Talus fracture in a 4-year-old child.

Fracture of the talus is uncommon in childhood. We report a case of talar neck fracture that occurred in a 4-year-old girl. We present the radiological findings, the orthopaedic follow-up and the clinical outcome

Frustration Effects in Antiferromagnetic FCC Heisenberg Films

We study the effects of frustration in an antiferromagnetic film of FCC lattice with Heisenberg spin model including an Ising-like anisotropy. Monte Carlo (MC) simulations have been used to study thermodynamic properties of the film. We show that the presence of the surface reduces the ground state (GS) degeneracy found in the bulk. The GS is shown to depend on the surface in-plane interaction $J_s$ with a critical value at which ordering of type I coexists with ordering of type II. Near this value a reentrant phase is found. Various physical quantities such as layer magnetizations and layer susceptibilities are shown and discussed. The nature of the phase transition is also studied by histogram technique. We have also used the Green's function (GF) method for the quantum counterpart model. The results at low-$T$ show interesting effects of quantum fluctuations. Results obtained by the GF method at high $T$ are compared to those of MC simulations. A good agreement is observed.Comment: 11 pages, 19 figures, submitted to J. Phys.: Condensed Matte

Intense training overcomes effects of the Val66Met BDNF polymorphism on short-term plasticity.

The val(66)met polymorphism in the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) gene impacts activity-dependent secretion of BDNF and modifies short-term cortical plasticity. The current study examined whether sustained training overcomes polymorphism effects on short-term plasticity and also examined polymorphism effects on long-term plasticity. Twenty-four subjects completed a 12-day protocol of daily training on a marble navigation task that required intense use of the first dorsal interosseus (FDI) muscle. In parallel, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) mapping was used to assess serial measures of short-term cortical motor map plasticity, plus long-term cortical motor map plasticity, of the cortical FDI map. On Day 1, subjects with the polymorphism did not show significant short-term cortical motor map plasticity over 30 min of FDI activity, but subjects without the polymorphism did. After 5 days of intense training, a genotype-based difference in short-term cortical motor map plasticity was no longer found, as both groups showed short-term plasticity across the 30 min of FDI activity. Also, across 12 days of training, map area decreased significantly, in a manner that did not vary in relation to genotype. Training of sufficient intensity and duration overcomes effects that the val(66)met polymorphism has on short-term cortical motor map plasticity. The polymorphism-related differences seen with short-term plasticity are not found with long-term cortical motor map plasticity

Cleavable Biotin Probes for Labeling of Biomolecules via Azide−Alkyne Cycloaddition

The azide−alkyne cycloaddition provides a powerful tool for bio-orthogonal labeling of proteins, nucleic acids, glycans, and lipids. In some labeling experiments, e.g., in proteomic studies involving affinity purification and mass spectrometry, it is convenient to use cleavable probes that allow release of labeled biomolecules under mild conditions. Five cleavable biotin probes are described for use in labeling of proteins and other biomolecules via azide−alkyne cycloaddition. Subsequent to conjugation with metabolically labeled protein, these probes are subject to cleavage with either 50 mM Na_2S_2O_4, 2% HOCH_2CH_2SH, 10% HCO_2H, 95% CF_3CO_2H, or irradiation at 365 nm. Most strikingly, a probe constructed around a dialkoxydiphenylsilane (DADPS) linker was found to be cleaved efficiently when treated with 10% HCO_2H for 0.5 h. A model green fluorescent protein was used to demonstrate that the DADPS probe undergoes highly selective conjugation and leaves a small (143 Da) mass tag on the labeled protein after cleavage. These features make the DADPS probe especially attractive for use in biomolecular labeling and proteomic studies

Anaerobic membrane bioreactors for future green bioprocesses

© 2016 American Society of Civil Engineers. This chapter focuses on the comprehensive overview of the recent progress in anaerobic membrane bioreactor (AnMBR) applications, including the fundamental aspects and development of AnMBR processes. For a future green bioprocess, the chapter discusses the application development of AnMBRs in domestic and industrial wastewater treatment, opportunities for biogas production and waste minimization and membrane fouling researches. The anaerobic treatment processes are known to have the inherent advantages over the aerobic counterparts, such as sludge minimization and energy savings. The key competitive advantages of AnMBRs over conventional aerobic and anaerobic processes include total biomass retention, excellent effluent quality, bioenergy recovery, smaller footprint, lower energy consumption, high efficiency of wastewater treatment, and strong ability of handling fluctuation in influent quality. Biogas recovery represents one of the key green features of AnMBR technology, particularly for submerged AnMBR (SAnMBR). The compact configure of SAnMBR allows for more convenient collection of biogas

Triggering up states in all-to-all coupled neurons

Slow-wave sleep in mammalians is characterized by a change of large-scale cortical activity currently paraphrased as cortical Up/Down states. A recent experiment demonstrated a bistable collective behaviour in ferret slices, with the remarkable property that the Up states can be switched on and off with pulses, or excitations, of same polarity; whereby the effect of the second pulse significantly depends on the time interval between the pulses. Here we present a simple time discrete model of a neural network that exhibits this type of behaviour, as well as quantitatively reproduces the time-dependence found in the experiments.Comment: epl Europhysics Letters, accepted (2010

Crop Knowledge Discovery Based on Agricultural Big Data Integration

Nowadays, the agricultural data can be generated through various sources, such as: Internet of Thing (IoT), sensors, satellites, weather stations, robots, farm equipment, agricultural laboratories, farmers, government agencies and agribusinesses. The analysis of this big data enables farmers, companies and agronomists to extract high business and scientific knowledge, improving their operational processes and product quality. However, before analysing this data, different data sources need to be normalised, homogenised and integrated into a unified data representation. In this paper, we propose an agricultural data integration method using a constellation schema which is designed to be flexible enough to incorporate other datasets and big data models. We also apply some methods to extract knowledge with the view to improve crop yield; these include finding suitable quantities of soil properties, herbicides and insecticides for both increasing crop yield and protecting the environment.Comment: 5 page

Automatic summarization of rushes video using bipartite graphs

In this paper we present a new approach for automatic summarization of rushes, or unstructured video. Our approach is composed of three major steps. First, based on shot and sub-shot segmentations, we filter sub-shots with low information content not likely to be useful in a summary. Second, a method using maximal matching in a bipartite graph is adapted to measure similarity between the remaining shots and to minimize inter-shot redundancy by removing repetitive retake shots common in rushes video. Finally, the presence of faces and motion intensity are characterised in each sub-shot. A measure of how representative the sub-shot is in the context of the overall video is then proposed. Video summaries composed of keyframe slideshows are then generated. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of this approach we re-run the evaluation carried out by TRECVid, using the same dataset and evaluation metrics used in the TRECVid video summarization task in 2007 but with our own assessors. Results show that our approach leads to a significant improvement on our own work in terms of the fraction of the TRECVid summary ground truth included and is competitive with the best of other approaches in TRECVid 2007

Alloantibodies, Anti-D, Childbearing age, Women, Cameroon

We conducted a cross sectional retrospective study to determine anti-D and D-negative phenotype rates among Cameroonian women of reproductive age (15 – 44 years), in order to evaluate the importance ofD alloimmunization. Analysis of the haematology laboratory records from January 2006 to December 2007 harvested 225 results for red blood cell alloantibody screening and 2460 D phenotypes. Anti-D rate was found to be high at 4% and not linked to women’s parity. Three hundred and fifty two (14.3%) women were found to be D-negative. Anti-D rates significantly decreased with age from 18.8% among teenagers (15-19) to 7.8% among older women (35-44) (p = 0.001). The number of women submitted to both irregular antibody screening and type D phenotype determination was not strong enough (50) to analyse the link between anti-D rate and antigen D distribution in our study (Afr J Reprod Health 2009; 13[3]:47-52)