Search

© 2016 The Author(s). Background: Although classified as metal oxides, cobalt monoxide (CoO) and lanthanum oxide (La2O3) nanoparticles, as representative transition and rare earth oxides, exhibit distinct material properties that may result in different hazardous potential in the lung. The current study was undertaken to compare the pulmonary effects of aerosolized whole body inhalation of these nanoparticles in mice. Results: Mice were exposed to filtered air (control) and 10 or 30 mg/m3of each particle type for 4 days and then examined at 1 h, 1, 7 and 56 days post-exposure. The whole lung burden 1 h after the 4 day inhalation of CoO nanoparticles was 25 % of that for La2O3nanoparticles. At 56 days post exposure, < 1 % of CoO nanoparticles remained in the lungs; however, 22-50 % of the La2O3nanoparticles lung burden 1 h post exposure was retained at 56 days post exposure for low and high exposures. Significant accumulation of La2O3nanoparticles in the tracheobronchial lymph nodes was noted at 56 days post exposure. When exposed to phagolysosomal simulated fluid, La nanoparticles formed urchin-shaped LaPO4structures, suggesting that retention of this rare earth oxide nanoparticle may be due to complexation of cellular phosphates within lysosomes. CoO nanoparticles caused greater lactate dehydrogenase release in the bronchoalveolar fluid (BALF) compared to La2O3nanoparticles at 1 day post exposure, while BAL cell differentials indicate that La2O3nanoparticles generated more inflammatory cell infiltration at all doses and exposure points. Histopathological analysis showed acute inflammatory changes at 1 day after inhalation of either CoO or La2O3nanoparticles. Only the 30 mg/m3La2O3nanoparticles exposure caused chronic inflammatory changes and minimal fibrosis at day 56 post exposure. This is in agreement with activation of the NRLP3 inflammasome after in vitro exposure of differentiated THP-1 macrophages to La2O3but not after CoO nanoparticles exposure. Conclusion: Taken together, the inhalation studies confirmed the trend of our previous sub-acute aspiration study, which reported that CoO nanoparticles induced more acute pulmonary toxicity, while La2O3nanoparticles caused chronic inflammatory changes and minimal fibrosis.

CIRCE (Coherent InfraRed CEnter) is a proposal for a new electron storage ring to be built at the Advanced Light Source (ALS) of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). The ring design is optimized for the generation of coherent synchrotron radiation (CSR) in the terahertz frequency range. Among others, CIRCE operation includes three interesting CSR modes: ultra stable, femtosecond laser slicing and broadband bursting. CSR allows CIRCE to generate an extremely high flux in the terahertz frequency region. The many orders of magnitude increase in the intensity over that presently achievable by conventional sources, has the potential to enable new science experiments. The characteristics of CIRCE and of the different modes of operation are described in this paper.

We consider the initial-value problem for the radially symmetric nonlinear Schrodinger equation with cubic nonlinearity (NLS) in d = 2 and 3 space dimensions. To approximate smooth solutions of this problem, we construct and analyze a numerical method based on a standard Galerkin finite element spatial discretization with piecewise linear, continuous functions and on an implicit Crank-Nicolson type time-stepping procedure. We then equip this scheme with an adaptive spatial and temporal mesh refinement mechanism that enables the numerical technique to approximate well singular solutions of the NLS equation that blow up at the origin as the temporal variable t tends from below to a finite value t(star). For the blow-up of the amplitude of the solution we recover numerically the well-known rate (t(star)- t)(-1/2) for d = 3. For d = 2 our numericalevidence supports the validity of the log log law [ln ln 1/t(star)-t/(t(star)- t)](1/2) for t extremely close to t(star). The scheme also approximates well the details of the blow-up of the phase of the solution at the origin as t --> t(star). Siam Journal on Scientific Computing

OBJECTIVES: The authors analyzed self-reported questionnaire data from the 1987 National Medical Expenditure Survey (NMES) to determine the smoking patterns of veterans. METHODS: Using NMES data, the authors compared veterans versus nonveterans overall, women veterans versus women nonveterans, Vietnam-era veterans versus other veterans, and veterans whose usual source of medical care was the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) system versus veterans who received care elsewhere. RESULTS: The likelihood of ever having smoked cigarettes was higher for veterans than for nonveterans and for women veterans than for women nonveterans. The prevalence of current smoking was higher for veterans than for nonveterans and higher for those seeking care within the VA system than for other veterans. CONCLUSIONS: Given the enormous health care costs associated with smoking, health promotion efforts should be developed to reduce the high rate of smoking among veterans--especially those who are consumers of VA health care.

The paper presents case reports of nine children, all of whom had severe disturbances of language function of abrupt or gradual onset. Seizures occurred in seven of the children and all nine had EEG abnormalities.There was no apparent correlation between the seizures, the EEG changes and the aphasia. One patient had a brain biopsy performed at another hospital and the tissue was said to be normal. The cause of the abnormal language function is unknown. Five of the children failed to acquire normal speech subsequently. Three of the four children who made a complete recovery were treated with steroids.