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Biomedical subjects

K H Martin

Publications and source records attributed to K H Martin.

12 recordsLinked to original sources

Improving staff safety through an aggression management program.

This article provides information regarding the relationship of a formal inpatient Aggression Management Program and subsequent aggression-related staff injuries at one university medical center. Data related to staff injuries, collected before and after the program, were compared as a means of measuring the program's effectiveness. Although the frequency of injury changed only slightly, the results indicate that there was a decrease in the severity of aggression-related staff injuries after institution of the formal program, as well as a reduction in time missed from work and cost to the system. Improvements of other aspects of care such as resource management and staff satisfaction as outcomes of this program are also discussed.

Aggression

Oocyte activation and passage through the metaphase/anaphase transition of the meiotic cell cycle is blocked in clams by inhibitors of HMG-CoA reductase activity.

Cell cycle progression for postembryonic cells requires the activity of 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl coenzyme A reductase (HMG-R), the enzyme which catalyzes the production of the isoprenoid precursor, mevalonate. In this study, we examine the requirements of HMG-R activity for cell cycle progression during the meiotic and early mitotic divisions using oocytes and dividing embryos from the surf clam, Spisula solidissima. Using two different inhibitors of HMG-R, we find that the activity of this enzyme appears to be required at three distinct points of the cell cycle during meiosis. Depending on the stage at which these inhibitors are added to synchronous clam cultures, a reversible cell cycle block is triggered at the time of activation or at metaphase of either meiosis I or II, whereas there is not block to the mitotic cell cycle. Inhibition of HMG-R activity in activated oocytes does not affect the transient activation of p42MAPK but results in a block at metaphase of meiosis I that is accompanied by the stabilization of cyclins A and B and p34cdc2 kinase activity. Our results suggest that metabolites from the mevalonate biosynthetic pathway can act to influence the process of activation, as well as the events later in the cell cycle that lead to cyclin proteolysis and the exit from M phase during clam meiosis.

Animals

Response of primate heart to emotional stress before and after cardiac denervation.

Eleven chair-restrained rhesus monkeys were classically conditioned to a 1-min, 900-Hz tone (CSf) followed by food and a 1-min, 3.4-5Hz tone (CSs) followed by shock. Each conditional stimulus produced large, sudden, and highly significant (P less than .01) increases in left ventricular systolic pressure (LVP), its first time derivative (d(LVP)/dt), and heart rate (HR). The animal's hearts were sugically denervated following control studies of the conditional responses. Two to four weeks later, these responses were reexamined by again presenting CSf and CSs to five surviving monkeys following a format identical to that used in the control experiments. Complete cardiac denervation virtually eliminated the sudden increases in each of the measured variables. Denervation also "unmasked" small-magnitude, delayed chronotropic and inotropic responses during CSs (but not CSf). These effects were ascribed to the action of circulating catecholamines known to be secreted during "emotional" stress. Four monkeys studied for 6 mo or more postoperatively showed evidence for varying degrees of cardiac reinnervation. Loss of nervous control of the nonhuman primate heart greatly compromises the cardiovascular response to these environmental and behavioral stress situations.

Animals

Cardiovascular dynamics during classical appetitive and aversive conditioning in laboratory primates.

This report describes changes in the rate of rise of left and right intraventricular pressures during aversive and appetitive conditioning procedures in chair-restrained rhesus monkeys. The conditioning paradigm consisted of a one-minute tone followed, in the one case, by an electric shock, and in the other, by the delivery of Purina monkey pellets. The conditional cardiovascular response was characterized by short latency, highly significant elevations in the derivatives of both ventricular pressures as well as a marked arterial pressor response and tachycardia. The magnitude of the conditional response to the classical aversive procedure was somewhat larger than that to appetitive conditioning. These alterations in the rate of development of intraventricular pressure can be attributed largely to augmentation in the sympathetic neural input to the heart and contribute to an analysis of selective aspects of the nervous regulation of the heart in intact, behaviorally conditioned animals.

Animals