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An initial study was conducted with 37 crossbred sows to compare the efficacy of dicalcium, soft and Curacao phosphates as supplements for a corn-soybean meal diet during gestation and lactation. Reproductive performance was similar whether the gilts received the diet unsupplemented or supplemented with one of the three phosphorus supplements. There was a high incidence of posterior paralysis during the sixth to eighth week of lactation in sows fed the unsupplemented diet. Paralysis was also observed, but to a lesser incidence, in sows fed soft or Curacao phosphates.Reproductive performance was not significantly (P< .05) affected in a second study with 70 first-litter sows fed the same diets. During the 36-day lactation, phosphorus digestibility, retention and balance (corrected for milk phosphorus) were similar for sows fed the supplemented diets but much lower for those fed the basal diet. Bone ash and phosphorus and bone strength criteria were lower for sows fed the unsupplemented diet than for those fed dicalcium or Curacao phosphate. Values for sows fed soft phosphate were intermediate between the unsupplemented group and those receiving the other supplements. Two sows on the unsupplemented diet developed posterior paralysis after the litter was weaned and the sows were grouped. A phosphorus level of 0.5% during gestation and lactation appears adequate for all criteria measured when feeding either dicalcium or Curacao phosphate.

GRAFTS of peripheral nerves across long gaps, except for the facial and the short finger nerves, were a dismal failure in the recent war, as they had been before. This was true of fresh homologous grafts (Spurling and associates1) and of our own attempts with dehydrated frozen grafts (Nulsen, Lewey and Van Wagenen). This sad experience, together with the urgent need of some kind of nerve repair, focused attention on the possibility of end to end sutures after extensive mobilization and transposition of the corresponding nerves in conjunction with maximal flexion of the extremities. Encouraging results with this procedure were reported by Naffziger,3 Platt,4 Platt and Bristow,5 Babcock,6 Forrester-Brown7 and, lately, Highet and Holmes.8 The last two authors followed the course of 42 patients operated on during this war at the Oxford Nerve Center for gaps of 1.5 to 11 cm. in practically

The free energy of solid solution varies with the atomic arrangement or degree of mixing in solution. The change of free energy with solution state in an alloy system with a miscibility gap was examined step by step from the random state toward the equilibrium state by a series of approximations provided by the cluster-variation method. As equilibrium is approached, the gap corresponding to the non-equilibrium state gradually shrinks to the equilibrium gap, while the chemical spinodal region expands and eventually approaches the solubility limits. The effects of these features on the spinodal decomposition are discussed. Several experimental observations of spinodal decomposition that cannot be explained satisfactorily by the current theory can be accounted for when the free energy is considered to vary with the state of solution.