Central NO is involved in the antinociceptive action of intracisternal antidepressants in freely moving rats

The present study was performed to examine the central effects of antidepressants on nociceptive jaw opening reflex after intracisternal injection. we also investigated the mechanisms of central antinociceptive action of intracisternal antidepressants. We recorded the jaw opening reflex in freely moving rats and chose to administer antidepressants intracisternally in order to eliminate the effects of anesthetic agents on the pain assessment and evaluate the importance of the spinal site of action of antidepressants. After intracisternal injection of 15 microg imipramine, digastric electromyogram (dEMG) was decreased to 76+/-6% of the control. Intracisternal administration of 30 microg desipramine, nortriptyline or imipramine suppressed dEMG remarkably to 48+/-2, 27+/-8, or 25+/-5% of the control, respectively. The suppression of dEMG was maintained for 50 min. L-NG-Nitroarginine methyl ester (NAME) blocked the suppression of dEMG from 32+/-2 to 81+/-5% of the control. These results indicate that antidepressants produce antinociception through central mechanisms in the orofacial area. The central NO pathway seems to be involved in the antinociception of intracisternal antidepressants at supraspinal sites.     

Risk factors for new coronary events in older African-American men and women

Independent risk factors for new coronary events in older African-American men were (1) age (risk ratio = 1.037), (2) cigarette smoking (risk ratio = 2.231), (3) hypertension (risk ratio = 2.531), (4) serum total cholesterol (risk ratio = 1.012), (5) serum high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol (inverse association) (risk ratio = 0.948), and (6) prior coronary artery disease (CAD) (risk ratio = 2.288). Independent risk factors for new coronary events in older African-American women were (1) cigarette smoking (risk ratio = 2.202), (2) hypertension (risk ratio = 2.344), (3) diabetes mellitus (risk ratio = 1.632), (4) serum total cholesterol (risk ratio = 1.008), (5) serum HDL cholesterol (inverse association) (risk ratio = 0.936), (6) age (risk ratio = 1.026), and (7) prior CAD (risk ratio = 2.368).     

Lack of familial clustering of hepatitis C virus infection

BACKGROUND: Although transmission of hepatitis C virus (HCV) through parental exposure is well documented, it is still controversial whether familial clustering of HCV occurs. METHODS: To investigate risk factors for HCV infection, 109 cases and 84 non-infected controls were studied. In addition, 250 family members (104 men, 146 women) of cases and 170 family members of controls (64 men, 106 women) were tested for HCV infection using an anti-HCV antibody, alanine aminotransferase (ALT), and reverse transcribed polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). RESULTS: In the case-control analysis, people aged > or =60 were almost three times more likely to be infected by HCV than those aged <40. Risk of HCV infection was most strongly related to a history of blood transfusion (OR = 12.6, 95% CI: 4.3-36.5) followed by a history of jaundice (OR = 4.1, 95% CI: 1.3-12.6). Only one family member of cases and no-one related to the controls had HCV infection. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that, in Korea, age and parenteral exposure, such as a blood transfusion, are risk factors for HCV infection and familial clustering of HCV infection, if it occurs, is rare.     

Synthesis of 6-aziridinylbenzimidazole derivatives and their in vitro antitumor activities

In search for new antitumor agents, twelve 6-aziridinylbenzimidazole derivatives were synthesized and their cytotoxicities were tested against three cancer cell lines (mouse lymphocytic leukemia P388 and B16, and human gastric carcinoma SNU-16). From 4-amino-3-nitrotoluene as the starting material, 2-(acetoxymethyl)benzimidazoles (5a-d) were obtained by Phillips reaction. These benzimidazoles were then reacted with Fremy's salt to give a mixture of three 2-(acetoxymethyl) (8a-c) and four 2-(hydroxymethyl)benzimidazole-4,7-diones (9a-d). Addition of these quinones with aziridine afforded 6-aziridinyl-2-(acetoxymethyl) (10a-c) and 6-aziridinyl-2-(hydroxymethyl)benzimidazole-4,7-diones (11a-d). Utilizing 2-(hydroxymethyl)benzimidazole-4,7-diones (9b,d), esters 10d and 13e-h were prepared by the sequential reactions of esterification and addition. The synthesized compounds show potent cytotoxicity against all of three cell lines tested. The cytotoxicities of 10a-d or 11a-d against SNU-16 were superior to those of 13e-h, and were equal to or slightly higher than that of mitomycin C. Compounds 11a-d were slightly more cytotoxic than 10a-d in all cell lines tested.     

Progressive familial leukodystrophy of late onset

We report a family in which three siblings developed dementia between the ages of 40 and 70 years. Two of the siblings developed symptoms of depression, abnormal behavior, and an inability to function, progressing to severe dementia. The third sibling had a severe dementia, the clinical details of which are not available. In the two deceased siblings neuropathologic examinations demonstrated severe demyelination, axon loss, and gliosis in cerebral white matter. Cerebellar and brainstem white matter were unaffected. Cerebral gray matter was negligibly affected. The disorder, histopathologically classified as a pigmented orthochromatic leukodystrophy, is extremely rare. Its etiology is unknown, but the pathology and familial occurrence imply that it represents a genetic defect in a function localized in the cerebral white matter.     

Support NNEF execution model for NNAPI

The Journal of Supercomputing - With growing applications such as image recognition, speech recognition, ADAS, and AIoT, artificial intelligence (AI) frameworks are becoming popular in various...     

High-performance simulations of turbulent boundary layer flow using Intel Xeon Phi many-core processors

The Journal of Supercomputing - Direct numerical simulations (DNS) of turbulent flows have increasing importance because they not only provide fundamental understanding of turbulent flows but also...     

Adaptive load balancing algorithm for multiple homing mobile nodes

In places where mobile users can access multiple wireless networks simultaneously, a multipath scheduling algorithm can benefit the performance of wireless networks and improve the experience of mobile users. However, existing literature shows that it may not be the case, especially for TCP flows. According to early investigations, there are mainly two reasons that result in bad performance of TCP flows in wireless networks. One is the occurrence of out-of-order packets due to different delays in multiple paths. The other is the packet loss which is resulted from the limited bandwidth of wireless networks. To better exploit multipath scheduling for TCP flows, this paper presents a new scheduling algorithm named Adaptive Load Balancing Algorithm (ALBAM) to split traffic across multiple wireless links within the ISP infrastructure. Targeting at solving the two adverse impacts on TCP flows, ALBAM develops two techniques. Firstly, ALBAM takes advantage of the bursty nature of TCP flows and performs scheduling at the flowlet granularity where the packet interval is large enough to compensate for the different path delays. Secondly, ALBAM develops a Packet Number Estimation Algorithm (PNEA) to predict the buffer usage in each path. With PNEA, ALBAM can prevent buffer overflow and schedule the TCP flow to a less congested path before it suffers packet loss. Simulations show that ALBAM can provide better performance to TCP connections than its other counterparts.     

Minimal-drift heading measurement using a MEMS gyro for mobile robots: Fused with odometry

To achieve the goal of low-cost MEMS gyros for the precise self-localization of mobile robots, this paper presents a simple, yet effective method to minimize drifts on the heading angle by combining measurements from a gyro with measurements from wheel encoders (odometry). The main idea of the proposed approach is to estimate the accuracy of both sensors as a function of the actual maneuver being carried out, and then the output of both sensors are fused by the complementary filter taking into account the maneuvering conditions. The proposed method is applied to a mobile robot and the experimental data demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach.