Relation of Neurological Findings after Cardiac Arrest to Outcome

Routine neurological examination of patients one hour after cardiac arrest seems to be of value in determining the prognosis for life and likelihood of intellectual impairment.In 48 patients 53 episodes of cardiac arrest were followed by serial neurological examinations. Patients were divided into two groups according to neurological findings one hour after cardiac arrest. Patients in group 1 were unresponsive or at most responded in a reflex fashion to painful stimuli at one hour; these patients died or survived with intellectual damage. Patients in group 2 responded purposefully at one hour and survived without neurological damage. These patients commonly showed transient confusional states and a variety of other non-focal abnormalities, and focal signs were seen occasionally.     

The buoyancy and orientation of the upside-down catfishes of the genus Synodontis (Pisces: Siluroidei)

The forces involved in the buoyancy of the genus Synodontis are unusually large owing to the well-developed cephalo-nuchal shield possessed by all members of the genus, and the large swim bladder and high levels of body fat needed to counteract this. A new method of determining the quantity of crude lipid in the tissues was developed and tested against a recognized method. Negative correlations were found between the total quantities of fat present and the volumes of the swim bladder for several species. Two species which maintained neutral buoyancy but occupied different ecological niches were found to achieve neutrality by different means, one possessing an abnormally large swim bladder and the other very large quantities of fat. The amount of bone present was found to be considerably greater than in species from other genera.
Several species of this genus regularly invert and swim on their backs. Three of the species known to do this were found amongst the 16 species present in the man-made Lake Kainji on the River Niger in Nigeria. The orientations of many of the species were studied both under natural conditions and in the laboratory. Several possible causes of inversion were investigated, including both physical and behavioural factors. The position of the food source was found to be the most important factor controlling the orientation of the species. By manipulating this it was possible to persuade normally orientating species to invert, and inverting species to return to normal orientation. Three theories to explain the inverting habit are advanced and their merits discussed.     

A sensitive silver stain for proteins in agarose gels

A silver stain for proteins in agarose gels which is at least 10 times as sensitive as Coomassie blue is described. The method is simple to use and is particularly useful for the study of protein bands in the gamma region on electrophoresis of fluids such as cerebrospinal fluid in which the protein concentration is low. It readily detects bands of IgG containing 20 to 40 ng/band (approx 3 to 6 ng of IgG/mm2 of gel).     

Glutamate-Treated Rat Cortical Neuronal Cultures Die in a Way Different from the Classical Apoptosis Induced by Staurosporine

The alkaloid protein kinase inhibitor staurosporine induced neuronal cell death with both the morphological and the biochemical characteristics of apoptosis. The punctate chromatin associated with apoptosis with retention of plasma membrane integrity was observed in neurons identified by colocalization of NeuN staining. Such cells had DNA fragmentation visualized byin situend-labeling which was seen as a laddered pattern upon gel electrophoresis. In contrast cells treated with glutamate did not exhibit either of these morphological or biochemical hallmarks of apoptosis. Instead a much smaller and more compact pyknotic structure was observed associated with smeared DNA fragmentation patterns. A confocal time-lapse study of the appearance of the morphological changes in individual nuclei after staurosporine treatment showed collapse into punctate chromatin over a period of 10 min. In contrast, the collapse into small pyknotic nuclei after glutamate treatment was at least 10 times slower. It is concluded that excitotoxicity produced by glutamate did not induce cell death by an apoptotic mechanism in cultured cortical neurons.