Regular Session Research Articles

No acute change of serum erythropoietin in response to hypocalcemia or antihypertensive agents in uremic patients.

Endogenous erythropoietin (EPO) secretion can still be modulated in patients with end-stage renal failure but only in response to strong stimuli. Thus even anephric dialysis patients are able to increase EPO production acutely when exposed to a marked hypoxic stimulus. The present study was designed to test the hypothesis that a decrease of plasma calcium or the administration of various antihypertensive agents might be able to induce acute changes of plasma EPO concentration. Four groups of chronic hemodialysis patients were studied. Eight patients volunteered for the induction of an acute, transient hypocalcemia via a calcium-free dialysate during the initial 60 min of a regular dialysis session of 240 min. Plasma immunoreactive (i) EPO, total calcium, and intact parathyroid hormone (iPTH1-84), as well as blood ionized calcium and blood gases were measured before as well as 30, 60, 120 and 240 min after the start of dialysis. In addition, plasma iEPO was measured 48 h after the session. Patients of group 2 (n = 6), group 3 (n = 6), and group 4 (n = 7) received the day after a hemodialysis session a single dose of either acetazolamide, furosemide, or enalapril, respectively, and their plasma iEPO was determined before and 3, 6 and/or 24 h after drug administration. In group 1, plasma total calcium decreased from 2.39 +/- 0.07 mM (mean +/- SEM) to 1.98 +/- 0.02 and 1.83 +/- 0.03 mM after 30 and 60 min of dialysis, respectively, and blood ionized calcium from 1.28 +/- 0.04 to 1.02 +/- 0.03 and 0.92 +/- 0.04 mM, respectively.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

“A license to do anything”: Robert Rauschenberg and the Merce Cunningham dance company

Robert Rauschenberg first worked with Merce Cunningham in 1952 at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. Now internationally known as a prolific creator of paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, and other items of visual art less easy to classify, Rauschenberg (born 1925) was then a student at Black Mountain College's regular summer session in the arts. Cunningham (born 1919), along with his associate John Cage (born 1912), was performing and teaching there. The embryonic association made among Rauschenberg, Cunningham, and Cage at Black Mountain in 1952 continued to develop in subsequent years, and Rauschenberg made his first work specifically for the Cunningham dance company, the set for Minutiae, in 1954. Over the next eleven years he acted variously as the company's scenic, costume, and lighting designer and stage manager, and from 1961 to 1964 traveled with the company on its tours both within America and overseas. Between 1954 and 1964 he contributed to over twenty of Cunningham's dance works. He left the company at the end of its 1964 world tour, but returned in 1977 to collaborate once more with Cunningham and Cage on a new piece, Travelogue.

Safety Standards for Radioactive Waste Management

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has established the Radioactiee Waste Safety Standards (RADWAS)) programme upon request by its Member States to provide evidence that radioactive waste can be managed safely. The RADWASS programme consists of a series of fifty-five internaiionll consensus documenss covering all parts of radioactive waste management, i.e. the subject areas:PlanningPre-disposalNear surface disposalGeological disposalU/Th mining and millingDecommissioningA single Safety Fundamentals document will set out the basic safety principles for radioactive waste management. Each subject area is headed by a Safety Standard. Twenty-eight Safety Guides and twenty Safety Practices will provide further details for the implementation of safety requirements stated in the Safety Standards. The programme was started in 1991 and is being carried out in three phases (Phase I: 1991–1994; Phase II: 1995–1998; Phase III: post 1998). Phase I includes twelve documents comprising the Safety Fundamentals, four Safety Standards, five Safety Guides and two Safety Practices. The Safety Fundamentals and the Safety Standards are planned to be submitted to the Board of Governors for review and approval in 1994. Four of the Safety Guides have been or will soon be submitted for publication and the fifth will be finalised by the end of 1994. One Safety Practice on ‘Application of Exemption Principles’ was published at the end of 1992 and the second Safety Practice of Phase I is planned to be finalised in 1994. The thirty-seventh regular session gf the General Conference in the 361st plenary meeting adopted the resolution ‘Strengthening Nuclear Safety’ through the early conclusion of a Nuclear Safety Convention. It calls for ‘Measures to Strengthen International Co-operation in Matters Relating to Nuclear Safety and Radiological Protection’ and requests the Director General inter alia to initiate preparations for a convention on the safety of waste management as soon as the ongoing process of developing the RADW ASS Safety Fundamentals has resulted in broad international agreement. Approval of the document by the Board of Governors will be an important step toward convening the waste management Safety Convention. It is intended to finalise work on Phase I (1991–1994) documents by the end of 1994. Phase II envisages the initial preparation of thirteen documents comprising one Safety Standard, eleven Safety Guides and one Safety Practice. It is planned to start some of these activities in 1994.

Teacher immediacy and student involvement: A dual process analysis

A field experiment investigated the impact of teacher immediacy and student involvement on student attitudes toward learning. Based on dual process models of persuasion, it was predicted that teacher immediacy would interact with student involvement. Undergraduate students (N = 123) were randomly assigned to one of four immediacy / involvement conditions during a regular class session. Student attitude was strongly affected by immediacy, but this effect interacted with involvement. Teacher immediacy operated as a persuasion cue, showing greater impact under low involvement conditions compared to high involvement.

The Association of Women Writers, USSR Writers' Union: Draft Program

A regular session of the Organizational Committee of the All-Union Constituent Conference of the Country's Women Writers and the Moscow club for women writers "Vestnitsa" took place on October 18, at which drafts of the program and charter of the future Association of the Country's Women Writers were discussed.

Use and Risks of Volleyball in Cardiac Rehabilitation Programs

The use of volleyball in cardiac rehabilitation and the incidence (event/patient hours) of cardiovascular events and musculoskeletal injuries during volleyball were surveyed in 270 community-based/maintenance cardiac rehabilitation programs around the United States. Only 56 (21%) of the programs surveyed incorporated volleyball. Approximately 70% of the patients participated in volleyball. Four events of cardiac arrest were reported while engaging in volleyball. Although not statistically significant (P < 0.05), this rate of cardiac arrest in volleyball is more than three-fold greater than that associated with the regular exercise session (without volleyball). However, the incidence of combined cardiovascular events was significantly (P < 0.05) greater during the regular exercise session than volleyball. The incidence of the musculoskeletal injuries was significantly greater during the volleyball session (P < 0.05). No significant relationship was found between the combined cardiovascular-musculoskeletal incidence rate and each of the following: 1) modified/unmodified volleyball, 2) intensity monitored by perceived exertion or heart rate, or 3) volleyball, whether played as a cool-down or as an aerobic stimulus. A significant negative relationship was found between the cardiovascular incidence and the inclusion/exclusion criteria (> 5 or 8 METs) for volleyball (P < 0.05). Because the inclusion/exclusion criteria could not be associated with the musculoskeletal incidence, the authors assume that the musculoskeletal incidence may be related to the nature of the game. Therefore, their main recommendation is to further modify the characteristics of the game and prepare the patient specifically for its musculoskeletal demands.

No ban on radiation warfare Agenda of 44th (1989) regular session of UN general Assembly (Ref. A/44/100)

No ban on radiation warfare Agenda of 44th (1989) regular session of UN general Assembly (Ref. A/44/100)

Vasopressin in End-Stage Renal Disease: Relationship to Salt, Catecholamines and Renin Activity

The blood pressure changes and behavior of vasoactive hormones after various stimuli were studied in eighteen patients with end-stage renal disease maintained on chronic hemodialysis. Group A patients (n = 9) were not subject to intra- or post-dialysis hypotensive episodes, and Group B (n = 9) frequently had such episodes. A 500 ml hypertonic saline infusion produced no change in blood pressure in either group, despite significant rise of vasopressin levels in both. Plasma renin activity levels were similar and became appropriately suppressed by the infusion in both groups, whereas norepinephrine rose significantly only in Group A, but not Group B where it was already higher at baseline. The regular dialysis session produced, as expected, a significantly more profound hypotensive effect in Group B, but was accompanied in both groups by decrease in vasopressin and increase in plasma renin activity. Norepinephrine change differed in the two groups: it decreased in Group A as expected from its capacity to be dialyzed, but rose in several hypotensive patients in Group B, indicating appropriate response to baroreceptor stimulation and leading to an unchanged average. These findings suggest that dialysis-induced hypotensive episodes are not necessarily associated with autonomic neuropathy or with abnormal patterns of vasopressor hormone response to stimuli. They also shed new light on the factors regulating vasopressin secretion under these circumstances, since they indicate that the osmoreceptor and/or sodium-sensitive receptor may be a more dominant mechanism in the regulation of vasopressin release than the volumetric mechanism responding to fluid volume changes.

Observations of Courtship in the Rattlesnake, Crotalus viridis oreganus

According to Fitch and Glading (1947) and Fitch (1949), the northern Pacific rattlesnake (Crotalus viridis oreganus) generally mates during a twomonth period following spring emergence, usually in well concealed situations such as burrow entrances, rock crevices, or under the edges of brush or logs. The mating snakes were sensitive to disturbance and quick to separate. Unfortunately, the secretive nature of most snakes renders field analysis of courtship behavior difficult or impossible. The few other accounts of courting rattlesnakes in the field (e.g., Wood, 1933; Bogert, 1942; Lowe, 1942; Klauber, 1956; Duvall et al., 1985) provide little quantitative data. Laboratory studies have elucidated the courtship behavior of the western massasauga, Sistrurus catenatus tergeminus (Chiszar et al., 1976), and the western diamondback rattlesnake, C. atrox (Gillingham et al., 1983). The courtship of C. atrox appears to follow the triphasic scheme described for colubrids (Gillingham, 1979): tactile-chase (phase I), tactile-alignment (phase II) and intromission and coitus (phase III). I here report laboratory observations on the courtship of C. v. oreganus. Seven adult rattlesnakes were housed together in a 165 x 87 x 86 cm wooden pen with a paper floor covering, rocks and a glass vessel containing water. Mice were accepted as prey on a regular basis. Temperature was 26-31?C during the light cycle (0600-2000). Six snakes (4 6) were collected in April 1983 (Walla Walla County, Washington); the seventh, a female (65.1 cm SVL; 174 g), was collected in March 1984. After refusing food during a regular feeding session, this female was isolated in a smaller wooden cage where ecdysis occurred four days later (10 July 1984). When reintroduced to the pen on 27 July, and again on several occasions through 13 August, the largest male (77.2 cm SVL; 332 g) actively courted her. Courtship intensity decreased during this period. Several times other males briefly (c 11 min) courted her as well. Most observations, which lasted 70-120 min between 1900 and 2200 (while lights remained on), were terminated when the male lost interest in the coiled female. Several of the later observations, which lacked the intensity and consistency of earlier male courting efforts, were recorded on videotape. The following analysis retains terminology developed by Gillingham (1979). However, phase II events clearly consisted of three distinct behaviors, for which new terminology is introduced. A verbal description of repetitions of the entire three-part phase II sequence was recorded by a second observer, who timed each clearly demarcated cycle with a stopwatch. In addition, forward-jerks during the flexion-cycle (described below) were incremented on a hand-held counter. Fifty complete sequences from the first two obervations were evaluated for phase II events. The tongue-flick rate (TFR) and additional motor pattern details were determined from videotape. Selected behavioral events were scored using a microcomputer (Radio Shack TRS-80) timing subroutine, then loaded onto a VAX 11/750 for subsequent analysis and graphic display. In most courting snakes phase I consists of chases (female flees, male pursues) or chasemounts (male maintains contact during pursuit). Phase II begins when the male exhibits tail-search copulatory attempts (TSCA), which are tactile attempts by the male's tail to locate the female's cloaca. In the present study, the female usually remained coiled and quiescent. Only occasionally did the female flee and a chase ensue. However, chases often interrupted rather than preceded phase II behavior. Phase I behavior was therefore istinct from phase II only in the initial absence (2.6, 7.4 min) of TSCA. When chases interrupted phase II behavior, TSCA was quickly resumed once contact was reestablished.

Hydrology Section Executive Committee minutes

The Executive Committee of the AGU Hydrology Section met in regular session at 4:00 P.M. on Monday, December 9, 1985, in Room 318 of the Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, Calif., during the AGU Fall Meeting. Twenty‐two members of the section were present, with section president R. Allan Freeze presiding.

Assessing the Performance of State Legislative Committees: a Case Study and a Proposed Research Agenda

HIS PAPER has three immediate objectives: (1) it describes the structure and procedures used by standing committees in the New Hampshire House of Representatives; (2) using two measures of committee effectiveness suggested by the scholarly literature (committee permissiveness and committee floor success), it assesses the performance of all twenty-two standing committees in the New Hampshire House during the regular legislative session of 1977; and (3) it examines other committee characteristics and seeks to determine the extent to which variations

Information about the preparatory commission

The Preparatory Commission, established by resolution I of the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea, held its third regular session in Kingston (Jamaica), 11 March to 4 April 1985 and a meeting in Geneva (Switzerland), 12 August to 4 September 1985.

Information about the preparatory commission

The Preparatory Commission established by resolution I of the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea held its second regular session in Kingston (Jamaica), 19 March to 13 April 1984 and an informal meeting in Geneva (Switzerland), 13 August to 5 September 1984.

AGU Hydrology Section minutes

The Executive Committee of the AGU Hydrology Section met in regular session at 4:00 p.m. on Wednesday, December 5, 1984, in Room 320 of the Civic Auditorium, San Francisco, California. Present were 23 Board members, with section president, R. Allan Freeze presiding.

Recording system of infant oral response during regular feeding session

The sucking response is often used as a dependent variable in the study of infant behavior. Nevertheless, few attempts have been made to systematically investigate sucking within the context in which this response gets its original significance and adaptive function: nutrition. This might come partially from a lack of technical devices to make this kind of investigation feasible, without interfering with the bonding atmosphere that usually takes place between baby and caretaker during feeding sessions. A system has been designed to record the oral response of the infant during bottle-feeding. The system consists of a portable and otherwise convenient device mounted on a standard bottle that allows study of this type of response within the familiar environment of the bottle-fed baby, avoiding the usual laboratory constraints (Figure 1). The device is constructed as follows: Four strain gauges are connected to form a Wheatstone bridge and are glued on both sides of a rubber restraint which is tightened around the circular base of the bottle’s rubber nipple (Figure 2A). The rubber restraint is made of a normal rubber nipple that has been truncated at 10 mm from its base. The connecting order of the strain gauges is indicated in Figure 2B. Figure 2C shows the assembly of the device on a regular bottle. When no pressure is applied upon the nipple, the signal output of the resistance bridge has a null value, thus changing when a positive pressure is applied commensurate with the amount applied. The resulting signal output is amplified, and can be recorded on an FM tape recorder or can drive a graphic chart display. Two output signals can be recorded via the amplifier: (a) the AC conzponent (Figure 3A), which corresponds to the signal one can obtain by using

The scope of neuroethology

AbstractNeuroethology, an interdisciplinary subdivision of neuroscience, has emerged in recent years. Since 1976 there has been a regular session under this heading at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. In 1980 two introductory texts in English were published on the subject (Ewert 1980; Guthrie 1980), and a third (Camhi 1984) was published recently. There is widespread interest in neural mechanisms underlying behavior, but they encompass such a vast array of often unrelated topics that proponents do not share common goals. This article describes the emergence of ethology as a discipline, pointing out that its practitioners were successful because they confined their research to stereotyped, complex, nonlearned, innate behavioral acts. A limited number of profoundly significant principles emerged. Each of these is redefined. The major concepts of earlier ethology were embodied in a simple hydraulic model used by Konrad Lorenz in 1949 (Lorenz 1950). It is pointed out that this model implies the existence of common neurophysiological mechanisms and neuronal circuitry. This model has now been made obsolete by neurophysiological progress, but with appropriate modifications an updated version may still be useful in focusing attention on possible principles. The initial aim of neuroethology should be to examine the neurophysiological events in a variety of behaviors, exhibited by diverse animals from different phyla, which meet the criteria of innate behavioral acts. The behaviors should be sufficiently complex to interest ethologists, yet they should be addressable with neurophysiological methods down to the cellular level. In the case of vertebrates this may mean working with brain slices as well as whole animals, but for some invertebrates recording should be possible in the nearly intact animal during execution of the behavior. The work will be exacting and very difficult, and it is not likely to get done at all unless neuroethologists recognize that they should both train and discipline themselves and restrict their attention to welldefined goals.

Council Raises Dues, Approves Affiliate Commission Program

In a two-hour session in St. Louis, the ACS Council voted a $2.00 increase in next year's ACS membership dues, adopted the one petition scheduled for action to amend the society's by laws, approved 1985 subscription prices for ACS journals and magazines, and decided on several other business matters. It was probably the shortest regular council session in the past 25 years. The $2.00 increase will bring membership dues next year to $67. The automatic dues escalator provided in the society's bylaws and based on last year's rate of inflation was calculated at $2.00, not $3.00 as erroneously reported earlier (C&EN, March 5, page 32). Councilors had the option of allowing the dues to increase automatically by that calculated amount, or setting the dues increase at a smaller amount. Their decision marks the first time in five years that dues will increase the full amount calculated by the escalator. The successful petition adopted by councilors, if ...

AGU Hydrology Section

The Executive Committee of the AGU Hydrology Section met in regular session at 4:00 P.M. on Thursday, December 8, 1983, in Room 378 of the Cathedral Hill Hotel, San Francisco, Calif. Seven board members were present with section president, Peter Eagleson, presiding.A total of 18 sessions were presented in San Francisco, and all were well attended, as was reported by program chairman Dennis Lettenmaier. Added to the regular sessions of General Hydrology, General Ground‐water Hydrology, and Sediment Transport were the following special sessions: Glacier Ocean Interaction, presider Edward Josberger; Orinoco and the Amazon, presider Edward Andrews; Transport and Geochemical Interactions in Stream Water, presider F. E. Bencola; Instream Flow Requirements for Fish, presider Brian W. Mar; Multivariate Modeling of Hydrologic and Other Geophysical Time Series, presiders Jose D. Salas and David R. Dawdy; Optimization Techniques for Managing Ground Water and Stream Aquifer Systems, presider Steve Gorelick; Treatment of Evapotranspiration Soil Moisture Evolution and Aquifer Recharge in Watershed Models, presiders Arlen D. Feldman and Hubert J. Morel‐Seytoux; Statistical Procedures for Estimating of Flood Risk at Gauged Sites, presider J. R. Stedinger; and Searching for More Physically Based Extreme Value Distributions in Hydrology, presider Juan B. Valdes. The session on Glacier Ocean Interaction received the most publicity, with numerous accounts of some of the presentations appearing in the newspaper. One of the pleasant surprises of the meetings was the high attendance at the special sessions on Optimization Techniques for Managing Ground Water and Stream Aquifer Systems and Multivariate Modeling of Hydrologic and Other Geophysical Time Series. Both sessions were highly interdisciplinary, attracting numerous scientists from other sections of AGU.

Individual differences in the responses to repeated bell sound bursts of heart rate and plethysmogram from the index finger.

To investigate the possible individual differences in response pattern of the autonomic functions to sound stimulation, simultaneous measurements of the heart rate (HR) and plethysmogram (PLT) from the index finger were performed when bell-sound bursts were presented irregularly as well as regularly.The subjects were 3 healthy male students, ages 19, 19 and 22 years. They were exposed to 3s long bell sound bursts (91.5dBA) presented regularly with intervals of 150s and irregularly with random from 90 to 150s in an insulated room with the background sound level under 30dBA inside. Both of the regular and irregular sessions consisted of 5 blocks of 5 exposures as above. The intervals between blocks were 5min. The irregular session was conducted one week after the regular one.ECG (chest lead, V4) records from -3 to 30s after each 3s long burst were divided into eleven 3s records, and mean HR was calculated from the mean R-R intervals included completely within each 3s record. In the same manner, mean finger-top plethysmogram amplitude for all the complete waves within each time period of 3s before, during and after each bell sound burst were calculated. However, all the responses were examined as percent changes to the pre-exposure 3 s-long values in all the cases.The results of HR responses to sounds showed such great intra- and inter-individual variations that any consistent trends like habituation (gradual decrement of responses with repetition of stimuli) could not be observed. Only in block 1 of the regular session in Subject 1, consistent and typical HR responses were found, which showed rapid tachycardia followed by bradycardia. On the other hand, PLT showed consistent and significant responses especially in the regular session as shown in the figures. Decremental process of the minimum peaks or habituation with repetitive stimulations from block 1 to 5 in the regular session was obvious in Subject 1 and 3, whereas in Subject 2, on the contrary, the minimum peaks increased with repetition of the stimulations.Thus, individual differences in response patterns of the autonomic nervous system functions were confirmed to be possible, which may cause great intra- and inter-individual variation in the autonomic functions especially when only one measurement like HR is adopted as a parameter. However, one cannot deny that a subject, who does not respond in HR to sound, may be significantly susceptible to the same sound in another aspect like peripheral circulation. Therefore, further study is needed to clarify such subtypes of the autonomic functions to investigate the physiological effects of noise as well as to use sound stimulation in a test of the autonomic functions. It should also be noted that habituation or sensitization could be significantly observed in some of the autonomic functions, only if sounds are presented regularly.

Confirming Personality Test Results in the Classroom

The present study was conducted to determine whether college students can confirm the accuracy of their own personality test results. 38 female and 9 male undergraduates completed Jackson's 1967 Personality Research Form in a regular class session and later were asked to evaluate the accuracy of personality descriptions by completing a five-point rating scale for each trait. Finally, after another week all participants were provided with computerized interpretations of their own test results and the opportunity to discuss these findings with an experienced counselor. Significant correlations were found between standard scores and accuracy ratings for 26 of 28 predicted relationships. College students are able to assist in the confirmation of their own personality test results.