Little is known about the number of minors enrolled in clinical research today. IRB administrators at leading pediatric medical centers were surveyed regarding studies with minors. Analyses were descriptive in nature with adaptive Bayesian bootstrap imputation used with missing data. Officials from 17/41 (41.5%) pediatric research centers responded: 74,204 active studies were estimated, 29,078 (39%) included minors, and 6574 (23%) were “more than minimal risk.” Minors accounted for 0.7–2.87M research subjects. Pediatric medicine desperately needs a more accurate and reliable reporting system for tracking the recruitment, retention, and involvement of minors in clinical research.

Emotion regulation dysfunction is characteristic of psychotic disorders, but little is known about how the use of specific types of emotion regulation strategies differs across phases of psychotic illness. This information is vital for understanding factors contributing to psychosis vulnerability states and developing targeted treatments. Three studies were conducted to examine emotion regulation across phases of psychosis, which included (a) adolescent community members with psychotic-like experiences (PLEs; n = 262) and adolescents without PLEs (n = 1,226); (b) adolescents who met clinical high-risk criteria for a prodromal syndrome (n = 29) and healthy controls (n = 29); and (c) outpatients diagnosed with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder (SZ; n = 61) and healthy controls (n = 67). In each study, participants completed the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire and measures of psychiatric symptoms and functional outcome. The three psychosis groups did not differ from each other in reported use of suppression; however, there was evidence for a vulnerability-related, dose-dependent decrease in reappraisal. Across each sample, a lower use of reappraisal was associated with poorer clinical outcomes. Findings indicate that emotion regulation abnormalities occur across a continuum of psychosis vulnerability and represent important targets for intervention.

The objective of the present study was to compare the performance of seven different, widely applied crop models in predicting heat and drought stress effects. The study was part of a recent suite of model inter-comparisons initiated at European level and constitutes a component that has been lacking in the analysis of sources of uncertainties in crop models used to study the impacts of climate change. There was a specific focus on the sensitivity of models for winter wheat and maize to extreme weather conditions (heat and drought) during the short but critical period of 2 weeks after the start of flowering. Two locations in Austria, representing different agro-climatic zones and soil conditions, were included in the simulations over 2 years, 2003 and 2004, exhibiting contrasting weather conditions. In addition, soil management was modified at both sites by following either ploughing or minimum tillage. Since no comprehensive field experimental data sets were available, a relative comparison of simulated grain yields and soil moisture contents under defined weather scenarios with modified temperatures and precipitation was performed for a 2-week period after flowering. The results may help to reduce the uncertainty of simulated crop yields to extreme weather conditions through better understanding of the models’ behaviour. Although the crop models considered (DSSAT, EPIC, WOFOST, AQUACROP, FASSET, HERMES and CROPSYST) mostly showed similar trends in simulated grain yields for the different weather scenarios, it was obvious that heat and drought stress caused by changes in temperature and/or precipitation for a short period of 2 weeks resulted in different grain yields simulated by different models. The present study also revealed that the models responded differently to changes in soil tillage practices, which affected soil water storage capacity.

The analysis of genetic and environmental contributions to preterm birth is not straightforward in family studies, as etiology could involve both maternal and fetal genes. Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are presented as a flexible approach for defining user-specified covariance structures to handle multiple random effects and hierarchical dependencies inherent in children of twin (COT) studies of pregnancy outcomes. The proposed method is easily modified to allow for the study of gestational age as a continuous trait and as a binary outcome reflecting the presence or absence of preterm birth. Estimation of fetal and maternal genetic factors and the effect of the environment are demonstrated using MCMC methods implemented in WinBUGS and maximum likelihood methods in a Virginia COT sample comprising 7,061 births. In summary, although the contribution of maternal and fetal genetic factors was supported using both outcomes, additional births and/or extended relationships are required to precisely estimate both genetic effects simultaneously. We anticipate the flexibility of MCMC methods to handle increasingly complex models to be of particular relevance for the study of birth outcomes.

Ageing women may choose to drink soya milk to reduce menopausal symptoms. As fermentation enriches soya milk with isoflavone aglycones, its beneficial qualities may improve. To reduce osteoporotic risk, however, soya milk must be Ca enriched, and it is not known how fermentation affects Ca bioavailability. A randomised crossover pilot study was undertaken to compare the Ca absorption of fortified soya milk with that of fermented and fortified soya milk in twelve Australian osteopenic post-menopausal women. The fortified soya milk was inoculated with Lactobacillus acidophilus American Type Culture Collection (ATCC) 4962 and fermented for 24 h at 37°C. Ca absorption from soya milk samples was measured using a single isotope radiocalcium method. Participants had a mean age of 54·8 (sd 12·3) years, with mean BMI of 26·5 (sd 5·5) kg/m2 and subnormal to normal serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (mean 62·5 (sd 19·1) nmol/l). Participants consumed 185 kBq of 45Ca in 44 mg of Ca carrier. The mean fractional Ca absorption (α) from soya milk and fermented soya milk was 0·64 (sd 0·23) and 0·71 (sd 0·29), respectively, a difference not of statistical significance (P = 0·122). Although fermentation of soya milk may provide other health benefits, fermentation had little effect on acute Ca absorption.

Intraindividual variability of physical status and affect/beliefs as well as their relations with cognition were examined in 3 groups of older adults: healthy elderly, individuals with a nonneurological health-related disturbance (arthritis) and people with neurological compromise (dementia). The findings showed that greater inconsistency in physical performance was observed in groups characterized by central nervous system dysfunction. By contrast, fluctuations in affect appeared to reflect other more transient sources, such as pain. In general, increased inconsistency in non-cognitive domains was associated with poorer cognitive function. There were cross-domain links between inconsistency in physical functioning and fluctuations in cognitive performance, although the nature of the links depended largely upon the neurological status of the individuals. Considered together, the result indicated that measures of cognitive as well as physical variability are important behavioral markers of neurological integrity. (JINS, 2002, 8, 893–906.)

To determine the epidemiology of cytomegalovirus (CMV) infections among patients with burns, we prospectively studied 120 burn patients admitted to the University of Iowa Burn Center over a two-and-one-half year period. At the time of their admission, 44% of the patients had serologic evidence of prior CMV infection. Among 44 seropositive patients, 23 (52%) had four-fold or greater rises in CMV antibody titers. These patients had more severe burns (mean body surface area burn [BSAB] 26.8%) than those who did not exhibit titer rises (mean BSAB 16.2%, p=.04). Among 43 seronegative patients observed for at least 65 days after discharge from the center, eight (18.6%) seroconverted. Patients who seroconverted had longer hospital stays (p=.03), trends toward more severe burns p = .08) and a younger age (p = .15) than patients who remained seronegative. Despite frequent serologic evidence of CMV infection, CMV did not contribute, either directly or indirectly, to the morbidity or mortality of burns in these patients.

The use of increased sensitivity and temporal resolution at mm-wavelengths has revealed a number of novel features associated with solar activity (Kaufmann et al., 1979a). Of particular interest are the ultra-fast time structures superimposed on impulsive bursts. They are distinguished by time scales and repetition rates much shorter than the impulsive times scales. For weak bursts at λ = 13mm (i.e., few s.f.u.) the superimposed spikes are separated in time by several seconds. For moderate fluxes (i.e., 100 s.f.u.) the repetition rate of superimposed spikes is ~ 10–15 per second (i.e., time interval between two repeated spikes ~ 80 msec). For bursts larger than 500 s.f.u. the predicted times between repeated ultra-fast structures are shorter than 10 msec. Various examples have been studied with a time resolution better than 10 msec. (Kaufmann et al., 1979b). The impulsive flux level increases with the repetition rate of the ultra-fast component, following a nearly linear relationship. The simplest interpretation suggests that the injected spikes are associated with the bursting source function and are quasi-quantized in energy (Kaufmann et al., 1979b).

The reliability of energy dispersive x-ray fluorescence data for the analysis of low-alloy steels is reported for chromium, manganese, nickel, and molybdenum. The accuracy and precision of the analysis were evaluated for two mathematical models, linear and multiple regression, using twelve NBS standard reference samples. Data on results are furnished.

Passionate pursuit of humanistic scholarship, religious controversy, and princely ambition conspired to create impressive book collections at numerous sixteenth-century German courts. Whether conceived as utilitarian repositories for scholars or polemicists, or as treasure to enhance the splendor of a prince's court in competition with his peers, most of these late Renaissance collections were to form the great territorial and national, public and university libraries of modern Germany. The present-day Bavarian State Library, in many respects a typical example, owes its origin to the magnificent book collection amassed by Duke Albrecht v during his reign (1550-1579). Outnumbered only by the imperial library in Vienna, Albrecht's collection of about 11,000 volumes was considered at the time of his death the second largest library in Germany.