A fatal case of severe methemoglobinemia presumably due to chlorate ingestion.

A fatal case due to severe methemoglobinemia is presented. A male in his forties was found unconscious in his house and, despite intensive care, death was confirmed approximately 11 hours later. Toxicological analysis using ion chromatography revealed the presence of chlorate in the stomach contents. However, chlorate was not detected in the blood, and no other drugs or ethanol were detected in the blood either. We concluded that the cause of death was presumably due to chlorate poisoning, based on the results of the autopsy and the toxicological examination.

Cascade Reactions in Quantitative Solid-State Syntheses.

100 % yield in the absence of the liquid phase: A one-pot synthesis of highly substituted pyrroles, which proceeds in solution with moderate yields, functions quantitatively in the solid-solid variant, and that at much lower temperatures, although at least four reaction steps are required. The reaction execution in the absence of liquid phases avoids product workup because of the 100 % yield and is thus resource-saving and environmentally friendly.

Searching for correlates of spatial ability.

A brief questionnaire about sense of direction and mechanical experience correlated with Mental Rotation scores. Several new, experimental measures thought to be related to spatial ability did not in fact correlate with Mental Rotation scores.

Epidemiologic studies of lung disease due to mycobacteria other than Mycobacterium tuberculosis in Japan.

The incidence of lung disease due to mycobacteria other than Mycobacterium tuberculosis (atypical mycobacteria) in Japan was estimated to be 0.9--1.9 per 10(5) population per year in 1971--1979. Although the incidence of lung tuberculosis is steadily decreasing, the incidence of lung disease due to atypical mycobacteria has remained at almost the same level. The number of patients newly infected per year in recent years was calculated to be approximately 2,000. The ratio of the number of patients with lung disease due to atypical mycobacteria to the number of patients with lung disease due to atypical mycobacteria to the number of patients with lung disease due to all species of mycobacteria was highest in hospitals on the southwest coast of the Pacific. The atypical mycobacteria that caused disease most frequently belonged to the Mycobacterium avium-intracellulare complex. Of the 537 cases of disease due to atypical mycobacteria, 491 (89.6%) were due to these organisms; 43 (8.0%), to Mycobacterium kansasii; and 7 (1.3%), to Mycobacterium fortuitum. The disease due to M. kansasii appeared most frequently in hospitals in the Tokyo and Kanagawa prefectures. Patients with lung tuberculosis had a high risk of lung infection due to M. avium-intracellulare. The incidence of such disease in tuberculous patients was estimated to be 18.7 per 10(5) population per year, a rate that is approximately 10 times that found in the general population.

Familial resemblance for the Identical Blocks Test of spatial ability: no evidence for X linkage.

The Identical Blocks Test of spatial ability was administered to subsamples of the two largest ethnic groups tested in the Hawaii Family Study of Cognition--Americans of European ancestry (171 families) and Americans of Japanese ancestry (98 families). Results of a hierarchical multiple regression analysis of family data and correlational analyses provided no evidence to support the hypothesis that spatial ability is influenced by a major, X-linked, recessive gene. Thus it appears that recent failures to replicate the sex-linkage pattern obtained by Stafford (1961) are not due to differences in the tests employed. We suggest that alternative explanations should be sought for the well-known sex difference in spatial ability.

Interrelationships of alcohol consumption, actions of alcohol, and biochemical traits.

Voluntary alcohol consumption, acute tolerance, and central nervous system (CNS) sensitivity to ethanol are potentially informative measures concerning human alcoholism. Little is understood regarding the associations among these parameters or between these traits and neurochemical processes such as brain protein or brain enzyme activities. A powerful strategy is to assess a large number of characteristics simultaneously on all individuals as a heterogeneous sample. This permits rapid screening of a large number of variables with respect to their interrelationships. Identification can thus be made of those variables that are elements of the caudal nexus, and subsequent experimental research can attack the problem of identifying mechanisms. The present study employed mice from the HS/Ibg stock which is maintained by systematic random mating to assure genetic heterogeneity. The results demonstrate that voluntary ethanol consumption and acquisition of acute tolerance to ethanol were positively associated, whereas these measures were not significantly related to CNS sensitivity to ethanol. In addition, ethanol preference was inversely related to soluble brain protein. The activities of the soluble enzymes from brain, aldehyde reductase and glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase, were not significantly associated with ethanol preference, acquisition of acute tolerance, or CNS sensitivity to ethanol. Unexpectedly, more than 30 percent of the variance in voluntary alcohol consumption could have been predicted from the measurements of acquisition of acute tolerance, and vice versa.

Mental rotations, a group test of three-dimensional spatial visualization.

A new paper-and-pencil test of spatial visualization was constructed from the figures used in the chronometric study of Shepard and Metzler (1971). In large samples, the new test displayed substantial internal consistency (Kuder-Richardson 20 = .88), a test-retest reliability (.83), and consistent sex differences over the entire range of ages investigated. Correlations with other measures indicated strong association with tests of spatial visualization and virtually no association with tests of verbal ability.

Near identity of cognitive structure in two ethnic groups.

As part of a large-scale family study in Hawaii, Americans of either Japanese or European ancestry were administered a battery of 15 cognitive tests. Principal component analyses (varimax rotations) yielded the same four major cognitive factors for each of the two ethnic groups, and these factors are defined by strikingly similar factor loadings.