Efficiency and the Public's Health

The Governor''s Survey on Efficiency and Cost Control, established by Governor Reagan''s executive order, was a non-profit, bipartisan, privately financed management analysis of State administration conducted by private citizens, including physicians, during 1967 for the purpose of achieving improvement in administrative procedure and operating economies in State government.State employees and appointed department heads offered many valuable suggestions and cooperated fully with the survey team.Two hundred recommendations were submitted to the Governor for improvement in the Departments of Public Health and Mental Hygiene, the Office of Health Care Services and the organizations under the Secretary of Human Relations.The recommendations for the health-related administrative units concerned reorganization and consolidation of departments and units, improvement in administrative and operating methods and improvement of services. Annual savings of several hundred million dollars could result.None of the recommendations were for reduction in services and none concerned individual employees or appointees.Assistance in and support for the implementation of the recommendations will be needed from legislators, responsible citizens and organizations interested in efficient and economical government.     

Novel heparin degradation products. Isolation and characterization of novel disaccharides and oligosaccharides produced from heparin by bacterial degradation

1. Heparin was degraded by enzymes of adapted Flavobacterium heparinum. Several degradation products were separated by combined Sephadex-gel filtration and paper chromatography, and chemically analysed. 2. These products were identified as glucosamine 2,6-disulphate, saturated disaccharides constituted of uronic acid and glucosamine and containing two and three sulphate residues, and tetra- and hexa-saccharides with the same basic disaccharide units. 3. The implications of these findings with respect to the present knowledge of heparin structure and its enzymic degradation are discussed.     

Statistical-Mechanical Studies of the α ⇄ β Transformation in Keratins: II. The Tension-Length Isotherms

In attempting to understand the yield region of the α β transformation in keratins (Astbury and Woods, 1933), we recently proposed a statistical-mechanical model (David and Schor, 1965) which generalized the work done by others on the helix random coil transformation (Zimm and Bragg, 1959; Gibbs and DiMarzio, 1959) (thermal denaturation) to the case of a polypeptide under external tension (Birstein, 1962). We wish now to report the comparison of the quantitative aspects of this model to the observed tension-length isotherms (in the yield region) of Cotswold wool.     

Electric Impedance and Rectification of Fused Anion-Cation Membranes in Solution

At relatively high currents, fused anion-cation membranes give rise to rectifying and reactive effects. The rectification becomes less pronounced with increasing frequency. This effect results from changes in the concentration profiles of the ions during the positive and negative phases of the AC cycle. With reduction of the current, the voltage-current response becomes linear. The reactive effect can then be separated from the rectifying effect. The former effect can be attributed essentially to two factors: (a) the presence of transition regions of fixed charge and (b) the diffusion mechanism of the ions in an AC field. The first factor is largely frequency-independent and the second, frequency-dependent. A first approximation equivalent circuit is described. This circuit involves frequency-dependent elements.