Pamidronate may be a useful treatment option in the management of patients with CRPS Type I. Although treatment response was variable, the majority of patients improved. Early administration in tandem with other treatment measures is recommended.

No abstract

(Anesth Analg. 2017;124(2):560–569) Epidural (EPL) and combined spinal epidural (CSE) are commonly used and effective labor analgesia neuraxial techniques. EPL has minimal adverse effects, but has a slow onset time and may result in insufficient sacral spread/patchy sensory blockade. In contrast, CSE has rapid onset and excellent sacral coverage but has greater risk of adverse effects. The dural puncture epidural (DPE) technique (passing a spinal needle through the EPL needle, puncturing the dura but not injecting medication into the intrathecal space) has been shown to improve caudal spread of analgesia compared with the EPL technique, without the side effects seen with CSE. In the present study, the authors determined whether or not overall analgesia characteristics and side effects would favor the DPE technique, and hypothesized that onset of labor analgesia is most rapid with CSE, followed by DPE and EPL.

This article investigates a trend in the Chicago region that defies conventional accounts of municipal politics and revenue-motivated policing: since the Great Recession, higher-income black suburbs have sharply increased collection of legal fines and fees. To explain this, we draw on a study of municipal officials to develop a racialization of municipal opportunity perspective, which highlights how racial segregation in the suburbs intersects with policies that encourage competition over tax revenue to produce fiscal inequalities that fall along racial lines. Officials across the region shared views about ‘good’ revenues like sales taxes paid mostly by nonresidents, but those in black suburbs were unable to access them and instead turned to ‘bad’ revenues like legal fines to manage fiscal crises—even where residents were fairly affluent and despite the absence of discriminatory intent at the local level. These findings invite inquiry into the racially uneven consequences of seemingly colorblind municipal fiscal practices in the USA and the distributional consequences of municipal governance in other national contexts.

During the manufacture of circuit boards, a palladium-tin colloid is adsorbed onto an epoxy substrate and serves as a catalyst for the subsequent electroless deposition of copper in nonconductive areas, viz., the drilled holes. This is normally followed by a thicker layer of electrolytically deposited copper. A simpler process has been developed which replaces the electroless step with a sulfide-containing solution which alters the adsorbed palladium-tin colloid and renders it resistant to acidic solutions and very effective for the subsequent electrolytic deposition of copper. Use of x-ray absorption spectroscopy techniques (x-ray absorption fine structures and x-ray absorption of near-edge structures) was conclusive in establishing that the altered catalytic film was a mixture of palladium sulfide, which remains stable for at least several months, and mixed valence sulfidized tin species, which begin to oxidize to stannic oxide within 24 h. Electrolytic copper plating characteristics are determined for this novel palladium sulfide activator and compared to those of a conventional palladium-tin catalyst. A "stepwise propagation with continuous conduction" model is proposed, based in part on the results of scanning tunneling microscopy which reveals PdS particles in intimate contact with each other.