716 research outputs found
Correlation of Early Outcomes and Intradiscal Interleukin-6 Expression in Lumbar Fusion Patients.
OBJECTIVE: To determine if there is correlation between intradiscal levels of interleukin-6 (IL-6) and early outcome measures in patients undergoing lumbar fusion for painful disc degeneration.
METHODS: Intervertebral disc tissue was separated into annulus fibrosus/nucleus pulposus and cultured separately in vitro in serum-free medium (Opti-MEM). Conditioned media was collected after 48 hours. The concentration of IL-6 was quantified using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Pearson correlation coefficients quantified relationships between IL-6 levels and pre- and postoperative visual analogue scale (VAS) back pain and Oswestry Disability Index (ODI), as well as change in VAS/ODI.
RESULTS: Sixteen discs were harvested from 9 patients undergoing anterior lumbar interbody fusion (mean age, 47.4 years; range, 21-70 years). Mean preoperative and 6-month postoperative VAS were 8.1 and 3.7, respectively. Mean preoperative and postoperative ODI were 56.2 and 25.6, respectively. There were significant positive correlations between IL-6 expression and postoperative VAS (ρ = 0.38, p = 0.048) and ODI (ρ = 0.44, p = 0.02). No significant correlations were found between intradiscal IL-6 expression and preoperative VAS (ρ = -0.12, p = 0.54). Trends were seen associating IL-6 expression and change in VAS/ODI (ρ = -0.35 p = 0.067; ρ = -0.34, p = 0.08, respectively). A trend associated IL-6 and preoperative ODI (ρ = 0.36, p = 0.063).
CONCLUSION: The direct association between IL-6 expression and VAS/ODI suggests patients with elevated intradiscal cytokine expression may have worse early outcomes than those with lower expression of IL-6 after surgery for symptomatic disc degeneration
Pendugaan Cadangan Karbon Above Ground Biomass (AGB) Pada Tegakan Sawit (Elaeis Guineensis Jacq.) Di Kabupaten Langkat / (the Estimate of Carbon Stocks Above Ground Biomass (AGB) on Palm (Elaeis Guineensis Jacq.) Stands in Langkat District)
Palm Oil Plant a CO2 absorber as well as other crops such as forest plants. Langkat District is one of the areas that have a high oil commodity. Research on AGB estimates carbon stocks in standing palm (Elaeis guineensis Jacq) in Langkat conducted in July through September 2012. This study uses Allometric that calculate carbon stocks in standing palm (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.) Associated with the value of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI).Largest carbon stocks contained in the 14-year-old stands of oil reserves by 68.84 tonnes carbon / ha and the smallest carbon stocks contained in the 3-year old palm stands by the number of carbon reserves 19.20 tonnes / ha. Vegetation index can be calculated by the model equation Y = 38.39 + 26.24 x NDVI on Landsat imagery. NDVI has a positive relationship with the value of the field in which the R ² of the resulting equation is equal to 49% of the stands of palm oil (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.)
Correlation of internal representations in feed-forward neural networks
Feed-forward multilayer neural networks implementing random input-output
mappings develop characteristic correlations between the activity of their
hidden nodes which are important for the understanding of the storage and
generalization performance of the network. It is shown how these correlations
can be calculated from the joint probability distribution of the aligning
fields at the hidden units for arbitrary decoder function between hidden layer
and output. Explicit results are given for the parity-, and-, and
committee-machines with arbitrary number of hidden nodes near saturation.Comment: 6 pages, latex, 1 figur
Clinical Outcomes After Four-Level Anterior Cervical Discectomy and Fusion.
Study Design: Retrospective cohort study.
Objectives: Anterior cervical discectomy and fusion (ACDF) demonstrates reliable improvement in neurologic symptoms associated with anterior compression of the cervical spine. There is a paucity of data on outcomes following 4-level ACDFs. The purpose of this study was to evaluate clinical outcomes for patients undergoing 4-level ACDF.
Methods: All 4-level ACDFs with at least 1-year clinical follow-up were identified. Clinical outcomes, including fusion rates, neurologic outcomes, and reoperation rates were determined.
Results: Retrospective review of our institutional database revealed 25 patients who underwent 4-level ACDF with at least 1-year clinical follow-up. Average age was 57.5 years (range 38.2-75.0 years); 14 (56%) were male, and average body mass index was 30.2 kg/m
Conclusions: Review of our institution\u27s experience demonstrated a low rate of revision cervical surgery for any reason of 8% at mean 19 months follow-up, and neurological examinations consistently improved, despite a high rate of radiographic nonunion (31%)
Severe Lumbar Disability Is Associated With Decreased Psoas Cross-Sectional Area in Degenerative Spondylolisthesis
Study Design: Retrospective cohort. Objectives: Alterations in lumbar paraspinal muscle cross-sectional area (CSA) may correlate with lumbar pathology. The purpose of this study was to compare paraspinal CSA in patients with degenerative spondylolisthesis and severe lumbar disability to those with mild or moderate lumbar disability, as determined by the Oswestry Disability Index (ODI). Methods: We retrospectively reviewed the medical records of 101 patients undergoing lumbar fusion for degenerative spondylolisthesis. Patients were divided into ODI score ≤40 (mild/moderate disability, MMD) and ODI score \u3e40 (severe disability, SD) groups. The total CSA of the psoas and paraspinal muscles were measured on preoperative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Results: There were 37 patients in the SD group and 64 in the MMD group. Average age and body mass index were similar between groups. For the paraspinal muscles, we were unable to demonstrate any significant differences in total CSA between the groups. Psoas muscle CSA was significantly decreased in the SD group compared with the MMD group (1010.08 vs 1178.6 mm2, P =.041). Multivariate analysis found that psoas CSA in the upper quartile was significantly protective against severe disability (P =.013). Conclusions: We found that patients with severe lumbar disability had no significant differences in posterior lumbar paraspinal CSA when compared with those with mild/moderate disability. However, severely disabled patients had significantly decreased psoas CSA, and larger psoas CSA was strongly protective against severe disability, suggestive of a potential association with psoas atrophy and worsening severity of lumbar pathology. © The Author(s) 2018
Optimally adapted multi-state neural networks trained with noise
The principle of adaptation in a noisy retrieval environment is extended here
to a diluted attractor neural network of Q-state neurons trained with noisy
data. The network is adapted to an appropriate noisy training overlap and
training activity which are determined self-consistently by the optimized
retrieval attractor overlap and activity. The optimized storage capacity and
the corresponding retriever overlap are considerably enhanced by an adequate
threshold in the states. Explicit results for improved optimal performance and
new retriever phase diagrams are obtained for Q=3 and Q=4, with coexisting
phases over a wide range of thresholds. Most of the interesting results are
stable to replica-symmetry-breaking fluctuations.Comment: 22 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in PR
Like-charge attraction through hydrodynamic interaction
We demonstrate that the attractive interaction measured between like-charged
colloidal spheres near a wall can be accounted for by a nonequilibrium
hydrodynamic effect. We present both analytical results and Brownian dynamics
simulations which quantitatively capture the one-wall experiments of Larsen and
Grier (Nature 385, p. 230, 1997).Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure
A canonical ensemble approach to graded-response perceptrons
Perceptrons with graded input-output relations and a limited output precision
are studied within the Gardner-Derrida canonical ensemble approach. Soft non-
negative error measures are introduced allowing for extended retrieval
properties. In particular, the performance of these systems for a linear and
quadratic error measure, corresponding to the perceptron respectively the
adaline learning algorithm, is compared with the performance for a rigid error
measure, simply counting the number of errors. Replica-symmetry-breaking
effects are evaluated.Comment: 26 pages, 10 ps figure
Enhancement of the Thermal Conductivity in gapped Quantum Spin Chains
We study mechanism of magnetic energy transport, motivated by recent
measurements of the thermal conductivity in low dimensional quantum magnets. We
point out a possible mechanism of enhancement of the thermal conductivity in
gapped magnetic system, where the magnetic energy transport plays a crucial
role. This mechanism gives an interpretation for the recent experiment of
CuGeO_3, where the thermal conductivity depends on the crystal direction.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure
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