"We are all in this together": integrated health service plans in Ontario.

Ontario's 14 Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs) produced their first major deliverable when they issued their integrated health service plans in October 2006. This article reviews the experience of LHINs in meeting this challenge, outlines the process and outcome dimensions of the plans and discusses eight opportunities for LHINs as they act on the basis of their plans.

Physician assistants: education, practice and global interest.

Background: In the United States, the physician assistant (PA) model has proven to be a cost-effective way to train quality primary care providers with a high degree of acceptance of the PA role by patients and other healthcare providers.

Aim: Discuss PA model as it pertains to other countries.

Methods: Review of relevant literature related to physician assistant education, practice and global interest.

Partial pressure of gases dissolved at great depth.

Thermodynamic considerations have been applied to data showing that the solubilities of oxygen, carbon dioxide, and helium in water decrease with increasing pressure and depth. When water is saturated with a given gas at 1 atmosphere absolute, the equilibrium partial pressure of the gas at any depth is equal to the partial pressure of that gas if it were contained in a gas column extending from the surface to that particular depth.

Pressure sensitivity of streptococcal growth in relation to catabolism.

The sensitivity of Streptococcus faecalis growth to hydrostatic pressures ranging up to 550 atm was found to depend on the source of adenosine triphosphate for growth. Barotolerance of cultures growing in a complex medium with ribose as major catabolite appeared to be determined primarily by the pressure sensitivity of ribose-degrading enzymes. Apparent activation volumes for growth were nearly identical to those for lactate production from ribose, and yield coefficients per mole of ribose degraded were relatively independent of pressure.

Growth of Streptococcus faecalis under high hydrostatic pressure and high partial pressures of inert gases.

Growth of Streptococcus faecalis in a complex medium was inhibited by xenon, nitrous oxide, argon, and nitrogen at gas pressures of 41 atm or less. The order of inhibitory potency was: xenon and nitrous oxide > argon > nitrogen. Helium appeared to be impotent.

Oxygen poisoning in Drosophila.

Fruit flies live longer at the partial pressure of oxygen found in air than at either larger or smaller partial pressures. Flies exposed to 1 atm of oxygen for 8 hr every day do not recover completely in the remaining 16 hr. In general, intermittent exposures to 1 atm of oxygen are better tolerated than continuous exposure to the same average oxygen concentration per day, but exposures to higher pressures of 2-5 atm of oxygen for as little as a half hour every two days markedly shorten the life-span.

Interactions of oxygen at high pressure and radiation in Drosophila.

Oxygen at high pressure (OHP) and X-irradiation can interact in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster to potentiate toxic actions characteristic of one agent alone. 1000 kvp X-irradiation in doses of 30, 60, and 75 kr accelerated the acute immobilization of young male Drosophila by oxygen at 7.8 atm, up to rates twice that observed with such oxygen pressure alone.