Age-related changes in cervical sagittal range of motion and alignment

Study Design Retrospective cohort study. Objective To compare sagittal cervical range of motion (ROM) and alignment in young versus middle-aged adults. Methods One hundred four asymptomatic adults were selected randomly out of 791 subjects who underwent lateral cervical radiographs in neutral, flexion, and extension positions. They were divided into two groups: young (age 20 to 29, 52 people) and middle-aged adults (age 50 to 59, 52 people). We determined the ROMs of upper cervical (occipital–C2 angle), midcervical (C2–C7 angle), and cervicothoracic spine (cervicosternal angle). We compared the alignment differences of the two groups by calculating the distances between C2 and C7 plumb lines, and C2 central-offset distance. Results In neutral position, there was no significant difference between young and middle-aged adults. However, in flexion, C2–C7 angle, distance between C2–C7 plumb lines, and C2 central-offset distance decreased with age. In extension, C2–C7 angle and C2 central-offset distance decreased with age. During flexion and extension, midcervical ROM and the range of C2 central-offset distance decreased in the middle-aged group. However, there was no difference between the two age groups in the ROM of the upper cervical and the cervicothoracic regions during flexion and extension. Conclusion We found that, despite of the presence of age-related cervical alignment changes, the only difference between the two groups was in the sagittal ROM of the midcervical spine during flexion and extension. Only the ROM of the midcervical spine appears to change significantly, consistent with findings that these levels are most likely to develop both symptomatic and asymptomatic degenerative changes

(7-Dimethylamino-1-hydroxy-3-naphthyl)(morpholino)methanone

In the title compound, C17H20N2O3, the morpholine ring is in a slightly distorted chair form. The crystal structure is stabilized by an inter­molecular O—H⋯O hydrogen bond between the H atom of the hydroxyl group and the O atom of a neighbouring carbonyl group. A weak inter­molecular C—H⋯π inter­action is also present

Secondary Science Teachers' Views about Purposes of Practical Works in School Science

The purpose of this paper was to examine views of secondary school science teachers about purposes to use practical works in school science. The instrument to survey consisted eighteen items, which were categorized into four components as follows: 'Scientific inquiry', 'Scientific knowledge', 'Science-related attitude', and 'STS (science-technology-society)'. Subjects were 152 secondary school science teachers (male 70 and female 82; middle school 50 and high school 102), who are teaching in 42 schools of 8 provinces. On the survey, science teachers were asked to answer on 5-point Lickert scale (from 1 to 5) how they thought of using practical works on purposes with domains of science objectives in school. They had positive views about using practical works for improving scientific inquiry process skills, science-related attitudes, and perceptions about STS literacy, and acquiring scientific knowledge. They would have the most willingness of using practical works for 'Scientific Inquiry' among domains of science objectives in school

Efficacy evaluation of combination vaccine of recombinant C-terminal fragments of ApxIA, ApxIIA and ApxIIIA in piglets

The efficacy of the combination vaccine of the individual C-terminal fragments of ApxIA, ApxIIA and ApxIIIA of Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae (APP) was evaluated in piglets. Twenty piglets were divided equally into 2 groups (n=10). All piglets were intramuscularly primed at 4 week-of-age (0 week post prime inoculation (WPPI)) and were intramuscularly boosted at 6 week-of-age (2 WPPI). Group A piglets were inoculated with sterile PBS and group B piglets were inoculated with the combination vaccine. Concentrations of each of the C-terminal fragment-specific IgG as determined by ELISA were significantly higher in group B than in group A from 2 WPPI until the end of this study. Clinical signs were observed from only 10% of group B piglets after the challenge with the mixture of APP serotypes 1, 2 and 5 at 4 WPPI, while 50% of group A piglets were protected against APP infections. Overall, intramuscular inoculation with the vaccine candidate can efficiently protect piglets against APP infection

New Radiographic Index for Occipito-Cervical Instability

Study DesignRetrospective study.PurposeTo propose a new radiographic index for occipito-cervical instability.Overview of LiteratureSymptomatic atlanto-occipital instability requires the fusion of the atlanto-occipital joint. However, measurements of occipito-cervical translation using the Wiesel-Rothman technique, Power's ratio, and basion-axial interval are unreliable because the radiologic landmarks in the occipito-cervical junction lack clarity in radiography.MethodsOne hundred four asymptomatic subjects were evaluated with lateral cervical radiographs in neutral, flexion and extension. They were stratified by age and included 52 young (20–29 years) and 52 middle-aged adults (50–59 years). The four radiographic reference points were posterior edge of hard palate (hard palate), posteroinferior corner of the most posterior upper molar tooth (molar), posteroinferior corner of the C1 anterior ring (posterior C1), and posteroinferior corner of the C2 vertebral body (posterior C2). The distance from posterior C1 and posterior C2 to the above anatomical landmarks was measured to calculate the range of motion (ROM) on dynamic radiographs. To determine the difference between the two age groups, unpaired t-tests were used. The statistical significance level was set at p<0.05.ResultsThe ROM was 4.8±7.3 mm between the hard palate and the posterior C1, 9.9±10.2 mm between the hard palate and the posterior C2, 1.7±7.2 mm between the molar to the posterior C1, and 10.4±12.1 mm between the molar to the posterior C2. There was no statistically significant difference for the ROM between the young- and the middle-aged groups. The intra-observer reliability for new radiographic index was good. The inter-observer reliability for the ROM measured by the hard palate was low, but was better than that by the molar.ConclusionsROM measured by the hard palate might be a useful new radiographic index in cases of occipito-cervical instability

Dependence of reaction center-type energy-dependent quenching on photosystem II antenna size

AbstractThe effects of photosystem II antenna size on reaction center-type energy-dependent quenching (qE) were examined in rice plants grown under two different light intensities using both wild type and qE-less (OsPsbS knockout) mutant plants. Reaction center-type qE was detected by measuring non-photochemical quenching at 50 μmol photons m−2 s−1 white light intensity. We observed that in low light-grown rice plants, reaction center-type qE was higher than in high light-grown plants, and the amount of reaction center-type qE did not depend on zeaxanthin accumulation. This was confirmed in Arabidopsis npq1–2 mutant plants that lack zeaxanthin due to a mutation in the violaxanthin de-epoxidase enzyme. Although the electron transport rate measured at a light intensity of 50 μmol photons m−2 s−1 was the same in high light- and low light-grown wild type and mutant plants lacking PsbS protein, the generation of energy-dependent quenching was completely impaired only in mutant plants. Analyses of the pigment content, Lhcb proteins and D1 protein of PSII showed that the antenna size was larger in low light-grown plants, and this correlated with the amount of reaction center-type qE. Our results mark the first time that the reaction center-type qE has been shown to depend on photosystem II antenna size and, although it depends on the existence of PsbS protein, the extent of reaction center-type qE does not correlate with the transcript levels of PsbS protein. The presence of reaction center-type energy-dependent quenching, in addition to antenna-type quenching, in higher plants for dissipation of excess light energy demonstrates the complexity and flexibility of the photosynthetic apparatus of higher plants to respond to different environmental conditions

Venn-diaNet : venn diagram based network propagation analysis framework for comparing multiple biological experiments

Background The main research topic in this paper is how to compare multiple biological experiments using transcriptome data, where each experiment is measured and designed to compare control and treated samples. Comparison of multiple biological experiments is usually performed in terms of the number of DEGs in an arbitrary combination of biological experiments. This process is usually facilitated with Venn diagram but there are several issues when Venn diagram is used to compare and analyze multiple experiments in terms of DEGs. First, current Venn diagram tools do not provide systematic analysis to prioritize genes. Because that current tools generally do not fully focus to prioritize genes, genes that are located in the segments in the Venn diagram (especially, intersection) is usually difficult to rank. Second, elucidating the phenotypic difference only with the lists of DEGs and expression values is challenging when the experimental designs have the combination of treatments. Experiment designs that aim to find the synergistic effect of the combination of treatments are very difficult to find without an informative system. Results We introduce Venn-diaNet, a Venn diagram based analysis framework that uses network propagation upon protein-protein interaction network to prioritizes genes from experiments that have multiple DEG lists. We suggest that the two issues can be effectively handled by ranking or prioritizing genes with segments of a Venn diagram. The user can easily compare multiple DEG lists with gene rankings, which is easy to understand and also can be coupled with additional analysis for their purposes. Our system provides a web-based interface to select seed genes in any of areas in a Venn diagram and then perform network propagation analysis to measure the influence of the selected seed genes in terms of ranked list of DEGs. Conclusions We suggest that our system can logically guide to select seed genes without additional prior knowledge that makes us free from the seed selection of network propagation issues. We showed that Venn-diaNet can reproduce the research findings reported in the original papers that have experiments that compare two, three and eight experiments. Venn-diaNet is freely available at: http://biohealth.snu.ac.kr/software/venndianetThis publication has been funded by (i) Next-Generation Information Computing Development Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) the Ministry of Science ICT (MSIT) (No.NRF-2017M3C4A7065887), (ii) The Collaborative Genome Program for Fostering New Post-Genome Industry of the National Research Foundation (NRF), the Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) (No.NRF2014M3C9A3063541), and (iii) a grant of the Korea Health Technology R&D Project through the Korea Health Industry Development Institute (KHIDI) the Ministry of Health & Welfare, Republic of Korea (Grant number: HI15C3224)

Impact of mutations in DNA methylation modification genes on genome-wide methylation landscapes and downstream gene activations in pan-cancer

In cancer, mutations of DNA methylation modification genes have crucial roles for epigenetic modifications genome-wide, which lead to the activation or suppression of important genes including tumor suppressor genes. Mutations on the epigenetic modifiers could affect the enzyme activity, which would result in the difference in genome-wide methylation profiles and, activation of downstream genes. Therefore, we investigated the effect of mutations on DNA methylation modification genes such as DNMT1, DNMT3A, MBD1, MBD4, TET1, TET2 and TET3 through a pan-cancer analysis. First, we investigated the effect of mutations in DNA methylation modification genes on genome-wide methylation profiles. We collected 3,644 samples that have both of mRNA and methylation data from 12 major cancer types in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). The samples were divided into two groups according to the mutational signature. Differentially methylated regions (DMR) that overlapped with the promoter region were selected using minfi and differentially expressed genes (DEG) were identified using EBSeq. By integrating the DMR and DEG results, we constructed a comprehensive DNA methylome profiles on a pan-cancer scale. Second, we investigated the effect of DNA methylations in the promoter regions on downstream genes by comparing the two groups of samples in 11 cancer types. To investigate the effects of promoter methylation on downstream gene activations, we performed clustering analysis of DEGs. Among the DEGs, we selected highly correlated gene set that had differentially methylated promoter regions using graph based sub-network clustering methods. We chose an up-regulated DEGs cluster where had hypomethylated promoter in acute myeloid leukemia (LAML) and another down-regulated DEGs cluster where had hypermethylated promoter in colon adenocarcinoma (COAD). To rule out effects of gene regulation by transcription factor (TF), if differentially expressed TFs bound to the promoter of DEGs, that DEGs did not included to the gene set that effected by DNA methylation modifiers. Consequently, we identified 54 hypomethylated promoter DMR up-regulated DEGs in LAML and 45 hypermethylated promoter DMR down-regulated DEGs in COAD. Our study on DNA methylation modification genes in mutated vs. non-mutated groups could provide useful insight into the epigenetic regulation of DEGs in cancer.This research is supported by National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT (No. NRF-2017M3C4A7065887), the Collaborative Genome Program for Fostering New Post-Genome Industry of the National Research Foundation (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) (No. NRF-2014M3C9A3063541), and a grant of the Korea Health Technology R&D Project through the Korea Health Industry Development Institute (KHIDI) funded by the Ministry of Health & Welfare, Republic of Korea (grant number: HI15C3224). The funding bodies provided financial support but had no other role in the design of the study, data collection, analysis, and interpretation of data, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript

Recurred pneumocephalus in a head trauma patient following positive pressure mask ventilation during induction of anesthesia -A case report-

Pneumocephalus is a condition which usually results from head trauma. It has been known that iatrogenic pneumocephalus can occur as a complication of positive pressure mask ventilation during induction of anesthesia or ventilatory care for head trauma patients. We report a case of mask ventilation during anesthesia induction in a 50-year-old male patient with head trauma. Initial pneumocephalus associated with cerebrospinal fluid leakage was diagnosed immediate following head injury involving facial sinuses. He was managed with emergent lumbar drainage and supportive care. Pneumocephalus recurred following positive pressure mask ventilation (PPMV) during anesthesia induction for surgery on the right arm. Recurred pneumocephalus was managed with high flow oxygen and supportive care. Anesthesiologists should be aware of pneumocephalus as a potential complication of PPMV in head trauma patients, even after resolution of previous pneumocephalus