An artificial heart with the right connection.

Led by Dr. Tofy Mussivand at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute, a team of Canadian medical scientists, engineers, economists, physicians and medical devices manufacturers is working to bring a prototype artificial heart closer to clinical trials. Key to this effort is the development of an electrical connector that can function for a long period in the harsh environment of the human body. Such a connector will enable various components of the artificial heart, such as the internal battery, to be replaced independently. As well as being of obvious benefit to people with end-stage heart disease, a Canadian-made artificial heart has export potential that should help to redress the country''s large trade deficit in medical devices.     

Risky business: Discourses of risk and (ir)responsibility in globalizing markets

This paper addresses aspects of 'market culture' as it is expressed in media discourse and among financial traders and corporate managers. Particular focus is placed on their perspectives on risk and responsibility. It is suggested that the ideas and actions of financial traders and corporate leaders contribute in significant ways to the structuring of market transactions across the world. They contribute to the diffusion of perspectives on markets and market actors, influence our understandings of the scope of individual action in market transactions, and play a vital role in the development and organization of contemporary markets. The paper argues that perceptions of risk and responsibility are culturally embedded in the particular contexts in which these actors operate; that they are tightly interwoven as aspects of developing global markets; and presented as forces of nature in discourses that produce not only 'truths' but also power. It is suggested that the fetishization of the market contributes to the evasion of responsibility among financial traders, whereas it presents an opportunity for corporations to position themselves as socially responsible actors. Central to the understanding of the differing conceptualizations of risk and responsibility are perceptions of agency of different actors in financial markets.     

TRAUMA OR STRAIN AND HEART DISEASE—Causal Relationship

Myocardial infarction and coronary insufficiency are the common conditions involved in workmen''s compensation cases based on allegations of cardiac injury. Since coronary disease tends to be a progressive process, punctuated by sudden accidents, it is difficult to determine when a given stress at work may have had a significant effect in producing an infarction. Though there are gaps in our knowledge, considerable information is available indicating the way in which effort or stress may produce a myocardial infarction.Certain states have taken steps to develop more uniformity of medical opinion regarding causal relationship of stress to heart disease, and in other ways have attempted to improve the application of workmen''s compensation laws in an attempt to provide fair and prompt compensation to those injured by their work but to discourage abuses of these laws.     

Numerical Relations and Skill Level Constrain Co-Adaptive Behaviors of Agents in Sports Teams

Similar to other complex systems in nature (e.g., a hunting pack, flocks of birds), sports teams have been modeled as social neurobiological systems in which interpersonal coordination tendencies of agents underpin team swarming behaviors. Swarming is seen as the result of agent co-adaptation to ecological constraints of performance environments by collectively perceiving specific possibilities for action (affordances for self and shared affordances). A major principle of invasion team sports assumed to promote effective performance is to outnumber the opposition (creation of numerical overloads) during different performance phases (attack and defense) in spatial regions adjacent to the ball. Such performance principles are assimilated by system agents through manipulation of numerical relations between teams during training in order to create artificially asymmetrical performance contexts to simulate overloaded and underloaded situations. Here we evaluated effects of different numerical relations differentiated by agent skill level, examining emergent inter-individual, intra- and inter-team coordination. Groups of association football players (national – NLP and regional-level – RLP) participated in small-sided and conditioned games in which numerical relations between system agents were manipulated (5v5, 5v4 and 5v3). Typical grouping tendencies in sports teams (major ranges, stretch indices, distances of team centers to goals and distances between the teams'' opposing line-forces in specific team sectors) were recorded by plotting positional coordinates of individual agents through continuous GPS tracking. Results showed that creation of numerical asymmetries during training constrained agents'' individual dominant regions, the underloaded teams'' compactness and each team''s relative position on-field, as well as distances between specific team sectors. We also observed how skill level impacted individual and team coordination tendencies. Data revealed emergence of co-adaptive behaviors between interacting neurobiological social system agents in the context of sport performance. Such observations have broader implications for training design involving manipulations of numerical relations between interacting members of social collectives.     

Ethnobotany in the Puuc,Yucatan

Ethnobotanical observations made in 4 weeks during the summer of 1970 are reported. Cooperation of a number of students participating in a University of Alabama summer class made the collection of information more complete, because the students lived in Ticul where many of the observations were made. Cultivation in this part of Yucatan is easily divided into the staple crops, corn, beans, squash, sometimes chili, jicama or sweet potato, grown in milpas and fruits and herbs grown in dooryard gardens. Milpas are usually cultivated for no more than two seasons before they are moved to a new area which has been fallowed for 7 to 10 years. This allows recovery of soil fertility in the very thin soils of the area. Dooryard gardens furnish items for the kitchen and, frequently, a surplus which can be sold for cash. Ticul market is the retail market of the area where both permanent and casual vendors sell produce and other items. The butchers and some of the vegetable and fruit vendors rent the same stall daily while many rural householders with only a small surplus sell a few items during Sunday market from a cloth spread on the ground. The local government fixes stall rental, settles disputes and assumes responsibility for market sanitation. Oxkutxcab market is a wholesale market, reportedly for the whole southern half of Yucatan. The butcher and a very few stall holders sell retail. Produce is largely offered by the basin, burlap bag or other quantity, but never by a single piece. Fruit was the principle commodity during the period of observation. Local government exercises the same control for the Oxkutxcab market as the Ticul government does. Commercial production in the area includes hennequen plantations, many of which are now abandoned, and fruit orchards. Among the local industries involving plant material are manufacturers of rope from hennequen fiber and hats from guano(Sabal mayarum) leaves.     

The 'home' in homeland: gender,national space,and Inkatha's politics of ethnicity

In South Africa, a country in which the manipulation of ethnicity was at the heart of the government's attempts to establish control over the majority African population, ethnic mobilization during the liberation struggle was singularly unsuccessful. The one exception was Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi's controversial Inkatha movement. This article suggests that one of the reasons for Inkatha's successes was the astute way in which the organization and, in particular, Buthelezi played on gendered notions of 'home' and 'homeland'. Historically, apartheid constructed notions of home and space differently for women and men and Inkatha was able to draw upon and manipulate these differences to produce a powerfully felt response. Thus, for men, many of them migrant workers in South Africa's cities, the notion of 'home' implied a return to patriarchal values and male domestic control in a historically constituted 'homeland'; for women, Buthelezi emphasized the new 'modern' opportunities opened up by the KwaZulu homeland, and the importance of their 'God-given' gifts of motherhood.     

中国碳交易市场的特征、动力机制与趋势——基于国际经验比较

建立和完善碳交易市场是目前各国政府控制温室气体排放、积极应对全球气候变化的重要途径之一,厘清其发展特征和动力是推动碳交易的前提。将碳交易市场作为自然-经济-社会复合生态系统反馈机制的一环,从国际、国内两个尺度对碳交易市场的特征、动力机制和趋势做了分析,发现国际气候谈判的核心利益、减排的融资需求、货币霸权是碳交易市场全球化和金融化的主要驱动力。中国碳交易市场发展具有分阶段、市场规模大、发展不平衡、试点区域构建了碳交易政策体系等特征。鉴于中国经济增速快、碳排放增量大、能源依赖性大、区域发展不平衡、政府主导经济发展和外围保障体系不够完善等因素影响下,国内减排压力和国际声誉作为内在驱动机制,与国际相通的驱动机制共同促使形成具有中国特色的全国统一碳交易市场。同时,中国碳交易市场存在规模和业务扩大、制度更加完善、成为有世界话语权的碳交易市场等发展趋势。     

Winnipeg pediatrician prepares to assume CMA presidency

The CMA''s incoming president is Dr. Jack Armstrong, a Winnipeg pediatrician with a particular interest in aboriginal issues. Armstrong, who graduated from the University of Manitoba in 1966, considers himself a team player. “You have to be a part of a team. My job is to try to be as good a spokesperson as possible, along with the other team members, for the physicians of the country.”     

Improving compliance with requirements on junior doctors' hours

Problem Compliance with UK regulations on junior doctors'' working hours cannot be achieved by manipulating rotas that maintain existing tiers of cover and work practices. More radical solutions are needed.Design Audit of change.Setting Paediatric night rota in large children''s hospital.Key measures for improvement Compliance with regulations on working hours assessed by diary cards; workload assessed by staff attendance on wards; patient safety assessed through critical incident reports.Strategies for change Development of new staff roles, followed by change from a partial shift rota comprising 11 doctors and one senior nurse, to a full shift night team comprising three middle grade doctors and two senior nurses.Effects of change Compliance with regulations on working hours increased from 33% to 77%. Workload changed little and was well within the capacity of the new night team. The effect on patient care and on medical staff requires further evaluation.Lessons learnt Reduction of junior doctors'' working hours requires changes to roles, processes, and practices throughout the organisation.     

Correction of severe facial deformity.

A craniofacial team has been developed to corrdinate the treatment of patients with severe facial deformity and to minimize the surgical risks. Two hundred patients have been evaluated in the last 4 years and more than 100 treated by this team to correct orbital hypertelorism, oxycephaly and plagiocephaly with exophthalmos, features of Crouzon''s disease and Apert''s and Treacher Collins syndromes, hemifacial microsomia, and severe lower facial deformity and malocclusion. Surgical principles include extensive subperiosteal stripping of bone, osteotomy as necessary, and repositioning maintained by bone grafts. Postoperative evaluation is being maintained for 5 years or to maturity in younger children. Although many of the results are less than perfect, there has been sufficient improvement, especially psychologic and functional, to warrant continuation of the surgical program under closely controlled conditions.     

Decrypting Financial Markets through E-Joint Attention Efforts: On-Line Adaptive Networks of Investors in Periods of Market Uncertainty

This paper looks at 800,000 messages on the Unicredit stock, exchanged by 7,500 investors in the Finanzaonline.com forum, between 2005 and 2012 and measured collective interpretations of stock market trends. We examined the correlation patterns between market uncertainty, bad news and investors'' network structure by measuring the investors'' communication patterns. Our results showed that the investors'' network reacted to market trends in different ways: While less turbulent market phases implied less communication, higher market volatility generated more complex communication patterns. While the information content of messages was less technical in situations of uncertainty, bad news caused more informative messages only when market volatility was lower. This meant that bad news had a different impact on network behaviour, depending on market uncertainty. By measuring the investors'' expertise, we found that their behaviour could help predict changes in daily stock returns. We also found that expert investors were more influential in communication processes during high volatility market phases, whereas they had less influence on the real-time forum''s reaction after bad news. Our findings confirm the crucial role of e-communication platforms. However, they also show the need to reconsider the fragility of these collective intelligence systems when under external shocks.     

THE HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL TEAM PHYSICIAN

Mutual confidence is necessary between the football coach and the team physician. The physician''s decision in the matter of a boy''s condition must always be final. The coach should also consider the physician''s advice in shaping his psychological appeals to the players in before-game and between-halves talks. The physician should be on his way to a man injured on the field as soon as the play is ended. It is up to him and not the trainer or coach to make the diagnosis. The physician must have the ability to make an immediate evaluation of the extent of injury and use appropriate measures to get the player off the field. To see a semi-conscious man with dangling head being half dragged off the field is far worse from the patient''s standpoint and from the spectator''s standpoint than removal by stretcher.     

EXTRACUTANEOUS MANIFESTATIONS OF KAPOSI'S SARCOMA—A Systemic Lymphoblastoma

Kaposi''s sarcoma may affect any system of the body. Serious difficulties occur only when the heart, lungs or gastrointestinal tract are affected. Usually, involvement in other viscera causes no clinical symptoms.This neoplasm is thought to be a low-grade lymphoblastoma. This idea of relationship is based on clinical and histologic association of Kaposi''s sarcoma with the lymphoblastomas more commonly than would be anticipated from the rarity of the conditions under consideration. This concept is strengthened by the occasional seeming mutation of Kaposi''s sarcoma into a lymphoblastoma. The associated reticuloendothelial hyperplasia in Kaposi''s sarcoma is another link in the evidence of relationship.     

Sex and disability are not mutally exclusive. Evaluation and management.

Managing sexual problems in persons with disabilities is a team effort. Physicians have three special roles; identifying problems that are sexual; assessing these problems; and providing psychological, pharmacologic, or surgical treatment methods in the context of the patients'' rehabilitation programs.     

Did Osler suffer from "paranoia antitherapeuticum baltimorensis"?: A comparative content analysis of The Principles and Practice of Medicine and Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine, 11th edition

One of the most important legacies of Sir William Osler was his textbook The Principles and Practice of Medicine. A common criticism of the book when it was first published was its deficiency in the area of therapeutics. In this article, the 1st edition of The Principles and Practice of Medicine is compared with the 11th edition of Harrison''s Principles of Internal Medicine. The analysis focuses on the treatment recommendations for 4 conditions that were covered in both books (diabetes mellitus, ischemic heart disease, pneumonia and typhoid fever). Osler''s textbook dealt with typhoid fever and pneumonia at greater length, whereas Harrison''s placed more emphasis on diabetes mellitus and ischemic heart disease. Notwithstanding Osler''s reputation as a therapeutic nihilist, the 2 books devoted equivalent space to treatment (in terms of proportion of total sentences for the conditions). For all conditions except ischemic heart disease, Osler concentrated on general measures and symptomatic care. Throughout Osler''s textbook numerous negative comments are made about the medicinal treatment of various conditions. A more accurate statement about Osler''s therapeutic approach was that he was a "medicinal nihilist." His demand for proof of efficacy before use of a medication remains relevant.     

Myrotoxins from a plant pathogenic isolate ofMyrothecium roridum

An isolate ofM roridum (ATCC 52485) which is a potent pathogen to muskmelon was shown to produce a series of macrocyclic trichothecenes, the myrotoxins, heretofore found to be produced only by an. isolate ofM roridum which is a pathogen to tomato. The fact that these two isolates are virulent pathogens and both produce the same potent mycotoxins suggests that these novel trichothecenes may play an important role in the pathogenicity of the fungi.     

Keeping up with the Joneses: Interpersonal Prediction Errors and the Correlation of Behavior in a Tandem Sequential Choice Task

In many settings, copying, learning from or assigning value to group behavior is rational because such behavior can often act as a proxy for valuable returns. However, such herd behavior can also be pathologically misleading by coaxing individuals into behaviors that are otherwise irrational and it may be one source of the irrational behaviors underlying market bubbles and crashes. Using a two-person tandem investment game, we sought to examine the neural and behavioral responses of herd instincts in situations stripped of the incentive to be influenced by the choices of one''s partner. We show that the investments of the two subjects correlate over time if they are made aware of their partner''s choices even though these choices have no impact on either player''s earnings. We computed an “interpersonal prediction error”, the difference between the investment decisions of the two subjects after each choice. BOLD responses in the striatum, implicated in valuation and action selection, were highly correlated with this interpersonal prediction error. The revelation of the partner''s investment occurred after all useful information about the market had already been revealed. This effect was confirmed in two separate experiments where the impact of the time of revelation of the partner''s choice was tested at 2 seconds and 6 seconds after a subject''s choice; however, the effect was absent in a control condition with a computer partner. These findings strongly support the existence of mechanisms that drive correlated behavior even in contexts where there is no explicit advantage to do so.     

Locomotor function shapes the passive mechanical properties and operating lengths of muscle

Locomotor muscles often perform diverse roles, functioning as motors that produce mechanical energy, struts that produce force and brakes that dissipate mechanical energy. In many vertebrate muscles, these functions are not mutually exclusive and a single muscle often performs a range of mechanically diverse tasks. This functional diversity has obscured the relationship between a muscle''s locomotor function and its mechanical properties. I use hopping in toads as a model system for comparing muscles that primarily produce mechanical energy with muscles that primarily dissipate mechanical energy. During hopping, hindlimb muscles undergo active shortening to produce mechanical energy and propel the animal into the air, whereas the forelimb muscles undergo active lengthening to dissipate mechanical energy during landing. Muscles performing distinct mechanical functions operate on different regions of the force–length curve. These findings suggest that a muscle''s operating length may be shaped by potential trade-offs between force production and sarcomere stability. In addition, the passive force–length properties of hindlimb and forelimb muscles vary, suggesting that passive stiffness functions to restrict the muscle''s operating length in vivo. These results inform our understanding of vertebrate muscle variation by providing a clear link between a muscle''s locomotor function and its mechanical properties.     

Selman A. Waksman,Winner of the 1952 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine

The history of the discovery and development of streptomycin is reviewed here from the personal standpoint of a member of Dr. Selman Waksman''s antibiotic screening research team. The team approach of eight individuals illustrates how the gradual enhancement of the screening methodology was developed. I illustrate three study periods with key aspects in the development of streptomycin which led to a Nobel Prize being granted to Professor Waksman. One item not previously emphasized is the employment of a submerged culture technique for large-scale production of streptomycin, thus enabling rapid animal testing and human clinical trials with Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Another is that purified streptomycin was shown by Dr. Waksman to be distinctly different from the substances called natural products, which are no longer patentable in the United States; therefore, streptomycin was found to be patentable. A third item not previously emphasized is his emphasis on the screening of actinomycetes, including the newly named Streptomyces genus. All of these factors contributed to the success of streptomycin in the treatment of tuberculosis. In combination, their successes led to Dr. Waksman''s department becoming a new pharmacological research area, specializing in drug discovery. These unique accomplishments all burnish the prior rationales used by the Karolinska Institute in granting Dr. Waksman alone the 1952 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.