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This prospective randomized study revealed no significant differences between standard and high-flexion posterior-stabilized rotating-platform mobile-bearing total knee prostheses in terms of clinical or radiographic outcomes or range of motion at a minimum of two years postoperatively.

From an extract of the red alga Symphyocladia latiuscula, a bromophenol (1) was isolated and characterized as (2R)-2-(2,3, 6-tribromo-4,5-dihydroxybenzyl)-cyclohexanone based on the spectroscopic evidence. The bromophenol was found to be a scavenger of 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl radical.

Cystic fibrosis (CF) patients battle life-long pulmonary infections with the respiratory pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa (PA). An overabundance of mucus in CF airways provides a favorable niche for PA growth. When compared to that of non-CF individuals, mucus of CF airways is enriched in sialyl-Lewisx, a preferred binding receptor for PA. Notably, the levels of sialyl-Lewisx directly correlate with infection severity in CF patients. However, the mechanism by which PA causes increased sialylation remains uncharacterized. In this study, we examined the ability of PA virulence factors to modulate sialyl-Lewisx modification in airway mucins. We found pyocyanin (PCN) to be a potent inducer of sialyl-Lewisx in both mouse airways and in primary and immortalized CF and non-CF human airway epithelial cells. PCN increased the expression of C2/4GnT and ST3Gal-IV, two of the glycosyltransferases responsible for the stepwise biosynthesis of sialyl-Lewisx, through a TNF-α-mediated phosphoinositol-specific phospholipase C (PI-PLC) dependent pathway. Furthermore, PA bound more efficiently to airway epithelial cells pre-exposed to PCN through a flagellar cap-dependent manner. Importantly, antibodies against sialyl-Lewisx and anti-TNF-α attenuated PA binding. These results indicate that PCN secretes PCN to induce a favorable environment for chronic colonization of CF lungs by increasing the glycosylation of airway mucins with sialyl-Lewisx.

Prosthesis design and patellar retention were associated with PCC. Surgery resolved the PCC.

Two distinct inositol phospholipid-specific phospholipase C (PLC; phosphatidylcholMe phosphatidohydrolase, EC 3.1.4.3) isozymes, PLC-I and PLC-il, have been purified and characterized from bovine brain. Monoclonal antibodies that distinguish between these isozymes are used in the present study to map isozyme distribution in the rat brain with immunohistothemical techniques. Both isozymes are localized in neurons, and, whereas PLC-il is rather ubiquitous-being expressed in most neurons, PLC-I is restricted in its distribution. The strongest immunoreactive labeling for PLC-I is in the neurons of the striatum, which provide inputs to the globus pallidus and substantia nigra, where terminals are also densely labeled. The neuronal targets of these terminals in the globus pallidus and substantia nigra do not express PLC-I immunoreactivityj but they do display PLC-il immunoreactivity. PLC-I immunoreactivity is also particularly well pronounced in the pyramidal cells of the hippocampus and, to a lesser extent, in the granule cells of the dentate gyrus. In the thalamus, PLC-I is localized to neurons in the reticular thalamic nucleus, in the medial subdivision of the mediodorsal thalamic nucleus, and in the anteromedial thalamic nucleus. Other areas displaying PLC-I immunoreactive neurons include the dorsal lateral septal nucleus and the basolateral amygdala. The expression of at least one or more forms of PLC in most neurons of the brain suggests that this enzyme may be part of a common system of signal transduction used universally by all neurons. However, the differential expression of PLC isozymes suggests further that certain neurotransmitter and receptor interactions may differ in the forms of the PLC enzyme used for signal transduction.One of the mechanisms whereby neurotransmitter receptormediated signal transduction produces second messengers is by the activation, via as yet unspecified guanine nucleotidebinding proteins, of inositol phospholipid-specific phospholipase C -(PLC; phosphatidylcholine phosphatidohydrolase, EC 3.1.4.3; for reviews, see refs. 1-4). This enzyme hydrolyzes inositolphospholipids to generate two second-messenger molecules, diacylglycerol (acyl2Gro) and inositol 1,4,5-triphosphate. Recently, two distinct PLC isozymes have been purified and characterized from bovine brain, 6). Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) have been raised that distinguish between these two forms of PLC and do not show crossreactivity for the heterologous isozyme (5, 6). Under denaturing conditions the molecular weights of the two forms differ, being 150,000 for PLC-I and 145,000 for PLC-Il. Moreover, PLC-I appears under nondenaturing conditions to be present mainly as a dimer, whereas PLC-II is present as a monomer. Both forms exhibit similar substrate specificity-catalyzing the hydrolysis of phosphatidylinositol, phosphatidylinositol4-phosphate, and phosphatidylinositol-4,5-bisphosphate (PtdInsP2) in the presence of calcium. At low calcium concentrations PtdInsP2 is the preferred substrate for both isozymes. However...

The regenerative pump is a kind of turbomachine that is capable of developing a high pressure rise at relatively low flow rates compared to the centrifugal and axial pumps. Although the efficiency of regenerative pumps is much lower than other turbomachines, they have still been widely used in many industrial applications for high heads at low flow rates. There are a few theoretical models to analyze the performance of regenerative pumps, though, the effect of the blade angle has not been included in any analysis model to date. In this study, the influence of the impeller blade angle and its shape on regenerative pump performance has been experimentally investigated. Straight blades with inclined blade angles of 0°, ± 15°, ± 30° and ± 45° were tested. In addition radial chevron impellers with chevron angles of 15°, 30° and 45° were also included in the present experiments. Hence a total of 10 blade configurations were examined. The pressure head, efficiency and the fluid temperature rise were measured at different flow rates and the results were expressed in appropriate non-dimensional coefficients. From the experimental results, it was found that the pressure head and the efficiency strongly depend on the blade angles as well as the blade geometry. Among all blade configurations tested in this study, the chevron blade exhibited the highest head with reasonably good efficiency. The comparative study shows that there is an optimum chevron angle of around 30° that yields the best performance. These experimental data may be used to include the effect of blade angles in the current performance analysis and design models to widen their applicability.

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