Fires and burns during plastic surgery.

Many plastic surgery procedures are performed under local anethesia. When the procedure involves the head and neck, oxygen is perilously close to the surgical field. A thorough understanding of the fire triangle will allow the plastic surgeon to develop a routine that will avoid any risk of fire. The fire triangle consists of a heat source, a fuel, and an oxidizer. By removing one component of the fire triangle, the risk of fire is averted. An in-depth look at each component is needed because fire hazards involve some surprising sources.

Longitudinal growth study of Tasmanian children, 1967-1983. The 13-, 14- and 15-year-old girls.

This study updates the heights and weights of sexually mature and immature girls aged 13, 14 and 15 years in the Tasmanian Longitudinal Growth Study. Problems arose when their heights and weights were plotted on the NHMRC standard distributions (1970-1972 NSW percentiles) in order to assess whether or not they were normal. The current NHMRC standards are not adequate for adolescent girls and should be replaced by separate charts for mature and immature girls, respectively.

Comparative study over a 12 year period of the weights of Tasmanian children from birth to 3 years of age.

Comparisons of weight data obtained from surveys of Tasmanian children born in 1967-68, 1974 and 1979 suggest no change in birthweights but a significant decrease in weights at 1 year of age over this period. Evidence is presented to show that an observed increase in the incidence and duration of breastfeeding over the period may account for part of the decline in these weights but that other factors must also be involved. By 3 years of age there was very little difference between the weight distributions over the 12 year period.

Model for bacterial culture growth rate throughout the entire biokinetic temperature range.

The "square-root" relationship proposed by Ratkowsky et al. (J. Bacteriol. 149:1-5, 1982) for modeling the growth rate of bacteria below the optimum growth temperature was extended to cover the full biokinetic temperature range. Two of the four parameters of this new nonlinear regression model represent minimum and maximum temperature bounds, respectively, for the predicted growth of the culture. The new model is easy to fit and has other desirable statistical properties. For example, the least-squares estimators of the parameters of the model were almost unbiased and normally distributed. The model applied without exception to all bacterial cultures for which we were able to obtain data. Results for 30 strains are reported.

Longitudinal growth study of tasmanian children. The ten-year-olds.

The data obtained at the 10-year examination of children in a longitudinal growth study are presented. The heights and weights of children appear to be comparable with those of children in other regions, but certain ethnic, social and economic factors as well as elapsed time have to be considered. From the percentages of overweight boys and girls at each of various years of the child's development--namely, birth, one year, three years, seven years and 10 years--it is shown that there is no one period in which children are likely to become overweight. Birth weight was found to be of minor importance in determining a child's weight at 10 years of age. Many children have wrong concepts about their own weight status.