Physiological equivalence of normobaric and hypobaric exposures of humans to 25,000 feet (7620 m).

Introduction: Skepticism exists about whether normobaric and hypobaric hypoxic exposures are equivalent. We have evaluated if physiological differences between the two environments would translate into actual differences in hypoxia symptoms.

Methods: We exposed 20 subjects to 5-min 25,000-ft (7620-m) equivalent environments in an altitude chami ber and then in a ground-level portable reduced-oxygen training enclosure (PROTE).

Improved real-time puff-by-puff GC-MS system for whole smoke analysis.

An automated puff-by-puff mainstream smoke (MSS) system is developed to monitor real-time whole smoke in mainstream cigarette smoke using gas chromatography (GC)-mass spectrometry (MS). The whole-smoke analysis is based on automated sample collection and injection into the GC-MS system. The important feature of this system is the real-time rapid analysis that is simple, sensitive, precise, flexible, and exhibits low carryover of volatile and semivolatile smoke constituents.