It has by now become obvious that environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) may pose a health risk to nonsmokers. Epidemiological data suggest that exposure to ETS may increase the risk of developing lung cancer, cardiovascular disease, intrauterine growth retardation, predisposition to chronic lung disease, and sudden infant death syndrome. The human populations most at risk from ETS exposure appear t...

Male A/J strain mice were fed AIN-76A diet supplemented with myo-inositol/dexamethasone (10 g and 0.5 mg/kg diet) or acetylsalicylic acid (300 mg/kg) and exposed for 5 months to a mixture of sidestream and mainstream cigarette smoke at a concentration of 132 mg total suspended particulates/m3. After tobacco smoke exposure, they were allowed to recover for another 4 months in filtered air. In th...

Laser speckle flowmetry suffers from a debated quantification of the inverse relation between decorrelation time (τc) and blood flow velocity (V), i.e. 1/τc = αV. Using a modified microcirculation imager (integrated sidestream dark field - laser speckle contrast imaging [SDF-LSCI]), we experimentally investigate on the influence of the optical properties of scatterers on α in vitro and in vivo....

Methods Nineteen adult sheep were anesthetized, mechanically ventilated and invasively monitored. Renal blood-flow was measured continuously through a left lumbotomy using a peri-vascular flow probe (Transonic, USA) and an aortic clamp was positioned above the renal arteries. After surgical preparation and stabilization, animals were randomized into 3 groups (SHAM=5, I-R=7, I-R+BH4=7). SHAM ani...

We use Attainable Region (AR) techniques to generate reactor network synthesis solutions to the WGS reaction system. We do this using the conventional method as described by Nicol et al. (1997) to generate the candidate AR (AR) for exothermic reversible reactions in three dimensions. We compare the results with two other automated techniques, namely: the isostate algorithm (Rooney et al. 2000) ...

The Surviving Sepsis Campaign guidelines suggest targeting a mean arterial pressure of at least 65 mm Hg to maintain organ perfusion pressure during septic shock. However, the optimal mean arterial pressure can be higher in patients with a history of hypertension or other vascular comorbidities or in those with increased abdominal pressure. In a given individual, the adequate mean arterial pres...

Deammonification is known as an efficient and resource saving sidestream process option to remove the nitrogen load from sludge liquors. The transfer of the intermediate product nitrite between both syntrophic groups of organisms - aerobic and anaerobic ammonia oxidizers (AOB) - appears very sensitive to process conditions such as temperature, dissolved oxygen (DO) and operating nitrite level. ...

Tobacco mainstream smoke (MSS) and sidestream smoke (SSS), butts, and ashes from commercial cigarettes and maleic hydrazide (MH) spiked cigarettes were analyzed for their MH contents. The MH transfer rates obtained for MSS ranged from 1.4% to 3.7%, for SSS ranged from 0.2% to 0.9%, and for butts ranged from 1.1% to 1.9%. And as expected, MH is absent in ashes. The transfer rate of MH into mains...

This study clarified the influence of cigarette smoke on the L-ascorbic acid (AsA) metabolism and the activities of drug-metabolizing enzyme in rats. The test rats (group T) were exposed to weak sidestream smoke from cigarettes for 2 h, everyday for 57 days. AsA concentration in the tissues and excreted amount of AsA in urine of group T tended to be higher than those of control group (group C)....

Microcirculation plays an important role both in physiological and pathophysiological states. Early recognition of changes in microcirculation is crucial for starting early therapeutic intervention and reversing the organ failure. Orthogonal polarization spectral (OPS) and Sidestream dark field imaging (SDF) are relatively new noninvasive methods that allow direct visualisation of the microcirc...