Influence of technology on magnetic tape storage device characteristics

There are available today many data storage devices that serve the diverse application requirements of the consumer, professional entertainment, and computer data processing industries. Storage technologies include semiconductors, several varieties of optical disk, optical tape, magnetic disk, and many varieties of magnetic tape. In some cases, devices are developed with specific characteristics to meet specification requirements. In other cases, an existing storage device is modified and adapted to a different application. For magnetic tape storage devices, examples of the former case are 3480/3490 and QIC device types developed for the high end and low end segments of the data processing industry respectively, VHS, Beta, and 8 mm formats developed for consumer video applications, and D-1, D-2, D-3 formats developed for professional video applications. Examples of modified and adapted devices include 4 mm, 8 mm, 12.7 mm and 19 mm computer data storage devices derived from consumer and professional audio and video applications. With the conversion of the consumer and professional entertainment industries from analog to digital storage and signal processing, there have been increasing references to the 'convergence' of the computer data processing and entertainment industry technologies. There has yet to be seen, however, any evidence of convergence of data storage device types. There are several reasons for this. The diversity of application requirements results in varying degrees of importance for each of the tape storage characteristics

Multidirectional photodiode array for the measurement of solar radiances

February, 1980.Includes bibliographical references.Sponsored by grant by the Eppley Laboratory, Inc.Sponsored by the National Science Foundation ATM 78-12631

Adapting to Climate Change: A Call for Federal Leadership

Recommends creating a strategic planning initiative to set goals, objectives, and priorities; a national climate service to provide information on climate change impacts and adaptation options; and an adaptation research program. Includes case summaries

Development of Items Designed to Evaluate Activity Performance and Participation in Children and Adolescents with Spinal Cord Injury

Background/Objective. Outcomes-based data, whether used clinically or for research, are difficult to collect in the pediatric spinal cord injury (SCI) population due to a lack of appropriate assessment measures. The purpose of this paper is twofold: to describe the process by which two item pools were developed to evaluate activity performance and participation among children with SCI and to introduce the resultant items specific to pediatric SCI. Methods. The process of item development, including construct development, review of related assessment tools, chart review, item writing and refinement using focus groups, cognitive interviews, and further refinement, was used to create the items pools for activity and participation for children and adolescents with SCI. Results. A total of 347 items were written for the activity performance construct and 61 items were written for the participation construct. Several domains were established within each construct and items were written for both child and parent respondents. Conclusion. The process of detailed item development is the first step in the process of developing an outcomes instrument for children and adolescents with SCI to assess activity performance and participation. The items are representative of pediatric SCI because they address areas specific to children and adolescents with SCI such as wheeled mobility, upper extremity function with adaptive equipment, role performance, and socialization. After testing these items in calibration studies, we will determine if these items can be developed into effective computer-adaptive testing applications

Computerized Adaptive Tests Detect Change Following Orthopaedic Surgery in Youth with Cerebral Palsy.

BACKGROUND: The Cerebral Palsy Computerized Adaptive Test (CP-CAT) is a parent-reported outcomes instrument for measuring lower and upper-extremity function, activity, and global health across impairment levels and a broad age range of children with cerebral palsy (CP). This study was performed to examine whether the Lower Extremity/Mobility (LE) CP-CAT detects change in mobility following orthopaedic surgery in children with CP. METHODS: This multicenter, longitudinal study involved administration of the LE CP-CAT, the Pediatric Outcomes Data Collection Instrument (PODCI) Transfer/Mobility and Sports/Physical Functioning domains, and the Timed Up & Go test (TUG) before and after elective orthopaedic surgery in a convenience sample of 255 children, four to twenty years of age, who had CP and a Gross Motor Function Classification System (GMFCS) level of I, II, or III. Standardized response means (SRMs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated for all measures at six, twelve, and twenty-four months following surgery. RESULTS: SRM estimates for the LE CP-CAT were significantly greater than the SRM estimates for the PODCI Transfer/Mobility domain at twelve months, the PODCI Sports/Physical Functioning domain at twelve months, and the TUG at twelve and twenty-four months. When the results for the children at GMFCS levels I, II, and III were grouped together, the improvements in function detected by the LE CP-CAT at twelve and twenty-four months were found to be greater than the changes detected by the PODCI Transfer/Mobility and Sports/Physical Functioning scales. The LE CP-CAT outperformed the PODCI scales for GMFCS levels I and III at both of these follow-up intervals; none of the scales performed well for patients with GMFCS level II. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study showed that the LE CP-CAT displayed superior sensitivity to change than the PODCI and TUG scales after musculoskeletal surgery in children with CP

Haploinsufficiency for BRCA1 is associated with normal levels of DNA nucleotide excision repair in breast tissue and blood lymphocytes

BACKGROUND: Screening mammography has had a positive impact on breast cancer mortality but cannot detect all breast tumors. In a small study, we confirmed that low power magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) could identify mammographically undetectable tumors by applying it to a high risk population. Tumors detected by this new technology could have unique etiologies and/or presentations, and may represent an increasing proportion of clinical practice as new screening methods are validated and applied A very important aspect of this etiology is genomic instability, which is associated with the loss of activity of the breast cancer-predisposing genes BRCA1 and BRCA2. In sporadic breast cancer, however, there is evidence for the involvement of a different pathway of DNA repair, nucleotide excision repair (NER), which remediates lesions that cause a distortion of the DNA helix, including DNA cross-links. CASE PRESENTATION: We describe a breast cancer patient with a mammographically undetectable stage I tumor identified in our MRI screening study. She was originally considered to be at high risk due to the familial occurrence of breast and other types of cancer, and after diagnosis was confirmed as a carrier of a Q1200X mutation in the BRCA1 gene. In vitro analysis of her normal breast tissue showed no differences in growth rate or differentiation potential from disease-free controls. Analysis of cultured blood lymphocyte and breast epithelial cell samples with the unscheduled DNA synthesis assay (UDS) revealed no deficiency in nucleotide excision repair (NER). CONCLUSION: As new breast cancer screening methods become available and cost effective, patients such as this one will constitute an increasing proportion of the incident population, so it is important to determine whether they differ from current patients in any clinically important ways. Despite her status as a BRCA1 mutation carrier, and her mammographically dense breast tissue, we did not find increased cell proliferation or deficient differentiation potential in her breast epithelial cells, which might have contributed to her cancer susceptibility. Although NER deficiency has been demonstrated repeatedly in blood samples from sporadic breast cancer patients, analysis of blood cultured lymphocytes and breast epithelial cells for this patient proves definitively that heterozygosity for inactivation of BRCA1 does not intrinsically confer this type of genetic instability. These data suggest that the mechanism of genomic instability driving the carcinogenic process may be fundamentally different in hereditary and sporadic breast cancer, resulting in different genotoxic susceptibilities, oncogene mutations, and a different molecular pathogenesis

On the Normalization of the Neutrino-Deuteron Cross Section

As is well-known, comparison of the solar neutrino fluxes measured in SuperKamiokande (SK) by $\nu + e^- \to \nu + e^-$ and in the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) by $\nu_e + d \to e^- + p + p$ can provide a ``smoking gun'' signature for neutrino oscillations as the solution to the solar neutrino puzzle. This occurs because SK has some sensitivity to all active neutrino flavors whereas SNO can isolate electron neutrinos. This comparison depends crucially on the normalization and uncertainty of the theoretical charged-current neutrino-deuteron cross section. We address a number of effects which are significant enough to change the interpretation of the SK--SNO comparison.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, submitted to PR

The Supercooling of a Nematic Liquid Crystal

We investigate the supercooling of a nematic liquid crystal using fluctuating non-linear hydrodynamic equations. The Martin-Siggia-Rose formalism is used to calculate renormalized transport coefficients to one-loop order. Similar theories for isotropic liquids have shown substantial increases of the viscosities as the liquid is supercooled or compressed due to feedback from the density fluctuations which are freezing. We find similar results here for the longitudinal and various shear viscosities of the nematic. However, the two viscosities associated with the nematic director motion do not grow in any dramatic way; i.e.\ there is no apparent freezing of the director modes within this hydrodynamic formalism. Instead a glassy state of the nematic may arise from a ``random anisotropy" coupling of the director to the frozen density.Comment: Late