A program system interpreting recording of long-latency evoked potentials

An algorithm and a personal computer program for automatic distinguishing between EEC records containing evoked and no potentials, based on the detected invariants reflecting experts' experience in evoked potential analysis have been developed. The efficiency of the programme (its high accuracy and speed, low volume) has been demonstrated in the system for automatic determination of the hearing level by long-latent evoked potentials. It is easily modifiable to identify evoked potentials from other modalities (visual, somatosensory ones) in the systems using the traditional and/or up-to-date computerized EEC equipment.     

Elegant emergency medicine

Spontaneous intracranial hypotension due to a spinal cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) leak is a rare but increasingly recognized cause of postural headaches. The exact cause of these CSF leaks often remains unknown. The authors treated a 32-year-old man with a unique cause of spontaneous intracranial hypotension. He suffered an excruciating headache that was exacerbated by his being in an upright position. The results of four-vessel cerebral angiography were negative; however, magnetic resonance (MR) imaging of the brain revealed pachymeningeal enhancement and hindbrain herniation. A presumptive diagnosis of spontaneous intracranial hypotension was made. Myelography revealed extrathecal contrast material ventral to the cervical spinal cord as well as an unusual midline bone spur at C5-6. The patient's symptoms did not resolve with the application of epidural blood patches, and he subsequently underwent an anterior approach to the C5-6 spur. After discectomy, a slender bone spur that had pierced the thecal sac was found. After its removal, the dural rent was closed using two interrupted prolene sutures. The patient was discharged home 2 days later. On follow up his symptoms had resolved, and on MR imaging the pachymeningeal enhancement had resolved and the cerebellar herniation had improved slightly.     

Carcinoma of the male breast: a review and recommendations for management

OBJECTIVES: To investigate whether occupational exposure to organic solvents increases the risk of dementia. METHODS: Cases of dementia were identified from the computed tomography records of eight neuroradiology centres in England and Wales, and were compared with two sets of controls investigated at the same centres. The first set of controls were patients with brain cancer and the second set were patients with other disorders that were not chronically disabling. Lifetime occupational histories were obtained through a postal questionnaire completed by the subjects or their next of kin. Associations between dementia and occupation were examined by logistic regression. RESULTS: Usable questionnaires were returned for 204 (61%) of the cases, 225 (51%) of the controls with brain cancer, and 441 (61%) of the other controls. The findings with each of the two sets of controls were similar. In comparison with all controls combined, cases had less often worked ever as a painter or printer (odds ratio (OR) 0.6, 95% confidence interval (95% CI) 0.3 to 1.2), and were less likely to have worked for > 1 year as a printer, painter, or launderer or dry cleaner (OR 0.6, 95% CI 0.3 to 1.4). CONCLUSIONS: These findings provide no support for the hypothesis that occupational exposure to solvents is a cause of dementia. An excess risk in subsets of workers with extremes of exposure cannot be discounted, but the data indicate that any influence of exposure to solvents on the overall incidence of severe dementia in the general population of England and Wales is small.     

The Gator Tech Smart House: a programmable pervasive space

Research groups in both academia and industry have developed prototype systems to demonstrate the benefits of pervasive computing in various application domains. Unfortunately, many first-generation pervasive computing systems lack the ability to evolve as new technologies emerge or as an application domain matures. To address this limitation, the University of Florida's Mobile and Pervasive Computing Laboratory is developing programmable pervasive spaces in which a smart space exists as both a runtime environment and a software library. Service discovery and gateway protocols automatically integrate system components using generic middleware that maintains a service definition for each sensor and actuator in the space. The Gator Tech Smart House in Gainesville, Florida, is the culmination of more than five years of research in pervasive and mobile computing. The project's goal is to create assistive environments such as homes that can sense themselves and their residents and enact mappings between the physical world and remote monitoring and intervention services.     

Neurobiological correlates of the antidepressant action of electroconvulsive therapy

The activation of adenosine receptors has recently been demonstrated to stimulate haematopoiesis. In the present study, we investigated the ability of drugs elevating extracellular adenosine to influence curative effects of granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) in mice exposed to a sublethal dose of 4 Gy of 60Co radiation. Elevation of extracellular adenosine in mice was induced by the combined administration of dipyridamole, a drug inhibiting the cellular uptake of adenosine, and adenosine monophosphate (AMP), an adenosine prodrug. The effects of dipyridamole plus AMP, and G-CSF, administered either alone or in combination, were evaluated. The drugs were injected to mice in a 4-d treatment regimen starting on d 3 after irradiation and the haematopoietic response was evaluated on d 7, 10, 14, 18 and 24 after irradiation. While the effects of G-CSF on the late maturation stages of blood cells, appearing shortly after the completion of the treatment, were not influenced by dipyridamole plus AMP, positive effects of the combination therapy occurred in the post-irradiation recovery phase which is dependent on the repopulation of haematopoietic stem cells. This was indicated by the significant elevation of counts of granulocyte-macrophage progenitor cells (GM-CFC) and granulocytic cells in the bone marrow (d 14), of GM-CFC (d 14), granulocytic and erythroid cells (d 14 and 18) in the spleen, and of neutrophils (d 18), monocytes (d 14 and 18) and platelets (d 18) in the peripheral blood. These effects suggest that the repopulation potential of the combination therapy lies in a common multilineage cell population. The results of this study implicate the promising possibility to enhance the curative effects of G-CSF under conditions of myelosuppressive states induced by radiation exposure.     

Modification of CAPP systems for CAPP/scheduling integration

This paper presents a new approach - through the modification of an existing CAPP system, i.e. CMPP, - for achieving CAPP/scheduling integration. An operation-machine index is developed as a relative measure for selecting the best machine from all the alternates in the process planning stage to satisfy two scheduling criteria: mean flow time and number of jobs tardy.     

Langerhans cell histiocytosis

The authors present a rare case of Langerhans cell histiocytosis in a 31 year old female patient with vulvar, peri-anal and oral lesions, diabetes insipidus, pulmonary skin and bone infiltrations. Skin biopsy immunohistochemistry presented positive S100 protein and vimentin, but the diagnosis was done with the demonstration of Birbeck granules with electronic microscopy. The treatment was based on systematical chemotherapy although vulvar lesion has a bad response to chemotherapy.     

To Eat or Not to Eat: Implications of the Attentional Myopia Model for Restrained Eaters.

The attentional myopia model of behavioral control was tested in a study of food consumption by chronic dieters. According to the model, when individuals' attentional capacity is limited, their behavior will be disproportionately influenced by highly salient internal and external cues to the exclusion of more distal stimuli. In situations that normally feature conflicting behavioral pressures, such a state of narrowed attention is likely to result in abnormally disinhibited behavior when cues promoting action are more salient and to result in abnormally restrained behavior when inhibiting cues are more salient. In addition to supporting the predictions of the model, this study provided the first evidence for enhanced behavioral control under conditions of limited attention. Participants' responses to a thought-reporting measure also provided evidence for the role played by attentional myopia in the control of eating. Implications for a broad array of regulatory successes and failures are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Biomimetic Hydroxyapatite–Drug Nanocrystals as Potential Bone Substitutes with Antitumor Drug Delivery Properties

This Full Paper investigates the adsorption and desorption of the anticancer drugs cis‐diamminedichloroplatinum(II) (CDDP, cisplatin) and the new platinum(II) complex di(ethylenediamineplatinum)medronate (DPM), as well as the clinically relevant bisphosphonate alendronate, towards two biomimetic synthetic HA nanocrystalline materials with either plate‐shaped (HAps) or needle‐shaped (HAns) morphologies and different chemico‐physical properties. The adsorption and desorption kinetics are dependent on the specific properties of the drugs and the morphology of the HA nanoparticles. Adsorption of the platinum complexes occurs with retention of the nitrogen ligands but the chloride ligands of cisplatin are displaced. Despite their opposite charges, the negatively charged alendronate bisphosphonate and the positively charged aquated cisplatin are strongly adsorbed, while the neutral DPM complex shows lower affinity towards the negatively charged apatitic surface. The data suggest that adsorption of the two platinum complexes is driven by electrostatic attractions, while interaction between the alendronate and the HA surface takes place by ligand exchange in which the two phosphonate groups of the drug molecule replace two surface phosphate groups. Significantly, adsorption of positively charged hydrolysis species of cisplatin is more favored on the phosphate‐rich HAns surface while adsorption of negatively charged alendronate is more favored on the calcium‐rich HAps surface. The latter type of short‐range electrostatic interactions also appear to dominate the desorption kinetics; consequently, drug release is greater for neutral DPM than for charged alendronate and aquated cisplatin. Moreover, while the release per unit area of charged species is the same for the two types of HAs, the release of DPM is faster from HAns, which is lower in surface calcium, than for HAps. Overall, this work demonstrates that the properties of HA nanocrystals can be modulated in such a way to produce HA/biomolecule conjugates tailored for specific therapeutic applications.