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913 students from 6 junior and senior high schools in California responded to a 20-item questionnaire using 4-point Likert-type ratings to indicate their 3 greatest worries, to the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, and nuclear-war-related items. On forced-choice items concerns were parents dying for 53.5%, getting bad grades for 37.0%, and nuclear war for 31.9%; however, the three greatest worries were parents dying for 54.9%, nuclear war for 32.8%, and bad grades for 25.9%. Older adolescents were less worried than younger ones, but there were no differences for sex or socioeconomic status, or for race on several items. On derived factor scores students classified as high in worry (about nuclear war) scored higher on Social Issues than low worriers but scored lower on Psychosocial Concerns. Implications for education are discussed.

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This paper suggests that medically the term a 'human being' should be defined by the presence of an active human brain. The brain is the only unique and irreplaceable organ in the human body, as the orchestrator of all organ systems and the seat of personality. Thus, the presence or absence of brain life truly defines the presence or absence of human life in the medical sense. When viewed in this way, human life may be seen as a continuous spectrum between the onset of brain life in utero (eight weeks gestation), until the occurrence of brain death. At any point human tissue or organ systems may be present, but without the presence of a functional human brain, these do not constitute a 'human being', at least in a medical sense. The implications of this theory for various ethical concerns such as in vitro fertilisation and abortion are discussed. This theory is the most consistent possible for the definition of a human being with no contradictions inherent. However, having a good theory of definition of a 'human being' does not necessarily solve the ethical problems discussed herein.

Twelve cases of liver abscess in children and adolescents presenting at Children's Hospital at Los Angeles from 1974 to 1983 were reviewed. Most occurred in children younger than 5 years of age. The time from onset of symptoms to presentation did not differ over the 10-year period examined. However, diagnosis was made more rapidly in the latter half of the decade due to the development of advanced noninvasive imaging techniques and serologic methods. A constellation of fever, abdominal pain (whether or not localized in the right upper abdomen), vomiting or anorexia, hepatomegaly, elevated white blood cell count and sedimentation rate, and an unexplained anemia should prompt the clinician to include occult liver abscess in the differential diagnosis and proceed to early use of ultrasound or isotopic liver-spleen scan. History of travel or immigration or exposure to food handlers harboring the infection is important to differentiate amebic abscess from bacterial abscess. This suspicion may greatly alter the course of treatment.