Self-rated health questions have been proven to be a highly reliable and valid measure of overall health as measured by other indicators in many population groups. It also has been shown to be a very good predictor of mortality, chronic or severe diseases, and the need for services, and is positively correlated with clinical assessments. Genetic factors have been estimated to account for 25–64% of the variance in the liability of self-rated health. The aim of the present study was to identify Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) underlying the heritability of self-rated health by conducting a genome-wide association analysis in a large sample of 6,706 Australian individuals aged 18–92. No genome wide significant SNPs associated with self-rated health could be identified, indicating that self-rated health may be influenced by a large number of SNPs with very small effect size. A very large sample will be needed to identify these SNPs.

Chickasaw is a Muskogean language spoken in south-central Oklahoma. Published descriptions of Chickasaw phonetics include Munro & Willmond (1994), Munro (to appear), and Gordon et al. (2000). The following description is a summary of the principal phonetic aspects of Chickasaw drawn primarily from these works.

The ability to observe the behavior of living cells and tissues provides unparalleled access to information regarding the organization and dynamics of complex cellular structures. While great strides have been made over the past 30 to 40 years in the design and application of a variety of novel optical microscopic techniques, until recently, it has not been possible to image biological phenomena that occur over very short time periods (nanosecond to millisecond) or over short distances (10 to 1000 Å). However, the recent combination of (1) very rapidly gated and sensitive image intensifiers and (2) the ability to deliver fluorescence excitation energy to intact living biological specimens in a pulsed or sinusoidally modulated fashion has allowed such measurements to become a reality through the imaging of the lifetimes of fluorescent molecules. This capability has resulted in the ability to observe the dynamic organization and interaction of cellular components on a spatial and temporal scale previously not possible using other microscopic techniques. This paper discusses the implementation of a fluorescence lifetime imaging microscope (FLIM) and provides a review of some of the applications of such an instrument. These include measurements of receptor topography and subunit interactions using fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET), fluorescence anisotropy of phospholipids in cell membranes, cytosolic free calcium (Ca2+)i and the detection of human papillomavirus (HPV) infection in clinical cervicovaginal smears.