Spousal carers' worries have significant implications for health care professionals. The findings provide insight into the concerns and worries the carers of people with multiple sclerosis face when caring for their chronically ill partners at home.

This phenomenological-interpretative inquiry explores spousal carers' experience of caring for their partner while confronting many apparent losses. Ten spousal carers of people with multiple sclerosis (MS) participated in the study. The authors collected data using unstructured in-depth interviews and analyzed them using a hermeneutic method. The constitutive pattern, Weaving Through a Web of Paradoxes, that emerged from the data described how these participants' experience in caring for their partner has changed their way of living and their being. The authors present in this article some of the paradoxes that capture carers' experiences of loss and gain, and their feelings of vulnerability and strength. The insight gained from this study adds new understanding of responses to non-death-related losses.

The microwave spectrum of 3,4-dimethylanisole, a molecule containing three methyl groups allowing for internal rotation, was recorded using a pulsed molecular jet Fourier transform microwave spectrometer operating in the frequency range from 2.0 to 26.5 GHz. Quantum chemical calculations yielded two conformers with a trans and a cis configuration of the methoxy group, both of which were assigned in the experimental spectrum. Torsional splittings due to the internal rotations of two methyl groups attached to the aromatic ring were resolved and analysed. The rotation-torsional transitions could be reproduced to measurement accuracy, yielding well-determined rotational and internal rotation parameters. The torsional barriers of the methyl groups at the meta and para position were deduced to be 430.00(37) and 467.90(17) cm −1 , respectively, for the cis-conformer. The respective values for the trans-conformer are 499.64(26) and 533.54( 22) cm −1 . A labelling scheme for the G18 group written as the semidirect product ( 3  3 )⨴ was introduced.

In a study using unstructured interviews to explore nurses' understanding and interpretations of caring in nursing, one of the major themes emerging from the data is that through caring for patients, nurses discover the meaning and nature of nursing and what it means for them to be nurses. In the process of caring for patients, nurses further develop and understand the knowledge and skill of caring which constitutes the knowledge base of nursing. The data also show that nurses, in their practice, continue to define, develop and shape the meaning and knowledge of caring in nursing. From the evidence of this study, this paper argues that caring can be considered as the ontological and epistemological foundations of nursing.

Endochondral ossification (EO) occurs in the growth plate where chondrocytes pass through discrete stages of proliferation, maturation, hypertrophy, and calcification. We have developed and characterized a novel bovine cell culture model of EO that mirrors these events and will facilitate in vitro studies on factors controlling chondrocyte differentiation. Chondrocytes derived from the epiphyses of long bones of fetal calves were treated with 5-azacytidine (aza-C) for 48 h. Cultures were maintained subsequently without aza-C and harvested at selected time points for analyses of growth and differentiation status. A chondrocytic phenotype associated with an extensive extracellular matrix rich in proteoglycans and collagen types II and VI was observed in aza-C-treated and -untreated cultures. aza-C-treated cultures were characterized by studying the expression of several markers of chondrocyte differentiation. Parathyroid hormone-related protein (PTHrP) and its receptor, both markers of maturation, were expressed at days 5-9. Type X collagen, which is restricted to the stage of hypertrophy, was expressed from day 11 onward. Hypertrophy was confirmed by a 14-fold increase in cell size by day 15 and an increased synthesis of alkaline phosphatase during the hypertrophic period (days 14 -28). The addition of PTHrP to aza-C-treated cultures at day 14 led to the down-regulation of type X collagen by 6-fold, showing type X collagen expression is under the control of PTHrP as in vivo. These findings show that aza-C can induce fetal bovine epiphyseal chondrocytes to differentiate in culture in a manner consistent with that which occurs during the EO process in vivo. (J Bone Miner Res 2001;16:309 -318)