Creativity is a vital tool for innovation in engineering. Psychology and engineering faculty developed the Creative Engineering Design Assessment (CEDA) because existing tools are limited. This measure was administered with general creativity measures in 63 engineering (57 males, six females) and 21 non‐engineering (six males, 15 females) students in five week intervals. Inter‐rater reliability showed high consistency overall and between the test and retest administrations. Only engineering males and females significantly differed on the retest. Engineering students with low, medium, and high creative engineering design did not statistically differ in their general creativity, not domain specific to engineering; however, only high scorers were significantly higher on the retest from the other groups. Future research is needed with larger samples.

Current noninvasive tests for coronary artery disease detect atherosclerosis or regional ischemia. Global myocardial flow reserve is not routinely identified, although it may be an additional marker of disease development and progression. Methods: For the clinical work-up of suspected or known stable coronary artery disease, 275 individuals had undergone rest-dipyridamole 82 Rb myocardial perfusion imaging using PET. In addition to clinical measures of regional perfusion and function, an experimentally validated approach to quantify global myocardial flow reserve was used. Follow-up was obtained for 362 6 277 d. Results: Myocardial blood flow and flow reserve showed significant correlation to systemic and cardiac hemodynamics and a weak association with risk factors such as age and history of hyperlipidemia. Flow reserve was expectedly lower in subjects with regional ischemia (1.70 6 0.65 vs. 2.31 6 0.97 in those without; P , 0.0001), but a wide range was observed in those without regional perfusion abnormalities. We used a composite endpoint of hard and soft events to determine that flow reserve below the median was predictive of adverse outcome in the overall population (P 5 0.001) and in subjects with normal regional perfusion (n 5 178; P 5 0.036), whereas stress flow was predictive only in the overall population (P 5 0.001). Ageadjusted multivariate analysis confirmed regional perfusion defects (relative hazard, 2.51; 95% confidence interval, 1.24-5.10; P 5 0.009) and low global flow reserve (relative hazard, 2.93; 95% confidence interval, 1.30-6.65; P 5 0.011) as independent predictors of cardiac events. Conclusion: In clinical cardiac 82 Rb PET, globally impaired flow reserve is a relevant marker for predicting short-term cardiovascular events. It may be used for integration with currently established functional and morphologic test results and for guidance of preventive measures, especially in the absence of regional flow-limiting disease.

Inward-rectifying potassium (K+  in) channels in guard cells have been suggested to provide a pathway for K+ uptake into guard cells during stomatal opening. To test the proposed role of guard cell K+  in channels in light-induced stomatal opening, transgenic Arabidopsis plants were generated that expressed dominant negative point mutations in the K+  in channel subunit KAT1. Patch-clamp analyses with transgenic guard cells from independent lines showed that K+  in current magnitudes were reduced by approximately 75% compared with vector-transformed controls at −180 mV, which resulted in reduction in light-induced stomatal opening by 38% to 45% compared with vector-transformed controls. Analyses of intracellular K+ content using both sodium hexanitrocobaltate (III) and elemental x-ray microanalyses showed that light-induced K+ uptake was also significantly reduced in guard cells of K+  in channel depressor lines. These findings support the model that K+  inchannels contribute to K+ uptake during light-induced stomatal opening. Furthermore, transpirational water loss from leaves was reduced in the K+  in channel depressor lines. Comparisons of guard cell K+  in current magnitudes among four different transgenic lines with different K+  in current magnitudes show the range of activities of K+  in channels required for guard cell K+ uptake during light-induced stomatal opening.

Prior estimates of radiation-absorbed doses from 82Rb, a frequently used PET perfusion tracer, yielded discrepant results. We reevaluated 82Rb dosimetry using human in vivo biokinetic measurements. Methods Ten healthy volunteers underwent dynamic PET/CT (6 contiguous table positions, each with separate 82Rb infusion). Source organ volumes of interest were delineated on the CT images and transferred to the PET images to obtain time-integrated activity coefficients. Radiation doses were estimated using OLINDA/EXM 1.0. Results The highest mean absorbed organ doses (μGy/MBq) were observed for the kidneys (5.81), heart wall (3.86), and lungs (2.96). Mean effective doses were 1.11 ± 0.22 and 1.26 ± 0.20 μSv/MBq using the tissue-weighting factors of the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP), publications 60 and 103, respectively. Conclusion Our current 82Rb dosimetry suggests reasonably low radiation exposure. On the basis of this study, a clinical 82Rb injection of 2 × 1,480 MBq (80 mCi) would result in a mean effective dose of 3.7 mSv using the weighting factors of the ICRP 103—only slightly above the average annual natural background exposure in the United States (3.1 mSv).