Preliminary report on AED deployment on the entire Air France commercial fleet: a joint venture with Paris XII University Training Programme.

The positive effect of early defibrillation on survival from cardiac arrest has been demonstrated. We describe the use of AEDs over 1 year following the training of flight attendants. Air France and the University of Paris XII together designed a 1 year training programme for 14000 flight attendants. The university emergency departments (SAMU) provided 250 instructors. AEDs training and certification was conducted for crew members between November 2001 and November 2002. By January 2003, all aircraft were fully equipped with AEDs. All cases of cardiac arrest that occurred during the study were reviewed comprehensively. Comments from the crew were collected. Twelve cardiac arrests were reported between November 2002 and November 2003 out of 4194 cases of emergency care delivered to passengers. Shock treatment was advised initially in 5/12 cases. The survival rate after in-flight cardiac arrest was 3/12. The survival rate at discharge from hospital following in flight shock was 2/5. No complications arose from the use of AEDs. Training by professionals gave the flight attendants confidence and allowed for the survival of two young passengers. Our study highlights the ability of flight attendants to give better onboard care for the future. The next step is to consolidate the network between in-flight care and the medical dispatch centre in Paris.

Temperature dependence of dielectric relaxations in alpha-elastin coacervate: evidence for a peptide librational mode.

The dielectric permittivity of alpha-elastin coacervate is reported over the frequency range of 1 MHz to 1000 MHz and the temperature dependence from 6.8 degrees C to 70 degrees C is also reported. A temperature-dependent simple Debye-type relaxation is observed with a correlation time of 8 nsec (40 degrees C) which is similar to that of the polypentapeptide of elastin (i.e. 7 nsec at 40 degrees C) where the band has been assigned to a peptide librational mode. By analogy this allows for the first assignment of a peptide librational mode in a naturally occurring polypeptide or protein. The strong spectrally localized band indicates a regularity of structure. The low temperature dependence of the correlation time, giving a 1.7 kcal/mole enthalpy of activation, is consistent with torsional motions associated with a peptide librational mode.

Optical activity and electronic absorption spectra of some simple nucleosides related to cytidine and uridine: all-valence-shell molecular orbital calculations.

The circular dichroism and electronic absorption of three simple model systems for cytidine and uridine have been measured to 190 nm. The molecular spectral properties (excitation wavelengths, oscillator strengths, rotational strengths, and polarization directions) and electronic transitional patterns were investigated by using wave functions of the entire nucleoside with the goal of establishing the reliability of the theoretical method. The computed electronic absorption quantities were shown to be in satisfactory agreement with experimental data. It was found that the computed optical rotatory strengths of the B2u and E1u electronic transitions and lowest observed n-pi transition are in good agreement with experimental values. Electronic transitions were characterized by their electronic transitional patterns derived from population analysis of the transition density matrix. The theoretical rotational strengths associated with the B2u and E1u transitions stabilize after the use of just a few singly excited configurations in the configuration interaction basis and, hypothetically, are more reliable as indicators of conformation in pyrimidine nucleosides related to cytidine.

A theory of distortion of the reaction zone.

A cylindrical detonating explosive behaves like a non-Newtonian viscous fluid emerging from a cylindrical pipe. The expression for non-Newtonian viscous flow has been applied to detonating explosives. The resultant fit to emerging flame fronts from detonation is excellent for a wide variety of detonating explosives both for transients (at various times) and for steady state. The quantities k'(lambda/lambda(1))(2/B) and 1/B and the rate constant k' increase abruptly at a time supporting a change in mechanism from deflagration to detonation in the transient during initiation. All of these parameters are temperature sensitive, indicating an abrupt temperature increase as a condition or indicator in the deflagration-to-detonation transition. Furthermore, a straight line results when log particle velocity u is plotted against log radial distance r, indicating that, for the explosives studied, the hyperbolic cosine wave front can be replaced by a parabolic wave front within the accuracy of the available experimental data.

Density matrix method for orbital localization.

A method is presented for localizing molecular orbitals, based on diagonalizing subunits of the density matrix. First, nonbonding orbitals are found by diagonalizing the monatomic subunits; then, diatomic sigma or pi bonding and antibonding orbitals are obtained from the diatomic subunits for all bonded pairs of atoms; finally, the delocalized pi-orbitals for particular chromophores are found by projecting the first set out of the self-consistent field (SCF) Hamiltonian. The results show good general agreement with other localization methods, with advantages in the ability to display group orbitals in complex molecules which most closely resemble the SCF orbitals for simple prototypes.

Theoretical studies of the conformational properties of ribavirin.

One of the factors required for the antiviral activity of the synthetic nucleoside, ribavirin (1-beta-D-ribofuranosyl-1,2,4-triazole-3-carboxamide), is the ability of the molecule to adopt the substrate conformation specified by the enzyme for which it is a competitive inhibitor, inosine 5'-phosphate dehydrogenase (IMP:NAD+ oxidoreductase, EC 1.2.1.14). The calculated glycosidic minimum for ribavirin is the high syn conformation, which is in agreement with experimental determinations of the molecule's solution conformation. The similarity in solution between the conformation of the active ribavirin molecule and the conformation of its inactive 5-methyl and 5-chloro derivatives indicate that some other substrate conformation is specified by the enzyme. The high anti conformation, found by these calculations to be close in energy to the high syn minimum, is postulated to be the active conformation required by the enzyme. The inactivity of the 5-methyl and 5-chloro derivatives is attributed to the much greater stability of these derivatives in the inactive high syn conformation.

Comparative study by circular dichroism of the conformation of deazapurine nucleosides and that of common purine nucleosides.

Purine nucleoside analogs modified by replacement of the nitrogen atom at the 3 position by a CH group give a characteristic circular dichroism curve that is not substantially modified by chemical substitution at the 8 position. Since it is rather well established that 8-substituted purine nucleosides are predominantly in the syn conformation in aqueous solution, it follows that the 3-deazapurine nucleosides, whether substituted at position 8 or not, also favor the syn conformation. These data are in sharp contrast to the circular dichroism data obtained on 8-halogenated and 8-alkylated derivatives of adenosine and guanosine, which give circular dichroism profiles substantially different from those obtained on the parent compounds. Certain purine-nucleoside-utilizing enzymes fail to interact effectively with either the unsubstituted 3-deaza analogs or the 8-substituted derivatives of adenosine and guanosine. The hypothesis recently given that the inactivity of the 8-substituted derivatives springs from their syn-conformational preference is tentatively accepted to explain the inactivity of the 3-deaza analogs.