A prospective evaluation of children under the age of 5 years living in the same household as adults with recently diagnosed pulmonary tuberculosis

Lung injury is a well-documented adverse effect of cardiopulmonary bypass. The mechanism of injury is not fully understood, but pulmonary hypoxia may be a factor. Post-operative pulmonary epithelial permeability (PEP) in ventilated versus non-ventilated lungs was measured within 2 h of return to the intensive care unit using a 99Tcm-diethylenetriamine pentaacetate aerosol technique. A portable scintillation detector system was required. Sodium iodide detectors have been used previously with this technique but are cumbersome. This study used mini caesium iodide detectors (Oakfield Instruments, Oxon, UK), which can be attached directly to the patient and are more suited to the intensive care setting. The clearance half-time from lung to blood (T1/2LB) was measured in 31 patients (62 lungs). The mean (+/- S.E.M.) clearance half-times were 42.3 +/- 2.7 and 45.7 +/- 3.8 min for non-ventilated and ventilated lungs respectively, with a mean difference of 3.4 +/- 3.1 min (P > 0.05). We conclude that, using this technique, no significant difference in PEP is observed between ventilated and non-ventilated lungs in patients undergoing cardiopulmonary bypass.     

Stable expression of the Golgi form and secretory variants of human fucosyltransferase III from BHK-21 cells. Purification and characterization of an engineered truncated form from the culture medium

Stable BHK-21 cell lines were constructed expressing the Golgi membrane-bound form and two secretory forms of the human alpha1, 3/4-fucosyltransferase (amino acids 35-361 and 46-361). It was found that 40% of the enzyme activity synthesized by cells transfected with the Golgi form of the fucosyltransferase was constitutively secreted into the medium. The corresponding enzyme detected by Western blot had an apparent molecular mass similar to those of the truncated secretory forms. The secretory variant (amino acids 46-361) was purified by a single affinity-chromatography step on GDP-Fractogel resin with a 20% final recovery. The purified enzyme had a unique NH2 terminus and contained N-linked endo H sensitive carbohydrate chains at its two glycosylation sites. The fucosyltransferase transferred fucose to the O-4 position of GlcNAc in small oligosaccharides, glycolipids, glycopeptides, and glycoproteins containing the type I Galbeta1-3GlcNAc motif. The acceptor oligosaccharide in bovine asialofetuin was identified as the Man-3 branched triantennary isomer with one Galbeta1-3GlcNAc. The type II motif Galbeta1-4GlcNAc in bi-, tri-, or tetraantennary neutral or alpha2-3/alpha2-6 sialylated oligosaccharides with or without N-acetyllactosamine repeats and in native glycoproteins were not modified. The soluble forms of fucosyltransferase III secreted by stably transfected cells may be used for in vitro synthesis of the Lewisa determinant on carbohydrates and glycoproteins, whereas Lewisx and sialyl-Lewisx structures cannot be synthesized.     

A new evaluation system to predict the sequelae of late obstetric brachial plexus palsy

Xklp2 is a plus end-directed Xenopus kinesin-like protein localized at spindle poles and required for centrosome separation during spindle assembly in Xenopus egg extracts. A glutathione-S-transferase fusion protein containing the COOH-terminal domain of Xklp2 (GST-Xklp2-Tail) was previously found to localize to spindle poles (Boleti, H., E. Karsenti, and I. Vernos. 1996. Cell. 84:49-59). Now, we have examined the mechanism of localization of GST-Xklp2-Tail. Immunofluorescence and electron microscopy showed that Xklp2 and GST-Xklp2-Tail localize specifically to the minus ends of spindle pole and aster microtubules in mitotic, but not in interphase, Xenopus egg extracts. We found that dimerization and a COOH-terminal leucine zipper are required for this localization: a single point mutation in the leucine zipper prevented targeting. The mechanism of localization is complex and two additional factors in mitotic egg extracts are required for the targeting of GST-Xklp2-Tail to microtubule minus ends: (a) a novel 100-kD microtubule-associated protein that we named TPX2 (Targeting protein for Xklp2) that mediates the binding of GST-Xklp2-Tail to microtubules and (b) the dynein-dynactin complex that is required for the accumulation of GST-Xklp2-Tail at microtubule minus ends. We propose two molecular mechanisms that could account for the localization of Xklp2 to microtubule minus ends.     

Discourse after closed head injury in young children

This study examined narrative discourse in 23 children, ages 6 to 8 years, who sustained a severe closed head injury (CHI) at least 1 year prior to assessment. Narratives were analyzed at multiple levels using language and information structure measures. Results revealed significant discourse impairments in the CHI group on all measures of information structure, whereas differences in the linguistic domain failed to reach significance. In addition, effects of age at injury and lateralization of lesion on discourse were considered. Although no significant differences were found according to age at injury, a consistent pattern of generally poorer discourse scores was found for the early injured group (< 5 years). With regard to lesion focus, the group findings were unimpressive. However, preliminary examination of individual CHI cases with relatively large lateralized lesions suggested that the late injured children may show the language-brain patterns reported in brain-injured adults, whereas early injured children may not.     

An unprocessed pseudogene of inducible nitric oxide synthase gene in human

Over 4.5 years, 32 patients with spinal epidural metastases were decompressed and stabilized. Median survival was 9.5 months. Myelopathy was the predominant indication (41%) for the operation, intractable pain (microinstability) the second most important. The type of tumor spreading and biomechanics necessitated ventral decompression and stabilization in 65%. Corporectomy or extensive laminectomy was always combined with internal fixation and bone cement. With the exception of six patients (5 early deaths), all patients were able to walk after surgery. The Karnofsky index was improved significantly from 35 to 66%. The longest survival time was found in breast carcinomas and myelomas. Preoperative radiological embolization was a keystone in the treatment. Indication for surgery in spinal metastases is critical and needs an interdisciplinary approach. When the patient is suffering from higher degrees of paresis or even paralysis, he/she is no longer an ideal candidate for the operation. The same applies in the presence of uncontrolled primary tumors and neoplastic disease of the GI tract and the bronchus.     

New imidazoles as probes of the active site topology and potent inhibitors of beta-glucosidase

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the long-term efficacy, safety, and tolerability of the alpha-glucosidase inhibitor miglitol in the treatment of African-American patients with type 2 diabetes. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: A total of 345 African-American type 2 diabetic patients (mean age 55.6 years, BMI 31.9 kg/m2, duration of diabetes 4.9 years, baseline HbA1C 8.7%) treated with either diet alone or sulfonylurea were randomized to 1 year of double-blind treatment with either placebo (n = 117) or miglitol (n = 228) at doses of 50 or 100 mg t.i.d., titrated based on tolerability. The primary efficacy criterion was change from baseline in HbA1C at the 6-month visit. Secondarily efficacy parameters included changes from baseline in plasma glucose and serum insulin (both fasting and 120 min after a standardized test meal), fasting lipids, and urinary albumin-to-creatinine ratio. Safety and tolerability evaluations were primarily based on reporting of adverse events and symptoms and on periodic laboratory analyses. RESULTS: Miglitol treatment was associated with a mean placebo-subtracted reduction in HbA1C from baseline of 1.19% at 6 months. Fasting and 120-min postprandial plasma glucose levels were reduced in parallel to HbA1C, in association with miglitol treatment. Significant reductions versus placebo in 120-min postprandial insulin levels, in LDL cholesterol, and in fasting triglycerides, were also seen in the miglitol group at individual study time points. Softer, more frequent stools and flatulence were significantly more common in the miglitol group. Urinary tract infections, hematuria, and herpes simplex infections were significantly more common in the placebo group. CONCLUSIONS: Miglitol treatment appears to be at least as efficacious in the African-American type 2 population as in the U.S. type 2 population at large, with comparable tolerability. alpha-Glucosidase treatment may be an important therapeutic option in these patients in view of their greater risk for microvascular complications and the accumulating body of evidence that better glucose control reduces the risk of these complications.     

Intelligent Transportation Systems

This issues Works in Progress department features 10 interesting ongoing intelligent transportation systems projects. The first five projects (TIME, Sentient Transport, EVT, DynaCHINA, TrafficView) focus on traffic and vehicular data collection, transmission, and analysis. The sixth projects aims to provide intelligent-copilot services for driven, while the seventh focuses on asset identification and data collection for railroad environments. The eighth and ninth projects are budding application development environments for automobiles, and the tenth project is designing a multimodal biometric identification system for travel documents     

Diagonalizing properties of the discrete cosine transforms

Since its introduction in 1974 by Ahmed et al., the discrete cosine transform (DCT) has become a significant tool in many areas of digital signal processing, especially in signal compression. There exist eight types of discrete cosine transforms (DCTs). We obtain the eight types of DCTs as the complete orthonormal set of eigenvectors generated by a general form of matrices in the same way as the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) can be obtained as the eigenvectors of an arbitrary circulant matrix. These matrices can be decomposed as the sum of a symmetric Toeplitz matrix plus a Hankel or close to Hankel matrix scaled by some constant factors. We also show that all the previously proposed generating matrices for the DCTs are simply particular cases of these general matrix forms. Using these matrices, we obtain, for each DCT, a class of stationary processes verifying certain conditions with respect to which the corresponding DCT has a good asymptotic behavior in the sense that it approaches Karhunen-Loeve transform performance as the block size N tends to infinity. As a particular result, we prove that the eight types of DCTs are asymptotically optimal for all finite-order Markov processes. We finally study the decorrelating power of the DCTs, obtaining expressions that show the decorrelating behavior of each DCT with respect to any stationary processes