Effect of cortical cooling on interictal epileptiform activities

AbstractObjectiveTo determine if applying chilled solution to exposed cerebral cortex can reduce interictal epileptiform activities in patients during surgery.MethodsElectrocorticography was used to record the epileptiform activity of 12 patients (ages 18–53) undergoing cortical mapping and resection surgery. Interictal spikes were counted at baseline and compared with spikes after applying room temperature and chilled Lactated Ringer's or normal saline solution.ResultsCortical irrigation with 150-cm3, chilled (4°C) normal saline solution reduced the mean number of interictal spikes from 11.46 to 4.87 spikes per minute (p=0.04). There was no significant reduction in the epileptic spike frequency when room temperature normal saline was used.ConclusionThe application of chilled solution directly to the cortex can reduce interictal epileptiform activities, suggesting that seizure potential can be suppressed to avoid evoked seizures during intraoperative surgery

Urginea capitata Baker - the berg slangkop, its toxic effects on ruminants, with a brief botanical survey of area

The green leaves proved poisonous when fed, mixed with lucerne, to cattle. The symptoms preceding death were " tucked up" appearance, sunken eyeballs, loss of appetite and profuse diarrhoea with blood stained faeces. The minimum fatal dose for an average sized animal is given as 6-8 lb. of the green material.The articles have been scanned in colour with a HP Scanjet 5590; 600dpi. Adobe Acrobat XI Pro was used to OCR the text and also for the merging and conversion to the final presentation PDF-format.mn201

Stable vortex and dipole vector solitons in a saturable nonlinear medium

We study both analytically and numerically the existence, uniqueness, and stability of vortex and dipole vector solitons in a saturable nonlinear medium in (2+1) dimensions. We construct perturbation series expansions for the vortex and dipole vector solitons near the bifurcation point where the vortex and dipole components are small. We show that both solutions uniquely bifurcate from the same bifurcation point. We also prove that both vortex and dipole vector solitons are linearly stable in the neighborhood of the bifurcation point. Far from the bifurcation point, the family of vortex solitons becomes linearly unstable via oscillatory instabilities, while the family of dipole solitons remains stable in the entire domain of existence. In addition, we show that an unstable vortex soliton breaks up either into a rotating dipole soliton or into two rotating fundamental solitons.Comment: To appear in Phys. Rev.

The Reduced Folate Carrier (SLC19A1) c.80G>A Polymorphism is associated with red cell folate concentrations among women

Low folate status may be a consequence of suboptimal intake, transport or cellular utilization of folate and, together with elevated homocysteine, is a recognized risk factor/marker for several human pathologies. As folate transport across cell membranes is mediated in part by the reduced folate carrier (RFC1), variants within this gene may influence disease risk via an effect on folate and/or homocysteine levels. The present study was undertaken to assess the association between the SLC19A1 (RFC1) c.80G>A polymorphism and folate/homocysteine concentrations in healthy young adults from Northern Ireland. The SLC19A1 c.80G>A polymorphism was not strongly associated with either serum folate or homocysteine concentrations in either men or women. However, in women, but not in men, this polymorphism explained 5% of the variation in red blood cell (RBC) folate levels (P=0.02). Relative to women with the SLC19A1 c.80GG genotype, women with the GA and AA genotypes had higher RBC folate concentrations. Consequently, compared to women with the SLC19A1 c.80AA and GA genotypes, women who are homozygous for the 80G allele may be at increased risk of having a child affected with a neural tube defect and of developing pathologies that have been associated with folate insufficiency, such as cardiovascular disease

A framework for the local information dynamics of distributed computation in complex systems

The nature of distributed computation has often been described in terms of the component operations of universal computation: information storage, transfer and modification. We review the first complete framework that quantifies each of these individual information dynamics on a local scale within a system, and describes the manner in which they interact to create non-trivial computation where "the whole is greater than the sum of the parts". We describe the application of the framework to cellular automata, a simple yet powerful model of distributed computation. This is an important application, because the framework is the first to provide quantitative evidence for several important conjectures about distributed computation in cellular automata: that blinkers embody information storage, particles are information transfer agents, and particle collisions are information modification events. The framework is also shown to contrast the computations conducted by several well-known cellular automata, highlighting the importance of information coherence in complex computation. The results reviewed here provide important quantitative insights into the fundamental nature of distributed computation and the dynamics of complex systems, as well as impetus for the framework to be applied to the analysis and design of other systems.Comment: 44 pages, 8 figure