[New forms of scientific communication of medical societies: thoughts on scientific collections and museums for urology]. / Neue Formen der Wissenskommunikation medizinischer Fachgesellschaften : Gedanken zu wissenschaftlichen Sammlungen und Museen für Urologie.

Collections from medical societies which are not connected with a university or another public institution cannot be legitimized on the basis of the argument of conserving historical heritage. Even the museum itself with its many tasks and classical site of scientific communication comes into public view and becomes a topic of scientific interest.

Detoxification rates of wild herbivorous woodrats (Neotoma).

The detoxification systems of mammalian herbivores are thought to have evolved in response to the ingestion of plant secondary compounds. Specialist herbivores consume high quantities of secondary compounds and are predicted to have faster rates of Phase 1 detoxification compared to generalist herbivores. We tested this hypothesis by comparing the performances of a specialist (Neotoma fuscipes) and generalist (Neotoma lepida) herbivore using hypnotic state assays. Herbivores foraging in nature were live trapped and injected with hexobarbital (100 mg/kg). We measured the length of time in the hypnotic state as the time in which the animal was unable to right itself twice in 30 s. The specialist metabolized hexobarbital 1.7 times faster than the generalist (F(1, 19) = 9.31, P = 0.007) as revealed by its significantly shorter time spent in the hypnotic state (56+/-9 min vs. 87+/-8 min, respectively). The results are consistent with the hypothesis that specialists have faster rates of Phase 1 detoxification. This is the first evaluation of the detoxification capability of mammalian herbivores foraging under natural conditions. Hypnotic state assays have broad potential applications to the study of vertebrate-plant interactions.

Discrimination of photon from proton irradiation using glow curve feature extraction and vector analysis.

Two types of thermoluminescence dosemeters (TLDs), the Harshaw LiF:Mg,Ti (TLD-100) and CaF(2):Tm (TLD-300) were investigated for their glow curve response to separate photon and proton irradiations. The TLDs were exposed to gamma irradiation from a (137)Cs source and proton irradiation using a positive ion accelerator. The glow curve peak structure for each individual TLD exposure was deconvolved to obtain peak height, width, and position. Simulated mixed-field glow curves were obtained by superposition of the experimentally obtained single field exposures. Feature vectors were composed of two kinds of features: those from deconvolution and those taken in the neighbourhood of several glow curve peaks. The inner product of the feature vectors was used to discriminate among the pure photon, pure proton and simulated mixed-field irradiations. In the pure cases, identification of radiation types is both straightforward and effective. Mixed-field discrimination did not succeed using deconvolution features, but the peak-neighbourhood features proved to discriminate reliably.

Glow curve analysis applied to the discrimination of X ray versus proton irradiation.

Three types of thermoluminescence dosemeters (TLDs): LiF:Mg,Ti (TLD-100), CaF2:Tm (TLD-300), and alpha-Al2O3:C (TLD-500), were investigated for their glow curve response to separate X ray and proton irradiations. The glow curve structure for each individual TLD's exposure to the X ray and proton irradiations was analysed and compared. Distinguishable differences between the glow curve structure characteristic of each type of radiation were observed. The proton TLD-100 glow curve has revealed a complex high-temperature peak structure that was used for the proton/X ray discrimination algorithm. Proton irradiation of TLD-300 resulted in an apparent switch in the relative heights of peaks 3 and 5 as compared to X ray. In TLD-500, proton irradiation produced a more subtle difference in the glow curve with an increase in the ratio between high- and low-temperature peaks. Results demonstrate promising differences in glow curve structure present allowing for discrimination between X ray and proton radiation field exposures.

Hearing aid electromagnetic interference from digital wireless telephones.

Several in-the-ear (ITE) and behind-the-ear (BTE) hearing aids were tested for audible interference at various distances from five types of digital wireless telephones. The interference which takes the form of a buzzing and a static sound was quantified using a calibrated system including a frequency analyzer and a pressure field microphone. The output of the each hearing aid was coupled to the microphone via Tygon tubing and a standard 2 cc coupler. The highest interference-induced sound pressure level (SPL), 122.5 dB, was measured from a BTE hearing aid placed within 2 cm of a transmitting Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) phone. In this case, interference was detected up to a separation distance of almost 3 m. While all phones tested produced a similar interference level within 2 cm of this hearing aid, interference SPL from the code division multiple access (CDMA)-based system decreased more rapidly with distance than the time division multiple access (TDMA)-based phones tested.

[Vincent Priessnitz and the Vienna Medical School]. / Vinzenz Priessnitz und die Wiener Schulmedizin.

Vinzenz Priessnitz, a small-scale farmer from Gräfenberg (Austrian Silesia), from the 1820's on aroused worldwide interest in hydrotherapy, on the basis of purely empirical observations on his regimen of compresses, head, eye and foot baths, hip baths and full baths, showers and cold-water cures. The new hydrotherapeutic impulse from Gräfenberg also influenced the Vienna Medical School. Wilhelm Winternitz, who became a lecturer in hydrotherapy in 1864, is referred to as the "father of scientific hydrotherapy".

Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis, the prophet of bacteriology.

Although by 1931 I. Ph. Semmelweis' achievements and the tragedy of his life had been given their due place in the history of mankind, Alexander Fränkel, formerly Theodor Billroth's assistant and later his biographer, critically stated that the discoverer of the causes of puerperal fever should have defended his discovery with facts rather than with fanaticism. It was only a few years after Semmelweis' death, for instance, that Billroth made laborious experiments. Billroth's work on Coccobacteria had important implications and even influenced Robert Koch, although his hypotheses did not really predict the pathogenic and specific nature of microbes. In 1847 Semmelweis postulated his theory; ie, that the pathological-anatomical changes which he observed in the bodies of the women who died in childbed, in their newborn infants, and in the autopsy findings on his friend Jakob Kolletschka were an entity, morphologically and clinically. He summed them up under the concept of pyemia. Even though Semmelweis was continually abhorred by the evident statistics and would have been able to prove his discovery through animal experiments, he primarily took to the pen to defend his opinion vehemently. Only the clinical facts proved him right during his lifetime; the triumph of bacteriology which began after his death made him not only the "savior of mothers" but also a genial ancestor of bacteriology.