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Rodent feeder devices are often made of reusable, sanitizable materials such as glass and stainless steel. As part of an initiative at the authors' facility to automate the feeder filling process, disposable plastic feeding cups were proposed as a preferable alternative to standard feeders for use in a filling machine. The authors tested and validated designs for rodent meal-type feeder assemblies that incorporated plastic cups. Assemblies included stainless steel shields that prevented rats and mice from chewing on the plastic cups while allowing them full access to food. The use of disposable feeder cups that are filled and sealed automatically reduces labor associated with sanitation, enables staff to prepare feeders for several weeks in advance and limits personnel contact with feed that may contain harmful chemicals.

The indentation process of pressing a Rockwell diamond indenter into inelastic material has been studied to provide a means for the analysis, simulation and prediction of Rockwell hardness tests. The geometrical characteristics of the spheroconical-shaped Rockwell indenter are discussed and fit to a general function in a self-similar way. The complicated moving boundary problem in Rockwell hardness tests is simplified to an intermediate stationary one for a flat die indenter using principle of similarity and cumulative superposition approach. This method is applied to both strain hardening and strain rate dependent materials. The effects of different material properties and indenter geometries on the indentation depth are discussed.

Purpose: The aim of this randomized trial was to assess the potential therapeutic advantage of an intensive induction-sequential chemotherapy schedule (bleomycin, vincristine, cisplatin [BOP])/etoposide, ifosfamide, cisplatin, and bleomycin [VIP-B]), compared with a regimen based on bleomycin, etoposide, and cisplatin (BEP) (BEP/etoposide and cisplatin [EP]) for the treatment of patients with poor-prognosis metastatic nonseminomatous germ cell tumors (NSGCTs)., Patients and Methods: Patients had one or more of the following: a retroperitoneal mass > or = 10 cm in diameter; mediastinal or supraclavicular mass > or = 5 cm in diameter; at least 20 lung metastases (any size); liver, bone, or brain metastases; and serum beta human chorionic gonadotropin (betaHCG) > or = 10,000 IU/L or alfa fetoprotein (AFP) > or = 1,000 IU/L. A total of 380 patients were accrued between May 1990 and June 1994 into this joint Medical Research Council (MRC)/European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) trial; of these, nine patients were deemed ineligible., Results: There was no significant difference between the two arms in the proportion of patients who achieved a complete response (CR) with chemotherapy alone, ie, 79 of 185 assessable patients (57%) with BEP/EP and 72 of 186 (54%) with BOP/VIP-B (P = 0.687). With a median follow-up of 3.1 years (maximum, 5.8), a total of 107 patients (28%) had progressive disease. There was no significant difference in time to first disease progression, or failure-free or overall survival between the two arms (P = 0.21, 0.101, and 0.190, respectively). The 1-year failure-free survival rates for BEP/EP and BOP/VIP-B were 60% (95% confidence interval [CI], 53% to 67%) and 53% (95% CI, 47% to 61%). Grade 3 or 4 myelosuppression, febrile neutropenia, and weight loss were more pronounced with BOP/VIP-B than with BEP/EP, and there were more toxic deaths with BOP/VIP-B than BEP/EP (18 [9%] v nine [5%])., Conclusion: The intensive BOP/VIP-B therapy was associated with more toxicity, but there was no evidence of an improvement in response rate or survival compared with treatment with BEP/EP.

The general theory of disclinations developed earlier is applied to the special case of a straight disclination line. First the geometrical fields are found, such as the defect loop densities which correspond to Mura's new concepts of "plastic distortion" and "plastic rotation," the basic plastic fields (strain and bend-twist), the defect densities (dislocation and disclination), the characteristic vectors (Burgers and Frank), and the incompatibility. Then the static fields are found for the isotropic case, such as the displacement, total distortion, basic elastic fields, and the stress. It is shown that the disclination axis is moved by adding a dislocation to the disclination line. All these special results for the straight disclination line are shown to satisfy the general equations of the theory. As corollaries the following topics are also treated: 1. The finite and infinitesimal straight disclination dipole, which can be biaxial or uniaxial. It resembles the straight dislocation line. 2. The dislocation models of the straight disclination line and of the finite disclination dipole. They are terminating dislocation walls (tilt and twist). 3. The compensated disclination line and the bent dislocation wall. 4. Finally we show analytically a special case of a dislocation ending on a disclination.

A general theory of stationary disclinations is developed for a linearly elastic, infinitely extended, homogeneous, isotropic body. It is shown to be a special case of the anisotropic theory. Integral expressions are derived for the total displacement, elastic strain and bend-twist, and stress. Both continuous distributions and discrete lines are treated.

A general theory of stationary disclinations for a linearly elastic, infinitely extended, homogeneous body is developed. Dislocation theory is extended in three different ways to include disclinations, i.e., from continuous distributions, discrete lines, and continuous distributions of infinitesimal loops. This leads to three independent definitions of the disclination, which can be uniquely related to each other. These interrelationships clarify Anthony and Mura's approaches to disclination theory, which at first appear to diverge from the present theory. Mura's "plastic distortion" and "plastic rotation" are identified as the dislocation and disclination loop densities. The clastic strain and bend-twist are derived as closed integrals in terms of the defect densities, and shown to be state quantities. The theory reduces to classical dislocation theory when the disclinations vanish. For every discrete disclination line, it is always possible to find a "dislocation model," which is a dislocation wall terminating on the line that gives exactly the same elastic strain and stress.