Pathomechanisms of the adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS): elastase contents of polymorphonuclear leukocytes and elastase release during passage across the blood/air barrier

Conclusions In comparison to normals blood derived PMNL of ARDS patients were found to be partially depleted of elastase that in turn caused a 5-fold elevation of the plasma elastase concentration. During their capillary-interstitial-alveolar passage stimulated PMNL released elastase as could be demonstrated by the further decreased elastase contents of BAL derived PMNL and by a 68-fold increase in total elastase concentration in BAL fluid as compared to normals. Urea served as an internal reference substance in plasma and BAL fluid as well as the albumin/urea ratios indicated the extent of permeability increase. By this it was possible to judge whether the high total elastase concentration in BAL fluid predominantly resulted from a₁PI-elastase complex permeation or from elastase release during PMNL migration followed by consecutive complexation with ubiquitously occurring a₁PI. The total elastase/urea ratios of the patients were elevated 79-fold above normals in BAL fluid whereas the patients' albumin/urea ratios were only 4.4-fold higher than those of normals. These data gave evidence that the high BAL fluid elastase concentration was mainly the result of free elastase release from migrating and phagocytosing PMNL. Hereby, the inflammatory cascades can be started and/ or enhanced, thus contributing to lung injury in ARDS, especially, if non-complexed enzymatically active elastase is present in BAL fluid.

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Zum Pathomechanismus des posttraumatischen progressiven Lungenversagens (ARDS): Elastase-Gehalt und -Freisetzung aus polymorphkernigen Leukocyten während der capillär/alveolären Passage

Abbreviations PTS polytrauma scale injury severity score (ISS) - NP 40 Nonidet P-40 nonionic detergent - ₁ PI ₁-protein-ase inhibitor (₁-antitrypsin) Supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, project II B 6     

Correlation effects and the density of states in amorphous silicon

The evaluation of the density of gap states from the charge density measured in field-effect experiments is considered in terms of a model which incorporates electron correlation effects. Due to the positive Hubbard U a density of states is deduced which differs appreciably from the “field effect” densities published previously. Besides the lack of the E_x and E_y peaks the minimum density is found to be ～ 10¹⁵ ? 10¹⁶ cm^?3 eV^?1.     

The 46Ti(p, γ)47V, 50Cr(p, γ)51Mn, 58Ni(α, γ)62Zn and58Ni(α, p)61Cu cross sections

The ${}^{46}\text{Ti}\text{(}\text{p}\text{, γ)}{}^{47}\text{V}\text{,}{}^{50}\text{Cr}\text{(}\text{p}\text{, γ)}{}^{51}\text{Mn}\text{,}{}^{58}\text{Ni}\text{(α,γ)}{}^{62}\text{Zn and}{}^{58}\text{Ni}\text{(α, p)}{}^{61}\text{Cu}$ cross sections have been measured in the energy range of interest for stellar nucleosynthesis during oxygen and silicon burning. The results are compared with statistical theory calculations which attempt to treat excited state effects and the γ-ray channel more realistically than previous calculations.     

A new determination of the partial widths of the 16.11 MeV state in 12C

The partial widths of the second T = 1 state of ¹²C, at 16.11 MeV excitation energy, have been determined by measuring the ¹¹B(p, γ) and ¹¹B(p, α) cross sections at the E_p = 163 keV resonance corresponding to this state. These measurements result in the new values of Γ_p = 21.7 ± 1.8 eV and Γ_γ = 21.6 ± 3.3 eV, for the partial widths of this state; approximately 3 times smaller and larger, respectively, than the present values in the literature. The new result for the proton width eliminates a serious discrepancy found in an earlier comparison of the partial widths of the T = 1 analogue states of the A = 12 system. Measurements were also made of the ¹¹B(d, n)¹²C¹ reaction to compare the proton widths of the 15.11 and 16.11 MeV T = 1 states; these measurements confirm the new, smaller proton width for the 16.11 MeV state. An attempt was also made to determine the γ-width of the 16.11 MeV state by measuring the γ-branching ratio in the ¹⁰B(³He, p)¹²C¹(γ)¹²C reaction.     

Phosphorescence of pi-conjugated oligomers and polymers

We observed phosphorescence from a ladder-type poly-(para-phenylene) and an analogous oligomer containing five phenylene rings. The spectra are similar to the intrinsic fluorescence spectra and bear out a singlet-triplet splitting of 5000 cm(-1) (polymer) and 6800 cm(-1) (oligomer). Phosphorescence decay of the polymer occurs on a 10-100-micros scale obeying a power law and suggestive of nonradiative quenching, while that of the oligomer is asymptotically exponential with an intrinsic decay time of approximately 250 ms. The polymer also exhibits delayed fluorescence. It originates from delayed recombination of geminate electron-hole pairs rather than from triplet-triplet annihilation.     

Stable enrichment and local preconditioning in the particle-partition of unity method

This paper is concerned with the stability and approximation properties of enriched meshfree and generalized finite element methods. In particular we focus on the particle-partition of unity method (PPUM) yet the presented results hold for any partition of unity based enrichment scheme. The goal of our enrichment scheme is to recover the optimal convergence rate of the uniform h-version independent of the regularity of the solution. Hence, we employ enrichment not only for modeling purposes but rather to improve the approximation properties of the numerical scheme. To this end we enrich our PPUM function space in an enrichment zone hierarchically near the singularities of the solution. This initial enrichment however can lead to a severe ill-conditioning and can compromise the stability of the discretization. To overcome the ill-conditioning of the enriched shape functions we present an appropriate local preconditioner which yields a stable and well-conditioned basis independent of the employed initial enrichment. The construction of this preconditioner is of linear complexity with respect to the number of discretization points. We obtain optimal error bounds for an enriched PPUM discretization with local preconditioning that are independent of the regularity of the solution globally and within the employed enrichment zone we observe a kind of super-convergence. The results of our numerical experiments clearly show that our enriched PPUM with local preconditioning recovers the optimal convergence rate of O(h ^p ) of the uniform h-version globally. For the considered model problems from linear elastic fracture mechanics we obtain an improved convergence rate of O(h ^p+δ ) with d 3 \frac12{\delta\geq\frac{1}{2}} for p = 1. The convergence rate of our multilevel solver is essentially the same for a purely polynomial approximation and an enriched approximation.