From small to big molecules: how do we prevent and delay the progression of age-related neurodegeneration?

Age-related neurodegeneration in the brain and retina is complicated. It comprises a series of events encompassing different modes of degeneration in neurons, as well as inflammation mediated by glial cells. Systemic inflammation and risk factors can contribute to disease progression. Age-related conditions such as Alzheimer's disease (AD), Parkinson's disease (PD) and Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD) affect patients for 5 to 20 years and are highly associated with risk factors such as hyperhomocysteinaemia, hypercholesterolaemia, hypertension, and symptoms of mood disorder. The long duration of the degeneration and the wide array of systemic factors provide the opportunity for nutraceutical intervention to prevent or delay disease progression. Small molecules such as phenolic compounds are candidates for neuroprotection because they have anti-oxidant activities and can modulate intracellular signaling pathways. Bigger entities such as oligosaccharides and polysaccharides have often been neglected because of their complex structure. However, certain big molecules can provide neuroprotective effects. They may also have a wide spectrum of action against risk factors. In this review we use an integrative approach to the potential uses of nutraceutical products to prevent age-related neurodegeneration. These include direct effects of phenolic compounds and polysaccharides on neurons to antagonize various neurodegenerative mechanisms in AD, PD and AMD, and indirect effects of these compounds on peripheral disease-related risk factors.postprin

Factors Related to Intra-Tendinous Morphology of Achilles Tendon in Runners

The purpose of this study was to determine and explore factors (age, sex, anthropometry, running and injury/pain history, tendon gross morphology, neovascularization, ankle range of motion, and ankle plantarflexor muscle endurance) related to intra-tendinous morphological alterations of the Achilles tendon in runners. An intra-tendinous morphological change was defined as collagen fiber disorganization detected by a low peak spatial frequency radius (PSFR) obtained from spatial frequency analysis (SFA) techniques in sonography. Ninety-one runners (53 males and 38 females; 37.9 ± 11.6 years) with 8.8 ± 7.3 years of running experience participated. Height, weight, and waist and hip circumferences were recorded. Participants completed a survey about running and injury/pain history and the Victorian Institute of Sport Assessment-Achilles (VISA-A) survey. Heel raise endurance and knee-to-wall composite dorsiflexion were assessed. Brightness-mode (B-mode) sonographic images were captured longitudinally and transversely on the Achilles tendon bilaterally. Sonographic images were analyzed for gross morphology (i.e., cross-sectional area [CSA]), neovascularization, and intra-tendinous morphology (i.e., PSFR) for each participant. The factors associated with altered intra-tendinous morphology of the Achilles tendon were analyzed using a generalized linear mixed model. Multivariate analyses revealed that male sex was significantly associated with a decreased PSFR. Additionally, male sex and the presence of current Achilles tendon pain were found to be significantly related to decreased PSFR using a univariate analysis. Our findings suggested that male sex and presence of current Achilles tendon pain were related to intra-tendinous morphological alterations in the Achilles tendon of runners

Risk factors, clinical features and prognosis of perioperative stroke in adults

INTRODUCTION: Perioperative stroke (POS) is an uncommon but severe surgical complication. No widely accepted guidelines for risk prediction or management have been established. Its prevention depends on knowledge about the nature of this disease. METHODS: A total of 36 cases and equal number of controls in Hong Kong West Cluster hospitals were recruited over 43 months. Peri- and intra-operative features were compared and characteristics of POS were described. RESULTS: Atrial fibrillation, diabetes mellitus (DM), and history of stroke were identified as risk factors (P=0.017, 0.002, and 0.003, respectively). Prolonged aortic occlusion (P=0.018) and bypass (P=0.002) contributed in cardiac surgery. Only few BP parameters, but not consistently all, were significant; 78% POS were infarcts. Watershed infarction related to hypotension was uncommon. Beta-blocker use seemed to bare protective effect. Blood loss and haemoglobin levels did not correlate to POS. Three-month mortality rate was 36%. CONCLUSION: Optimal DM control and cardioversion before elective OT, perioperative anticoagulation in AF and old stroke patients, and beta-blockers may be preventive measures for POS. Role of hypotension in POS aetiology is debatable.published_or_final_versionThe 15th Medical Research Conference; Department of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 16 January 2010. In Hong Kong Medical Journal, 2010, v. 16 suppl. 1, p. 13, abstract no.

Solid–liquid interface temperature measurement of evaporating droplet using thermoresponsive polymer aqueous solution

The present study aims to measure the solid–liquid interface temperature of an evaporating droplet on a heated surface using a thermoresponsive polymer. Poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (pNIPAM) was used owing to its sensitive optical and mechanical properties to the temperature. We also measured the refractive index variation of the pNIPAM solution by using the surface plasmon resonance imaging (SPRi). In particular, the present study proposed a new method to measure the solid–liquid interface temperature using the correlation among reflectance, refractive index, and temperature. It was found that the reflectance of a pNIPAM solution decreased after the droplet deposition. The solid–liquid interface temperature, estimated from the reflectance, showed a lower value at the center of the droplet, and it gradually increased along the radial direction. The lowest temperature at the contact line region is present because of the maximum evaporative cooling. Moreover, the solid–liquid interface temperature deviation increased with the surface temperature, which means solid–liquid interface temperature should be considered at high temperature to predict the evaporation flux of the droplet accurately

Central nervous system inflammatory demyelinating disorders in Hong Kong Chinese

Poster PresentationBACKGROUND: Classical multiple sclerosis (CMS) must be differentiated from neuromyelitis optica (NMO) as treatments are different. Serum aquaporin-4 autoantibodies (AQP4 Ab) are specific for NMO spectrum disorders (NMOSD). We aimed to study the diagnoses of CNS inflammatory demyelinating disorder (IDD) patients presenting to a hospital over 29 years. METHODS: Chinese patients presenting with CNS IDD to our hospital from 1981 to 2009 were studied. Patients referred from other centres were excluded. Since 2008, patients had yearly magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain and cord for 3 years even without relap…published_or_final_versio

Autonomous Base Station Placement for Localization of the GNSS Interference Source

This paper presents the control strategy of autonomous base station placement for localization of the GNSS interference source. The proposed algorithm deals with the optimization of the base station trajectory for target motion analysis based on bearing only tracking problem. The control strategy of the proposed algorithm is designed to maximize a cost function which is generally a functional of the Fisher information matrix. Compared to the optimal control methods, the proposed algorithm is easy to be designed and implemented, and constraints of multiple base stations’ trajectories can be effectively included. In addition, the proposed algorithm also considered target’s dynamics that is both uncertain and random, and there are multiple base stations for observing the target. In order to verify the performance of the proposed algorithm, simulation was performed with dynamic target case in the 2D scenario. It is assumed that the base stations’ networks have non-fully connected topology. According to the simulation results, it was confirmed that the proposed algorithm presents a flexible control strategy of autonomous multiple base stations’ placement for bearing only target tracking system

The effect of adsorbed volatile organic compounds on an ultrathin water film measurement

Using surface plasmon resonance imaging (SPRi), we have recently shown for the first time the existence of a monolayer water film between droplets during dropwise condensation. This study examines the effect of adsorbed volatile organic compounds (VOCs) on the ultrathin film measurement using SPRi. Further, the work presents the proper surface-treatment process that enables measurements of the ultrathin water layer during high-speed imaging of dropwise condensation at 3000 frame per second. In this study, two methods were applied for cleaning the surface (gold-coated glass)-(1) standard cleaning procedure (SCP) using acetone, isopropyl alcohol, and deionized water and (2) SCP followed by air plasma cleaning. This work discusses the effect of the cleaning procedures on surface roughness, contact angle, and surface chemistry using atomic force microscopy, optical microscopy, and an X-ray photoelectron spectroscope meter. The results showed that SCP before the SPRi is a proper surface-treatment method. The effect of adsorbed VOCs during dropwise condensation on a surface treated with SCP was measured to be 0.0025 (reflectivity unit), which was 70% smaller than the reflectance associated with a monolayer water film. The results of this work confirm a monolayer water film observation during the dropwise condensation, which has been reported before

Synovial Sarcoma of the Thyroid Gland

Primary synovial sarcoma of the thyroid is an extremely rare condition which has only been reported twice in the literature. We herein report a case of highly aggressive and rapidly lethal primary synovial sarcoma of the thyroid. A 72-year-old woman presented with extensive local invasion, rapid progression, and early distant metastasis secondary to primary thyroid synovial sarcoma. The tumor exhibited an atypical histologic and immunohistochemical staining pattern. Detection of SYT/SSX fusion transcript confirmed the diagnosis of synovial sarcoma. Due to the aggressive nature of primary synovial sarcoma of the thyroid gland, early diagnosis and comprehensive treatment including wide resection and postoperative chemoradiation is required

Palette: Image-to-Image Diffusion Models

This paper develops a unified framework for image-to-image translation based on conditional diffusion models and evaluates this framework on four challenging image-to-image translation tasks, namely colorization, inpainting, uncropping, and JPEG restoration. Our simple implementation of image-to-image diffusion models outperforms strong GAN and regression baselines on all tasks, without task-specific hyper-parameter tuning, architecture customization, or any auxiliary loss or sophisticated new techniques needed. We uncover the impact of an L2 vs. L1 loss in the denoising diffusion objective on sample diversity, and demonstrate the importance of self-attention in the neural architecture through empirical studies. Importantly, we advocate a unified evaluation protocol based on ImageNet, with human evaluation and sample quality scores (FID, Inception Score, Classification Accuracy of a pre-trained ResNet-50, and Perceptual Distance against original images). We expect this standardized evaluation protocol to play a role in advancing image-to-image translation research. Finally, we show that a generalist, multi-task diffusion model performs as well or better than task-specific specialist counterparts. Check out https://diffusion-palette.github.io for an overview of the results