The Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI) is a validated clinical instrument for evaluating psychopathology in dementia. The authors developed a brief questionnaire form of the NPI (NPI-Q), intended for use in routine clinical practice, and cross-validated it with the NPI in 60 Alzheimer's patients. Test-retest reliability of the NPI-Q was acceptable. The prevalence of analogous symptoms reported on the NPI and NPI-Q differed on average by 5%; moderate or severe symptom ratings differed by less than 2%. The NPI-Q provides a brief, reliable, informant-based assessment of neuropsychiatric symptoms and associated caregiver distress that may be suitable for use in general clinical practice.

Tungstic acid surfaces chemisorb NH, and HNOa. Coilectlon of these gases is posslbie by sampling with a hollow tube, the interior of which is coated wlth tungstic acid. Under conditions of laminar flow, the gases diffuse to the wail and are chemisorbed while particles are carried through the tube. Particles are collected with an in-line tube packed with tungstic acid coated sand. Thermal desorption followed by a simple separation and detection by a chemiluminescent NO, analyzer permits analyses at the parts per bllllon and lower concentration range for gaseous and particulate forms of the analytes. Detection limits are 1-3 nglsampie. The precision of analyses of ambient air samples is in the 5-10% relative standard deviation range. Coated hollow tubes conform sufficiently to the mathematical model of tube gas dynamics so as to permit reasonable determination of gaseous diffusion coefficients at ambient concentrations.Ammonia, nitric acid, and sulfuric acid aerosol are important factors influencing the acidity of air and acidity of rain. Ammonium nitrate and ammonium sulfate are solid compounds resulting from atmospheric acid-base reactions of the three acid rain components. Thus, both gaseous and particulate forms of ammonia and nitric acid are expected to be present in air.The determination of gaseous ammonia and nitric acid at the trace concentrations (0.1-5.0 pg/m3) present in comparatively nonpolluted, ambient air as well as discrimination of gaseous from particulate forms is a difficult task. A number of workers have noted particle to gas or gas to particle conversion reactions on filters used to separate particles from the gas phase. A discussion of this aspect of previous work is given in our companion article (I).Analytical procedures for gaseous ammonia have involved absorption on an oxalic acid treated surface as in the ring oven technique of Shendrikar and Lodge (2) modified by Cattell and DuCross (3). Gillett and Ayers (4) report the detection limit of this method to be near 0.05 pg/sample in routine use. Ferm (5) has used an oxalic acid coated diffusion tube to collect NH3 later determined by ion-selective electrode. McClenny and Bennett (6) have reported a method for gaseous ammonia based upon absorption on Teflon beads after filtration to remove particulate ammonia. Collected gaseous ammonia was desorbed by heating and detected by using a photoacoustic detector. The detection limit was approximately 5 ng/sample.Gaseous nitric acid has been collected on sodium chloride impregnated filters after removal of particles by a nontreated prefilter (7,8). Total gaseous and particulate nitrates can be collected on filter combinations such as, for example, a quartz fiber filter and a nylon filter (9). Shaw et al. (IO) developed a method for nitric acid in air employing two parallel sampling lines, one of which includes a diffusion denuder tube to eliminate "OB.Both total and particulate HN03 are determined and the difference is gaseousThe work reported here started with a preliminary study of new approaches t...

One of the first steps in establishing safe handling procedures for explosives is small‐scale safety and thermal (SSST) testing. To better understand the response of homemade or improvised explosives (HMEs) to SSST testing, 16 HME materials were compared to three standard military explosives in a proficiency‐type round robin study among five laboratories, two U.S. Department of Defense and three U.S. Department of Energy, sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security, Science & Technology Directorate, Explosives Division. The testing included impact, friction, electrostatic discharge (ESD) and thermal. The testing matrix was designed to address problems encountered with improvised materials: powder mixtures, liquid suspensions, partially wetted solids, immiscible liquids, and reactive materials. All testing materials and/or precursors came from the same batch distributed to each of the participants and were handled, pretreated, and mixed by standardized procedures. For this proficiency test, the participants had similar equipment, usually differing by vintage. This allowed for a direct comparison of the results from each participant to the average of the results from all the participants. Some general trends observed for each series of tests were: (1) Drop hammer – LLNL usually found the materials less sensitive than the average with materials that have high sensitivity to impact and LANL usually found the materials less sensitive than the average with materials that have high sensitivity to impact; (2) friction – LLNL found the materials less sensitive than the average; (3) and ESD – IHD usually found the materials less sensitive than the average. In this report, the proficiency test data from all the participants is compared and contrasted for impact, selected friction, and ESD testing. Other friction and thermal data will be addressed elsewhere as well as the statistical analysis of several repeated measurements on the proficiency test standards.

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