16 research outputs found
Intravenous Immunoglobulin Treatment in Multifocal Motor Neuropathy
# The Author(s) 2010. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Introduction Multifocal motor neuropathy (MMN) is characterized by asymmetric weakness of limbs and the electrophysiological finding of conduction block in motor nerves. Conduction block is the inability of nerves to propagate action potentials and is probably caused b
Two-pion Bose-Einstein correlations in central Pb-Pb collisions at = 2.76 TeV
The first measurement of two-pion Bose-Einstein correlations in central Pb-Pb
collisions at TeV at the Large Hadron Collider is
presented. We observe a growing trend with energy now not only for the
longitudinal and the outward but also for the sideward pion source radius. The
pion homogeneity volume and the decoupling time are significantly larger than
those measured at RHIC.Comment: 17 pages, 5 captioned figures, 1 table, authors from page 12,
published version, figures at
http://aliceinfo.cern.ch/ArtSubmission/node/388
Suppression of charged particle production at large transverse momentum in central Pb-Pb collisions at TeV
Inclusive transverse momentum spectra of primary charged particles in Pb-Pb
collisions at = 2.76 TeV have been measured by the ALICE
Collaboration at the LHC. The data are presented for central and peripheral
collisions, corresponding to 0-5% and 70-80% of the hadronic Pb-Pb cross
section. The measured charged particle spectra in and GeV/ are compared to the expectation in pp collisions at the same
, scaled by the number of underlying nucleon-nucleon
collisions. The comparison is expressed in terms of the nuclear modification
factor . The result indicates only weak medium effects ( 0.7) in peripheral collisions. In central collisions,
reaches a minimum of about 0.14 at -7GeV/ and increases
significantly at larger . The measured suppression of high- particles is stronger than that observed at lower collision energies,
indicating that a very dense medium is formed in central Pb-Pb collisions at
the LHC.Comment: 15 pages, 5 captioned figures, 3 tables, authors from page 10,
published version, figures at http://aliceinfo.cern.ch/ArtSubmission/node/98
Scaling Effects and Spatio-Temporal Multilevel Dynamics in Epileptic Seizures
Epileptic seizures are one of the most well-known dysfunctions of the nervous system. During a seizure, a highly synchronized behavior of neural activity is observed that can cause symptoms ranging from mild sensual malfunctions to the complete loss of body control. In this paper, we aim to contribute towards a better understanding of the dynamical systems phenomena that cause seizures. Based on data analysis and modelling, seizure dynamics can be identified to possess multiple spatial scales and on each spatial scale also multiple time scales. At each scale, we reach several novel insights. On the smallest spatial scale we consider single model neurons and investigate early-warning signs of spiking. This introduces the theory of critical transitions to excitable systems. For clusters of neurons (or neuronal regions) we use patient data and find oscillatory behavior and new scaling laws near the seizure onset. These scalings lead to substantiate the conjecture obtained from mean-field models that a Hopf bifurcation could be involved near seizure onset. On the largest spatial scale we introduce a measure based on phase-locking intervals and wavelets into seizure modelling. It is used to resolve synchronization between different regions in the brain and identifies time-shifted scaling laws at different wavelet scales. We also compare our wavelet-based multiscale approach with maximum linear cross-correlation and mean-phase coherence measures
Soluble VCAM-1 impairs human brain endothelial barrier integrity via integrin α-4-transduced outside-in signalling
Iron Behaving Badly: Inappropriate Iron Chelation as a Major Contributor to the Aetiology of Vascular and Other Progressive Inflammatory and Degenerative Diseases
The production of peroxide and superoxide is an inevitable consequence of
aerobic metabolism, and while these particular "reactive oxygen species" (ROSs)
can exhibit a number of biological effects, they are not of themselves
excessively reactive and thus they are not especially damaging at physiological
concentrations. However, their reactions with poorly liganded iron species can
lead to the catalytic production of the very reactive and dangerous hydroxyl
radical, which is exceptionally damaging, and a major cause of chronic
inflammation. We review the considerable and wide-ranging evidence for the
involvement of this combination of (su)peroxide and poorly liganded iron in a
large number of physiological and indeed pathological processes and
inflammatory disorders, especially those involving the progressive degradation
of cellular and organismal performance. These diseases share a great many
similarities and thus might be considered to have a common cause (i.e.
iron-catalysed free radical and especially hydroxyl radical generation). The
studies reviewed include those focused on a series of cardiovascular, metabolic
and neurological diseases, where iron can be found at the sites of plaques and
lesions, as well as studies showing the significance of iron to aging and
longevity. The effective chelation of iron by natural or synthetic ligands is
thus of major physiological (and potentially therapeutic) importance. As
systems properties, we need to recognise that physiological observables have
multiple molecular causes, and studying them in isolation leads to inconsistent
patterns of apparent causality when it is the simultaneous combination of
multiple factors that is responsible. This explains, for instance, the
decidedly mixed effects of antioxidants that have been observed, etc...Comment: 159 pages, including 9 Figs and 2184 reference