Aspirin-like drugs may block pain independently of prostaglandin synthesis inhibition

Summary Using flurbiprofen, a chiral anti-inflammatory and analgesic 2-arylpropionic acid derivative, the enantiomers of which are not converted to each other (less than 5%) in rats or man, we obtained evidence that prostaglandin synthesis inhibition is primarily mediating the anti-inflammatory activity but prostaglandin synthesis independent mechanisms contribute to the analgesic effects. Thus, the S-form inhibited prostaglandin synthesis, inflammation and nociception in rats. The R-form had much less effect on prostaglandin synthesis and did not affect inflammation. It did, however, block nociception in rats almost as potently as the S-form. S-flurbiprofen, in contrast to the R-form, was clearly ulcerogenic in the gastrointestinal mucosa. These results indicate additional molecular mechanisms of analgesia and suggest the use of R-arylpropionic acids as analgesics.     

Purealidin A,a new cytotoxic bromotyrosine-derived alkaloid from the Okinawan marine spongePsammaplysilla purea

Summary A new bromotyrosine-derived alkaloid with antileukemic activity, purealidin A (5), has been isolated from the Okinawan marine spongePsammaplysilla purea and its chemical structure elucidated on the basis of the spectroscopic data.     

Aeromonas caviae: ecologic adaptation in the intestinal tract of infants coupled to adherence and enterotoxin production as factors in enteropathogenicity

Aeromonas caviae isolated from stools of diarrheic formula-fed infants and environmental sources produce acetic acid when grown in glucose broth, which is bactericidal (suicide phenomenon). A. caviae grows anaerobically in a minimal medium or under permissive conditions such as the intestinal tract of formula-fed infants. These isolates adhered to HEp-2 cells and produced a cytotoxic and a cytotonic enterotoxin which underscore their enteropathogenicity.     

Business Process Reengineering (BPR) Versus Outsourcing—Critical Perspectives

This article presents a case example involving the renaming of an organizational change process from BPR to outsourcing. The paper discusses the important ramifications of such a name change in that the recognition of outsourcing allowed an organizational commitment to counseling and termination advice. The paper discusses two ways of looking at the name change, one from a critical theory perspective and one from a realist perspective. It demonstrates how theory can provide useful yet markedly different interpretations of such organizational events. Critical theory operates from within what can be termed the transitive epistemological dimension, whereas critical realism tends to emphasize the importance of ontological issues. Each has important things to say about the situation and improves our understanding overall.     

Subset threshold autoregression

We develop in this paper an efficient way to select the best subset threshold autoregressive model. The proposed method uses a stochastic search idea. Differing from most conventional approaches, our method does not require us to fix the delay or the threshold parameters in advance. By adopting the Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques, we can identify the best subset model from a very large of number of possible models, and at the same time estimate the unknown parameters. A simulation experiment shows that the method is very effective. In its application to the US unemployment rate, the stochastic search method successfully selects lag one as the time delay and five best models from more than 4000 choices. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Huntington's disease candidate region exhibits many different haplotypes.

Analysis of 78 Huntington's disease (HD) chromosomes with multi-allele markers revealed 26 different haplotypes, suggesting a variety of independent HD mutations. The most frequent haplotype, accounting for about one third of disease chromosomes, suggests that the disease gene is between D4S182 and D4S180. However, the paucity of an expected class of chromosomes that can be related to this major haplotype by assuming single crossovers may reflect the operation of other mechanisms in creating haplotype diversity. Some of these mechanisms sustain alternative scenarios that do not require a multiple mutational origin for HD and/or its positioning between D4S182 and D4S180.