Aspectos radiográficos das glândulas salivares maiores na sialografia

Objetivo: O objetivo deste estudo foi avaliar os aspectos radiográficos das glândulas salivares maiores na sialografia e seu grau de inflamação com as características individuais dos pacientes. Métodos: Trinta imagens radiográficas de ambas as glândulas parótidas e submandibulares de 25 pacientes submetidos a exames de sialografia foram analisadas retrospectivamente. O teste qui-quadrado foi realizado para correlacionar o grau de inflamação de cada área das glândulas salivares com as variáveis categóricas: sexo, tipo e lado da glândula afetada. A correlação de Pearson foi realizada para correlacionar o grau de inflamação entre o ducto principal e o ducto intraglandular e o parênquima. Resultados: Não houve relação estatisticamente significante entre o grau de inflamação de nenhuma das partes das glândulas salivares e as variáveis categóricas no teste qui-quadrado (p>0,05). O grau de inflamação no ducto principal teve uma fraca correlação com o grau de inflamação no ducto intraglandular (p<0,05). Conclusões: As glândulas salivares afetadas por obstrução ou inflamação não estão significativamente relacionadas ao sexo dos pacientes e nem ao tipo ou lado da glândula afetada. O exame de sialografia demonstrou a delicada anatomia do sistema ductal e permitiu uma visualização precisa dos sialólitos e estenoses, que são duas das causas mais comuns de obstrução, mostrando seu importante papel na avaliação do estado das glândulas salivares.Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate the radiographic aspects of the major salivary glands in sialography and their grade of inflammation with patients’ individual characteristics. Methods: A total of 30 radiographic images of both parotid and submandibular glands from 25 patients, who underwent sialography examinations, were retrospectively analyzed. Chi-squared test was performed to correlate the grade of inflammation of each area of the salivary glands with the categorical variables: sex, type and side of the affected gland. Pearson correlation was performed to correlate the grade of inflammation between the main duct and the intraglandular duct and the parenchyma. Results: There was no statistically significant relationship between the grade of inflammation of any of the parts of the salivary glands and the categorical variables in the Chi-squared test (p>0.05). The grade of inflammation in the main duct had a weak correlation with the degree of inflammation in the intraglandular duct (p<0.05). Conclusions: Salivary glands affected by obstruction or inflammation are not significantly related to the sex of patients, not to the type or side of the affected gland. The , but sialography examination demonstrated the delicate anatomy of the ductal system and allowed an accurate visualization of sialoliths and strictures that are two of the most common causes of obstruction, showing its important role in the assessment of salivary gland status

Successful Endourologic Management of Lower Pole Moiety Ureteropelvic Junction Obstruction in a Partially Duplicated Collecting System

We present two cases of symptomatic lower pole moiety ureteropelvic junction obstruction (UPJO) in a partially duplicated collecting system that were successfully treated with minimally invasive endourologic procedures. In the first case, we performed retrograde endopyelotomy with the Acucise® ureteral cutting balloon device, and in the latter case, we performed percutaneous nephrolithotomy and antegrade endopyelotomy because of the presence of multiple renal stones. Subsequent intravenous pyelography confirmed marked resolution of the obstruction, and both patients remained asymptomatic during 1 year of follow-up

Supervised Classification: Quite a Brief Overview

The original problem of supervised classification considers the task of automatically assigning objects to their respective classes on the basis of numerical measurements derived from these objects. Classifiers are the tools that implement the actual functional mapping from these measurements---also called features or inputs---to the so-called class label---or output. The fields of pattern recognition and machine learning study ways of constructing such classifiers. The main idea behind supervised methods is that of learning from examples: given a number of example input-output relations, to what extent can the general mapping be learned that takes any new and unseen feature vector to its correct class? This chapter provides a basic introduction to the underlying ideas of how to come to a supervised classification problem. In addition, it provides an overview of some specific classification techniques, delves into the issues of object representation and classifier evaluation, and (very) briefly covers some variations on the basic supervised classification task that may also be of interest to the practitioner

Evaluation of the Waste Tire Resources Recovery Program and Environmental Health Policy in Taiwan

This paper examines the effectiveness of Taiwanese environmental health policies, whose aim is to improve environmental quality by reducing tire waste via the Tire Resource Recovery Program. The results confirm that implemented environmental health policies improve the overall health of the population (i.e. a decrease in death caused by bronchitis and other respiratory diseases). Current policy expenditures are far below the optimal level, as it is estimated that a ten percent increase in the subsidy would decrease the number of deaths caused by bronchitis and other respiratory diseases by 0.58% per county/city per year on average

Postoperative Nutritional Effects of Early Enteral Feeding Compared with Total Parental Nutrition in Pancreaticoduodectomy Patients: A Prosepective, Randomized Study

The benefits of early enteral feeding (EEN) have been demonstrated in gastrointestinal surgery. But, the impact of EEN has not been elucidated yet. We assessed the postoperative nutritional status of patients who had undergone pancreaticoduodenectomy (PD) according to the postoperative nutritional method and compared the clinical outcomes of two methods. A prospective randomized trial was undertaken following PD. Patients were randomly divided into two groups; the EEN group received the postoperative enteral feed and the control group received the postoperative total parenteral nutrition (TPN) management. Thirty-eight patients were included in our analyses. The first day of bowel movement and time to take a normal soft diet was significantly shorter in EEN group than in TPN group. Prealbumin and transferrin were significantly reduced on post-operative day (POD) 7 and were slowly recovered until POD 90 in the TPN group than in the EEN group. EEN group rapidly recovered weight after POD 21 whereas it was gradually decreased in TPN group until POD 90. EEN after PD is associated with preservation of weight compared with TPN and impact on recovery of digestive function after PD

Development of a Gaussian Process – Feature Selection Model to Characterise (poly)dimethylsiloxane (Silastic®) Membrane Permeation

© 2020 Royal Pharmaceutical Society, Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmacology. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Objectives The current study aims to determine the effect of physicochemical descriptor selection on models of polydimethylsiloxane permeation. Methods 2,942 descriptors were calculated for a dataset of 77 chemicals. Data was processed to remove redundancy, single values, imbalanced and highly correlated data, yielding 1,363 relevant descriptors. For four independent test sets feature selection methods were applied and modelled via a variety of Machine Learning methods. Key findings Two sets of molecular descriptors which can provide improved predictions, compared to existing models, have been identified. Best permeation predictions were found with Gaussian Process methods. The molecular descriptors describe lipophilicity, partial charge and hydrogen bonding as key determinants of PDMS permeation. Conclusions This study highlights important considerations in the development of relevant models and in the construction and use of the datasets used in such studies, particularly that highly correlated descriptors should be removed from datasets. Predictive models are improved by the methodology adopted in this study, notably the systematic evaluation of descriptors, rather than simply using any and all available descriptors, often based empirically on in vitro experiments. Such findings also have clear relevance to a number of other fieldsPeer reviewe

The Third International Symposium on Fungal Stress – ISFUS

Stress is a normal part of life for fungi, which can survive in environments considered inhospitable or hostile for other organisms. Due to the ability of fungi to respond to, survive in, and transform the environment, even under severe stresses, many researchers are exploring the mechanisms that enable fungi to adapt to stress. The International Symposium on Fungal Stress (ISFUS) brings together leading scientists from around the world who research fungal stress. This article discusses presentations given at the third ISFUS, held in São José dos Campos, São Paulo, Brazil in 2019, thereby summarizing the state-of-the-art knowledge on fungal stress, a field that includes microbiology, agriculture, environmental science, ecology, biotechnology, medicine, and astrobiology

An Improved, Bias-Reduced Probabilistic Functional Gene Network of Baker's Yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Background: Probabilistic functional gene networks are powerful theoretical frameworks for integrating heterogeneous functional genomics and proteomics data into objective models of cellular systems. Such networks provide syntheses of millions of discrete experimental observations, spanning DNA microarray experiments, physical protein interactions, genetic interactions, and comparative genomics; the resulting networks can then be easily applied to generate testable hypotheses regarding specific gene functions and associations. Methodology/Principal Findings: We report a significantly improved version (v. 2) of a probabilistic functional gene network [1] of the baker's yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae. We describe our optimization methods and illustrate their effects in three major areas: the reduction of functional bias in network training reference sets, the application of a probabilistic model for calculating confidences in pair-wise protein physical or genetic interactions, and the introduction of simple thresholds that eliminate many false positive mRNA co-expression relationships. Using the network, we predict and experimentally verify the function of the yeast RNA binding protein Puf6 in 60S ribosomal subunit biogenesis. Conclusions/Significance: YeastNet v. 2, constructed using these optimizations together with additional data, shows significant reduction in bias and improvements in precision and recall, in total covering 102,803 linkages among 5,483 yeast proteins (95% of the validated proteome). YeastNet is available from http://www.yeastnet.org.This work was supported by grants from the N.S.F. (IIS-0325116, EIA-0219061), N.I.H. (GM06779-01,GM076536-01), Welch (F-1515), and a Packard Fellowship (EMM). These agencies were not involved in the design and conduct of the study, in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of the data, or in the preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript.Cellular and Molecular Biolog

Evaluation and Treatment of Iron Deficiency Anemia: A Gastroenterological Perspective

A substantial volume of the consultations requested of gastroenterologists are directed towards the evaluation of anemia. Since iron deficiency anemia often arises from bleeding gastrointestinal lesions, many of which are malignant, establishment of a firm diagnosis usually obligates an endoscopic evaluation. Although the laboratory tests used to make the diagnosis have not changed in many decades, their interpretation has, and this is possibly due to the availability of extensive testing in key populations. We provide data supporting the use of the serum ferritin as the sole useful measure of iron stores, setting the lower limit at 100 μg/l for some populations in order to increase the sensitivity of the test. Trends of the commonly obtained red cell indices, mean corpuscular volume, and the red cell distribution width can provide valuable diagnostic information. Once the diagnosis is established, upper and lower gastrointestinal endoscopy is usually indicated. Nevertheless, in many cases a gastrointestinal source is not found after routine evaluation. Additional studies, including repeat upper and lower endoscopy and often investigation of the small intestine may thus be required. Although oral iron is inexpensive and usually effective, there are many gastrointestinal conditions that warrant treatment of iron deficiency with intravenous iron