Features, symptoms, and neurophysiological findings in stroke associated with hyperhomocysteinemia

BACKGROUND: Hyperhomocysteinemia has been shown to be a mild independent risk factor for premature atherosclerosis, and there is evidence of an increased rate of peripheral vascular occlusive disease, myocardial infarction, and stroke. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate clinical, biochemical, and neurophysiological findings in patients with ischemic stroke with and without hyperhomocysteinemia. SUBJECTS: One hundred twenty-five consecutive patients with a history of stroke and 60 healthy control subjects. METHODS: Patients were divided into those with and those without hyperhomocysteinemia, which was defined as blood levels beyond the mean total plasma homocysteine level plus 2 SDs of the healthy control group. History, symptoms, cause, patterns of infarction, biochemical data, continuous and transcranial Doppler sonography, and event-related potentials were recorded in all patients. RESULTS: Twenty-seven patients had hyperhomocysteinemia. Compared with the 98 patients without hyperhomocysteinemia, they had an increased rate of hypertension (odds ratio, 3.5; 95% confidence interval, 1.0-12.6), an increased level of uric acid (P < .007), an increased hematocrit (P < .02), a higher rate of microangiopathy (odds ratio, 2.8; 95% confidence interval, 1.1-7.2), and a trend to a higher rate of multiple infarction. Furthermore, the P3 latency of the event-related potential was significantly increased in hyperhomocysteinemia (P < .004). CONCLUSIONS: Hyperhomocysteinemia is probably an independent risk factor for stroke, with a prevalence of about 20% in all patients with a history of stroke; however, additional factors (eg, hypertension, hyperuricemia) may have an enhancing effect. There are significant differences in stroke patterns between patients with and without hyperhomocysteinemia, with a higher rate of lesions typical of cerebral microangiopathy and a trend to multiple infarctions in the former. Impairment of cognitive processing as measured by visual event-related potential is more pronounced in hyperhomocysteinemia.     

Must the patient fast before intravascular injection of a non-ionic contrast medium? Results of a controlled study

PURPOSE: Prospective evaluation of food and fluid restriction before the intravascular injection of a non-ionic contrast medium. MATERIAL AND METHODS: 1000 patients (657 men, 343 women; average age 59 +/- 1/4 5 years) undergoing intravascular contrast injections (CT, phlebography, angiography, urography) were randomly allocated to two groups. Group A had no fluid or solids for at least four hours before the injection (499 cases); group B were allowed unlimited food and fluid (501 cases). Both groups were comparable in all other respects and all were given the non-ionic contrast medium iopamidol (300 mg l/ml). RESULTS: The incidence of acute complications was 3.5%. There was, however, no statistically significant difference between the two groups (p = 0.29). Late adverse reactions were seen in 3.9% patients. There was again no difference between the two groups (p = 0.33). No serious or life threatening complications occurred. CONCLUSION: Restriction of food and fluid before intravascular injection of contrast medium does not reduce the number of adverse side effects. For reasons of patient comfort and compliance, and to achieve adequate hydration, the patient should not fast before injection of contrast.     

The design and implementation of an operating system to supportdistributed multimedia applications

Support for multimedia applications by general purpose computing platforms has been the subject of considerable research. Much of this work is based on an evolutionary strategy in which small changes to existing systems are made. The approach adopted is to start ab initio with no backward compatibility constraints. This leads to a novel structure for an operating system. The structure aims to decouple applications from one another and to provide multiplexing of all resources, not just the CPU, at a low level. The motivation for this structure, a design based on the structure, and its implementation on a number of hardware platforms is described     

Relevance of width measurements of the right pulmonary artery descending branch for detection of pulmonary hypertension in chronic obstructive lung diseases (author's transl)

363 patients with chronic obstructive lung diseases were examined regarding the relation between pulmonary hypertension and width of the right descending branch of the pulmonary artery (RDB). There was found a high significant correlation between mean pulmonary artery pressure at rest and diameter of the RDB. The width of RDB was not so close correlated with pulmonary artery pressure during exercise. If the diameter of the RDB was 19 mm and more, a manifest pulmonary hypertension was stated nearly always. Missing this radiological sign doesn't exclude pulmonary hypertension. The method will be useful for screening a risk group "pulmonary hypertension". All cases selected by this method aught to be examined by means of right heart catheterization with the floating technic.     

Anger and social appraisal: A "spicy" sex difference?

The central objective of this study was to investigate the role of social appraisal in sex differences in anger expression. Anger expression was inferred from the amount of hot sauce given to the person who induced anger. Participants were randomly assigned to a social condition, in which they expected to meet this person, or to a nonsocial condition, in which they had no such expectation. Men and women differed in their anger expressions, despite the fact that they did not differ in anger experience. Women expressed anger to a lesser extent than men, but only in the social condition. Social appraisal partly mediated the relation between sex and anger expression. The role of social appraisal in emotion and appraisal theory is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Context analysis to support development of virtual reality applications

To develop a usable Virtual Reality system, the prospective context of use of such a system may need to be considered in order to make sure it meets the requirements and restrictions of that context. In this paper, a contextual analysis is described for a virtual reality system to aid medical diagnosis and treatment planning of vascular disorders. Semi-structured interviews were coupled with observations in an ethnographic approach to requirements gathering in the daily work environment of (interventional) radiologists and vascular surgeons. The identified potential usability problems of a fully immersive prototype, coupled with the needs, requirements and real-life environment of the end-users lead to guidelines for the development of a VR application on a semi-immersive desktop environment. The findings lead us to believe that contextual analysis can be a powerful way to inform the design of a VR application by offering an understanding of the context of use and to inform developers of the most appropriate degree of immersiveness of the VR environment.     

A review on fulminating gold (Knallgold)

Expensive and explosive! The reaction of ammonia and gold(III) compounds leads to explosive products known as “fulminating gold”. Gold scientists should be aware of the potential hazards involved in the reaction of these starting materials. Herein, a historic and scientific review on this fascinating substance is presented. Fulminating gold has been known since medieval times, but cannot be fully characterized due to its polymeric and heterogeneous character. Magnetic measurements confirm previous EXAFS analyses that the gold atoms have a square planar coordination environment (AuN₄-moieties that are party connected and form a 3-dimensional network). The explosive properties and resulting safety instructions are discussed in detail as well.     

MANUS--a wheelchair-mounted rehabilitation robot.

Rehabilitation robots are assistive devices designed for use by people with severe disability in order to gain independence in tasks of daily living. MANUS is a wheelchair-mounted general-purpose manipulator now in use with over 100 people in their homes in the Netherlands, in France and in other countries. MANUS has six main degrees of freedom, excluding the gripper. To keep the arm slim, the motors are placed in the main base. The resulting low mass of the arm ensures a reduced impulse in case of collision. A complex system of toothed belts, hollow shafts and geared wheels drives the end-effector. MANUS is equipped with a two-fingered gripper. The fingers have passive canting mechanisms which ensure a three-point grasping action for most objects. A modular control system is used for steering the manipulator to its desired position. For this, a simple but effective user interface has been developed which is configurable by the end-user as well as by the therapist.     

兼顾可靠性与成本LIN2.0从属器件的车载应用

在充分集成的LIN 2.0从属器件UJA 1023的帮助下,可以实现多种电子模块.每一个模块都按照LIN 2.0进行配置,保证了其"即插即用"特性.即使是对在现场服务维修、替换工作中使用的现成从属模块而言也是如此.通过座椅控制应用的例子,本文将向您介绍LIN 2.0车载应用的优点.