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Chronic ingestion of ethanol resulted in ultrastructural and mechanical changes in rat femurs. Scanning electron microscopy of the distal end of the femur revealed that the trabeculae of bones from ethanol-fed rats were thinner, more columnar, and more extensive than those from control rats. Three-point bending tests of the rat femurs showed that the maximum force or so-called "strength" required to break the bone was less in ethanol- than in control-fed animals. A significant inverse correlation was observed between the strength required to break the femur and the dose of ethanol calculated on a body weight basis. For the first time our study presents quantitative proof that a relationship exists between bone strength and the consumption of ethanol in rats. The study revealed that ethanol consumption resulted in a weaker femur compared to controls. We suggest that a common mechanism may be responsible for the decreased bone strength of ethanol-fed rats and the increased incidence of fractures in human alcoholics.

Abstract. Flooding represents one of the most severe natural disasters threatening the development of human society. A model that is capable of predicting the hydrological responses in watershed with management practices during flood period would be a crucial tool for pre-assessment of flood reduction measures. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) is a semi-distributed hydrological model that is well capable of runoff and water quality modeling under changed scenarios. The original SWAT model is a long-term yield model. However, a daily simulation time step and a continuous time marching limit the application of the SWAT model for detailed, event-based flood simulation. In addition, SWAT uses a basin level parameter that is fixed for the whole catchment to parameterize the unit hydrograph (UH), thereby ignoring the spatial heterogeneity among the sub-basins when adjusting the shape of the UHs. This paper developed a method to perform event-based flood simulation on a sub-daily timescale based on SWAT2005 and simultaneously improved the UH method used in the original SWAT model. First, model programs for surface runoff and water routing were modified to a sub-daily timescale. Subsequently, the entire loop structure was broken into discrete flood events in order to obtain a SWAT-EVENT model in which antecedent soil moisture and antecedent reach storage could be obtained from daily simulations of the original SWAT model. Finally, the original lumped UH parameter was refined into a set of distributed ones to reflect the spatial variability of the studied area. The modified SWAT-EVENT model was used in the Wangjiaba catchment located in the upper reaches of the Huaihe River in China. Daily calibration and validation procedures were first performed for the SWAT model with long-term flow data from 1990 to 2010, after which sub-daily (Δt=2 h) calibration and validation in the SWAT-EVENT model were conducted with 24 flood events originating primarily during the flood seasons within the same time span. Daily simulation results demonstrated that the SWAT model could yield very good performances in reproducing streamflow for both whole year and flood period. Event-based flood simulation results simulated by the sub-daily SWAT-EVENT model indicated reliable performances, with ENS values varying from 0.67 to 0.95. The SWAT-EVENT model, compared to the SWAT model, particularly improved the simulation accuracies of the flood peaks. Furthermore, the SWAT-EVENT model results of the two UH parameterization methods indicated that the use of the distributed parameters resulted in a more reasonable UH characterization and better model fit compared to the lumped UH parameter.

This study was designed to determine whether pituitary glands contain an immunoreactive material which reacts with antisera to calcitonin (CT) and, if so, whether secretion of the material could be demonstrated. Testing 15 antisera to rat and human CT and using an immunoperoxidase method, we found 2 antisera to human CT which stained rat pituitaries and several which stained human pituitaries. Essentially all cells in the rat intermediate lobe and scattered cells in the rat and human anterior lobes showed staining, and staining was not entirely abolished by prior adsorption of antisera with rat or human CT. The 2 antisera which stained rat pituitaries showed cross-reactivity with several synthetic human CT fragments (1-18, 11-23 and 22-32) but not with ACTH-(1-39), ACTH-(1-24), beta-endorphin, alpha- or beta MSH, or bovine lipotropin. Crude extracts of pituitaries from 2 strains of young rats showed CT-like immunoreactivity which could be measured easily by RIA (0.2-0.3 ng/gland). In vivo, an antiserum which stained pituitaries and 1 which did not were compared using young rats made hypercalcemic (15-20 mg/dl) with iv Ca. In rats with thyroids, both antisera showed an increase in serum CT of more than 15-fold whether the pituitary was present or absent. In thyroidectomized rats, serum CT remained undetectable (less than 50 to 100 pg/ml) during hypercalcemia even if the pituitary was present. In vitro, rat pituitaries in a serum-free medium did not release measurable amounts of immunoreactive CT-like material even when medium contained high Ca (2.5 mM), high K (25 mM), or TRH (10(-6) M). Therefore, the findings agree with other reports of a CT-like material in the pituitary, but no secretion of the material could be demonstrated. We hypothesize that the material is not authentic CT but is, rather a related peptide sequence probably contained in the 31 K precursor protein of ACTH-beta-lipotropin.

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