Local synthesis of immunoglobulins in neuropathies

It is essential to know how the immune system acts in different neurological diseases, some of them non very well known or of unknown etiology at all. It was applied Reiber and Felgenhauer's formula in 56 patients with different diseases. IgA, IgM, IgG and albumin were quantified in sera and cerebrospinal fluid by simple immunodiffusion. It was observed more frequent IgG local synthesis and IgA in this sample.     

Clinical trial of ototopical ofloxacin for treatment of chronic suppurative otitis media

A multicenter, open-label prospective trial was performed to determine the clinical and microbiologic efficacy of ofloxacin (OFLX) otic solution in the treatment of subjects > or =12 years with chronic suppurative otitis media (CSOM) and a chronically perforated tympanic membrane in the infected ear(s). A total of 207 patients at 27 centers in the United States and Central America received OFLX 0.5 mL instilled ototopically twice daily for 14 consecutive days. The primary clinical end point was cure (dry ear) or failure (not dry ear). The primary microbiologic end point was eradication of baseline pathogens. Because there was no comparator and there were few data in the literature regarding clinical efficacy in patients treated with other regimens, the efficacy of OFLX was compared with data recorded in the clinical records of historical-practice control (HPC) or current-practice control (CPC) subjects. The incidence of clinical cure in clinically evaluable OFLX-treated patients (91%; 148 of 162 subjects) was significantly higher than in HPC subjects (67%; 124 of 185 subjects) or CPC subjects (70%; 38 of 54 subjects). OFLX eradicated all baseline pathogens isolated in microbiologically evaluable subjects. These pathogens were predominantly Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Proteus mirabilis. The most common treatment-related adverse event, bitter taste, occurred in 17% (35 of 207) of OFLX-treated subjects. Thus OFLX 0.5 mL administered twice daily for 14 days was effective in resolving the signs and symptoms of CSOM in subjects > or =12 years, was significantly more effective than therapies used to treat HPC or CPC subjects, and was well tolerated.     

Mitogenic effect of retinoid X receptor agonists in rat liver

Thirty-nine acrylates and methacrylates that had been used in dental resin materials were evaluated by a cytotoxicity test, and the relationships between their structures and cytotoxicity were studied to predict cytotoxic levels of dental resin materials in order to develop new low-toxic resin materials. All the acrylates evaluated were more toxic than corresponding methacrylates. In both the acrylates and methacrylates, a hydroxyl group seemed to enhance cytotoxicity. Dimethacrylates with 14 or fewer oxyethylene chains showed similar cytotoxicity while dimethacrylates with 23 oxyethylene chains showed lower cytotoxicity. The cytotoxicity ranking of monomers widely used in dental resin materials was bisphenol A bis 2-hydroxypropyl methacrylate (bisGMA) > urethane dimethacrylate (UDMA) > triethyleneglycol dimethacrylate (3G) > 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate (HEMA) > methyl methacrylate (MMA). In acrylates, methacrylates, and ethylmethacrylates with either substituents, the lipophilicity of substituents affected their cytotoxicity, and an inverse correlation between IC50 and logP was observed. These results will be useful in developing new resin materials with low toxic monomer compositions.     

CHILD syndrome with linear eruptions, hypopigmented bands, and verruciform xanthoma

The traditional rhomboid transposition flap has been widely used in reconstructive surgery. The authors have modified the original technique by eliminating the creation of the rhomboid defect and by directly transposing the flap into the original postexcisional defect. These changes allow maximum flexibility in flap design and minimize normal tissue loss. The authors retrospectively reviewed the charts of patients who underwent periocular reconstruction with flaps from 1990 through 1995. The authors selected those patients in whom the modified rhomboid flap was used. Functional and cosmetic results and complications were reviewed. Two hundred thirty-two patients were identified in whom 242 flaps were performed. The modified rhomboid flap was used in 101 patients (41.7%). Complications occurred in 23 patients (23%), 19 of whom (19%) were treated medically and four of whom (4%) required an additional surgical procedure. Cosmetic and functional results were classified as very good or excellent in 96 patients (96%). The use of a modified rhomboid flap in the reconstruction of the periocular area offers ample versatility in flap design and minimal normal tissue loss. Functional and cosmetic results are satisfactory in the vast majority of cases.     

Action recognition via bio-inspired features: The richness of center–surround interaction

Motion is a key feature for a wide class of computer vision approaches to recognize actions. In this article, we show how to define bio-inspired features for action recognition. To do so, we start from a well-established bio-inspired motion model of cortical areas V1 and MT. The primary visual cortex, designated as V1, is the first cortical area encountered in the visual stream processing and early responses of V1 cells consist in tiled sets of selective spatiotemporal filters. The second cortical area of interest in this article is area MT where MT cells pool incoming information from V1 according to the shape and characteristic of their receptive field. To go beyond the classical models and following the observations from Xiao et al. [61], we propose here to model different surround geometries for MT cells receptive fields. Then, we define the so-called bio-inspired features associated to an input video, based on the average activity of MT cells. Finally, we show how these features can be used in a standard classification method to perform action recognition. Results are given for the Weizmann and KTH databases. Interestingly, we show that the diversity of motion representation at the MT level (different surround geometries), is a major advantage for action recognition. On the Weizmann database, the inclusion of different MT surround geometries improved the recognition rate from 63.01 ± 2.07% up to 99.26 ± 1.66% in the best case. Similarly, on the KTH database, the recognition rate was significantly improved with the inclusion of MT different surround geometries (from 47.82 ± 2.71% up to 92.44 ± 0.01% in the best case). We also discussed the limitations of the current approach which are closely related to the input video duration. These promising results encourage us to further develop bio-inspired models incorporating other brain mechanisms and cortical areas in order to deal with more complex videos.     

An analytic solution to the transient diffusion-reaction problem in particles dispersed in a slurry reactor

In this work, we present the solution of the equations that govern the reactant transport in a well mixed system that contains particles where diffusion and first-order reaction occur. The transport equations are coupled by an interfacial boundary condition that includes mass transfer resistance. The statement of the problem allows arbitrary time depending feed functions. The evaluation of the solution obtained by the Laplace method requires the solution of an eigenvalue problem. We discuss the evaluation of the solution, and typical results for three different feed functions: step, pulse and oscillatory functions are presented. The resulting equations are able to show the effect of internal and external mass transfer limitations on the particle and fluid concentrations and on kinetic experimental results.     

Cephazoline sodium release from poly(N‐isopropyl acrylamide‐co‐N,N‐dimethylacrylamide) hydrogels

Hydrogels are hydrophilic polymers that swell to an equilibrium volume in the presence of water, preserving their shape. The dynamic swelling behavior of poly(N‐isopropylacrylamide‐co‐N,N‐dimethylacrylamide) [poly(NIPA‐co‐DMA)] copolymers at 37°C was investigated. It was observed that the swelling degree in the copolymers decreases with the N‐isopropylacrylamide content. In addition, the liberation mechanism was found to be Fickian. Diffusion coefficients according to Fick′s law as a function of the N‐isopropylacrylamide concentration and results of the release process are reported. The kinetics of cephazoline sodium release from poly(NIPA‐co‐DMA) hydrogels with different compositions was studied. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 91: 3433–3437, 2004     

Action Recognition Using a Bio-Inspired Feedforward Spiking Network

We propose a bio-inspired feedforward spiking network modeling two brain areas dedicated to motion (V1 and MT), and we show how the spiking output can be exploited in a computer vision application: action recognition. In order to analyze spike trains, we consider two characteristics of the neural code: mean firing rate of each neuron and synchrony between neurons. Interestingly, we show that they carry some relevant information for the action recognition application. We compare our results to Jhuang et al. (Proceedings of the 11th international conference on computer vision, pp. 1–8, 2007) on the Weizmann database. As a conclusion, we are convinced that spiking networks represent a powerful alternative framework for real vision applications that will benefit from recent advances in computational neuroscience.     

Simultaneous aligning and smoothing of surface triangulations

In this work we develop a procedure to deform a given surface triangulation to obtain its alignment with interior curves. These curves are defined by splines in a parametric space and, subsequently, mapped to the surface triangulation. We have restricted our study to orthogonal mapping, so we require the curves to be included in a patch of the surface that can be orthogonally projected onto a plane (our parametric space). For example, the curves can represent interfaces between different materials or boundary conditions, internal boundaries or feature lines. Another setting in which this procedure can be used is the adaption of a reference mesh to changing curves in the course of an evolutionary process. Specifically, we propose a new method that moves the nodes of the mesh, maintaining its topology, in order to achieve two objectives simultaneously: the piecewise approximation of the curves by edges of the surface triangulation and the optimization of the resulting mesh. We will designate this procedure as projecting/smoothing method and it is based on the smoothing technique that we have introduced for surface triangulations in previous works. The mesh quality improvement is obtained by an iterative process where each free node is moved to a new position that minimizes a certain objective function. The minimization process is done on the parametric plane attending to the surface piece-wise approximation and to an algebraic quality measure (mean ratio) of the set of triangles that are connected to the free node. So, the 3-D local projecting/smoothing problem is reduced to a 2-D optimization problem. Several applications of this method are presented.     

A collaborative platform for cognitive decision making in the Knowledge Society

Two key aspects of the Knowledge Society are the interconnection between the actors involved in the decision making processes and the importance of the human factor, particularly the citizen’s continuous learning and education. This paper presents a new module devoted to knowledge extraction and diffusion that has been incorporated into a previously developed decision making tool concerning the Internet and related with the multicriteria selection of a discrete number of alternatives (PRIOR-Web). Quantitative and qualitative procedures using data and text mining methods have been employed in the extraction of knowledge. Graphical visualisation tools have been incorporated in the diffusion stage of the methodological approach suggested when dealing with decision making in the Knowledge Society. The resulting collaborative platform is being used as the methodological support for the cognitive democracy known as e-cognocracy.