The body as object versus the body as subject: the case of disability.

This paper is prompted by the charge that the prevailing Western paradigm of medical knowledge is essentially Cartesian. Hence, illness, disease, disability, etc. are said to be conceived of in Cartesian terms.

The Japanese pilgrimage: not begun.

The modern Western hospice philosophy, with its Christian background, has tried to create a metaphorical connection between cancer patients and medieval pilgrims which implies an active attitude to an individual responsibility for pain, life and death - as one carries one's 'own cross'. This approach is not strictly relevant to Japanese people, because their culture emphasises a family or community responsibility for - and sharing of - the matter of each person's life and death, and passive acceptance of death and pain. This paper seeks to reveal the cultural differences between the Western and Japanese hospice movements in relation to the pilgrim-cancer patient metaphor, and the difficulties in bringing the Western hospice concept to Japan.

Characterization of the rad14-2 mutant of Saccharomyces cerevisiae: implications for the recognition of UV photoproducts by the Rad14 protein.

The RAD14 gene of Saccharomyces cerevisiae is required for the incision step of the nucleotide excision repair process. The Rad14 protein can bind zinc, possesses a potential zinc finger DNA binding domain and has been shown to bind specifically to damaged DNA. Differences in UV sensitivity exist between a rad14 deletion strain and a putative rad14 point mutant, the point mutant being more resistant to UV than the deletion strain.

The levels of repair of endonuclease III-sensitive sites, 6-4 photoproducts and cyclobutane pyrimidine dimers differ in a point mutant for RAD14, the Saccharomyces cerevisiae homologue of the human gene defective in XPA patients.

In the accompanying paper we demonstrated that endonuclease III-sensitive sites in the MAT alpha and HML alpha loci of Saccharomyces cerevisiae are repaired by the Nucleotide Excision Repair (NER) pathway. In the current report we investigated the repair of endonuclease III sites, 6-4 photoproducts and cyclobutane pyrimidine dimers (CPDs) in a rad14-2 point mutant and in a rad14 deletion mutant. The RAD14 gene is the yeast homologue of the human gene that complements the defect in cells from xeroderma pigmentosum (XP) patients belonging to complementation group A.

Realism and children's early grasp of mental representation: belief-based judgements in the state change task.

In a standard deceptive box procedure, children aged around 3 years typically fail to acknowledge their own prior false beliefs. For example, they judge incorrectly that they had initially thought a Smarties tube contained pencils after discovering these to be the actual content. Wimmer and Hart (1991) showed that children were more likely to answer correctly in a variant of this task known as a "state change", procedure.

Join the club: a modest proposal to increase availability of donor organs.

The shortage of suitable donor organs is the most significant single limiting factor in transplant programmes. More lives could be saved or immeasurably improved if more organs were available. I look at two traditional solutions to the shortfall, and suggest that they are ineffective and/or offensive, and consider the features common to any answer to the problem.

Properties of microfiltration membranes: Mechanisms of flux loss in the recovery of an enzyme.

The transmission and rate of filtration of the enzyme yeast alcohol dehydrogenase (YADH) has been studied at capillary pore microfiltration membranes. Photon correlation spectroscopy (PCS) with nanometer resolution showed that the enzyme existed as discreate molecules only for a narrow range of pH and ionic strength. Under such conditions, the transmission of the enzyme was high.

On the nature of auditory neglect: a reply to Hugdahl and Wester.

We respond to the points raised by Hugdahl and Wester (1994) and argue that a definition of auditory neglect must be based not on consideration of lesion location and extension but on a theoretical understanding of the mechanisms held to underlie neglect in the auditory modality. A first requirement is to describe the phenomenon that has to be explained. An ear extinction effect in dichotic listening, even considered along with the site of brain damage, does not provide sufficient justification for the effect to be attributed to "neglect.

A double-blind cross-over placebo-controlled trial of the effects of bromocriptine on psychomotor function, cognition, and mood in de novo patients with Parkinson's disease.

The effects of bromocriptine on potentially dissociable functions were investigated in this double-blind placebo-controlled trial in previously untreated Parkinsonian patients. Bromocriptine-induced reductions in response time were independent of variations in the complexity of the cognitive or motor programming components of reaction time tasks. These results suggest that bromocriptime speeds up response initiation, and it may also improve some "early" visual processes.

Adaptive finite-element approach for analysis of bone/prosthesis interaction.

The study uses the finite-element method to analyse the stress field in a perfectly bonded hip prosthesis arising from loading through body weight. Special attention is paid to the accuracy of the numerical analysis, and adaptive mesh refinement is introduced to reduce the discretisation error. The finite-element procedure developed is especially well suited to analyse the behaviour of a bonded interface as it is capable of calculating accurately the stress at the nodal positions while satisfying the natural discontinuity in the stress field at this location.

Effects of dietary fatty acids on eicosanoid-generating capacity, fatty acid composition and chemotactic activity of rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) leucocytes.

Rainbow trout, Oncorhynchus mykiss, were maintained on isocalorific diets in which either sunflower, menhaden or Fosol oils were used as the dietary source of fatty acids. At intervals over a period of 6 months, head kidney leucocytes were isolated and used for the analysis of their fatty acid composition and eicosanoid-generating capacity. Major changes in fatty acid composition were apparent within 4 weeks on the diets, with fish fed sunflower oil diets showing a 2.

Ethical issues in palliative care research.

Much has been written about the ethics of experimental research upon human subjects, particularly where such subjects can be said to be in a vulnerable position in relation to the researcher. This paper attempts to address such questions with reference to people who are dying. A case is made to defend the view that no research is morally justifiable with this client group.

DNA damage induced by the environmental carcinogen butadiene: identification of a diepoxybutane-adenine adduct and its detection by 32P-postlabelling.

To date only a few studies have been undertaken on DNA adducts formed by epoxybutene (EB) and diepoxybutane (DEB), the two active metabolites of 1,3-butadiene. Our interests have focused on further investigating DNA alkylation by the two epoxides, especially in relation to the development of a method for human biomonitoring. Here, following the reaction of deoxyadenosine monophosphate and poly(dA-dT)(dA-dT) with DEB and subsequent HPLC, we have identified an adenine adduct.

Chromatographic and mass spectrometric methods for the identification of phosphorylation sites in phosphoproteins.

The phosphorylation sites in a model phosphoprotein, alpha s1-casein from bovine milk, have been identified by tryptic peptide mapping (Gibson and Cohen, Methods Enzymol. vol. 193, p.

Magnetic susceptibility mapping of the human thorax using a SQUID biomagnetometer.

Biomagnetism is essentially the study of the weak magnetic fields generated by biological organisms, in particular the human body. The human thorax is composed of a variety of tissues and organs of slightly different magnetic susceptibility. In an applied magnetic field (of the order of milliTeslas) these small differences in susceptibility lead to measurable field variations (of the order of nanoTeslas) at the body surface which may be of diagnostic value.

Characterization of a Streptomyces-lividans-type site-specific DNA modification system in the avermectin-producer Streptomyces avermitilis permits investigation of two novel giant linear plasmids, pSA1 and pSA2.

The degradation of Streptomyces avermitilis DNA samples analysed by conventional pulsed-field gel electrophoresis was shown to be due to Tris-dependent, double-strand cleavage. Using alternative electrophoretic conditions, separation of intact DNA molecules was achieved, permitting the identification of two novel giant linear plasmids: the 100 kb pSA1 and 250 kb pSA2. Use of pSA2 DNA as a probe showed that pSA1 does not cross-hybridize, indicating that the plasmids are not closely related.

Proton-transfer reactions of mass-selected multiply charged ions.

A triple-quadrupole spectrometer has been used to study proton-transfer reactions of multiply charged ions generated by electrospray ionization. Doubly and triply charged ions generated from the peptides Arg-Lys-Glu-Val-Tyr and Met-Lys-bradykinin, respectively, were found to undergo proton-transfer reactions with ammonia molecules contained in the RF-only quadrupole collision-gas cell of the spectrometer. With horse-heart myoglobin in the source, ions having charges of 20+, 19+, 16+ and 14+ were selected in turn by the first quadrupole and their proton-transfer reactions with ammonia investigated.

Effects of chronic systemic administration of 5-HT on food intake and body weight in rats.

The effects of chronic peripheral administration of 5-HT on food intake and body weight was investigated. In normal male Wistar rats, normal female Wistars, obese Zucker males, ovariectomised Wistar females, or normal Wistar males free fed a cafeteria diet, suppression of the creeping weight gain typical of control animals is observed. In females, this effect is not dependent on the local hormonal environment, because intact and ovariectomised females showed similar responses to treatment.