Search PubMed⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

G Wilson

Publications and source records attributed to G Wilson.

414 records · Page 23Linked to original sources

The value-adding CFO: an interview with Disney's Gary Wilson. Interview by Geraldine E. Willigan.

Financing a company is more complex than ever-and more important to its economic success. The demands on a CFO are tremendous. Optimizing capital costs requires an unprecedented level of technical sophistication. Yet the best CFOs today are not mere technicians. They are also strategists and innovators. Gary Wilson exemplifies the new CFO. In his 5 years as executive vice president and CFO of the Walt Disney Company and his 12 years at Marriott Corporation, he has shown how the finance function can add value-not just account for it. How does a CFO create value for shareholders? "Just like all the great marketing and operating executives," Wilson says, "by being creative." To Wilson, being creative means rethinking assumptions and finding clever ways to achieve financial and strategic goals. Some of Wilson's innovative deal making-like the off-balance-sheet financing he used at Marriott-is well known. At Marriott, he discovered the power of separating the ownership of an asset from its control. Marriott's strength was in operations, yet the company had a great deal of money tied up in real estate. Growth would require even more investment in real estate. Wilson's solution was to sell the hotels-in effect, removing them and the debt used to finance them from the balance sheet-and contract to operate them. In this interview, Wilson gives his view of the role of finance in today's corporation and explains the thinking behind some of the successful deals he has engineered-including Disney's Silver Screen movie-making partnerships and Euro Disneyland.

Administrative Personnel↗

Patients know best.

Explore the source record for details and available documents.

Decision Making, Organizational↗

Mechanism of protection of rat spermatogenesis by hormonal pretreatment: stimulation of spermatogonial differentiation after irradiation.

Pretreatment of rats with hormones that suppress testosterone levels and sperm production enhances the recovery of spermatogenesis from stem cells after a cytotoxic insult. It is not known whether the enhanced recovery results from an increase in the numbers of surviving stem cells or whether their ability to differentiate is enhanced. In this study, untreated rats and rats pretreated with testosterone plus estradiol-17beta (T + E) were irradiated with 3.5 or 6 Gy, and the recovery of spermatogenesis from surviving stem cells was assessed at 6, 10, and 20 weeks after irradiation. T + E pretreatment did not significantly affect the numbers of A spermatogonia remaining in the tubules at 6 weeks after irradiation. In rats that were given irradiation alone, spermatogenesis steadily declined after 6 weeks because the stem cells lost their ability to differentiate. However, when rats were treated with T + E before irradiation, this decline was prevented, and in fact, at least at the lower dose of radiation, there was a progressive recovery of spermatogenesis. Given the similar spermatogonial counts at 6 weeks after irradiation in the irradiated-only and T + E-treated, irradiated rats, the hormone treatment appears not to protect stem cells from being killed by the cytotoxic agent. Rather, the later enhancement of spermatogenic recovery results from prevention of an injury-induced change in spermatogonia or in their environment, which would have otherwise resulted in failure of spermatogonial differentiation.

Animals↗

GnRH agonists and antagonists stimulate recovery of fertility in irradiated LBNF1 rats.

The goal of this study was to determine whether both gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) agonists and antagonists could enhance fertility in rats given sterilizing doses of irradiation, to quantify the levels of fertility, and to measure their relative effectiveness in stimulating recovery of spermatogenesis. Irradiated rats were treated with either the GnRH agonist Lupron or the GnRH antagonist Cetrorelix, which have different mechanisms of action. The antagonist suppressed luteinizing hormone (LH), reducing intratesticular testosterone from 75 ng/g-testis to about 5 ng/g-testis, whereas the agonist reduced intratesticular testosterone only moderately to about 20 ng/g-testis, presumably by direct action on the Leydig cell since LH was elevated. These differences were reflected in Leydig cell morphology. When hormone treatment was started immediately after 3.7-Gy irradiation, fertility was normal at week 20 in the agonist-treated rats and was near normal in antagonist-treated rats, whereas irradiated-only rats were sterile. At week 22 in the GnRH antagonist-treated rats, testicular weights and sperm counts were maintained at greater than 80% of control values; in GnRH agonist-treated rats, they were slightly but significantly lower than in GnRH antagonist-treated rats, and in irradiated-only rats, they were very low. When the treatment was initiated 10 weeks after 5-Gy irradiation, after spermatogenesis had ceased, fertility was restored at week 30 to subnormal levels in 83% of GnRH agonist- and 50% of GnRH antagonist-treated rats. Testis weights and sperm counts were restored to about 50% and 20% of control levels, respectively. The percentages of tubules with differentiated germ cells were higher in all groups of antagonist-treated rats than in those of agonist-treated rats. Thus, both GnRH agonists and antagonists produced dramatic recovery of spermatogenesis and fertility in irradiated rats, although there were differences in mechanism and perhaps also in effectiveness.

Animals↗

Fatal ethibloc embolization of vertebrobasilar system following percutaneous injection into aneurysmal bone cyst of the second cervical vertebra.

A 4-year-old boy developed progressive neck pain and an expansile osteogenic lesion of C2; the diagnosis was an aneurysmal bone cyst. An image-guided biopsy with 3D CT planning was performed followed by Ethibloc injection into the aneurysmal bone cyst. Subsequent CT and MR images demonstrated embolization material in the vertebrobasilar system, and the patient died of brain stem and cerebellar infarction 23 hours after the intervention. The course of events and technical considerations are discussed.

Basilar Artery↗

Technology and stress.

Explore the source record for details and available documents.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

Effect of hydrogen peroxide on epithelial light-scattering and stromal deturgescence.

The anterior epithelium of the cornea is particularly sensitive to toxic solutions. A zone of increased light-scattering in the anterior epithelium, the anterior bright band (ABB), increases in thickness when exposed to toxic substances, but is not affected by benign solutions. With some solutions the thickness of the stroma also increases. The endothelial surfaces of rabbit corneas were perfused in vitro at 35 degrees C with various solutions, and the ABB and stromal thickness determined by specular microscopy. With glutathione-bicarbonate Ringer as control, the epithelium was bathed with concentrations of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) at 72, 153, and 235 ppm with either a 10-minute pulse dose or a sustained dose of 150 minutes. In the 10-minute pulse-dose experiment, the H2O2 concentrations caused no significant changes in the ABB or stroma when compared with the control. In the 150-minute sustained-dose experiment, significant changes in both the ABB and stroma thickness were noted at the 153 and 235 ppm concentrations, but the 72 ppm dose caused no significant change. Exposure to benzalkonium chloride for 150 minutes produces a greater increase in both ABB and stromal thickness than does exposure to 235 ppm hydrogen peroxide.

Animals↗

Anterior tarsal tunnel syndrome.

The pathogenesis, etiology, and diagnostic features of the anterior tarsal tunnel syndrome as it affects the foot are discussed in this manuscript.

Adult↗

On the road.

Explore the source record for details and available documents.

Community Health Nursing↗

Protection by gonadal steroid hormones against procarbazine-induced damage to spermatogenic function in LBNF1 hybrid rats.

Some anti-cancer drugs, such as procarbazine (PCZ), are associated with irreversible damage to spermatogenic function and cause sterility in men. In the present study, protection of spermatogenesis by gonadal steroid hormones during PCZ treatment was investigated in male rats. LBNF1 hybrid rats were chosen for these studies because the response of the testis to PCZ was more uniform than in a stock of Sprague-Dawley outbred rats. Mature male LBNF1 rats were subcutaneously implanted with cholesterol (C)-, testosterone (T)-, and/or estradiol-17 beta (E)-containing capsules, and 5-10 weeks later given one or four weekly intraperitoneal injections of PCZ at a dose of 200-250 mg/kg of body weight. Hormone capsules were removed 24 hours after the last PCZ injection and the animals were killed 10-12 weeks later. Testicular weights, sonication-resistant sperm head counts, and quantitative testicular histology revealed protection of the spermatogenic epithelium from PCZ toxicity by gonadal steroid hormones when compared with the C controls. Protection was observed against both single and multiple injections of PCZ. A combination of T and E capsules provided better protection than T alone. This model system is suitable for studies of the mechanism of protection of spermatogenesis from chemotherapy-induced damage.

Animals↗

Hormonal protection from cyclophosphamide-induced inactivation of rat stem spermatogonia.

Studies of protection of testicular function from cyclophosphamide with hormonal pretreatment have been limited by the lack of a convenient model for cyclophosphamide-induced inactivation of stem spermatogonia. In the rat, the mortality from cyclophosphamide had prevented the administration of sufficient dosages to produce detectible damage to stem spermatogonia. To overcome this problem, we used bone marrow transplantation and sodium 2-mercaptoethanesulfonate (Mesna) treatment to raise the lethal dose for 50% of the animals (LD50) for cyclophosphamide from 275 to > 400 mg/kg body weight. In addition we used irradiation, 2 weeks prior to injection of cyclophosphamide, to greatly enhance the measured toxicity of cyclophosphamide towards stem spermatogonia. Whereas sperm counts at 9 weeks after a 300 mg/kg cyclophosphamide dose were reduced by only a factor of 1.6 without prior irradiation, they were reduced by a factor of 60 when 2.5 Gy of irradiation had been given. Dramatic protection against this toxicity was produced by hormone treatment with a gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) antagonist (Nal-Glu) and an antiandrogen (flutamide) following the radiation but prior to cyclophosphamide. This hormone treatment did not modify the stem cell toxicity of the radiation and it therefore must be protecting stem cells against cyclophosphamide-induced damage. Because GnRH antagonist-antiandrogen treatment can protect stem spermatogonial survival and/or function in the rat from cyclophosphamide-induced damage, if the same principles are applicable in human, hormonal pretreatment should be useful for preventing the prolonged azoospermia caused by chemotherapy with cyclophosphamide-containing protocols.

Androgen Antagonists↗

[Infection by intestinal protozoa and helminths in schoolchildren from riverside sectors, with different fecal contamination levels, of Valdivia River, Chile].

During 1993, the prevalences of infection by intestinal protozoa and helminths (IPH) in the riverside schoolchildren population of two sectors of Valdivia river, with different levels of fecal contamination, were compared in relation to their contact with river water (swimming, bathing) and basic sanitation elements (BSE) of their houses: feces and garbage disposal, and water supply. Populations of children from sectors A (n = 418), with significatively greater (SG) total coliform most probable number (MPN), and sector B (n = 400), were examined. PAFS test was used for the stool examination of one sample, from each child. The global prevalence of infection by IPH was similar in A (74.8%) and B (72.5%) sectors. From 10 identified IPH, only Entamoeba histolytica and Hymenolepis nana showed prevalences of infection SG in sector A, than in sector B. The contact of the children with the water of the river showed association with SG prevalences for E. histolytica, Entamoeba coli and Endolimax nana in sector B and for E. histolytica in sector A. No sanitary condition for the different BSE contributed to SG prevalences for E. histolytica, Ascaris lumbricoides and Trichuris trichiura in both sectors, and for E. coli in sector B. The contact with the river water and the different BSE contributed to prevalences SG in 5 and 3 IPH in sectors B and A, respectively. The results suggest that a project in study for the development of a treatment plant of wastewater in sector A, could contribute to control infection by IPH. But, this measure must be associated with improvement of the BSE, health education, and application of chemotherapy measures for geohelminthosis in both sectors.

Adolescent↗