The normal and pathological movement of water in tissues and its relation to the colligative properties of solutions and to inflammation.
A series of studies, each suggested by those that preceded, were first concerned with the movement of water in parenchymatous cells of liver, kidney, submaxillary glands, and other glandular organs. Evidenee was soon obtained showing that these cells were isotonic as determined by the osmotic pressure they maintained, not with physiological salt solution (0.15 M), as at that time popularly assumed, but with sodium chloride in approximately twice this concentration. Cells of the liver or of the kidney acted as osmometers and measured the osmotic pressure which they maintained. When various eleetrolytes were tested, it was found that their osmotic pressures varied with the valence of the basic ions of the salts that were used, being, for example; I for monovalent sodium salts, 2 for calcium salt, 3 for lanthanum salts. Solutions of the salts of eleetrolytes manifest properties so bound together that they are designated colligative. These properties include osmotic pressure, depression of the freezing point, vapor tension, and boiling point of solutions. It is well established that any one of them provides data from which the others can be dedueed by appropriate calculation.1 The changes which oceurred in liver or in kidney were found to be in aecord with tables which record changes in the freezing point of graded solutions of salts of electrolytes, on the one hand, or of boiling points on the other. Visible necrosis of the skin of laboratory animals was produeed by injeetion into the dermis, and the molar strength of solutions of various electrolytes needed to cause it was determined. This varied with the valence of the basic ions of the salts that were tested and followed a sequence which was the same as that of the isotonicity of liver or of kidney cortex immersed in corresponding solutions. The molar concentration of amino acids that produced necrosis followed the same order as osmotic pressure of liver in the same solutions. The relation of necrosis to the colligative properties of electrolytes suggested a study of the relation of inflammatory reactions to the moleeular constitution of agents that cause them. Injection of injurious substances into the large serous cavities of the body, peritoneal and pleural, offered a method by which exudation of fluid, leucocytes, and plasma protein could be measured with considerable accuracy. The numerical results thus obtained give an adequate measure of the inflammatory reactions. The relations cited emphasize the dependence of normal and pathological changes upon the colligative properties of electrolytes and of organic compounds which direet the movement of water and of the compounds it may contain. With these relations in mind, it has seemed desirable to review the sequence of studies which were undertaken to measure the movement of water in cells and interstitial tissue under normal and under pathological conditions.
OSMOTIC ACTIVITY OF TISSUES DURING FETAL AND POSTNATAL GROWTH
The osmotic pressure maintained by liver tissue of the white rat preceding birth is less than that of the maternal blood serum and shortly after birth approximates this level. Following birth osmotic pressure of liver tissue, continuing to increase, reaches after about 60 to 90 days the level found in the liver of mature animals and is then isotonic with solutions of sodium chloride with concentration slightly more than twice that isotonic with blood serum. Osmotic pressure maintained by kidney tissue pursues with growth a similar course but at a lower level and about 35 to 60 days after birth reaches that found in the mature animal being represented by isotonicity with a concentration of sodium chloride slightly less than twice that isotonic with blood serum. The tissues of the whole fetus are isotonic with sodium chloride solutions less concentrated than that isotonic with the maternal blood serum.
Refinement of crystal structure parameters using convergent‐beam electron diffraction: the low‐temperature phase of SrTiO3
The method to refine crystal structure parameters (atom positions and Debye–Waller factors) using convergent-beam electron diffraction (CBED), which is applicable to crystal structure analysis of a small specimen area down to a few nm in diameter, is studied. The line profiles of higher-order Laue-zone reflections are recorded using imaging plates. Theoretical intensities are calculated based on the dynamical theory of electron diffraction with the aid of the generalized Bethe approximation to shorten calculation time. The structural parameters are determined by fitting the experimental profiles with the theoretical ones using a nonlinear least-squares method. The present method has been applied to the low-temperature phase of SrTiO3. The structural parameter or the rotation angle of the oxygen octahedron has been determined to be \varphi = 1.12 (4)°, which shows good agreement with that obtained from electron spin resonance experiments.