Chapter 2 provides an overview of solar irradiances, the dominant energy input driving Earth’s climate. The uninterrupted 33-year long total solar irradiance (TSI) record from space-borne instruments requires sufficient stability for climate-quality studies, helping determine the global and regional sensitivities of Earth’s climate to solar variability. New instrument calibration capabilities h...

OBJECTIVE This study examined the prevalence and psychological sequelae of childhood sexual and physical abuse in adults from the general population. METHOD A national sampling service generated a geographically stratified, random sample of 1,442 subjects from the United States. Subjects were mailed a questionnaire that included the Traumatic Events Survey (TES) [Traumatic Events Survey, Unpu...

Botulinum neurotoxins are highly effective therapeutic products. Their therapeutic success results from highly specific and potent inhibition of neurotransmitter release with a duration of action measured in months. These same properties, however, make the botulinum neurotoxins the most potent acute lethal toxins known. Their toxicity and restricted target cell activity severely limits their cl...

In human immune deficiency virus (HIV)-seropositive hemophilia patients, a low number of CD4 + lymphocytes is found, as well as a low CD4+/CD8+ ratio. In previous studies, it has been shown that antigen-specific T-helper cell (CD4+) function was present and no excessive antigen-specific T-suppressor cell (CD8+) function could be demonstrated. In this report, we studied another activity of CD4+ ...

Platform independent Java application to support interaction between an instructor, teaching assistants and students in a traditional on-campus course is developed. The TSI (teacher-student interaction) application includes a specialized Web server, an ordinary Web server, a mailer and a simple database. The HTTP protocol is used for all communications. Both teachers and students employ Web bro...

BACKGROUND The heart was very sensitive to fluctuating thyroid hormone levels. To assess intra-left ventricular (LV) systolic asynchrony in patients with subclinical thyroid dysfunction. METHODS Fifty patients with subclinical hypothyroidism and 40 controls were included. A diagnosis of subclinical hypothyroidism was reached with increased TSH and normal free T4. All subjects were evaluated b...

AIMS We compared the effects of total thyroidectomy (TTx) and radioiodine (RAI) administration on the course of thyroid hormones and thyroid-stimulating immunoglobulins (TSI) in patients with Graves' disease. METHODS We retrospectively studied 80 patients initially treated with antithyroid drugs and requiring either RAI (8.3 ± 1.7 mCi of (131)I; n = 40) or TTx (n = 40) as second-line therapy....

Surface sediment and water samples were collected from Daihai Lake to study the biogeochemical characteristics of nitrogen and phosphorus, to estimate the loads of these nutrients, and to assess their effects on water quality. The contents and spatial distributions of total phosphorus (TP), total nitrogen (TN), and different nitrogen forms in sediments were analyzed. The results showed that con...

Para-water is an analogue of para-hydrogen, where the two proton spins are in a quantum state that is antisymmetric under permutation, also known as singlet state. The populations of the nuclear spin states in para-water are believed to have long lifetimes just like other Long-Lived States (LLSs). This hypothesis can be verified by measuring the relaxation of an excess or a deficiency of para-w...