Fatty Acid composition in tobacco I. Green tobacco plants

The major fatty acids (16 and 18 carbons) in leaves, flowers, and seeds of Nicotiana tabacum L. cv. Catterton have been analyzed at various intervals during the growth period. From the pattern of their accumulation and relative distribution, it was found that A) the amount of fatty acids in upper young leaves attained a maximum about 75 days after transplanting which is the time of early flowering, while in older leaves the fatty acids continuously declined; B) the relative amount of linolenic acid (18:3) increased progressively with leaf development, from 30% at an early stage to 60% at maturity, while other fatty acids (18:2, 18:1, 18:0, and 16:0) decreased during the same period, indicating a progressive desaturation; and C) a rapid increase of fatty acids was found as flowers developed into seedpods, particularly of linoleic acid (18:2), which comprises 75% of tobacco seed oil.

Air-curing resulted in a loss of fatty acids, especially the unsaturated ones.

     

Lipoplasty claims experience of U.S. insurance companies

An analysis of medical liability claims for lipoplasty (liposuction) from January of 1985 through June of 1998 compared the insurance industry experience of plastic surgeons with that of other physicians. The Data Sharing Project database of the Physician Insurers Association of America, a trade association of professional liability companies owned and operated by medical professionals that collectively insure approximately 60 percent of America's private practice physicians, was queried. Of the nearly 45,000 total entries in the database, 292 were claims for adverse events related to lipoplasty or liposuction. These raw data were stratified by physician specialty, severity of complication, practice location, patient gender, indemnity payment, and other insurance industry-relevant variables.To simplify interspecialty comparisons, we normalized the claims rate to incidents per 100 insured physicians. The indexed lipoplasty claims rate was 3.0 per 100 insured plastic surgeons and 4.1 for other surgeons; the indexed lipoplasty claims rate for nonsurgical specialists was 2.5 per 100 insured dermatologists and 2.3 for other nonsurgeons. The higher claims rate for surgeons most likely reflects the wider scope of full-service aesthetic surgery performed by surgical specialists. Nearly two-thirds of claims (65.4 percent) during the 13-year survey period were the result of hospital-based lipoplasty; 20.9 percent were office-based claims. The prevalence of hospital-based claims may be a consequence of both historical bias introduced by hospital-based specialty surgery in the early years and prudent patient safety considerations during performance of complex or prolonged procedures in more recent years.Two-thirds of the claims (67 percent) arose from informed-consent or breach-of-contract issues, far higher than the 26 percent aggregate claims norm. The mean indemnity payment was $94,534 per lipoplasty claim; claims paid against board-certified specialists averaged $83,350. Consistent with national lipoplasty demographics, 87 percent of claims were brought by women and 13 percent were brought by men. Seven fatalities (three women and four men) were noted; cause of death is not recorded in this type of database.