Fractures of Facial Bones

A detailed review was made of 1025 consecutive patients with “face-bone” fractures admitted to four Montreal hospitals over the five-year period 1958-1962, inclusive. In addition a survey was carried out of the other general hospitals in Greater Montreal in order to obtain admission figures for facial-bone fractures and for total hospital cases. In the study group the common causes of face-bone fractures were found to be fights, traffic accidents, falls, and athletic pursuits. Very few of these injuries occurred in industrial settings. A distinctly vulnerable group is made up of males between ages 16 and 35 years. In order of frequency of occurrence these injuries involve the nose, lower jaw, cheekbone, upper jaw, and zygomatic arch. The experience throughout metropolitan Montreal indicated that more persons with face-bone fractures require hospital treatment each year, but the increase is approximately parallel to the upward trend of total hospital admissions.     

The Archaeology of Animal Bones

The Archaeology of Animal Bones. Terry O'Connor. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2000.206 pp.     

Evidence of Electrical Hysteresis in Bones

The aim of this paper is to investigate: (1) the electrical behavior of bone samples when low (<100 mV) stationary voltages are applied; (2) the reproducibility of successive high impedance (200 TΩ) voltage measurements; and (3) the existence of a spontaneous potential, suggested by previous work. We studied 16 cow bone samples, eight fresh and eight old. We applied analysis of variance to verify the constancy of the bone resistance and the behavior of the time constants. We found that: (1) the existence of a spontaneous potential, on the order of magnitude 10 m V, is confirmed; (2) one constant of time, out of two in a double exponential model, strongly depends on the current direction (p < 0.001); (3) the characteristic voltage-current curve shows a hysteresis loop, maximum amplitude 15% of the full current range; and (4) voltage measurements should be considered perturbative with respect to the electrical response of the samples.