Cerebrovascular Disease; A Leading Cause of Epilepsy

Various types of cerebrovascular diseases can result in epilepsy in any age, especially in the elderly. Besides well-known cause of epilepsy as large cerebral infarction involving cerebral cortex and intracerebral hemorrhage, there are growing evidences of roles of subcortical infarction, chronic subdural hematoma, and superficial siderosis of the central nervous system in the pathogenesis of epilepsy. We review here the epidemiology and possible predictors of epilepsy in each type of cerebrovascular lesions and summarize the characteristics of semiology and electroencephalography findings in order to take early treatment strategy. Additionally, relevance of acute-symptomatic seizures and status epilepticus to epilepsy is discussed

Validation and Factor Analysis of the Japanese Version of the Highs Scale in Perinatal Women

Background: The Highs scale has been developed to evaluate hypomanic symptoms in the first postpartum week. However, it has not been elucidated whether this scale is also applicable to pregnant women. To address this issue, we confirmed the factor structure, reliability, and validity of the Japanese version of the Highs scale for pregnant and postpartum women.Methods: 418 women provided effective responses to both the Highs scale and the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) during early pregnancy (before week 25), late pregnancy (around week 36), at 5 days and at 1 month after delivery. Subjects were randomly divided into two groups, and exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were performed for each group. Cronbach's alpha was calculated and the correlation of the Highs scale with EPDS was analyzed. The correlation between the subscales was analyzed at four time points, and the correlation of subscales between the four time points was confirmed.Results: This scale was found to have the two-factor structure with elation and agitation subscales. The two subscales had reasonable internal consistency at all time points (Cronbach's alpha range: Factor 1, 0.696–0.758; Factor 2, 0.553–0.694). The overall scale had reasonable internal consistency at all time points (Cronbach's alpha range: 0.672–0.738). Based on the correlation analysis of the two subscales and EPDS, discriminative and convergent validity were indicated at all time points, confirming the construct validity of the Highs scale. Subscale scores showed a significant correlation with EPDS at all time points (r = 0.388, 0.384, 0.498, and 0.442, p < 0.01).Conclusions: The Japanese version of the Highs scale is reliable and valid, and can be applied for evaluating the hypomanic symptoms during pregnancy and postpartum period

Drilling constraints on lithospheric accretion and evolution at Atlantis Massif, Mid-Atlantic Ridge 30°N

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2011. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research 116 (2011): B07103, doi:10.1029/2010JB007931.Expeditions 304 and 305 of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program cored and logged a 1.4 km section of the domal core of Atlantis Massif. Postdrilling research results summarized here constrain the structure and lithology of the Central Dome of this oceanic core complex. The dominantly gabbroic sequence recovered contrasts with predrilling predictions; application of the ground truth in subsequent geophysical processing has produced self-consistent models for the Central Dome. The presence of many thin interfingered petrologic units indicates that the intrusions forming the domal core were emplaced over a minimum of 100–220 kyr, and not as a single magma pulse. Isotopic and mineralogical alteration is intense in the upper 100 m but decreases in intensity with depth. Below 800 m, alteration is restricted to narrow zones surrounding faults, veins, igneous contacts, and to an interval of locally intense serpentinization in olivine-rich troctolite. Hydration of the lithosphere occurred over the complete range of temperature conditions from granulite to zeolite facies, but was predominantly in the amphibolite and greenschist range. Deformation of the sequence was remarkably localized, despite paleomagnetic indications that the dome has undergone at least 45° rotation, presumably during unroofing via detachment faulting. Both the deformation pattern and the lithology contrast with what is known from seafloor studies on the adjacent Southern Ridge of the massif. There, the detachment capping the domal core deformed a 100 m thick zone and serpentinized peridotite comprises ∼70% of recovered samples. We develop a working model of the evolution of Atlantis Massif over the past 2 Myr, outlining several stages that could explain the observed similarities and differences between the Central Dome and the Southern Ridge

Simple and extremely efficient blue emitters based on mononuclear Cu(I)-halide complexes with delayed fluorescence

Simple mononuclear Cu(I)-halide complexes, [CuX(PPh3)(2)(4-Mepy)] (X = Cl-, Br-, I-; PPh3 = triphenylphosphine; 4-Mepy = 4-methylpyridine), were prepared. They exhibit blue light emission, with extremely high photoluminescence quantum yields approaching 100% in the crystals. Emission lifetime analyses and density functional theory calculations revealed that the bright blue light emission at room temperature is mainly delayed fluorescence originating from the singlet metal-to-ligand charge transfer (MLCT) state combined with the halide-to-ligand charge transfer (XLCT) state, ((1)(M + X)LCT), while that at 77 K is phosphorescence from the (3)(M + X) LCT transition state, due to the small singlet-triplet energy differences (Delta E = 940-1170 cm(-1)). The ternary ligand systems consisting of halide, bulky phosphine, and N-heteroaromatic ligands constitute inexpensive pure-blue-light-emitting materials, which can be fabricated by facile procedures such as simple manual grinding

Effects of N-heteroaromatic ligands on highly luminescent mononuclear copper(I)-halide complexes

A series of mononuclear Cu(I)-halide complexes, [CuX(PPh3)(2)(L)] (X= CI-, Br-, I-; PPh3 = triphenylphosphine; L = pyridine (py), isoquinoline (iq), 1,6-naphthyridine (nap)), were synthesized. The emission color of [CuX(PPh3)2(L)] varies from blue to red by changing the L ligands and the halide ions, and all the complexes exhibit high emission quantum yields (0.16-0.99) in the crystals. The emission studies revealed that the emissive states of [CuX(PPh3)(2)(L)] differ depending on the L ligand. Complexes [CuX(PPh3)(2)(py)] and [CuX(PPh3)2(nap)] mainly emit from the singlet metal-to-ligand charge transfer mixed with the halide-to-ligand charge transfer ((1)(M + X)LCT) state at room temperature. In contrast, emissions from [CuX(PPh3)(2)(iq)] at room temperature originate from both (3)(M + X)LCT and (3)pi pi* states. These results indicate that N-heterodomatic ligands play an important role in the emission properties of mononuclear Cu(I)-halide complexes. (C) 2015 Academie des sciences. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved