Practice Patterns Among Eye Care Providers at US Teaching Hospitals With Regard to Assessing and Educating Patients About Smoking.

Purpose: To investigate practice patterns of eye care providers at academic medical centers in the United States (US) with regard to assessing patients' smoking status and exposure, educating patients regarding ocular risks of smoking, and counseling patients about smoking cessation.

Design: Cross-sectional survey.

Methods: An anonymous survey including multiple choice and Likert-style questions was constructed on http://www.

Trends in cataract surgery training curricula.

Purpose: To evaluate trends in cataract surgery training curricula and factors affecting timing of resident participation as a primary surgeon.

Setting: Pennsylvania State College of Medicine, Hershey, Pennsylvania, USA.

Design: Cross-sectional study of anonymous survey results.

Inhibition of calpain but not caspase activity by spectrin fragments.

Calpains and caspases are ubiquitous cysteine proteases that are associated with a variety of cellular pathways. Calpains are involved in processes such as long term potentiation, cell motility and apoptosis, and have been shown to cleave non-erythroid (brain) alpha- and beta-spectrin and erythroid beta-spectrin. The cleavage of erythroid alpha-spectrin by calpain has not been reported.

Association studies of erythroid alpha-spectrin at the tetramerization site.

The functional roles of residues 21-43 and 55-59 in the alpha-spectrin N-terminal region in forming tetramers were determined by the introduction of mutations at each of these positions. We measured association affinities for tetramer formation (K(d)), which can be used to predict clinical severity, of these mutants. A total of nine residues critical for association with beta-spectrin were found.