The Short Parkinson's Evaluation Scale/Scales for Outcomes in Parkinson's disease (SPES/SCOPA) was developed as a reliable and valid scale to evaluate motor impairment in Parkinson's disease (PD) patients and can be completed in less time than the gold standard Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS). This study aimed to further investigate the reliability and validity of the SPES/SCOPA motor clinical examination, as relatively little research in the US has done so. The BRAVURA study was designed to investigate order effects associated with the UPDRS motor examination at 2 centers in the US. Patients, stratified by center and previous Hoehn and Yahr (H&Y) stage, were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 UPDRS item sequences. All scale evaluations occurred during a single clinic visit. In addition to the 8-item SPES/SCOPA motor clinical examination and the 14-item UPDRS motor examination, scales included current H&Y stage and patient- and physician-rated Schwab and England Activities of Daily Living (ADL). Data were analyzed using Cronbach's alpha and Spearman's correlation. Complete data were available for 112 patients (mean time from diagnosis = 6.4 years). Relationships among the scales were comparable across the 2 experimental groups, thus data were pooled for these analyses; SPES/SCOPA mean score = 9.5 (SD = 5.2). The SPES/SCOPA demonstrated good internal reliability (alpha = 0.79). Construct validity was supported with the SPES/SCOPA correlating 0.76 with the UPDRS. Furthermore, the SPES/SCOPA correlated 0.47 with current H&Y stage and −0.39, −0.45 with patient- and physician-rated ADL, respectively. In this US sample of PD patients with varied disease severity, the SPES/SCOPA exhibited good psychometrics, including evidence of construct validity with the current standard of motor impairment measurement. The SPES/SCOPA also had good internal consistency and correlated with 3 broad evaluations of disease disability in a similar fashion to the UPDRS.

Tholeiitic basalts showing anomalously high Ba, Y and rare-earth element (REE) concentrations occur within the Tertiary Newer Volcanic Province of Victoria and these geochemical characteristics are related to incipient alteration accompanying weathering. REE and Y released during weathering of basalts are retained either in secondary phosphate or clay minerals and. in rocks showing very high Ba concentrations, the Ba is present as BaSO4. Leaching experiments suggest that glassy or fine-grained rocks are more likely to release REE, Y and Ba while more extensively altered rocks are likely to hold these elements, probably because they substitute in, or are adsorbed on, clay minerals or because secondary BaSO4 and REE phosphates are resistant to acid leaching. Samples taken sequentially across a weathering profile in a tholeiitic basalt flow, from fresh to intensively altered rock, illustrate that, in the very earliest stages of alteration, extreme variations in the abundances of Ba. Y and REE can occur. This is reflected in the broad patterns of trace-element behaviour manifested by an extensive analysed sample suite from the Victorian Newer Volcanic Province where there is no correlation between anomalous enrichments in Ba, Y, or REE and the level of incipient alteration. Ba anomalies are not necessarily accompanied by "abnormal" Y and REE behaviour and this is probably because the mobility of each trace element is a function of. (a) the ionic radius and charge of the ionic species it forms in solution; (b) local groundwater parameters (such as Eh, pH, groundwater flux, and concentrations in the groundwater of species such as SO42-); and (c) the secondary mineral assemblages developed in a particular situation. Sr isotopic compositions are not strongly affected by incipient weathering and do not show significant changes until alteration has progressed to the point where plagioclase begins to break down. The study illustrates that relatively slight alteration at the earliest stages of weathering can produce drastic changes in the concentrations of REE, Y and Ba and petrographic assessment of the freshness of samples is not precise enough to eliminate, prior to analysis, cases where these effects may be manifested. Where weathering has caused changes in abundance patterns these may be recognised by careful comparisons of appropriate elemental ratios (e.g., Ba/Rb) throughout a particular analysed sample suite.

Heated sugar/amino acid reaction mixtures, known to contain products that are clastogenic and/or mutagenic to cells in vitro, were evaluated for clastogenic activity in mouse bone marrow using the erythrocyte micronucleus assay. Heated (i.e. browned) fructose/lysine reaction mixtures were also evaluated in the Salmonella his-reversion assay and the Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cell chromosomal aberration assay to confirm and extend previous in vitro observations. Significant mutagenicity of fructose/lysine mixtures was observed in Salmonella typhimurium strains TA100, TA2637, TA98 and TA102, with greater activity in mixtures heated at pH 10 than at pH 7. S-9 decreased the activity in strains TA100, TA2637 and TA98, but increased the activity in strain TA102. Both pH 7 and pH 10 reaction mixtures of the fructose/lysine browning reaction were highly clastogenic in CHO cells. Heated mixtures of fructose and lysine, and of glucose or ribose with lysine, histidine, tryptophan or cysteine, did not increase the frequency of micronucleated erythrocytes in mice when administered by the oral route. This indicates the absence of chromosomal aberrations in erythrocyte precursor cells, and indicates that the genotoxic components of the browned mixtures are not absorbed and distributed to bone marrow cells in amounts sufficient to induce micronuclei when given orally. Because sugar/amino acid browning reactions occur commonly in heated foods, it is important to evaluate further the in vivo genotoxicity of browning products in cell populations other than bone marrow.

Flavones mutagenic in Salmonella typhimurium fall into two distinct classes, characterized by different structural and metabolic activation requirements and by different strain responses. The mutagenic potencies of a prototype agent of each class, quercetin (3,3′,4′,5,7‐hydroxyflavone) and norwogonin (5,7,8‐hydroxyflavone), were determined in tester strains differing in excision‐repair capability and in the presence or absence of plasmid pKM101. Two series of strains were used, one with the hisD3052 frameshift mutation and one with the hisG46 missense mutation. With both agents and for both series of strains, the mutagenic response was markedly dependent on the absence of excision repair and the presence of the pKM101 plasmid.

Nine hydroperoxy and hydroperoxy-epidioxy oxidation products derived from either autoxidation (AO) or photosensitized oxidation (PO) of methyl linoleate (MLo) or methyl linolenate (MLn) were tested for mutagenic activity by the Salmonella typhimurium his+ reversion assay using strains TA100, TA98, TA102, TA97 and TA1537. All nine oxidation products, monohydroperoxides from AO-MLn (I) or from PO-MLn (II), dihydroperoxides from PO-MLo (III), AO-MLn (IV) or PO-MLn (V), hydroperoxy epidioxides from PO-MLo (VI), AO-MLn (VII) or PO-MLn (VIII) and hydroperoxy bis-epidioxides from PO-MLn (IX), were weakly mutagenic in strains TA97 and/or TA100. The hydroperoxy epidioxides (VI-IX) exhibited significantly greater activity in strain TA97 than did the monohydroperoxides (I, II) or the dihydroperoxides (III-V). In strain TA100, all of the oxidation products tested exhibited similar activity. No major differences between products derived from autoxidized and photooxidized MLn (I v. II, IV v. V, VII v. VIII) were obtained. Rat-liver S-9 reduced the toxicity of all oxidation products to the tester strains. The greatest mutant yields were usually obtained in the presence of S-9, but mutagenic potency was sometimes greater without S-9. The structural feature common to all of the mutagenic oxidation products was the presence of a hydroperoxy group, suggesting that this characteristic is responsible for the observed mutagenicity, either directly or through a common degradative pathway to reactive products of lower molecular weight.

Few studies have been made on the stress/strain field or plastic zone size ahead of a crack tip in a high temperature environment under varying load frequencies and stress levels. Fewer studies have incorporated compressive loads or analyzed the effect of a negative R-ratio on the fatigue characteristics of the superalloy IN-100. This study involves the analysis of the stress field and plastic zone ahead of a crack tip in a compact tension specimen acting under a reverse loading considering IN-100, a superalloy. The finite element technique was used for this study incorporating the Bodner-Partom viscoplastic constitutive equations. Load spectra included a 2.5 Hz frequency with an R-ratio of − 1.0 (zero mean load).