A diagnostic to measure neutral-atom density in fusion-research plasmas.

A femtosecond two-photon-absorption laser-induced-fluorescence (TALIF) diagnostic was designed, installed, and operated on the Princeton-Field-Reversed Configuration-2 device to provide non-invasive measurements of the time and spatially resolved neutral-atom densities in its plasmas. Calibration of the Ho density was accomplished by comparison with Kr TALIF. Measurements on plasmas formed of either H2 or Kr fill gases allowed examination of nominally long and short ionization mean-free-path regimes. With multi-kW plasma heating and H2 fill gas, a spatially uniform Ho density of order 1017 m-3 was measured with better than ±2 mm and 10 µs resolution. Under similar plasma conditions but with Kr fill gas, a 3-fold decrease in the in-plasma Kr density was observed.

Evaluation of a collisional radiative model for electron temperature determination in hydrogen plasma.

A collisional-radiative (CR) model that extracts the electron temperature, Te, of hydrogen plasmas from Balmer-line-ratio measurements is examined for the plasma electron density, ne, and Te ranges of 1010-1015 cm-3 and 5-500 eV, respectively. The CR code, developed and implemented in Python, has a forward component that computes the densities of excited states up to n = 15 as functions of Te, ne, and the molecular-to-atomic neutral ratio r(H2/H). The backward component provides ne and r(H2/H) as functions of the Balmer ratios to predict the Te. The model assumes Maxwellian electrons. The density profiles of the electrons and of the molecular and atomic hydrogen neutrals are shown to be of great importance, as is the accuracy of the line-ratio measurement method.

Adrenal Hormone and Metabolic Biomarker Responses to 30 min of Intermittent Cycling Exercise in Breast Cancer Survivors.

The aim of this study was to explore the effect of one bout of aerobic exercise on epinephrine, norepinephrine, cortisol, glucose, lactate, and free fatty acid (FFA) responses in breast cancer survivors and healthy controls. 9 female breast cancer survivors and 9 women without a history of cancer completed 30 min of cycle ergometry exercise at 60% of VO2peak. Blood samples were taken pre-exercise, immediately post-exercise, and 2 h post-exercise from which plasma concentrations of study variables were measured. Immediately and 2 h post-exercise, increases were observed in epinephrine (control group only) norepinephrine (both groups), lactate (both groups), and FFA (both groups immediately post-exercise; breast cancer survivor group only at 2 h post-exercise) (p<0.05). Cortisol decreased immediately and 2 h post-exercise in the control group while glucose decreased immediately post-exercise in the breast cancer survivor group (p<0.05). In conclusion, breast cancer survivors appeared to display attenuated epinephrine, cortisol, and lactate responses while displaying larger magnitude changes in glucose and FFA responses compared to controls. These preliminary findings may have implications for the regulation of metabolism during exercise in breast cancer survivors.

Intensity-modulated radiation therapy for children with intraocular retinoblastoma: potential sparing of the bony orbit.

AIMS: We have evaluated the potential for intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) to reduce dose to surrounding normal tissues in children with retinoblastoma confined to the globe of the eye. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Treatment planning computed tomography (CT) scans from five children were used for comparison of four radiotherapy techniques to treat the eye. IMRT, conformal, anterior-lateral photon and en face electron plans were generated using the Corvus (NOMOS) and PLUNC treatment planning systems. Doses to surrounding critical structures were compared after normalisation of target coverage. RESULTS: The IMRT treatment technique allowed the greatest sparing of the surrounding bony orbit, with an average of 60% of the ipsilateral bony orbit treated above 20 Gy and 48% treated above 24 Gy when 45 Gy is prescribed to the globe. IMRT techniques reduced dose to the surrounding bony orbit by more than one-third compared with anterior-lateral photon and electron techniques, and by 23% compared with conformal techniques. The application of IMRT also reduced dose to other surrounding normal tissues, including the temporal lobe and contralateral orbit. CONCLUSION: IMRT shows potential for protecting normal tissues in patients requiring external beam radiation therapy for retinoblastoma.

Effect of parasitism with Ostertagia circumcincta on pharmacokinetics of fenbendazole in sheep.

Plasma and abomasal fluid concentrations of fenbendazole and its two major metabolites in sheep experimentally infected with Ostertagia circumcincta were compared with those in the same sheep when non-parasitised. Bio-availability of the drug was reduced in the parasitised state. There was also a reduction in the proportion of drug present in the form of metabolites in parasitised as compared with non-parasitised animals.

A re-assessment of the effect of thyrotrophin (TSH) on the tibial plate bioassay for growth hormone (GH).

The claim has been made that thyrotrophin (TSH) can augment the action of growth hormone (GH) to stimulate growth of the epiphysial cartilage plate of the hypophysectomized rat's tibia. The TSH induces its effect via secretion of thyroid hormones which in turn enhance the stimulatory action of GH. If this is true then the employment of the tibia test, whose endpoint is the increase in thickness of the epiphysial cartilage plate in response to GH present either in crude pituitary extracts or relatively purified preparations, which also are likely to contain modest or appreciable quantities of TSH, requires further examination. The present study utilized various fractions of crude pituitary extracts from intact and thyroidectomized rats that respectively contained appreciable quantities of GH or essentially no GH. Fractional aliquots of pituitary extracts from thyroidectomized rats were administered concomitantly with graded doses of exogenous GH to hypophysectomized rats to determine the point at which TSH in the extracts was sufficiently able to stimulate significant tibial plate growth when compared to recipients given GH alone. Purified GH and TSH were also administered in various doses to hypophysectomized recipients in a further attempt to delineate the dose range at which TSH augments the action of GH to promote significant chondrogenesis of the epiphysial plate. The results indicate that the enhancement of the GH effect on the cartilage plate by TSH was evident only when quantities above 100 microng bovine GH were co-administered with 100 mU bovine TSH. As little as 40 mU TSH augmented the growth effect of 400 microng GH on the cartilage plate, demonstrating that smaller quantities of TSH could potentiate larger quantities of GH. These data, therefore, suggest that extracts equivalent to not more than one-half of a normal adult rat's anterior pituitary gland should be administered to hypophysectomized rats for bioassay of GH. Fractions of glands greater than this may contain sufficient amounts of TSH to augment the appreciable quantities of GH already present.

Diatom diversity as a function of insecticidal treatment with a controlled-release formulation of chlorpyrifos.

Following treatment with a controlled-release formulation of chlorpyrifos, no substantial differences between diversity estimates were evident for 6 post-treatment weeks for both treated and control plots. By post-treatment week 12, significant decreases in diversity estimates occurred in treated plots, suggesting that a directly proportional relationship exists between chlorpyrifos concentrations and reduced diatom colonization through time. Comparatively, diatom colonization progress "normally" and populations proceeded toward "maturity" in the control plots as indicated by the increase in the diversity estimates between post-treatment weeks 6 and 12. Any adverse effects due to the insecticidal treatment, however, were not considered to be environmentally deleterious in light of the restricted type of habitat (rice culture) in which the chlorpyrifos was used.

Inconsistency of the tibia test for estimating growth hormone in crude pituitary extracts.

The complement fixation immunoassay (CFIA) was used for quantitating growth hormone (GH) in crude anterior pituitary extracts from rats subjected to thyroidectomy with or without cortisol and exogenous GH administration. The results obtained from this study were compared with pertinent bioassay (tibia test) results or correlated with the pituitary acidophil cell counts. Whereas it has been reported that pituitary GH levels are normal by the tibia test at 2 weeks after thyroidectomy, the highly specific CFIA method showed an actual 87% decrement which correlated well with the reduction in acidophilis. In addition, the apparently normal content of GH after cortisol administration to thyroidectomized rats, as measured by the tibia test, was contradictory to the very low acidophil population and to the marked reduction in pituitary GH content as measured by the CFIA. Furthermore, theoretical tibia responses illustrate the inconsistency of the bioassay in different experimental conditions. If, as previously suggested, the content of thyrotrophin (TSH) in the crude pituitary extracts renders the bioassay of GH a dubious procedure, then the superiority of immunoassay is obvious.