Ictal spitting in left temporal lobe epilepsy: Report of three cases

Purpose: Ictal spitting is rarely reported in patients with epilepsy. More often it is observed in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) and is presumed to be a lateralizing sign to language nondominant hemisphere. We report three patients with left TLE who had ictal spitting registered during prolonged video-EEG monitoring.Methods: Medical charts of all patients with medically refractory partial epilepsy submitted to prolonged video-EEG monitoring in the Epilepsy Unit at UNIFESP during a 3-year period were reviewed, in search of reports of ictal spitting. the clinical, neurophysiological and neuroimaging data of the identified patients were reviewed.Results: Among 136 patients evaluated with prolonged video-EEG monitoring, three (2.2%) presented spitting automatisms during complex partial seizures. All of them were right-handed, and had clear signs of left hippocampal sclerosis on MRI. in two patients, in all seizures in which ictal spitting was observed, EEG seizure onset was seen in the left temporal lobe. in the third patient, ictal onset with scalp electrodes was observed in the right temporal lobe, but semi-invasive monitoring with foramen ovate electrodes revealed ictal onset in the left temporal lobe, confirming false lateralization in surface records. the three patients became seizure-free following left anterior temporal lobectomy.Conclusions: Ictal spitting is a rare finding in patients with epilepsy, and may be considered a localizing sign of seizure onset in the temporal lobe. It may be observed in seizures originating from the left temporal lobe, and thus should not be considered a lateralizing sign of nondominant TLE. (C) 2006 British Epilepsy Association. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Univ São Paulo, Ribeirao Preto Sch Med, Div Neurol, Dept Neurol Psychiat & Clin Psychol, BR-05508 São Paulo, BrazilUniversidade Federal de São Paulo, Dept Radiol, Div Neuroradiol, São Paulo, BrazilUniversidade Federal de São Paulo, Div Neurol, Dept Neurol & Neurosurg, UNIPETE, BR-04024002 São Paulo, BrazilUniversidade Federal de São Paulo, Dept Radiol, Div Neuroradiol, São Paulo, BrazilUniversidade Federal de São Paulo, Div Neurol, Dept Neurol & Neurosurg, UNIPETE, BR-04024002 São Paulo, BrazilWeb of Scienc

Target capture sequencing for phylogenomic and population studies in the Southeast Asian genus Palaquium (Sapotaceae)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We thank the management of the National Parks Board and Singapore Botanic Gardens for providing continuous support, facilities and fieldwork approval in Singapore’s nature reserves. We appreciate the digital research team at the University of Aberdeen and the research/scientific computing teams at The James Hutton Institute and NIAB for providing technical support while using the computational resources on the respective HPC clusters, “Maxwell” and the “UK Crop Diversity Bioformatics HPC” (BBSRC grant BB/S019669/1), which have contributed to the results within this paper. We thank numerous staff at the Singapore Botanic Gardens, particularly Khoo-Woon Mui Hwang and Neo Wei Ling for strong technical support in the molecular lab, Matti Niissalo for generous sharing of lab protocols and bioinformatics tips, Choo Le Min for patient help with lab troubleshooting, Chong Kwek Yan and Chan Pin Jia for forest survey expertise, and Louise Neo for thoughtful field and R advice. Our sincere thanks are due to Herbarium staff at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, including Lesley Scott, for efficient assistance in sending silica-dried samples to the Singapore Botanic Gardens. We also thank Camille Christe at the Conservatoire et Jardin botaniques de la Ville de Genève for kind advice related to the taxon-specific baits’ setup and purchase FUNDING We are grateful to the Lady Yuen Peng McNeice Charitable Foundation for financial support of this study.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Predictive factors for improved diagnostic accuracy with the use of radial-probe EBUS

ABSTRACT Objective: To assess predictive factors for improved diagnostic accuracy with the use of radial-probe EBUS (RP-EBUS). Methods: This was a retrospective review of consecutive patients undergoing RP-EBUS between February of 2012 and January of 2020. Parameters including the presence of a bronchus sign on CT scans, the position of the radial EBUS probe, lesion size, lesion location, and lesion type were analyzed in relation to two defined outcomes (final diagnosis or no diagnosis). Univariate analysis was used in order to explore the individual effects of each parameter on diagnostic accuracy. Multivariate logistic regression was performed to identify significant predictors of diagnostic accuracy. Results: RP-EBUS was used for diagnostic purposes in 101 patients. The lesion was < 3 cm in size in 59 patients (58.4%) and predominantly solid in 60.3%. There was a positive correlation between radial EBUS probe position and diagnostic accuracy (p = 0.036), with 80.9% of the patients showing a bronchus sign on CT scans. Furthermore, 89% of the patients showed a bronchus sign on CT scans and a correlation with diagnostic accuracy (p = 0.030), with 65.8% of the lesions being located in the left/right upper lobe (p = 0.046). When the radial EBUS probe was within the target lesion, the diagnostic yield was = 80.8%. When the probe was adjacent to the lesion, the diagnostic yield was = 19.2%. A bronchus sign on CT scans was the only parameter that independently influenced diagnostic accuracy (adjusted OR, 3.20; 95% CI, 1.081-9.770; p = 0.036). Conclusions: A bronchus sign on CT scans is a powerful predictor of successful diagnosis by RP-EBUS

Dengue Virus Type 3, Brazil, 2002

An explosive epidemic of DENV-3 in 2002 was the most severe dengue epidemic reported in Brazil since dengue viruses were introduced

Myeloid Sirtuin 2 expression does not impact long-term Mycobacterium tuberculosis control

Sirtuins (Sirts) regulate several cellular mechanisms through deacetylation of several transcription factors and enzymes. Recently, Sirt2 was shown to prevent the development of inflammatory processes and its expression favors acute Listeria monocytogenes infection. The impact of this molecule in the context of chronic infections remains unknown. We found that specific Sirt2 deletion in the myeloid lineage transiently increased Mycobacterium tuberculosis load in the lungs and liver of conditional mice. Sirt2 did not affect long-term infection since no significant differences were observed in the bacterial burden at days 60 and 120 post-infection. The initial increase in M. tuberculosis growth was not due to differences in inflammatory cell infiltrates in the lung, myeloid or CD4+ T cells. The transcription levels of IFN-?, IL-17, TNF, IL-6 and NOS2 were also not affected in the lungs by Sirt2-myeloid specific deletion. Overall, our results demonstrate that Sirt2 expression has a transitory effect in M. tuberculosis infection. Thus, modulation of Sirt2 activity in vivo is not expected to affect chronic infection with M. tuberculosis.Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, Portugal and cofunded by Programa Operacional Regional do Norte (ON.2–O Novo Norte), Quadro de Referência Estratégico Nacional (QREN), through the Fundo Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional (FEDER). Project grants: PTDC/SAU-MII/101977/2008 (to AGC) and PTDC/BIA-BCM/102776/2008 (to MS). LMT was supported by FCT Grant SFRH/BPD/77399/20

VDES J2325−5229 a z = 2.7 gravitationally lensed quasar discovered using morphology-independent supervised machine learning

We present the discovery and preliminary characterization of a gravitationally lensed quasar with a source redshift zs = 2.74 and image separation of 2.9 arcsec lensed by a foreground zl = 0.40 elliptical galaxy. Since optical observations of gravitationally lensed quasars showthe lens system as a superposition of multiple point sources and a foreground lensing galaxy, we have developed a morphology-independent multi-wavelength approach to the photometric selection of lensed quasar candidates based on Gaussian Mixture Models (GMM) supervised machine learning. Using this technique and gi multicolour photometric observations from the Dark Energy Survey (DES), near-IR JK photometry from the VISTA Hemisphere Survey (VHS) and WISE mid-IR photometry, we have identified a candidate system with two catalogue components with iAB = 18.61 and iAB = 20.44 comprising an elliptical galaxy and two blue point sources. Spectroscopic follow-up with NTT and the use of an archival AAT spectrum show that the point sources can be identified as a lensed quasar with an emission line redshift of z = 2.739 ± 0.003 and a foreground early-type galaxy with z = 0.400 ± 0.002.We model the system as a single isothermal ellipsoid and find the Einstein radius θE ∼ 1.47 arcsec, enclosed mass Menc ∼ 4 × 1011 M and a time delay of ∼52 d. The relatively wide separation, month scale time delay duration and high redshift make this an ideal system for constraining the expansion rate beyond a redshift of 1

Signal transduction-related responses to phytohormones and environmental challenges in sugarcane

BACKGROUND: Sugarcane is an increasingly economically and environmentally important C4 grass, used for the production of sugar and bioethanol, a low-carbon emission fuel. Sugarcane originated from crosses of Saccharum species and is noted for its unique capacity to accumulate high amounts of sucrose in its stems. Environmental stresses limit enormously sugarcane productivity worldwide. To investigate transcriptome changes in response to environmental inputs that alter yield we used cDNA microarrays to profile expression of 1,545 genes in plants submitted to drought, phosphate starvation, herbivory and N(2)-fixing endophytic bacteria. We also investigated the response to phytohormones (abscisic acid and methyl jasmonate). The arrayed elements correspond mostly to genes involved in signal transduction, hormone biosynthesis, transcription factors, novel genes and genes corresponding to unknown proteins. RESULTS: Adopting an outliers searching method 179 genes with strikingly different expression levels were identified as differentially expressed in at least one of the treatments analysed. Self Organizing Maps were used to cluster the expression profiles of 695 genes that showed a highly correlated expression pattern among replicates. The expression data for 22 genes was evaluated for 36 experimental data points by quantitative RT-PCR indicating a validation rate of 80.5% using three biological experimental replicates. The SUCAST Database was created that provides public access to the data described in this work, linked to tissue expression profiling and the SUCAST gene category and sequence analysis. The SUCAST database also includes a categorization of the sugarcane kinome based on a phylogenetic grouping that included 182 undefined kinases. CONCLUSION: An extensive study on the sugarcane transcriptome was performed. Sugarcane genes responsive to phytohormones and to challenges sugarcane commonly deals with in the field were identified. Additionally, the protein kinases were annotated based on a phylogenetic approach. The experimental design and statistical analysis applied proved robust to unravel genes associated with a diverse array of conditions attributing novel functions to previously unknown or undefined genes. The data consolidated in the SUCAST database resource can guide further studies and be useful for the development of improved sugarcane varieties

Redshift distributions of galaxies in the Dark Energy Survey Science Verification shear catalogue and implications for weak lensing

We present photometric redshift estimates for galaxies used in the weak lensing analysis of the Dark Energy Survey Science Verification (DES SV) data. Four model- or machine learning-based photometric redshift methods—ANNZ2, BPZ calibrated against BCC-Ufig simulations, SKYNET, and TPZ—are analyzed. For training, calibration, and testing of these methods, we construct a catalogue of spectroscopically confirmed galaxies matched against DES SV data. The performance of the methods is evaluated against the matched spectroscopic catalogue, focusing on metrics relevant for weak lensing analyses, with additional validation against COSMOS photo-z’s. From the galaxies in the DES SV shear catalogue, which have mean redshift 0.72 0.01 over the range 0.3 < z < 1.3, we construct three tomographic bins with means of z ¼ f0.45; 0.67; 1.00g. These bins each have systematic uncertainties δz ≲ 0.05 in the mean of the fiducial SKYNET photo-z nðzÞ. We propagate the errors in the redshift distributions through to their impact on cosmological parameters estimated with cosmic shear, and find that they cause shifts in the value of σ8 of approximately 3%. This shift is within the one sigma statistical errors on σ8 for the DES SV shear catalogue. We further study the potential impact of systematic differences on the critical surface density, Σcrit, finding levels of bias safely less than the statistical power of DES SV data. We recommend a final Gaussian prior for the photo-z bias in the mean of nðzÞ of width 0.05 for each of the three tomographic bins, and show that this is a sufficient bias model for the corresponding cosmology analysis