PREPARATION FOR DISASTER IN CALIFORNIA

The operational plan for medical preparedness in California is divided into three main divisions, viz: Expansion of existing medical facilities, augmentation of practicing health personnel, scope of service expected.Medical and health personnel and facilities will be expected to modify and adjust their care of casualties according to the situation present such as strategic warning, alert signal (yellow), take cover signal (red), and the post-attack period.This service is concerned with conservation of resources (human) and must do everything possible to return people to a status where they can help rebuild our nation.Supplies already obtained and stored throughout the state consist of first aid stations, emergency hospitals, blood procurement equipment, sanitation units.Over a half million first aiders and more than 96,000 home nurses have been trained by the local chapters of the American National Red Cross.     

INDICATIONS FOR OPERATION IN GLAUCOMA

Prompt surgical operation is indicated in angle-closure glaucoma and in infantile glaucoma. Open-angle glaucoma is properly considered a disease for which conservative treatment should be tried.Operation is indicated in open-angle glaucoma when, despite maximal medical therapy, the intraocular pressure reaches a level at which the optic nerve is going to be damaged. Many factors must be considered in making a decision as to whether or not to operate in such circumstances, among them the condition of the eye, the result of previous operation if one has been done, the reliability of the patient with regard to carrying out a prescribed regimen, the age and physical condition of the patient, perhaps the race of the patient, the presence of cataracts and the attitude of both patient and surgeon toward surgical treatment.     

A SIMPLE METHOD FOR PRODUCING DIFFERENT GROWTH FRACTIONS IN VITRO FOR USE IN ANTI-CANCER DRUG STUDIES

A simple technique has been used experimentally to produce in vitro Chinese hamster ovary cells with growth fractions ranging from 0 to 100%. Known numbers of exponentially growing and plateau-phase tissue culture cells were mixed in various proportions to yield the desired final growth fraction. Cells attach to the culture flask surface within 1 hr of mixing. Treatment at that time with the nitrosourea compounds, CCNU and MeCCNU, resulted in differential drug survival sensitivities that were dependent upon the growth fraction of the population treated.     

INDICATIONS FOR OPERATION IN LARYNGEAL CANCER

Improvements in the surgical treatment of laryngeal cancer by combined laryngectomy and radical neck dissection have given new importance to selection of the mode of treatment for various stages of disease at that site. To cast light on the subject, the cases of 63 patients with cancer of the larynx were reviewed. Twenty-one of them were operated on for recurrence after radiation therapy; and 42 were treated surgically at the outset, 36 of them having combined laryngectomy and radical neck dissection. In almost 80 per cent of the patients the lesion was extrinsic.In the entire series, 51 patients had combined operations, and in 41 of them the cervical lymph nodes were positive for metastasis.Reports in the literature also make note of a very high incidence of cervical node metastasis not only in cases of extrinsic cancer, but also in those in which the lesion is intrinsic.Because of the frequency of cervical node spread, and its occult nature, choice between radiation and surgical operation must be made after candid, critical appraisal of the individual condition in each patient.     

SELECTION FOR RECOMBINATION IN SMALL POPULATIONS

Abstract The reasons that sex and recombination are so widespread remain elusive. One popular hypothesis is that sex and recombination promote adaptation to a changing environment. The strongest evidence that increased recombination may evolve because recombination promotes adaptation comes from artificially selected populations. Recombination rates have been found to increase as a correlated response to selection on traits unrelated to recombination in several artificial selection experiments and in a comparison of domesticated and nondomesticated mammals. There are, however, several alternative explanations for the increase in recombination in such populations, including two different evolutionary explanations. The first is that the form of selection is epistatic, generating linkage disequilibria among selected loci, which can indirectly favor modifier alleles that increase recombination. The second is that random genetic drift in selected populations tends to generate disequilibria such that beneficial alleles are often found in different individuals; modifier alleles that increase recombination can bring together such favorable alleles and thus may be found in individuals with greater fitness. In this paper, we compare the evolutionary forces acting on recombination in finite populations subject to strong selection. To our surprise, we found that drift accounted for the majority of selection for increased recombination observed in simulations of small to moderately large populations, suggesting that, unless selected populations are large, epistasis plays a secondary role in the evolution of recombination.     

GENETIC EVIDENCE FOR DIPLOIDY IN EQUISETUM

Sporophytes and gametophytes of Equisetum arvense, E. laevigatum, and E. telmateia were analyzed using enzyme electrophoresis to estimate isozyme number. Despite their uniformly high chromosome numbers (2n = 216), these three species exhibited isozyme numbers typical of diploid seed plants for the enzymes AAT, ADH, ALD, GDH, [NADP]IDH, LAP, MDH, [NADP]ME, PGI, PGM, SkDH, and 6PGDH. All three species exhibited an additional isozyme for TPI. There is, therefore, no genetic evidence for low base numbers such as x = 9 and x = 12 suggested for Equisetum. Intact chloroplasts were isolated from E. arvense and the chloroplast extract compared electrophoretically to whole plant extracts. The single enzymes observed for LAP, GDH, [NADP]IDH, and [NADP]ME were absent from the chloroplast extract. Isozymes AAT-1, ALD-2, MDH-3, PGI-1, PGM-2, SkDH-2, 6PGDH-2, TPI-2, and TPI-3 were active in the chloroplast fraction; 6PGDH-1, PGI-2, PGM-1, and TPI-1 were lacking from the chloroplast fraction and were considered cytosolic. Isozymes AAT-2, MDH-1, MDH-2, MDH-4, and SkDH-1 were also lacking from the chloroplast fraction but because AAT, MDH, and SkDH have been reported from several subcellular compartments, their localization is unknown. These findings indicate that isozymes in Equisetum species are subcellularly compartmentalized as has also been demonstrated for homosporous ferns, gymnosperms, and angiosperms.