Modern concepts of melanoma and its management

Malignant melanoma can be diagnosed at an early biological stage when relatively simple excisional surgery carries a remarkably good prognosis. For this to happen requires good public education, so that patients are aware of the potential danger of any change in a mole, and good professional education, so that physicians of first contact are alert to the possibility of melanoma in these patients.

Recovery of function after brain damage: the extrinsic stimulus specificity of spared neural traces

Previous research has demonstrated that while primary visual cortex lesions in rats will disrupt performance of a learned brightness discrimination, the neural traces associated with this discrimination are spared. Moreover, the spared neural traces may, in certain instances, influence the postoperative reinstatement of a brightness discrimination. The present research was designed to determine the generality of this postoperative influence. The results indicate that while the normal rat and the visual decorticate rat may readily transfer learning between discriminations involving different discriminative cues, a visual lesion between two discriminations prevents this transfer. These data are interpreted as indicating that the postoperative influence of a spared neural trace is dependent upon the reoccurrence of specific extrinsic stimulus cues.

Large bowel cancer: a retrospective study of 635 cases

A retrospective survey of 635 cases of large bowel cancer treated at the Princess Alexandra Hospital, Brisbane, from 1956 to 1970 is presented. The age and sex incidence, presentation and pathology are discussed, and a detailed analysis is made of treatment and operative mortality rates. The resectability rate was 72-2%; the operative mortality rate for resectable colonic lesions was 6-6%, and for resectable rectal lesions, 7-3%. There was an operative mortality rate in the presence of acute obstruction of 17-5%. This study forms the basis of a prospective survey presently being undertaken at the Princess Alexandra Hospital.

Utilization of iron gallate and other organic iron complexes by bacteria from water supplies

The degradation of four soluble organic iron compounds by bacteria isolated from surface waters and the precipitation of iron from these complexes by the isolates was studied. All eight isolates brought about the precipitation of iron when grown on ferric ammonium citrate agar. Three isolates were able to degrade ferric malonate, and three others degraded ferric malate with iron precipitation. Only three isolates, two strains of Pseudomonas and one of Moraxella, were able to degrade gallic acid when this was supplied as the sole carbon source. One strain of Pseudomonas was found to be active in degrading ferric gallate. Electron microscopy of cells of this bacterium after growth in ferric gallate as the sole carbon source yielded results indicating uniform deposition of the iron on or in the bacterial cells. Seven of the isolates could degrade the iron gallate complex if supplied with additional carbon in the form of yeast extract.

Scaling aphasics' error responses

An aphasic’s error response may roughly approximate the desired response or it may closely approximate the desired response. Since the relationship between actual response and desired response may have diagnostic and therapeutic utility, this study analyzed this relationship using a similarity continuum of gross, syntactic, and phonological components. The results indicated that recording of error responses as incorrect omits potentially useful clinical information.