Therapeutic management in trochanteric fractures

The authors present the management of trochanteric fractures based on 343 fractures treated in Department of Orthopaedics and Trauma in Clinical Hospital of Emergencies of Ia?i for 5 years. The non-operative treatment was used in 17.2% of cases and the conservative methods were plaster immobilization, continuous traction and early mobilization. The surgical treatment was used in 82.8% of cases. The reduction of the fractures was usually possible using closed methods. For fixation, the authors used four types of implants: the 135 degrees blade-plate in 9.2% of cases, the condylar blade plate in 44.7%, Ender nails in 45.4% and DHS in 0.6% of cases. The choice of one of this methods depends on the type of fracture, age of the patient and on his biological status.     

Perfect Laplacians for Polygon Meshes

A discrete Laplace‐Beltrami operator is called perfect if it possesses all the important properties of its smooth counterpart. It is known which triangle meshes admit perfect Laplace operators and how to fix any other mesh by changing the combinatorics. We extend the characterization of meshes that admit perfect Laplacians to general polygon meshes. More importantly, we provide an algorithm that computes a perfect Laplace operator for any polygon mesh without changing the combinatorics, although, possibly changing the embedding. We evaluate this algorithm and demonstrate it at applications.     

Secretome from Human Mesenchymal Stem Cells-Derived Endothelial Cells Promotes Wound Healing in a Type-2 Diabetes Mouse Model

Tissue regeneration is often impaired in patients with metabolic disorders such as diabetes mellitus and obesity, exhibiting reduced wound repair and limited regeneration capacity. We and others have demonstrated that wound healing under normal metabolic conditions is potentiated by the secretome of human endothelial cell-differentiated mesenchymal stem cells (hMSC-EC). However, it is unknown whether this effect is sustained under hyperglycemic conditions. In this study, the wound healing effect of secretomes from undifferentiated human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSC) and hMSC-EC in a type-2 diabetes mouse model was analyzed. hMSC were isolated from human Wharton’s jelly and differentiated into hMSC-EC. hMSC and hMSC-EC secretomes were analyzed and their wound healing capacity in C57Bl/6J mice fed with control (CD) or high fat diet (HFD) was evaluated. Our results showed that hMSC-EC secretome enhanced endothelial cell proliferation and wound healing in vivo when compared with hMSC secretome. Five soluble proteins (angiopoietin-1, angiopoietin-2, Factor de crecimiento fibroblástico, Matrix metallopeptidase 9, and Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor) were enriched in hMSC-EC secretome in comparison to hMSC secretome. Thus, the five recombinant proteins were mixed, and their pro-healing property was evaluated in vitro and in vivo. Functional analysis demonstrated that a cocktail of these proteins enhanced the wound healing process similar to hMSC-EC secretome in HFD mice. Overall, our results show that hMSC-EC secretome or a combination of specific proteins enriched in the hMSC-EC secretome enhanced wound healing process under hyperglycemic conditions.     

The POP Buffer: Rapid Progressive Clustering by Geometry Quantization

Within this paper, we present a novel, straightforward progressive encoding scheme for general triangle soups, which is particularly well‐suited for mobile and Web‐based environments due to its minimal requirements on the client's hardware and software. Our rapid encoding method uses a hierarchy of quantization to effectively reorder the original primitive data into several nested levels of detail. The resulting stateless buffer can progressively be transferred as‐is to the GPU, where clustering is efficiently performed in parallel during rendering. We combine our approach with a crack‐free mesh partitioning scheme to obtain a straightforward method for fast streaming and basic view‐dependent LOD control.     

Enhanced biodiversity and pollination in UK agroforestry systems

Monoculture farming systems have had serious environmental impacts such as loss of biodiversity and pollinator decline. The authors explain how temperate agroforestry systems show potential in being able to deliver multiple environmental benefits.     

Why higher resolution graphics cards are needed in colour vision research

The colour resolution of a 14‐bit and an 8‐bit per channel graphics card were evaluated and compared with the just noticeable difference between colours (varying only in luminance) for: (1) a standard observer (based on the CIE 1976 L*u*v* colour space) and (2) real observers in a colour discrimination task. The results of this study show that an 8‐bit per channel graphics card seems adequate for colour discrimination experiments where stimuli only vary in luminance. However, considering that the resolution of the graphics card should be equal to the Nyquist rate, an 8‐bit per channel card turns out to be inadequate. For colour discrimination experiments where stimuli only vary in chromaticity, there is an undersampling of the colour space with respect to MacAdam ellipses when using 8‐bit per channel graphics cards. The extremely fine colour resolution of a 14‐bit per channel graphics card overcomes these problems. Its use allows more accurate measurements of achromatic and chromatic discrimination thresholds and avoids experimental (spatial or luminance) artefacts, such as bandings that can occur on achromatic or chromatic gradients. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 2011     

Effects of preliminary perceptual output on neuronal activity of the primary motor cortex.

Observations of single neurons in the primary motor cortex of 1 monkey provided evidence that preliminary perceptual information reaches the motor system before perceptual analysis is complete. Neurons were recorded during a task in which 1 stimulus was assigned to a wrist flexion response and another was assigned to wrist extension. Two stimuli were assigned to a no-go response; each was visually similar to either the flexion or the extension stimulus. When a no-go stimulus was presented, neurons responded with weaker versions of the discharge patterns exhibited to the visually similar stimulus requiring a movement, suggesting that neurons receive partial perceptual information favoring that movement. Functionally separate neuronal populations were identified, and differences in the activations of these provide evidence about the functional effects of preliminary perceptual output on movement control processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)