HRSA's role in primary care and public health in the 1990s.

The principal responsibility of the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) is to see to it that primary health care services and qualified health personnel and facilities are available to all Americans, particularly the disadvantaged and the underserved. HRSA's resources are directed toward not only the most financially, functionally, and culturally vulnerable segments of the population but also to those who have significant clinical needs such as pregnant women, children, those infected with HIV. The Agency seeks to carry out its mission in many ways. The central approach, however, is to assure the availability of services to its constituencies directly or indirectly through the more than 50 programs it administers. This article explains HRSA's role in detail and cites its many ramifications for the nation's health in the 1990s.

Effects of health locus of control and health value upon EMG biofeedback training.

Subjects who scored highly internal or external on a health locus of control scale and who scored high or low on the value each attached to good health were each given two sessions of frontalis EMG biofeedback training in accordance with a 2 x 2 x 2 factorial design. It was predicted that both internality and high health value would be positively associated with ability to control EMG and that these influences would combine additively. The predictions were not supported but a significant interaction between internality and health value was found. This interaction could be explained by assuming that both internality and high health value increased drive which in turn produced greater muscle tension, the relationship between drive and muscle tension being an ascending sigmoid function.

The effects of ethanol upon threshold and response rate for self-stimulation.

The hypothesis that ethanol would reduce the threshold for self-stimulation of the medial forebrain bundle was not supported. Ten rats, implanted with electrodes in the lateral hypothalamus, were shaped to bar press for electrical brain stimulation. The effects of 0.6, 0.9, and 1.2 g/kg ethanol injections upon threshold and response rate for self-stimulation were measured. The lowest dose had no effect upon self-stimulation threshold while 0.9 and 1.2 g/kg ethanol raised thresholds. Rate of bar pressing was increased by 0.6 g/kg ethanol but was not affected by higher doses. Results were discussed in terms of a postulated dual effect of ethanol upon a brain arousal system and upon a reward system.

Thermal inactivation as a means of inhibiting the serum-associated deamination of 9-beta-D Arabinofuranosyladenine in tissue culture media.

9-beta-d-Arabinofuranosyladenine (ara-A) was deaminated to 9-beta-d-arabinofuranosylhypoxanthine by adenosine deaminase present in fetal bovine serum, newborn calf serum, and calf serum used to supplement tissue culture media. Heating newborn calf serum or calf serum for 12 h at 56 C completely eliminated the enzymatic deamination of ara-A. The deaminase activity associated with fetal bovine serum was more refractory to heating, requiring 24 h for complete inactivation. The nutritive value of heat-inactivated calf serum did not differ significantly from that of unheated serum based on considerations of population doubling times, deoxyribonucleic acid synthesis, and relative cloning efficiencies of KB cells.