Perceptions by parents of instructions from a doctor or a nurse of the position in which the infants were placed in the nursery were associated with the position parents reported placing their infants to sleep at home. Efforts to promote the supine sleeping position in the inner-city setting should address both practices and education provided to parents in the nursery during the postpartum hospital stay and should be sufficiently powerful to align their perceptions of the postpartum experience with current American Academy of Pediatrics recommendations.

Experimental steady-state hysteretic characteristics of ten direct shear seismic damping devices (DSSDs) are presented. The devices were tested over a range of frequencies and displacements chosen as representative of building responses during moderate to severe level earthquakes. Three different damping materials, produced by 3M Corporation and Lord Corporation, were used in the devices. Excitation frequency, strain amplitude, damping material initial temperature, temperature change over the test duration, cyclic energy dissipation, and damping material moduli (including complex shear, storage and loss moduli) are reported for all tests performed. The influence of frequency, displacement amplitude, temperature, and cumulative energy absorption on the damping material mechanical properties and hysteretic stability are examined. Methods by which material moduli can be used to design damping devices for specified spring stiffness and equivalent viscous damping are presented. Limitations of the hysteresis model, test results, and design methodology are discussed.

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ABSTRACT. al-Antichymotrypsin (al-ACHY) and al-an-(I). al-AT and aI-ACHY play major roles in the host response titrypsin (al-AT) are closely related glycoprotein protease to trauma and inflammation. The major function of aI-AT, inhibitors, present in plasma and other extracellular fluids, which is present at high levels in human plasma (1 5 3 . 5 mg/ that neutralize proteases released by leukocytes in re-mL), is to inhibit elastases released by leukocytes at sites of sponse to trauma and inflammatory stimuli. Both inhibitors inflammation. al-ACHY, present in plasma at lower levels (0.3-are synthesized primarily by hepatocytes, although lower 0.6 mg/mL), is thought to neutralize ch~motry~sin-like Proteases levels of synthesis by monocytes and breast and intestinal S U C~ aS cathepsin G also released by leukocytes at inflammatory epithelial cells have been demonstrated. Recently, the im-sites. a,-ACHY and (UI-AT belong to the serpin supergene family m u n o~i s t o c~e m i c a~ localization of a l -~~ and aI-~~-~~ in as does CBG, the major glucocorticoid camer in the circulation intrauterine and extrauterine human trophoblastic tissue (2). CBG is cleaved by elastase at a unique site in its C-terminal has been reported.the present study, we have sought to region resulting in decreased glucocorticoid binding (3). Because determine whether human trophoblast is also able to syn-local elastase levels depend to a large degree on local levels of althesize al-AT andMessenger RNA for both AT, delivery of glucocorticoids to inflammatory sites may be inhibitors was found by Northern blotting in chorionic villi regulated by a mechanism involving the interaction of elastase and aI-AT. obtained from first trimester and term placenta. SubstanaI-AT and are synthesized primarily by hepatocytes tial differences in messenger levels for both inhibitors and to a lesser degree by monocytes (4). We have shown that among individual placentas were noted' al-ACHY and al-MCF-7 human breast cancer cells, a cell line of epithelial AT messenger was present in trophoblast in can also synthesize these protease inhibitors and that their synprimary culture. Synthesis of al-AT and al-ACHY protein thesis can be stimulated by steroid hormones, cytokines, and was demonstrated by SDS-PAGE after immuno~reci~ita-growth factors (5). ~l t h o u g h the amount of al-AT and aI-ACHY tion of 135S1-labeled ~I -A T and a]-ACHY from conditioned produced by nonhepatic cells is small in comparison to that media of trophoblast cells in culture metabolically labeled by hepatocytes, local synthesis may be important at with [35S]-methionine. It is of some interest that the M, of sites of inflammation, particularly at locations not directly in the al-AT and ffl-ACHY secreted by trophob1ast contact with the circulation where levels of al-AT and aI-ACHY 50 000 and 49 000, respectively, compared with 54 000 and may only be a fraction of that in plasma (6). Implantation of the 6 8 000 for these proteins in plasma (or secreted by H~P G~ embryo in the uterus elicits an inflam...