Visual feedback alters force control and functional activity in the visuomotor network after stroke.

Modulating visual feedback may be a viable option to improve motor function after stroke, but the neurophysiological basis for this improvement is not clear. Visual gain can be manipulated by increasing or decreasing the spatial amplitude of an error signal. Here, we combined a unilateral visually guided grip force task with functional MRI to understand how changes in the gain of visual feedback alter brain activity in the chronic phase after stroke. Analyses focused on brain activation when force was produced by the most impaired hand of the stroke group as compared to the non-dominant hand of the control group. Our experiment produced three novel results. First, gain-related improvements in force control were associated with an increase in activity in many regions within the visuomotor network in both the stroke and control groups. These regions include the extrastriate visual cortex, inferior parietal lobule, ventral premotor cortex, cerebellum, and supplementary motor area. Second, the stroke group showed gain-related increases in activity in additional regions of lobules VI and VIIb of the ipsilateral cerebellum. Third, relative to the control group, the stroke group showed increased activity in the ipsilateral primary motor cortex, and activity in this region did not vary as a function of visual feedback gain. The visuomotor network, cerebellum, and ipsilateral primary motor cortex have each been targeted in rehabilitation interventions after stroke. Our observations provide new insight into the role these regions play in processing visual gain during a precisely controlled visuomotor task in the chronic phase after stroke

Pattern recognition in lymphoid malignancies using CytoGPS and Mercator

BACKGROUND: There have been many recent breakthroughs in processing and analyzing large-scale data sets in biomedical informatics. For example, the CytoGPS algorithm has enabled the use of text-based karyotypes by transforming them into a binary model. However, such advances are accompanied by new problems of data sparsity, heterogeneity, and noisiness that are magnified by the large-scale multidimensional nature of the data. To address these problems, we developed the Mercator R package, which processes and visualizes binary biomedical data. We use Mercator to address biomedical questions of cytogenetic patterns relating to lymphoid hematologic malignancies, which include a broad set of leukemias and lymphomas. Karyotype data are one of the most common form of genetic data collected on lymphoid malignancies, because karyotyping is part of the standard of care in these cancers. RESULTS: In this paper we combine the analytic power of CytoGPS and Mercator to perform a large-scale multidimensional pattern recognition study on 22,741 karyotype samples in 47 different hematologic malignancies obtained from the public Mitelman database. CONCLUSION: Our findings indicate that Mercator was able to identify both known and novel cytogenetic patterns across different lymphoid malignancies, furthering our understanding of the genetics of these diseases

Optical Guidance System /OGS/ for rendezvous and docking Final report

Optical guidance system for Apollo rendezvous and dockin

The impact of a pharmacist on post-take ward round prescribing and medication appropriateness

Background Medication communication and prescribing on the post-take ward round following patient admission to hospital can be suboptimal leading to worse patient outcomes. Objective To evaluate the impact of clinical pharmacist participation on the post-take ward round on the appropriateness of medication prescribing, medication communication, and overall patient health care outcomes. Setting Tertiary referral teaching hospital, Brisbane, Australia. Method A pre-post intervention study was undertaken that compared the addition of a senior clinical pharmacist attending the post-take ward was compared to usual wardbase pharmacist service, with no pharmacist present of the post-take ward round. We assessed the proportion of patients with an improvement in medication appropriateness from admission to discharge, using the START/STOPP checklists. Medication communication was assessed by the mean number of brief and in-depth discussions, with health care outcomes measured by comparing length of stay and 28-day readmission rates. Main outcome measures: Medication appropriateness according to the START/STOPP list, number and type of discussions with team members and length of stay and readmission rate. Results Two hundred and sixty patients were recruited (130 pre- and 130-post-intervention), across 23 and 20 post-take ward rounds, respectively. Post-intervention, there was increase in the proportion of patients who had an improvement medication appropriateness (pre-intervention 25.4%, post-intervention 36.9%; p = 0.004), the number of in-depth discussions about patients’ medication (1.9 ± 1.7 per patient pre-intervention, 2.7 ± 1.7 per patient post-, p < 0.001), and the number relating to high-risk medications (0.71 ± 1.1 per patient pre-intervention, to 1.2 ± 1.2 per patient post-, p < 0.05). Length of stay and 28-day mortality were unchanged. Conclusion Clinical pharmacist participation on the post-take ward round leads to improved medication-related communication and improved medication appropriateness but did not significantly improve health care outcomes

Polychrome: Creating and Assessing Qualitative Palettes with Many Colors

Although R includes numerous tools for creating color palettes to display continuous data, facilities for displaying categorical data primarily use the RColorBrewer package, which is, by default, limited to 12 colors. The colorspace package can produce more colors, but it is not immediately clear how to use it to produce colors that can be reliably distingushed in different kinds of plots. However, applications to genomics would be enhanced by the ability to display at least the 24 human chromosomes in distinct colors, as is common in technologies like spectral karyotyping. In this article, we describe the Polychrome package, which can be used to construct palettes with at least 24 colors that can be distinguished by most people with normal color vision. Polychrome includes a variety of visualization methods allowing users to evaluate the proposed palettes. In addition, we review the history of attempts to construct qualitative color palettes with many colors

Crossing the Line: Selection and Evolution of Virulence Traits

The evolution of pathogens presents a paradox. Pathogenic species are often absolutely dependent on their host species for their propagation through evolutionary time, yet the pathogenic lifestyle requires that the host be damaged during this dependence. It is clear that pathogenic strategies are successful in evolutionary terms because a diverse array of pathogens exists in nature. Pathogens also evolve using a broad range of molecular mechanisms to acquire and modulate existing virulence traits in order to achieve this success. Detailing the benefit of enhanced selection derived through virulence and understanding the mechanisms through which virulence evolves are important to understanding the natural world and both have implications for human health