Alien Registration- Myhr, Peter E. (New Sweden, Aroostook County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/34403/thumbnail.jp

Some hydraulic properties of Sandy-silty Norweigan Tills

Norwegian tills are usually coarse. The saturated water movement is mainly concentrated along fractures, fissures and' sorted sediment zones. The studies indicate that les that 10% of the water drains through the pore system of the tillmatrix. There is no marked correlation between the grain-size composition of the till and the saturated permeability. Homogeneous Norwegian tills may form important conduits of capillary water transport from the groundwater level to the vegetation during dry summers. This is mainly because the tills are dominated by equidimensional minerals which form an open pore system and because the groundwater level in many cases is situated at shallow depths

Casimir Force on a Micrometer Sphere in a Dip: Proposal of an Experiment

The attractive Casimir force acting on a micrometer-sphere suspended in a spherical dip, close to the wall, is discussed. This setup is in principle directly accessible to experiment. The sphere and the substrate are assumed to be made of the same perfectly conducting material.Comment: 11 pages, 1 figure; to appear in J. Phys. A: Math. Ge

Sitting and standing performance in a total population of children with cerebral palsy: a cross-sectional study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Knowledge of sitting and standing performance in a total population of children with cerebral palsy (CP) is of interest for health care planning and for prediction of future ability in the individual child. In 1994, a register and a health care programme for children with CP in southern Sweden was initiated. In the programme information on how the child usually sits, stands, stands up and sits down, together with use of support or assistive devices, is recorded annually.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A cross-sectional study was performed, analysing the most recent report of all children with CP born 1990-2005 and living in southern Sweden during 2008. All 562 children (326 boys, 236 girls) aged 3-18 years were included in the study. The degree of independence, use of support or assistive devices to sit, stand, stand up and sit down was analysed in relation to the Gross Motor Function Classification System (GMFCS), CP subtype and age.</p> <p>Result</p> <p>A majority of the children used standard chairs (57%), could stand independently (62%) and could stand up (62%) and sit down (63%) without external support. Adaptive seating was used by 42%, external support to stand was used by 31%, to stand up by 19%, and to sit down by 18%. The use of adaptive seating and assistive devices increased with GMFCS levels (p < 0.001) and there was a difference between CP subtypes (p < 0.001). The use of support was more frequent in preschool children aged 3-6 (p < 0.001).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>About 60% of children with CP, aged 3-18, use standard chairs, stand, stand up, and sit down without external support. Adding those using adaptive seating and external support, 99% of the children could sit, 96% could stand and 81% could stand up from a sitting position and 81% could sit down from a standing position. The GMFCS classification system is a good predictor of sitting and standing performance.</p

Serum neurofilament as a predictor of 10-year grey matter atrophy and clinical disability in multiple sclerosis: a longitudinal study

Background The predictive value of serum neurofilament light chain (sNfL) on long-term prognosis in multiple sclerosis (MS) is still unclear. Objective Investigate the relation between sNfL levels over a 2-year period in patients with relapsing-remitting MS, and clinical disability and grey matter (GM) atrophy after 10 years. Methods 85 patients, originally enrolled in a multicentre, randomised trial of ω−3 fatty acids, participated in a 10-year follow-up visit. sNfL levels were measured by Simoa quarterly until month 12, and then at month 24. The appearance of new gadolinium-enhancing (Gd+) lesions was assessed monthly between baseline and month 9, and then at months 12 and 24. At the 10-year follow-up visit, brain atrophy measures were obtained using FreeSurfer. Results Higher mean sNfL levels during early periods of active inflammation (Gd+ lesions present or recently present) predicted lower total (β=−0.399, p=0.040) and deep (β=−0.556, p=0.010) GM volume, lower mean cortical thickness (β=−0.581, p=0.010) and higher T2 lesion count (β=0.498, p=0.018). Of the clinical outcomes, higher inflammatory sNfL levels were associated with higher disability measured by the dominant hand Nine-Hole Peg Test (β=0.593, p=0.004). Mean sNfL levels during periods of remission (no Gd+ lesions present or recently present) did not predict GM atrophy or disability progression. Conclusion Higher sNfL levels during periods of active inflammation predicted more GM atrophy and specific aspects of clinical disability 10 years later. The findings suggest that subsequent long-term GM atrophy is mainly due to neuroaxonal degradation within new lesions.publishedVersio

When it's at: An examination of when cognitive change occurs during cognitive therapy for compulsive checking in obsessive-compulsive disorder

Abstract Background and objectives The cognitive theory of compulsive checking in OCD proposes that checking behaviour is maintained by maladaptive beliefs, including those related to inflated responsibility and those related to reduced memory confidence. This study examined whether and when specific interventions (as part of a new cognitive therapy for compulsive checking) addressing these cognitive targets changed feelings of responsibility and memory confidence. Methods Participants were nine adults with a primary or secondary diagnosis of OCD who reported significant checking symptoms (at least one hour per day) on the Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale. A single-case multiple baseline design was used, after which participants received 12 sessions of cognitive therapy. From the start of the baseline period through to the 1 month post-treatment follow-up assessment session, participants completed daily monitoring of feelings of responsibility, memory confidence, and their time spent engaging in compulsive checking. Results Results revealed that feelings of responsibility significantly reduced and memory confidence significantly increased from baseline to immediately post-treatment, with very high effect sizes. Multilevel modelling revealed significant linear changes in feelings of responsibility (i.e., reductions over time) and memory confidence (i.e., increases over time) occurred following the sessions when these were addressed. Finally, we found that improvements in these over the course of the treatment significantly predicted reduced time spent checking. Limitations The small sample size limits our ability to generalize our results. Conclusions Results are discussed in terms of a focus on the timing of change in cognitive therapy

A pilot study of a phenomenological model of adipogenesis in maturing adipocytes using Cahn–Hilliard theory

We consider the accumulation and formation of lipid droplets in an adipocyte cell. The process incorporates adipose nucleation (adipogenesis) and growth. At later stages, there will be merging of droplets and growth of larger droplets at the expense of the smaller droplets, which will essentially undergo lipolysis. The process is modeled by the use of the Cahn–Hilliard equation, which is mass-conserving and allows the formation of secondary phases in the context of spinodal decomposition. The volume of fluid (VOF) method is used to determine the total area that is occupied by the lipids in a given cross section. Further, we present an algorithm, applicable to all kinds of grids (structured or unstructured) in two spatial dimensions, to count the number of lipid droplets and the portion of the domain of computation that is occupied by the lipid droplets as a function of time during the process. The results are preliminary and are validated from a qualitative point using experiments carried out on cell cultures. It turns out that the Cahn–Hilliard theory can model many of the features during adipogenesis qualitatively

Dietary Vitamin D3 Supplements Reduce Demyelination in the Cuprizone Model

Vitamin D is emerging as a probably important environmental risk factor in multiple sclerosis, affecting both susceptibility and disease progression. It is not known to what extent this effect is due to a modulation of peripheral lymphocyte function, or to intrathecal effects of vitamin D. We investigated the effect of dietary vitamin D3 content on de/remyelination in the cuprizone model, which is a well established toxic model of demyelination, with no associated lymphocyte infiltration. The mice received diets either deficient of (<50 IU/kg), or supplemented with low (500 IU/kg), high (6200 IU/kg) or very high (12500 IU/kg) amounts of vit D3. Cuprizone (0.2%) was added to the diet for six weeks, starting two weeks after onset of the experimental diets. Mouse brain tissue was histopathologically evaluated for myelin and oligodendrocyte loss, microglia/macrophage activation, and lymphocyte infiltration after six weeks of cuprizone exposure, and two weeks after discontinuation of cuprizone exposure. High and very high doses of vitamin D3 significantly reduced the extent of white matter demyelination (p = 0.004) and attenuated microglia activation (p = 0.001). No differences in the density of oligodendrocytes were observed between the diet groups. Two weeks after discontinuation of cuprizone exposure, remyelination was only detectable in the white matter of mice receiving diets deficient of or with low vitamin D3 content. In conclusion, high dietary doses of vitamin D3 reduce the extent of demyelination, and attenuate microglia activation and macrophage infiltration in a toxic model of demyelination, independent of lymphocyte infiltration

Genetic risk and a primary role for cell-mediated immune mechanisms in multiple sclerosis.

Multiple sclerosis is a common disease of the central nervous system in which the interplay between inflammatory and neurodegenerative processes typically results in intermittent neurological disturbance followed by progressive accumulation of disability. Epidemiological studies have shown that genetic factors are primarily responsible for the substantially increased frequency of the disease seen in the relatives of affected individuals, and systematic attempts to identify linkage in multiplex families have confirmed that variation within the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) exerts the greatest individual effect on risk. Modestly powered genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have enabled more than 20 additional risk loci to be identified and have shown that multiple variants exerting modest individual effects have a key role in disease susceptibility. Most of the genetic architecture underlying susceptibility to the disease remains to be defined and is anticipated to require the analysis of sample sizes that are beyond the numbers currently available to individual research groups. In a collaborative GWAS involving 9,772 cases of European descent collected by 23 research groups working in 15 different countries, we have replicated almost all of the previously suggested associations and identified at least a further 29 novel susceptibility loci. Within the MHC we have refined the identity of the HLA-DRB1 risk alleles and confirmed that variation in the HLA-A gene underlies the independent protective effect attributable to the class I region. Immunologically relevant genes are significantly overrepresented among those mapping close to the identified loci and particularly implicate T-helper-cell differentiation in the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis