619 research outputs found
A Survey on Retrieval of Mathematical Knowledge
We present a short survey of the literature on indexing and retrieval of
mathematical knowledge, with pointers to 72 papers and tentative taxonomies of
both retrieval problems and recurring techniques.Comment: CICM 2015, 20 page
Evolution of hindlimb muscle anatomy across the tetrapod water-to-land transition, including comparisons with forelimb anatomy
Tetrapod limbs are a key innovation implicated in the evolutionary success of the clade. Although musculoskeletal evolution of the pectoral appendage across the fins‐to‐limbs transition is fairly well documented, that of the pelvic appendage is much less so. The skeletal elements of the pelvic appendage in some tetrapodomorph fish and the earliest tetrapods are relatively smaller and/or qualitatively less similar to those of crown tetrapods than those of the pectoral appendage. However, comparative and developmental works have suggested that the musculature of the tetrapod forelimb and hindlimb was initially very similar, constituting a “similarity bottleneck” at the fins‐to‐limbs transition. Here we used extant phylogenetic bracketing and phylogenetic character optimization to reconstruct pelvic appendicular muscle anatomy in several key taxa spanning the fins‐to‐limbs and water‐to‐land transitions. Our results support the hypothesis that transformation of the pelvic appendages from fin‐like to limb‐like lagged behind that of the pectoral appendages. Compared to similar reconstructions of the pectoral appendages, the pelvic appendages of the earliest tetrapods had fewer muscles, particularly in the distal limb (shank). In addition, our results suggest that the first tetrapods had a greater number of muscle‐muscle topological correspondences between the pectoral and pelvic appendages than tetrapodomorph fish had. However, ancestral crown‐group tetrapods appear to have had an even greater number of similar muscles (both in terms of number and as a percentage of the total number of muscles), indicating that the main topological similarity bottleneck between the paired appendages may have occurred at the origin of the tetrapod crown group
Exacerbation of Bloody Diarrhea as a Side Effect of Mesalamine Treatment of Active Ulcerative Colitis
Mesalamine has been used as the first-line therapy for the treatment of ulcerative colitis (UC) because of its efficacy and fewer side effects. However, earlier study showed that mesalamine occasionally causes diarrhea. We are presenting a patient with active UC in whom bloody diarrhea accompanied by abdominal pain and fever occurred and the symptoms were aggravated after administration of mesalamine. In order to clarify the reason of symptoms aggravation, drug lymphocyte stimulation test and rechallenge trial with mesalamine were performed. The results indicated the possibility that aggravation was related to allergic reaction and was dose-dependent. Furthermore, we examined colonoscopic views but there was no remarkable change in before and after rechallenge trial. Based on the above result, the patient was diagnosed with mesalamine intolerance. In order to differentiate whether the exacerbation of bloody diarrhea is due to the side effects of the mesalamine or a true relapse of UC, taking careful history before and after increasing mesalamine dosage as well as being aware of side effects of mesalamine are required. Clinicians should be aware of diarrhea as a side effect of mesalamine particularly after onset of mesalamine formulation, change in mesalamine formulation, or change in mesalamine dose
Neural correlates of sexual cue reactivity in individuals with and without compulsive sexual behaviours
Although compulsive sexual behaviour (CSB) has been conceptualized as a "behavioural" addiction and common or overlapping neural circuits may govern the processing of natural and drug rewards, little is known regarding the responses to sexually explicit materials in individuals with and without CSB. Here, the processing of cues of varying sexual content was assessed in individuals with and without CSB, focusing on neural regions identified in prior studies of drug-cue reactivity. 19 CSB subjects and 19 healthy volunteers were assessed using functional MRI comparing sexually explicit videos with non-sexual exciting videos. Ratings of sexual desire and liking were obtained. Relative to healthy volunteers, CSB subjects had greater desire but similar liking scores in response to the sexually explicit videos. Exposure to sexually explicit cues in CSB compared to non-CSB subjects was associated with activation of the dorsal anterior cingulate, ventral striatum and amygdala. Functional connectivity of the dorsal anterior cingulate-ventral striatum-amygdala network was associated with subjective sexual desire (but not liking) to a greater degree in CSB relative to non-CSB subjects. The dissociation between desire or wanting and liking is consistent with theories of incentive motivation underlying CSB as in drug addictions. Neural differences in the processing of sexual-cue reactivity were identified in CSB subjects in regions previously implicated in drug-cue reactivity studies. The greater engagement of corticostriatal limbic circuitry in CSB following exposure to sexual cues suggests neural mechanisms underlying CSB and potential biological targets for interventions
Rapid diagnosis of experimental meningitis by bacterial heat production in cerebrospinal fluid
BACKGROUND: Calorimetry is a nonspecific technique which allows direct measurement of heat generated by biological processes in the living cell. We evaluated the potential of calorimetry for rapid detection of bacterial growth in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) in a rat model of bacterial meningitis. METHODS: Infant rats were infected on postnatal day 11 by direct intracisternal injection with either Streptococcus pneumoniae, Neisseria meningitidis or Listeria monocytogenes. Control animals were injected with sterile saline or heat-inactivated S. pneumoniae. CSF was obtained at 18 hours after infection for quantitative cultures and heat flow measurement. For calorimetry, 10 microl and 1 microl CSF were inoculated in calorimetry ampoules containing 3 ml trypticase soy broth (TSB). RESULTS: The mean bacterial titer (+/- SD) in CSF was 1.5 +/- 0.6 x 108 for S. pneumoniae, 1.3 +/- 0.3 x 106 for N. meningitidis and 3.5 +/- 2.2 x 104 for L. monocytogenes. Calorimetric detection time was defined as the time until heat flow signal exceeded 10 microW. Heat signal was detected in 10-microl CSF samples from all infected animals with a mean (+/- SD) detection time of 1.5 +/- 0.2 hours for S. pneumoniae, 3.9 +/- 0.7 hours for N. meningitidis and 9.1 +/- 0.5 hours for L. monocytogenes. CSF samples from non-infected animals generated no increasing heat flow (<10 microW). The total heat was the highest in S. pneumoniae ranging from 6.7 to 7.5 Joules, followed by L. monocytogenes (5.6 to 6.1 Joules) and N. meningitidis (3.5 to 4.4 Joules). The lowest detectable bacterial titer by calorimetry was 2 cfu for S. pneumoniae, 4 cfu for N. meningitidis and 7 cfu for L. monocytogenes. CONCLUSION: By means of calorimetry, detection times of <4 hours for S. pneumoniae and N. meningitidis and <10 hours for Listeria monocytogenes using as little as 10 microl CSF were achieved. Calorimetry is a new diagnostic method allowing rapid and accurate diagnosis of bacterial meningitis from a small volume of CSF
Fras1, a basement membrane-associated protein mutated in Fraser syndrome, mediates both the initiation of the mammalian kidney and the integrity of renal glomeruli
FRAS1 is mutated in some individuals with Fraser syndrome (FS) and the encoded protein is expressed in embryonic epidermal cells, localizing in their basement membrane (BM). Syndactyly and cryptophthalmos in FS are sequelae of skin fragility but the bases for associated kidney malformations are unclear. We demonstrate that Fras1 is expressed in the branching ureteric bud (UB), and that renal agenesis occurs in homozygous Fras1 null mutant blebbed (bl) mice on a C57BL6J background. In vivo, the bl/bl bud fails to invade metanephric mesenchyme which undergoes involution, events replicated in organ culture. The expression of glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor and growth-differentiation factor 11 was defective in bl/bl renal primordia in vivo, whereas, in culture, the addition of either growth factor restored bud invasion into the mesenchyme. Mutant primordia also showed deficient expression of Hoxd11 and Six2 transcription factors, whereas the activity of bone morphogenetic protein 4, an anti-branching molecule, was upregulated. In wild types, Fras1 was also expressed by nascent nephrons. Foetal glomerular podocytes expressed Fras1 transcripts and Fras1 immunolocalized in a glomerular BM-like pattern. On a mixed background, bl mutants, and also compound mutants for bl and my, another bleb strain, sometimes survive into adulthood. These mice have two kidneys, which contain subsets of glomeruli with perturbed nephrin, podocin, integrin α3 and fibronectin expression. Thus, Fras1 protein coats branching UB epithelia and is strikingly upregulated in the nephron lineage after mesenchymal/epithelial transition. Fras1 deficiency causes defective interactions between the bud and mesenchyme, correlating with disturbed expression of key nephrogenic molecules. Furthermore, Fras1 may also be required for the formation of normal glomeruli
Sexual Abuse-Current Medico-legal, Forensic and Psychiatric Aspects
Abstract
Violence against women and minors is a worldwide problem that has not yet been sufficiently acknowledged. There are many obstacles especially when sexual abuses have to be evaluated. These problems are present both when victims of sexual abuse are evaluated and when sex offenders are dealt with, especially when the offenders are juvenile sex offenders (JSO).
These issues give cause for great concern about prognosis, and the resulting psychosocial implications, and call for a special effort from the scientific community in identifying appropriate prevention and treatment methods.
This chapter is divided into two parts. The first part deals with the forensic and psychiatric features, such as diagnostic and therapeutic/rehabilitative strategies for JSO, while the second part analyzes the legal–medicine aspects related to rape/sexual assault in a European context
Presentation of the 9th Edition of the Model Checking Contest.
International audience; The Model Checking Contest (MCC) is an annual competition of software tools for model checking. Tools must process an increasing benchmark gathered from the whole community and may participate in various examinations: state space generation, computation of global properties, computation of some upper bounds in the model, evaluation of reachability formulas, evaluation of CTL formulas, and evaluation of LTL formulas.For each examination and each model instance, participating tools are provided with up to 3600 s and 16 gigabyte of memory. Then, tool answers are analyzed and confronted to the results produced by other competing tools to detect diverging answers (which are quite rare at this stage of the competition, and lead to penalties).For each examination, golden, silver, and bronze medals are attributed to the three best tools. CPU usage and memory consumption are reported, which is also valuable information for tool developers
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A Search for Dark Higgs Bosons
Recent astrophysical and terrestrial experiments have motivated the proposal
of a dark sector with GeV-scale gauge boson force carriers and new Higgs
bosons. We present a search for a dark Higgs boson using 516 fb-1 of data
collected with the BABAR detector. We do not observe a significant signal and
we set 90% confidence level upper limits on the product of the Standard
Model-dark sector mixing angle and the dark sector coupling constant.Comment: 7 pages, 5 postscript figures, published version with improved plots
for b/w printin
Measurement of the Forward-Backward Asymmetry in the B -> K(*) mu+ mu- Decay and First Observation of the Bs -> phi mu+ mu- Decay
We reconstruct the rare decays , , and in a data sample
corresponding to collected in collisions at
by the CDF II detector at the Fermilab Tevatron
Collider. Using and decays we report the branching ratios. In addition, we report
the measurement of the differential branching ratio and the muon
forward-backward asymmetry in the and decay modes, and the
longitudinal polarization in the decay mode with respect to the squared
dimuon mass. These are consistent with the theoretical prediction from the
standard model, and most recent determinations from other experiments and of
comparable accuracy. We also report the first observation of the {\mathcal{B}}(B^0_s \to
\phi\mu^+\mu^-) = [1.44 \pm 0.33 \pm 0.46] \times 10^{-6}27 \pm 6B^0_s$ decay observed.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, 3 tables. Submitted to Phys. Rev. Let
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