Ex situ conservation of plant genetic resources: global development and environmental concerns.

Conservation of plant genetic resources is achieved by protection of populations in nature (in situ) or by preservation of samples in gene banks (ex situ). The latter are essential for users of germplasm who need ready access. Ex situ conservation also acts as a back-up for certain segments of diversity that might otherwise be lost in nature and in human-dominated ecosystems. The two methods are complementary, yet better understanding of this interrelation and the role of ex situ conservation in global environmental considerations is needed. Inclusion of ex situ conservation efforts within current environmental policies conserving global diversity would focus greater international attention on the safeguarding of these efforts.

The decision to hospitalize.

The authors explored determinants of psychiatric hospitalization in four Manhattan general hospital emergency rooms and found that although the nature and severity of a patient's problem played the most important role in the decision to hospitalize, the facility involved was also a determining factor. The findings are discussed in relation to policy concerning staffing and organization of emergency room services and future studies of service delivery in this area.

Disability, psychosomatic disease, and psychoneurosis. The problem of differential vulnerability.

A pattern of cognitive and of affective development characterizing three classes of psychiatric patients is presented: (1) disabled persons, usually unskilled laborers showing a 'somatization reaction', are unable to form abstract categories and, as well, to describe the physiological correlates of 'inner' feelings; (2) psychosomatic patients may show highly developed cognitive skills, although they may not; but they uniformly show a similar inability to 'know' and describe inner feelings; (3) 'neurotic' patients, most dramatically in the phobic category, often show both well-developed cognitive skills and a high degree of sensitivity to, and ability to describe, the symptom complex of anxiety in physiologically relevant forms, with maintenance of meaningful relations with supportive (often 'overprotectively' supportive) family members. These three different states can be diagrammed as follows: (1) -, -; (2) +/-, -; (3) +, +. The suggestion appears that these differences have to do with vulnerability, and that there may be in the general population three separable populations at risk for the development of these three categories of psychiatric disorder. The vulnerability so identified seems to be inversely proportional to 'suitability for interpretative psychotherapy'.

How are 'psychosomatic' patients different from 'psychoneurotic' patients?

Two groups of white male patients of the same racial stock were selected on the basis of their acceptance or rejection by psychiatric residents for extended treatment. The group of patients eagerly accepted were mostly college students with anxiety, several of a phobic type, while the completely rejected group was composed of rheumatoid arthritic patients. Examination of samples of verbal transcript material showed that previously determined criteria, established on the basis of content analysis of interview transcripts, place the arthritic patients very much in the 'unsuitable for psychoteraphy' category, whereas the selected patients were highly 'suitable'. Verbal patterns in several different contexts are compared to show the differences 'concretely'; in addition, another such comparison shows the abundance of psychosomatic diseases in the families of the arthritic patients. Comparison of verbal material shows that patients with anxiety tend to be acutely sensitive to the future and to human relations, especially those with physicians in a personal sense. Arthritic patients, on the other hand, 'worry' much less, attend little to the future, incongruguously report that they are 'in command of' feelings. In a hospital psychiatric ward, anxious patients soon adapt with relief; the arthritic in such a ward insists that he follows his own idea of the behaviour of the hospitalized patient, complete with night clothes and bed rest. The conclusion suggested is that the two types of patients live in quite separate 'universes of discourse'.

An evaluation of the nutritive value of new high protein oat varieties (cultivars).

Studies were conducted to evaluate the nutritive value of new high protein oat varieties using chicks and rats. Oat groats studied were Lodi, Dal, and Goodland; protein contents were 16.0, 18.0, and 20.5%, respectively. Increases in protein content were accompanied with an increase in indispensable amino acids. The lysine contents of Lodi and Goodland oat groats were 0.60 and 0.72%, respectively. With amino acid supplementation the 80% oat groats diets supported a growth rate of chicks comparable with that of a practical diet for up to 2 weeks. To correct amino acid deficiency, Goodland, Dal, and Lodi oat groats diets were supplemented with 0.55, 0.60, and 0.65% lysine and 3.2, 5.1, and 6.6% of a mixture of other amino acids. Omission of lysine from the amino acid supplement resulted in retarded growth and marked reduction of plasma free lysine concentration. For Goodland oat groats, the chemical score was 51. Protein efficiency ratio with rats was 2.2, which was increased to 2.4 by lysine and methionine supplementation, while protein efficiency ratio for whole egg protein was 3.4. The slope-ratio assay rendered a relative nutritive value of 59 for Goodland oat groats, assuming 100 for whole egg protein. This value was increased to 67 by lysine and methionine supplementation.