From the editors

We head into our second issue as Editors with changes, improvements, and plenty of excitement!

First, we've enlisted new colleagues to our Editorial Board. As we expand topical coverage, and expand our global reach, we'll need more help vetting your manuscripts. We want to invite more technical content to our pages, more international content, and content from new colleagues in different parts of the world. We're inviting several new Senior Editors onto the board to help us with this expansion.

Professor Laku Chidambaram comes to us with excellent editorial experience, including his ongoing work as Executive Editor of eService Journal and responsibilities as AMCIS program Co-Chair. He brings special expertise in virtual groups, group decision support and computer mediated communications to his new position as Senior Editor on our board.

Professor Hock Hai Teo is widely known and respected, world-wide. His home base in Asia gives us important new Senior Editor coverage for this important part of our new coverage. He is technically-versed, and will be a valuable addition to our growing organization here at The-Database.org.

Professor George Marakas is an iconic theorist in our field. To support our growth in papers that develop and propose dynamic new behavioral theories of information systems, Dr. Marakas brings his unique views and capabilities to our growing board as a new Senior Editor.

Professor Paul Pavlou is a rising young star in the field. While we hope the flattery does not make him uncomfortable, our experience has been that he is a superbly qualified editor and reviewer, and we are pleased to welcome him to the board as Senior Editor.

As we look to the future, we anticipate with great enthusiasm Dr. Allen Hevner's special issue on Systems Testing. Professor Hevner is known world-wide for his expertise in development and testing, and we are honored that he has agreed to serve as Guest Editor for this important special issue, due out late this year.

Lastly, Patrick and I are happy to report that we have, as of this year's first issue, been under review and are nearing completion of evaluation by Thomson ISI for purposes of including Data Base in regular surveying and reporting for the important Social Sciences Citation Index and the associated Journal Citation Report. That process should be complete toward the end of this year.

We continue to rely on the submission of your best research to our new online publication portal, which can be accessed by links on The-DataBase.org, or directly at http://www.editorialmanager.com/sigmis-db/. Even if you're not quite ready to submit a new manuscript to us, do visit the online portal and register yourself as a potential author and reviewer.

And, with very best regards from our publication offices in Memphis, for your continuing support, we say, "Thank you...thank you very much."

From the editors

Welcome to Data Base 2.0! Things are different, now; it's a new year and a new publication. A new editorial team is in place and we have new financial supporters to support the editorial process. This permits us to undertake initiatives to increase the scope and impact of Data Base. We are promoting new topic coverage and geographical coverage, we have a new scope, and we are building the basis of a new level of impact for this important ACM publication, as part of this new initiative.It's an all-new Data Base, with global editorial coverage and a new online manuscript submission and review system to facilitate global participation by the community of information systems and technology scholars. Visit our new Internet resources at http://the-database.org.I'm Tom Stafford (tstaffor@memphis.edu), Editor-in-Chief, stationed at the logistics hub of the West in Memphis, Tennessee; my Global Co-Editor, Patrick Chau (pchau@business.hku.hk), is stationed at the logistics hub of the East in Hong Kong. Together, with an online review system stationed online at Editorial Manager.com (http://www.editorialmanager.com/SIGMISDB), and citation analysis and impact scoring evaluated by Thompson Scientific, we anticipate greatly increased global presence and visibility with this important publication.In a field where we admittedly do not provide enough premium publication outlets for our scholars, it's time to start building a new premium marquee. That marquee is the new, improved, and ever-popular Data Base for Advances in Information Systems.As we undertake this important new initiative, we owe everything we intend to do to the diligent and successful efforts of Dorothy Leidner and Wynne Chin, who have nurtured and grown the publication thus far - building visibility, maintaining rigor and standards, promoting access and participation. We take what they have built and launch it on a truly global scale with the innovation of global editorship and global editorial access through our online review system.We continue to benefit from the sage advice and superior production capabilities of the prior technical management team, and are thoroughly pleased to announce that Managing Editor Andrew Schwarz and Technical Editor Denny Kramer continue with us through this important evolution in the growth of Data Base. In the interim period of transition to new editorial offices and the online review system, Andrew will continue to field new manuscript submissions via email (aschwarz@lsu.edu), while Denny (denny_kramer@baylor.edu) continues to prepare manuscripts in flow for completion and publication.It's new, it's important, and it's going places, world-wide: the new Data Base. Please join us as we grow!

The role of response mechanisms in determining reaction time performance: Piéron’s law revisited

A response mechanism takes evaluations of the importance of potential actions and selects the most suitable. Response mechanism function is a nontrivial problem that has not received the attention it deserves within cognitive psychology. In this article, we make a case for the importance of considering response mechanism function as a constraint on cognitive processes and emphasized links with the wider problem of behavioral action selection. First, we show that, contrary to previous suggestions, a well-known model of the Stroop task (Cohen, Dunbar, & McClelland, 1990) relies on the response mechanism for a key feature of its results-the interference-facilitation asymmetry. Second, we examine a variety of response mechanisms (including that in the model of Cohen et al., 1990) and show that they all follow a law analogous to Piéron's law in relating their input to reaction time. In particular, this is true of a decision mechanism not designed to explain RT data but based on a proposed solution to the general problem of action selection and grounded in the neurobiology of the vertebrate basal ganglia Finally, we show that the dynamics of simple artificial neurons also support a Piéron-like law.

Complete sequence of the IncPbeta plasmid R751: implications for evolution and organisation of the IncP backbone

The broad host range IncP plasmids are of particular interest because of their ability to promote gene spread between diverse bacterial species. To facilitate study of these plasmids we have compiled the complete sequence of the IncPbeta plasmid R751. Comparison with the sequence of the IncPalpha plasmids confirms the conservation of the IncP backbone of replication, conjugative transfer and stable inheritance functions between the two branches of this family. As in the IncPalpha genome the DNA of this backbone appears to have been enriched for the GCCG/CGGC motifs characteristic of the genome of organisms with a high G+C content, such as P. aeruginosa, suggesting that IncPbeta plasmids have been subjected during their evolution to similar mutational and selective forces as IncPalpha plasmids and may have evolved in pseudomonad hosts. The IncP genome is consistently interrupted by insertion of phenotypic markers and/or transposable elements between oriV and trfA and between the tra and trb operons. The R751 genome reveals a family of repeated sequences in these regions which may form the basis of a hot spot for insertion of foreign DNA. Sequence analysis of the cryptic transposon Tn4321 revealed that it is not a member of the Tn21 family as we had proposed previously from an inspection of its ends. Rather it is a composite transposon defined by inverted repeats of a 1347 bp IS element belonging to a recently discovered family which is distributed throughout the prokaryotes. The central unique region of Tn4321 encodes two predicted proteins, one of which is a regulatory protein while the other is presumably responsible for an as yet unidentified phenotype. The most striking feature of the IncPalpha plasmids, the global regulation of replication and transfer by the KorA and KorB proteins encoded in the central control operon, is conserved between the two plasmids although there appear to be significant differences in the specificity of repressor-operator interactions. The importance of these global regulatory circuits is emphasised by the observation that the operator sequences for KorB are highly conserved even in contexts where the surrounding region, either a protein coding or intergenic sequence, has diverged considerably. There appears to be no equivalent of the parABCDE region which in the IncPalpha plasmids provides multimer resolution, lethality to plasmid-free segregants and active partitioning functions. However, we found that the continuous sector from co-ordinate 0 to 9100 bp, encoding the co-regulated klc and kle operons as well as the central control region, could confer a high degree of segregational stability on a low copy number test vector. Thus R751 appears to exhibit very clearly what was first revealed by study of the IncPalpha plasmids, namely a fully functional co-ordinately regulated set of replication, transfer and stable inheritance functions.

Validity of the bulk-staining technique to separate artifactual from in vivo bone microdamage

Frost's bulk-staining technique clearly separates artifactual cracking in bone from that caused by mechanical loading in vivo. One-centimeter sections of human rib were either bulk stained before preparation of a thin section (experimental) or stained after grinding to a thickness of 150 microns (control). Microdamage produced before preparation can be separated from that caused by the preparation itself. Moreover, the technique does not cause additional artifactual cracking through dehydration. This technique provides a valid way to test hypotheses about the role that microdamage creation or its repair plays in skeletal pathology.

Cardiopulmonary response to extracorporeal venous CO2 removal in awake spontaneously breathing dogs

The ventilatory response to a reduction in mixed venous PCO2 has been reported to be a decrease in breathing even to the point of apnea with no change in arterial CO2 partial pressure (PaCO2), whereas a recent report in exercising dogs found a small but significant drop in PaCO2 (F. M. Bennett et al. J. Appl. Physiol. 56: 1335-1337, 1984). The purpose of the present study was to attempt to reconcile this discrepancy by carefully investigating the cardiopulmonary response to venous CO2 removal over the entire range from eupnea to the apneic threshold in awake, spontaneously breathing normoxic dogs. Six dogs with chronic tracheostomies were prepared with bilateral femoral arteriovenous shunts under general anesthesia. Following recovery, an extracorporeal venovenous bypass circuit, consisting of a roller pump and a silicone-membrane gas exchanger, was attached to the femoral venous cannulas. Cardiopulmonary responses were measured during removal of CO2 from the venous blood and during inhalation of low levels of CO2. Arterial PO2 was kept constant by adjusting inspired O2. The response to venous CO2 unloading was a reduction in PaCO2 and minute ventilation (VE). The slope of the response, delta VE/delta PaCO2, was the same as that observed during CO2 inhalation. This response continued linearly to the point of apnea without significant changes in cardiovascular function.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Computerized data retrieval system for colon surgery

Good clinical practice is based on a continuous reevaluation of one's own work as compared with published standards. That which limits particularly the private practitioner from examining and publishing his data, is not the lack of desire, but the scarcity of opportunities and resources to do so. Computers as tools for data retrieval and analysis for research purposes and patient management have been available for some time. They have been of limited utility for most surgeons because of an inhibiting size and/or training period, and illogical design. The authors discuss the limitations of much of the available computer "tools," and present a system, METABASE, specifically designed for colon and rectal surgeons to use in their private practices for data retrieval and analysis.

Transsphenoidal microsurgery of pituitary macroadenomas with long-term follow-up results

The authors have reported on 108 patients with pituitary macroadenomas (measuring 2 cm in at least one diameter) who underwent 117 transsphenoidal operations and five craniotomies, and were followed for periods ranging from 6 months to 14 years. Vision improved in 90% of the patients. Gross total tumor removal with no evidence of residual tumor tissue demonstrable on the postoperative computerized tomography scan was accomplished in 41% of cases. However, gross total tumor removal is not synonymous with complete tumor removal. Endocrine cure was possible in 25% of prolactin-secreting and 20% of growth hormone-secreting adenomas. The incidence of recurrence was 12%, with the majority occurring from 4 to 8 years postoperatively. Both the tumors with suprasellar extension of more than 2 cm and the hard fibrotic tumors had a higher recurrence rate. Postoperative administration of radiation therapy has been associated with a significantly lower recurrence rate than when this therapy was withheld. Transsphenoidal surgery of pituitary macroadenomas confined to the extra-arachnoid space is associated with a relatively small number of complications. The operative technique used in this series is described.

Familial pars planitis

Ophthalmologists do not consider pars planitis to occur on a familial basis. The development of pars planitis in nine members of four different families is reported. Affected family members include twin sisters, a mother and daughter, two brothers, and a sister and two brothers from the same family. This suggests that a common hereditary and/or environmental factor contributed to the disease in these patients.