for the determination of the electrophoretic patterns of hemolyzed mouse sera

A method is presented that will give comparable results for the evaluation of electrophoretic data on hemolyzed mouse serum patterns. Not only may hemoglobin be determined in the serum, but its contribution to the total protein may be calculated with the aid of a reference curve derived from the data obtained from the hemolyzed red cells of mice taken from the corresponding mouse blood pool.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/32548/1/0000660.pd

Limits of 'patient-centredness'; valuing contextually specific communication patterns

Context Globally, doctor–patient communication is becoming synonymous with high-quality health care in the 21st century. However, what is meant by ‘good communication’ and whether there is consensus internationally remain unclear. Objectives Here, we characterise understandings of ‘good communication’ in future doctors from medical schools in three contextually contrasting continents. Given locally specific socio-cultural influences, we hypothesised that there would be a lack of global consensus on what constitutes ‘good communication’. Methods A standardised two-phase methodology was applied in turn to each of three medical schools in the UK, Egypt and India (n = 107 subjects), respectively, in which students were asked: ‘What is good communication?’ Phase I involved exploratory focus groups to define preliminary themes (mean number of participants per site: 17). Phase II involved thematic confirmation and expansion in one-to-one semi-structured interviews (mean number of participants per site: 18; mean hours of dialogue captured per site: 55). Findings were triangulated and analysed using grounded theory. Results The overarching theme that emerged from medical students was that ‘good communication’ requires adherence to certain ‘rules of communication’. A shared rule that doctors must communicate effectively despite perceived disempowerment emerged across all sites. However, contradictory culturally specific rules about communication were identified in relation to three major domains: family; gender, and emotional expression. Egyptian students perceived emotional aspects of Western doctors’ communication strikingly negatively, viewing these doctors as problematically cold and unresponsive. Conclusions Contradictory perceptions of ‘good communication’ in future doctors are found cross-continentally and may contribute to prevalent cultural misunderstandings in medicine. The lack of global consensus on what defines good communication challenges prescriptively taught Western ‘patient-centredness’ and questions assumptions about international transferability. Health care professionals must be educated openly about flexible, context-specific communication patterns so that they can avoid cultural incompetence and tailor behaviours in ways that optimise therapeutic outcomes wherever they work around the globe