A case report: retigabine induced oral mucosal dyspigmentation of the hard palate

Background Dyspigmentation of the oral mucosa has a multitude of aetiological causes. Retigabine, a new antiepileptic drug, has the potential side effect of inducing a blue/purple pigmentation of the oral mucosa in addition to the skin, lips, nails and retina of the eyes. This article presents a unique case of dyspigmentation present in the oral mucosa of the hard palate which has previously been unreported in the dental literature. Case presentation A 70 year old white male presented to a secondary care oral surgery department with an unusual asymptomatic pigmented lesion present in the hard palate of the oral cavity. The pigmentation was remarkable for its distinct blue/purple colouration which was associated with a similar discolouration of the nail beds of the hands. This is believed to be a side effect of the anti-epileptic medication retigabine. Conclusion The dental profession and wider healthcare community should be made fully aware of the potential side effect of oral dyspigmentation associated with the novel anti-epileptic medication retigabine. Enhanced knowledge of the causative role of retigabine in dyspigementation of the oral mucosa will allow the practitioner to make an appropriate diagnosis. As far the authors are aware this is reaction is unreported in the dental literature and should be disseminated to the wider oral health professional’s community

Inflammatory responses in primary muscle cell cultures in Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar)

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Modelling the Galactic bar using OGLE-II Red Clump Giant Stars

Red clump giant stars can be used as distance indicators to trace the mass distribution of the Galactic bar. We use RCG stars from 44 bulge fields from the OGLE-II microlensing collaboration database to constrain analytic tri-axial models for the Galactic bar. We find the bar major axis is oriented at an angle of 24 - 27 degrees to the Sun-Galactic centre line-of-sight. The ratio of semi-major and semi-minor bar axis scale lengths in the Galactic plane x_0, y_0, and vertical bar scale length z_0, is x_0 : y_0 : z_0 = 10 : 3.5 : 2.6, suggesting a slightly more prolate bar structure than the working model of Gerhard (2002) which gives the scale length ratios as x_0 : y_0 : z_0 = 10 : 4 : 3 .Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS. Supplementary material available online: 10 pages, 10 figure

A Bramble-Pasciak-like method with applications in optimization

Saddle-point systems arise in many applications areas, in fact in any situation where an extremum principle arises with constraints. The Stokes problem describing slow viscous flow of an incompressible fluid is a classic example coming from partial differential equations and in the area of Optimization such problems are ubiquitous.\ud In this manuscript we show how new approaches for the solution of saddle-point systems arising in Optimization can be derived from the Bramble-Pasciak Conjugate Gradient approach widely used in PDEs and more recent generalizations thereof. In particular we derive a class of new solution methods based on the use of Preconditioned Conjugate Gradients in non-standard inner products and demonstrate how these can be understood through more standard machinery. We show connections to Constraint Preconditioning and give the results of numerical computations on a number of standard Optimization test examples

Cloning and characterisation of multiple ferritin isoforms in the Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar)

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Effects of stage of lactation and time of year on plasmin-derived proteolytic activity in bovine milk in New Zealand

The objective of this study was to determine the effects of stage of lactation (SOL) and time of year on plasmin-derived proteolytic activity in the milk of pasture-fed dairy cows in New Zealand. Four herds of 20 Friesian cows were used, one herd calving in each of January, April, July and October. Cows grazed ryegrass/white clover pasture only, except during June (winter) when all cows received supplementary pasture silage. Milk samples were collected on four occasions during the year (spring, summer, autumn and winter) from each cow in milk, to give a total of three samples per cow (early, mid and late lactation; c. 30, 120 and 220 days after calving, respectively). Milk samples were analysed for plasmin-derived proteolytic activity. There was no effect of either SOL or time of year on plasmin activity and therefore yields of plasmin followed patterns in milk yield (highest in early lactation and in summer). There were effects of both SOL and time of year on plasminogen-derived and total plasmin plus plasminogen-derived activity, both of which were highest in late lactation and in spring. Changes in plasminogen-derived activity and total plasmin plus plasminogen-derived activity due to SOL were not only due to the decrease in milk yield associated with advancing lactation, because enzyme yields were also increased with advancing lactation. Similarly, effects of time of year on plasminogen-derived activity and total plasmin plus plasminogen-derived activity could not be attributed solely to concomitant changes in milk yield, and may be influenced by the variation in the quality and quantity of feed during the year inherent in a pasture-based dairy system. Effects of SOL on proteolytic activity were greater than, and independent of, effects of time of year

Increasing spin-flips and decreasing cost: Perturbative corrections for external singles to the complete active space spin flip model for low-lying excited states and strong correlation

An approximation to the spin-flip extended configuration interaction singles method is developed using a second-order perturbation theory approach. In addition to providing significant efficiency advantages, the new framework is general for an arbitrary number of spin-flips, with the current implementation being applicable for up to around 4 spin-flips. Two new methods are introduced: one which is developed using non-degenerate perturbation theory, spin-flip complete active-space (SF-CAS(S)), and a second quasidegenerate perturbation theory method, SF-CAS(S)1. These two approaches take the SF-CAS wavefunction as the reference, and then perturbatively includes the effect of single excitations. For the quasidegenerate perturbation theory method, SF-CAS(S)1, the subscripted "1" in the acronym indicates that a truncated denominator expansion is used to obtain an energy-independent down-folded Hamiltonian. We also show how this can alternatively be formulated in terms of an extended Lagrangian, by introducing an orthonormality constraint on the first-order wavefunction. Several numerical examples are provided, which demonstrate the ability of SF-CAS(S) and SF-CAS(S)1 to describe bond dissociations, singlet-triplet gaps of organic molecules, and exchange coupling parameters for binuclear transition metal complexes