One-person family therapy: a modality of brief strategic family therapy.

The One-Person Family Therapy approach to the treatment of drug abuse described here is based on the Brief Strategic Family Therapy conceptual framework. It represents an innovative integration of family therapy techniques that have proven effective in working with entire families and techniques specifically designed for use with one family member. OPFT appears to be as effective as conjoint family therapy with adolescent drug abusers and their families. It thus provides skilled family therapists (generally master's-level social workers and psychologists with training and experience in structural family therapy) with a novel and useful tool for carrying out family therapy, while minimizing the problem of retaining entire families in therapy. Further work should concentrate on improving our ability to engage families of drug-abusing adolescents in the therapy process, generalizing results to other types of samples, learning more about using an OP who is not also the identified patient, exploring the possibility of switching OPs, exploring the use of spaced followup therapy, and integrating OPFT and CFT sessions more fully. However, it is clear that OPFT is a practical, cost-effective, field-oriented intervention for use with drug-abusing adolescents.

Proconvulsant effect of morphine on seizures induced by pentylenetetrazol in the rat.

The chemoconvulsant pentylenetetrazol (PTZ) was administered by a variety of routes to rats pretreated with morphine (10-50 mg/kg s.c.). In a naloxone-reversible, dose-dependent manner, morphine decreased the threshold for seizures induced by the slow intravenous infusion of PTZ. In addition, morphine increased the severity of seizures induced by the intravenous, intraperitoneal, and subcutaneous routes of administration of PTZ. Morphine also caused an increased incidence of multiple seizures following subcutaneous administration of PTZ. These results demonstrate that morphine has a proconvulsant effect on PTZ-induced seizures in the rat.

Prospectively gated cardiac computed tomography.

A fourth-generation scanner has been modified to perform prospectively gated cardiac computed tomography (CT). A computer program monitors the electrocardiogram (ECG) and predicts when to initiate the next scan in a gated series in order to acquire all projection data for a desired phase of the heart cycle. The system has been tested with dogs and has produced cross-sectional images of all phases of the cardiac cycle. Eight to ten scans per series were sufficient to obtain reproducible images of each transverse section in the end-diastolic and end-systolic phases. The radiation dose to the skin was approximately 1.4 cGy per scan. The prospectively gated system is more than twice as efficient as a retrospectively gated system in obtaining complete angular projection data for a 10% heart cycle window. A temporal smoothing technique to suppress reconstruction artifacts due to sorting inconsistent projection data was developed and evaluated. Image noise was reduced by averaging together any overlapping projection data. Prospectively gated cardiac CT has also been used to demonstrate that the error in attenuation measured with a single nongated CT scan through the heart can be as large as 50-60 CT numbers outside the heart in the lung field.

Morphine potentiates seizures induced by GABA antagonists and attenuates seizures induced by electroshock in the rat.

In a naloxone-reversible, dose-dependent manner, morphine (10-50 mg/kg i.p.) protected against seizures induced by maximal electroshock and increased the incidence and severity of seizures induced by bicuculline, in rats. Morphine also potentiated seizures induced by isoniazid and by picrotoxin. Thus, opiate activity influences the expression of seizures in contrasting ways depending upon the mode of seizure induction. Since morphine consistently potentiated seizures induced by interference with GABA transmission, it appears that GABAergic systems may be of particular significance for the elucidation of the varied effects of morphine on seizure susceptibility.

High performance at new FIR wavelengths from optically pumped CH(2)F(2).

A parametric study to clarify efficiency limiting mechanisms and to maximize the performance of the CH(2)F(2) laser has led to the discovery of five new CO(2) pump lines and ten new FIR laser lines. The wavelengths of the new lines fill a previous gap in the spectrum of strong cw FIR laser lines. With appropriate cavity design, measured conversion efficiencies exceed 30% of the maximum theoretical limit. Optimization of the output coupling for the strongest line at lambda = 184.6 microm has doubled the maximum output power from the identical system using the lambda = 118.8-microum line of CH(3)OH. The exceptionally high conversion efficiency (33%) occurring at the highest-available CO(2) pump power indicates that the limits on scaling to higher output powers have not yet been reached. The results confirm the high-performance capability of the CH(2)F(2) laser, the strongest cw optically pumped FIR laser reported to date.

Far infrared imagery.

Active imaging experiments are described in the 300 microm-l mm-region of the far infrared (FIR) spectrum. Transmission data are presented for a wide variety of common materials indicating the range of applicability of FIR imaging to law enforcement or nondestructive testing. The FIR images of several objects are presented, and the practicality of FIR imaging is discussed in light of straightforward improvements that can be made in the simple imaging system employed in these studies.