Ford Motor Company

About: Ford Motor Company is a company organization based out in Dearborn, Michigan, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Internal combustion engine & Signal. The organization has 36123 authors who have published 51450 publications receiving 855200 citations. The organization is also known as: Ford Motor & Ford Motor Corporation.

Prophylaxis for Stress-related Gastric Hemorrhage in the Medical Intensive Care Unit: A Randomized, Controlled, Single-Blind Study

Abstract: OBJECTIVE To determine the efficacy and safety of cimetidine and sucralfate prophylaxis for stress-related gastrointestinal hemorrhage in patients admitted to a medical intensive care unit. SETTING Medical intensive care unit of a nonprofit, university-affiliated teaching hospital. PATIENTS 300 patients admitted to the medical intensive care unit during a 10-month period. DESIGN Randomized, controlled, single-blind clinical trial. INTERVENTION Patients were assigned to receive no prophylaxis (control), 1 g sucralfate given orally every 6 hours, or continuous intravenous cimetidine titrated to maintain gastric pH at 4.0, intervention was maintained until the occurrence of clinically severe hemorrhage, onset of drug-related complications, death, or discharge from the medical intensive care unit. OUTCOME MEASURES The primary outcome measure was the incidence of clinically severe hemorrhage from endoscopically verified stress-related gastritis. Other outcome measures were transfusion requirements, duration of medical intensive care unit stay, incidence of nosocomial pneumonia, adverse drug reactions, and death. RESULTS 100 patients were randomly assigned to each treatment. The three groups were similar with regard to demographic characteristics, intensive care unit admission diagnoses, and APACHE II scores. Stress-related hemorrhage was seen in 6% of control participants and in 5% of those receiving sucralfate or cimetidine (relative risk compared with control, 0.83 for each group; 95% CI, 0.26 to 2.64; P = 0.75). No statistically significant differences were found for transfusion requirements, duration of medical intensive care unit stay, and mortality rates among the three groups. Nosocomial pneumonia was diagnosed in 6%, 12%, and 13% of controls, sucralfate recipients, and cimetidine recipients, respectively (sucralfate: relative risk, 2.0 [CI, 0.79 to 5.01], P = 0.14; cimetidine: relative risk, 2.2 [CI, 0.88 to 5.33], P = 0.09). Prophylaxis caused no definite adverse drug reactions. CONCLUSIONS The observed effects of cimetidine and sucralfate on the incidence and severity of hemorrhage from stress-related gastritis were not significant when compared with no treatment. Routine prophylaxis with these agents for patients entering the medical intensive care unit does not seem warranted.

Entropically favored ordering: the metallurgy of Al(2)Cu revisited.

Abstract: The famous sequence of precipitates which form upon heat treating Al-Cu is part of nearly every metallurgical textbook. Numerous precipitation (and other) experiments have led to a long-standing belief that the energetic ground state of Al(2)Cu is the theta phase. Modern first-principles calculations at T = 0 K surprisingly predict the energy of the observed Al(2)Cu-theta phase to be higher than that of its metastable counterpart, theta('). We show that vibrational entropy reverses this energetic preference at T approximately 150--200 degrees C, resolves the apparent discrepancy between theory and experiment, and hence plays a critical (but previously unsuspected) role in the precipitation sequence.

Impact of biofuel production and other supply and demand factors on food price increases in 2008

Abstract: The prices of some grain commodities more than doubled from March 2007 to March 2008. Increased food prices coincided with increasing global biofuel production, leading to speculation that biofuel production was responsible for the increased food prices. However, over the six-month period after March 2008, grain prices declined by 50% while biofuel production continued to increase. It is not possible to reconcile claims that biofuel production was the major factor driving food price increases in 2007–2008 with the decrease in food prices and increase in biofuel production since mid-2008. The available data suggests that record grain prices in 2008 were not caused by increased biofuel production, but were actually the result of a speculative bubble related to high petroleum prices, a weak US dollar, and increased volatility due to commodity index fund investments. Many factors converged in 2007–2008 to increase food and related commodity prices including increased demand, decreased supply, and increased production costs driven by higher energy and fertilizer costs. Disentangling these factors and providing a precise quantification of their contributions is a difficult, perhaps impossible, task. In 2008, several reports were published by governmental and international agencies that speculated on the cause of increased food prices worldwide. Taken together, the available analyses suggest that biofuel production had a modest (3–30%) contribution to the increase in commodity food prices observed up to mid-2008. The development of second-generation biofuels (e.g., cellulosic ethanol) which use non-food residual biomass or non-food crops should mitigate any future impact of biofuel production on food prices.