Agroterrorism: the risks to the United States food supply and national security

Agroterrorism is a collective term that describes an intentional criminal attack against crops or mankind using viral, bacterial, fungal, or insect-borne agents. Agroterrorism also includes attacks against animals using infectious pathogens such as Burkholderia mallei (glanders), Bacillus anthracis (anthrax), viral avian influenza, foot and mouth disease, and several equine encephalitis viruses. Agents that could be used against crops include the causative agents of wheat blast, rice blast, rice brown spot disease, and wheat stem rust. The primary goal of terrorists using agroterrorism is to spread fear and cause massive economic loss. Subsequent goals include causing disease and death to humans and animals. The use of bioterrorism agents is a much more practical approach than using explosives, for example, to achieve those results since many of these biological agents are commonly found naturally in the environment and are difficult to detect with modern technology. The effective use of biological warfare dates back centuries and can still can be employed by terrorist groups, lone wolves, and political and religious groups to cause death and mayhem on a grand scale.

Health professionals' attitudes toward parent participation in hospitalized children's care

This study explored the relation of personal and professional characteristics to the attitudes of health professionals toward parent participation. A random sample of members of the Association for the Care of Children's Health completed the Parent Participation Questionnaire. Attitudes were more accepting in subjects who were parents (p < .01), ever married (p < .05), educators (p < .01); older (p < .01), more experienced (p < .01), and/or had a higher level of education (p < .01). Health professionals need to develop means of creating positive attitudes that are not based solely on an individual's characteristics. These, however, can be mediated through several strategies--for example, role modeling, sharing, and education.

Nurses' attitudes toward parent participation: personal and professional characteristics

A nonrandom sample of 273 registered nurses completed a questionnaire that included the Parent Participation Attitude Scale and a personal and professional data section. Analysis of variance indicated that subjects who were married, were parents, were nursing supervisors, had a collegiate nursing education, or worked in Hospital 1 or 4 had more positive attitudes toward parent participation than did subjects who did not possess these characteristics. Further study of nurses from 28 hospitals found that head nurses, nursing supervisors, nurses with a professional nursing education, and nurses with a master's degree in nursing had significantly more accepting attitudes than did nurses without these characteristics.

Gait assessment for neurologically impaired patients. Standards for outcome assessment

This study compared the temporal-distance (TD) gait values of two groups of neurologically impaired subjects with published TD gait values of healthy subjects and analyzed the influence of nine clinical characteristics on TD values in the neurologically impaired subjects. Velocity, cadence, step length, stride length, and ratio of stride length to lower extremity length were recorded for 37 subjects with hemiparesis and 24 subjects with multiple sclerosis. Temporal-distance values were well below normal values, even in functionally independent subjects. Overall, the subjects with hemiparesis had lower values than the subjects with multiple sclerosis. Of the nine characteristics examined, only diagnosis, etiologic factor (for hemiparesis), type of ambulation aid, and functional category were related significantly to TD values. Our findings suggest that TD gait performance goals for patients with neurological impairment should be based on values from impaired rather than healthy subjects and that these goals should be adjusted for the individual patient's diagnosis, etiologic factor, type of ambulation aid, and functional category.

Clinical gait assessment in the neurologically impaired. Reliability and meaningfulness

This study of subjects with multiple sclerosis or hemiparesis assessed the interrater and test-retest reliability of temporal-distance (TD) gait measures and examined the relationship of TD values to functional ambulation ability. Sixty-one subjects ambulated twice on a 9-m (30-ft) paper walkway and rested 15 minutes between trials. An ink footprint record and ambulation time were used to calculate velocity, cadence, step and stride lengths, stride length to lower extremity length ratio, and step- and stride-time differentials. Subjects were rated on a scale that assessed the amount of manual assistance required for ambulation. Interrater and test-retest reliability were high for all TD measures except stride-time differential for the total sample and within diagnostic categories. The TD values were highly reliable in all functional categories except one. All TD measures except stride- and step-time differential displayed a strong linear relationship to the functional ambulation category. Implications for using TD measures in clinical settings are discussed.

Letter versus dot stimuli as tools for "splitting the normal brain with reaction time"

Filbey and Gazzaniga (1969) found simple dot-present or -absent reports averaged 35 ms slower for the left than for the right visual field. Other data suggests that verbal processing efficiency differences between the cerebral hemispheres, rather than transcallosal transfer time alone, must be tapped to obtain half-field differences as large as 35 ms. Three experiments were conducted. The first failed to show any half-field differences in vocal RT for dot detection; the second replicated previous reports of significant right field superiority of vocal RT to letter stimuli for right handers, and also showed a substantially smaller half-field difference for left handers; the third experiment, utilizing the fixation control procedure of the second experiment, again failed to show half-field differences for the dot detection paradigm. Differences between the Filbey and Gazzaniga and present results probably reflect important procedural differences. We conclude that transcallosal transfer time for simple dot information is much smaller than assumed by Filbey and Gazzaniga and that the letter report-time task taps hemispheric asymmetries of verbal processing efficiency.

Visual half-field differences in the recognition of bilaterally presented single letters and vertically spelled words

Tachistoscopic recognition of bilaterally presented single letters and vertically spelled words as a function of the lateral visual-half-field placement of the stimuli was examined. Right visual-field recognition superiority obtained for both types of stimuli, but the percentage of Ss showing right-field superiority was much lower than obtained in earlier experiments using horizontally spelled words as stimuli. Data from this aggregate of experiments were discussed in terms of compatibility with the view that reading habits play at least some role in producing right-field superiority with horizontal words. It was suggested that reading habits are not fundamental to the results and that all the data can be encompassed within a lateral dominance and visual masking-temporal registration sequence model in which the temporal patterning of inputs from differing retinal locations plays a major role in producing left-right differences for horizontally displayed words.