The Body's Cellular and Molecular Response to Protein-Coated Medical Device Implants: A Review Focused on Fibronectin and BMP Proteins.

Recent years have seen a marked rise in implantation into the body of a great variety of devices: hip, knee, and shoulder replacements, pacemakers, meshes, glucose sensors, and many others. Cochlear and retinal implants are being developed to restore hearing and sight. After surgery to implant a device, adjacent cells interact with the implant and release molecular signals that result in attraction, infiltration of the tissue, and attachment to the implant of various cell types including monocytes, macrophages, and platelets.

Promoting measurement-based care and quality measure development: The APA mental and behavioral health registry initiative.

Measurement-based care has important implications across multiple avenues in mental and behavioral health care, including clinical care, quality improvement, and accountability. Using measurement-based care to demonstrate that quality care is being provided within the context of cost-efficient care could strengthen the position of mental and behavioral health providers as critical members of the health care system. Yet when measurement-based care is used to assess performance of providers, and then that performance influences reimbursement, it must be done with great care and deliberation so as not to result in unintended consequences such as punishing providers.

Norine G. Johnson (1935-2011).

On November 19, 2011, Norine G. Johnson, the ninth woman to serve as president of the American Psychological Association (APA), lost a valiant battle with cancer. Norine's curiosity about her grandmother's strength led to much of her later work on the development of strength and resiliency in adolescent girls and in women.

Psychology practice: design for tomorrow.

This article offers a blueprint for modernizing the delivery of high-quality behavioral health care and for improving access to care by a public sorely in need of psychological services. The blueprint brings together disparate elements of psychology practice into a more unified structure, an updated house, based upon advances in the essential building blocks: evidence-based practice, treatment guidelines, technology, classifications of function, diagnostic systems, outcomes measurement, and integrated health care. The goal is twofold: to make psychological services more accessible to the public and to position psychology for an increasingly major role in health care in order to serve the public weal in diverse communities.

Clarification and elaboration on evidence-based practice in psychology.

Responds to comments by D. C. Wendt and B.

Did the first virus self-assemble from self-replicating prion proteins and RNA?

DNA is the molecule responsible for storing and processing genetic information today. In Earth's primeval environmental conditions, RNA was probably more suited for this function, due to its capability to act also as a catalytic enzyme. Some proteins are stable and reliable molecules even in extreme conditions, and under certain circumstances, proteins may play a role in transmitting certain phenotypes that are inherited in a non-Mendelian manner.

The effect of fibronectin and a bone xenograft on regenerative treatment: a feasibility study.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the ability of fibronectin to augment the regenerative effects of a bovine-derived xenograft in human periodontal defects. Using a parallel arm, randomized double-blind design, 24 patients with an intrabony defect or a Class II furcation defect were randomly assigned to either the experimental group (xenograft plus fibronectin) or the control group (xenograft without fibronectin). Probing attachment level, pocket depth, and gingival recession were measured at baseline and at 12 months after surgery.

The role of fibronectin in tumor implantation at surgical sites.

Fibronectins are a family of glycoproteins with modular functional domains. They mediate cell-cell and cell-matrix interactions which are important in embryogenesis, wound healing, metastasis and other processes. We present data on the influence of fibronectin on wound implantation of a murine mammary carcinoma line, TA3Ha.

Effects of butylated hydroxyanisole in Drosophila melanogaster.

The standard sex-linked recessive lethal test using "Basc" virgin females and treated Canton S males was used to test potential mutagenicity of ingested butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) on mature spermatozoa. Ethyl methanesulfonate (EMS) was employed as a positive control and at lower concentrations a roughly linear dose response curve resulted. Flies treated with BHA yielded no higher frequency of sex-linked recessive lethals than did control flies, and statistical analysis confirmed that a high confidence level, the BHA treatment used did not double the spontaneous frequency of sex-linked recessive lethals.

Growth of murine cytomegalovirus in a heterologous cell system and its enhancement by 5-iodo-2'-deoxyuridine.

Mouse cytomegalovirus replicated in rabbit kidney cultures, a cell system of nonrodent origin. However, the sensitivity of these cultures, and the yields of virus therefrom, were lower than those of mouse cultures. Although a cytopathic effect developed in rabbit kidney cultures inoculated with sufficient amounts of the virus, such cultures were unsatisfactory for plaque assay.

Concentration of oncogenic herpesviruses by methyl alcohol precipitation.

Oncogenic herpesviruses, like many other viruses, can be concentrated effectively from large volumes of culture fluids by precipitation with methanol with good recovery of infectivity.

Equine herpesviruses: antigenic relationships and deoxyribonucleic acid densities.

Equine herpesviruses with a deoxyribonucleic acid density of 1.716 to 1.717 g/cm(3) were compared with one another by the plaque-reduction test and by the rate of development of cytopathic effect as indicated by plaque size in rabbit kidney cultures.

Plating efficiency for primary hamster embryo cells as an index of efficacy of fetal bovne serum for cell culture.

Attachment and growth of mammalian cells plated at low cell density require optimum conditions for the cells to form colonies. Reliability, reproducibility, and validity of the plating efficiency test for evaluating cell culture sera were determined by measuring the plating efficiency of 37 lots of fetal bovine serum obtained from 8 suppliers (5 lots from each of 7, 2 lots from 1 supplier), by using hamster embryo fibroblasts plated at low cell density. The test revealed considerable variation between lots of serum and between suppliers.