The "coast" hydrostatic bed

The water bed has ushered in a new era in prophylactic care for patients suffering from the sequetiae of spinal cord injury and other debilitating diseases which have rendered the skin susceptible to decubitus ulceration. A commercially available water bed is described which has resulted from improvements to a prototype bed first used in the spinal injuries unit of Prince Henry Hospital in 1969 (Jones and Burniston, 1971).

Analysis of alpha-lipoprotein cholesterol in 50 microl of plasma

A micromethod for quantitation of alpha-lipoprotein cholesterol was devised for gas-liquid chromatography to minimize plasma sample size and facilitate lipid studies using capillary blood from children or small animals. alpha-Lipoprotein cholesterol was measured by gas-liquid chromatography in 20 micro l of the centrifuged supernate obtained after addition of 5 micro l of mixed heparin-manganese chloride solution 1:1 (v/v) to 50 micro l of plasma. Comparison of venous alpha-lipoprotein cholesterol measured by gas-liquid chromatography with venous alpha-lipoprotein cholesterol measured by conventional heparin-manganese precipitation and ferric chloride (colorimetric) cholesterol determination gave a correlation coefficient of 0.98 for 80 plasma samples. Capillary alpha-lipoprotein cholesterol and venous alpha-lipoprotein cholesterol were closely correlated in 31 patients (r = 0.97).

Binding characteristics of myosin and F-actin from dog hearts

We used light scattering and ultracentrifugation to study the binding ratio of myosin and actin from normal and failing dog hearts and to determine the effect of temperature and adenosine triphosphate (ATP) on the binding. For comparison, similar studies were done on myosin and actin from rabbit skeletal muscle.

We found a higher combining ratio, by weight, for cardiac myosin and actin (4.8 : 1) than for skeletal myosin and actin (4.4 : 1). The dissociation constants were similar at 24°C for cardiac and skeletal proteins. But at 10°C, the dissociation constant was greater for cardiac proteins, and the difference appeared more pronounced when phosphate was used to buffer the solutions.

The dissociation constant at 10°C was greater for myosin and actin from failing dog hearts.

ATP caused dissociation of cardiac and skeletal F-acto-heavy meromyosin and F-actomyosin. There was evidence that the binding of cardiac proteins may not be as tight as that of skeletal muscle proteins.