European clinical guidelines for Tourette syndrome and other tic disorders. Part II: pharmacological treatment

To develop a European guideline on pharmacologic treatment of Tourette syndrome (TS) the available literature was thoroughly screened and extensively discussed by a working group of the European Society for the Study of Tourette syndrome (ESSTS). Although there are many more studies on pharmacotherapy of TS than on behavioral treatment options, only a limited number of studies meets rigorous quality criteria. Therefore, we have devised a two-stage approach. First, we present the highest level of evidence by reporting the findings of existing Cochrane reviews in this field. Subsequently, we provide the first comprehensive overview of all reports on pharmacological treatment options for TS through a MEDLINE, PubMed, and EMBASE search for all studies that document the effect of pharmacological treatment of TS and other tic disorders between 1970 and November 2010. We present a summary of the current consensus on pharmacological treatment options for TS in Europe to guide the clinician in daily practice. This summary is, however, rather a status quo of a clinically helpful but merely low evidence guideline, mainly driven by expert experience and opinion, since rigorous experimental studies are scarce

Bio-inspired binary bees algorithm for a two-level distribution optimisation problem

Original article can be found at : http://www.sciencedirect.com/ Copyright Elsevier [Full text of this article is not available in the UHRA]Two uncoupleable distributions, assigning missions to robots and allocating robots to home stations, accompany the use of mobile service robots in hospitals. In the given problem, two workload-related objectives and five groups of constraints are proposed. A bio-mimicked Binary Bees Algorithm (BBA) is introduced to solve this multiobjective multiconstraint combinatorial optimisation problem, in which constraint handling technique (Multiobjective Transformation, MOT), multiobjective evaluation method (nondominance selection), global search strategy (stochastic search in the variable space), local search strategy (Hamming neighbourhood exploitation), and post-processing means (feasibility selection) are the main issues. The BBA is then demonstrated with a case study, presenting the execution process of the algorithm, and also explaining the change of elite number in evolutionary process. Its optimisation result provides a group of feasible nondominated two-level distribution schemes.Peer reviewe

Identification of candidate genes and gene networks specifically associated with analgesic tolerance to morphine

Chronic morphine administration may alter the expression of hundreds to thousands of genes. However, only a subset of these genes is likely involved in analgesic tolerance. In this report, we used a behavior genetics strategy to identify candidate genes specifically linked to the development of morphine tolerance. Two inbred genotypes [C57BL/6J (B6), DBA2/J (D2)] and two reciprocal congenic genotypes (B6D2, D2B6) with the proximal region of chromosome 10 (Chr10) introgressed into opposing backgrounds served as the behavior genetic filter. Tolerance after therapeutically relevant doses of morphine developed most rapidly in the B6 followed by the B6D2 genotype and did not develop in the D2 mice and only slightly in the D2B6 animals indicating a strong influence of the proximal region of Chrl0 in the development of tolerance. Gene expression profiling and pattern matching identified 64,53,86, and 123 predisposition genes and 81, 96,106, and 82 tolerance genes in the periaqueductal gray (PAG), prefrontal cortex, temporal lobe, and ventral striatum, respectively. A potential gene network was identified in the PAG in which 19 of the 34 genes were strongly associated with tolerance. Eleven of the network genes were found to reside in quantitative trait loci previously associated with morphine-related behaviors, whereas seven were predictive of tolerance (morphine-naive condition). Overall, the genes modified by chronic morphine administration show a strong presence in canonical pathways representative of neuroadaptation. A potentially significant role for the micro-RNA and epigenetic mechanisms in response to chronic administration of pharmacologically relevant doses of morphine was highlighted by candidate genes Dicer and H19. Copyright © 2009 Society for Neuroscience

Nonparametric regression under dependent errors with infinite variance

We consider local least absolute deviation (LLAD) estimation for trend functions of time series with heavy tails which are characterised via a symmetric stable law distribution. The setting includes both causal stable ARMA model and fractional stable ARIMA model as special cases. The asymptotic limit of the estimator is established under the assumption that the process has either short or long memory autocorrelation. For a short memory process, the estimator admits the same convergence rate as if the process has the finite variance. The optimal rate of convergence n−2/5 is obtainable by using appropriate bandwidths. This is distinctly different from local least squares estimation, of which the convergence is slowed down due to the existence of heavy tails. On the other hand, the rate of convergence of the LLAD estimator for a long memory process is always slower than n−2/5 and the limit is no longer normal