[Impact of Shahal (Cardiac Emergency Services) on daily life of subscribers].

SHAHAL (Cardiac Emergency Services) provides professional 24-hour mobile emergency medical service monitored by intensive care nurses via a central computerized operations unit. All subscribers carry a "cardiobeeper" for transtelephonic transmission of a 3-lead electrocardiogram, and an automatic intramuscular self-injector containing 300 mg lidocaine. In this retrospective study we assessed the impact of SHAHAL on subscribers' mental stress, self-confidence and ultimately, quality of life. Answers to a written questionnaire (n = 1034) and a personal interview (n = 55) were analyzed. It was shown that SHAHAL is effective in decreasing mental stress and improving self-confidence in the majority of subscribers. It was especially beneficial in women, the elderly, those of lower socioeconomic status, pessimists and chronic worriers, and the ill more than the healthy. Those whose functional capacities were very limited benefited less, but for them SHAHAL's function as a life-saving and rescue system is more valuable. Lastly, subscription to SHAHAL also improved the self-confidence of the subscriber's family.

Temporal structure model of binaural masking level difference.

It is shown that a simple cross-correlation model is not adequate to explain both binaural masking level difference (MLD) and spatial selective attention. The reason is that for a low-intensity signal in NoS(pi) condition the maximal activity in the binaural analyzer as a function of interaural delay in single spectral channel is independent of signal intensity. On the other hand, if detection ability is associated with the isolation of tonically firing units, MLD is simply explained as the increase in firing synchronization as a function of the signal's interaural phase difference (IPD). Quantitatively results are presented based on numerical solutions of the model.

Implementing receptive fields with excitatory and inhibitory optoelectrical responses of bacteriorhodopsin films.

The sign of the optoelectrical response of bacteriorhodopsin is highlighted as a means to emulate excitation and inhibition in neural computation. A classic example of a neural computation that is based on such excitation and inhibition is chosen to highlight the unique applicability of bacteriorhodopsin in highly parallel computational schemes. The classic example chosen is that of the ganglion receptive field, which is a fundamental element in retinal edge detection. Dried bacteriorhodopsin films are constructed that effectively act as receptive fields because of the sign of their photoresponse. The results on these simple bacteriorhodopsin receptive fields are extended to schemes that incorporate with greater elegance this unique ability of bacteriorhodopsin to exhibit excitation and inhibition. Experiments are presented that test some of these advanced ideas in bacteriorhodopsin parallel computation.

Bacteriorhodopsin oriented in polyvinyl alcohol films as an erasable optical storage medium.

Films of oriented bacteriorhodopsin have been formed in polyvinyl alcohol with excellent optical quality. Images with high contrast have been impressed and erased on these films. Second-harmonic microscopy has been used to read the image on a bacteriorhodopsin-polyvinyl alcohol film without erasure. The potential of these films for molecular information storage and computation is discussed.

The storage and recall of auditory memory.

The architecture of the auditory memory is investigated. The auditory information is assumed to be represented by f-t patterns. With the help of a psycho-physical experiment it is demonstrated that the storage of these patterns is highly folded in the sense that a long signal is broken into many short stretches before being stored in the memory. Recognition takes place by correlating newly heard input in the short term memory to information previously stored in the long term memory. We show that this correlation is performed after the input is accumulated and held statically in the short term memory.

Saturable absorption, wave mixing, and phase conjugation with bacteriorhodopsin.

Bacteriorhodopsin exhibits strong nonlinear and saturation behavior with very low light intensities (~10 mW/cm(2)). A model and an experimental study of the saturation are described. Four-wave mixing experiments are used for obtaining phase conjugation and information on the holographic resolution of the material. Two kinds of samples were prepared and used in the experiments: films of bacteriorhodopsin in a solid polyvinylalcohol (polymer) matrix and in water.

Recall of associated memories.

A mechanism of serial association in the brain is discussed. The passage from one state to another is assumed to be effected by a control operated by the thalamus on the cortex. Memory failure mechanisms are discussed, such as insufficient imprint, as well as Freudian failure phenomena.