Axon diversity of lamina I local-circuit neurons in the lumbar spinal cord

Spinal lamina I is a key area for relaying and integrating information from nociceptive primary afferents with various other sources of inputs. Although lamina I projection neurons have been intensively studied, much less attention has been given to local-circuit neurons (LCNs), which form the majority of the lamina I neuronal population. In this work the infrared light-emitting diode oblique illumination technique was used to visualize and label LCNs, allowing reconstruction and analysis of their dendritic and extensive axonal trees. We show that the majority of lamina I neurons with locally branching axons fall into the multipolar (with ventrally protruding dendrites) and flattened (dendrites limited to lamina I) somatodendritic categories. Analysis of their axons revealed that the initial myelinated part gives rise to several unmyelinated small-diameter branches that have a high number of densely packed, large varicosities and an extensive rostrocaudal (two or three segments), mediolateral, and dorsoventral (reaching laminae III–IV) distribution. The extent of the axon and the occasional presence of long, solitary branches suggest that LCNs may also form short and long propriospinal connections. We also found that the distribution of axon varicosities and terminal field locations show substantial heterogeneity and that a substantial portion of LCNs is inhibitory. Our observations indicate that LCNs of lamina I form intersegmental as well as interlaminar connections and may govern large numbers of neurons, providing anatomical substrate for rostrocaudal “processing units” in the dorsal horn

study of 10,574 cases from five Portuguese hospitals

WOS: 000363056900005publishersversionpublishe

Modeling electrodialysis and a photochemical process for their integration in saline wastewater treatment.

Oxidation processes can be used to treat industrial wastewater containing non-biodegradable organic compounds. However, the presence of dissolved salts may inhibit or retard the treatment process. In this study, wastewater desalination by electrodialysis (ED) associated with an advanced oxidation process (photo-Fenton) was applied to an aqueous NaCl solution containing phenol. The influence of process variables on the demineralization factor was investigated for ED in pilot scale and a correlation was obtained between the phenol, salt and water fluxes with the driving force. The oxidation process was investigated in a laboratory batch reactor and a model based on artificial neural networks was developed by fitting the experimental data describing the reaction rate as a function of the input variables. With the experimental parameters of both processes, a dynamic model was developed for ED and a continuous model, using a plug flow reactor approach, for the oxidation process. Finally, the hybrid model simulation could validate different scenarios of the integrated system and can be used for process optimization

Early atypical malignant transformation of diffuse low-grade astrocytoma: The importance of genotyping

Diffuse astrocytoma (WHO grade II) has classically been considered a slow growing tumour, typically affecting young adults, with tendency for late malignant conversion. We describe a case of early atypical malignant transformation of diffuse astrocytoma seventeen months after complete surgical removal, as an intraventricular high-grade glioma (HGG). Retrospective laboratory findings for the presence of IDH 1/2 (isocitrate dehydrogenase) mutations were negative. There is growing evidence that IDH-wildtype (wt) astrocytomas behave more aggressively, therefore identifying IDH-mutation status should be mandatory in order to determine disease prognosis and guide treatment course.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

HARD: Hybrid Adaptive Resource Discovery for Jungle Computing

In recent years, Jungle Computing has emerged as a distributed computing paradigm based on simultaneous combination of various hierarchical and distributed computing environments which are composed by large number of heterogeneous resources. In such a computing environment, the resources and the underlying computation and communication infrastructures are highly-hierarchical and heterogeneous. This creates a lot of difficulty and complexity for finding the proper resources in a precise way in order to run a particular job on the system efficiently. This paper proposes Hybrid Adaptive Resource Discovery (HARD), a novel efficient and highly scalable resource-discovery approach which is built upon a virtual hierarchical overlay based on self-organization and self-adaptation of processing resources in the system, where the computing resources are organized into distributed hierarchies according to a proposed hierarchical multi-layered resource description model. The proposed approach supports distributed query processing within and across hierarchical layers by deploying various distributed resource discovery services and functionalities in the system which are implemented using different adapted algorithms and mechanisms in each level of hierarchy. The proposed approach addresses the requirements for resource discovery in Jungle Computing environments such as high-hierarchy, high-heterogeneity, high-scalability and dynamicity. Simulation results show significant scalability and efficiency of the proposed approach over highly heterogeneous, hierarchical and dynamic computing environments

A Self-organizing and Self-configuration Algorithm for Resource Management in Service-oriented Systems

With the ever increasing deployment of service-oriented distributed systems in large-scale and heterogeneous computing environments, clustering and communication overlay topology design has become more and more important to address several challenging issues and conflicting requirements, such as efficient scheduling and distribution of services among computing resources, reducing communication cost between services, high performance service and resource discovery while considering both inter-service and inter-node properties and also increasing the load distribution and the load balance. In this paper, a four-stage hierarchical clustering algorithm is proposed which automates the process of the optimally composing communicating groups in a dynamic way while preserving the proximity of the nodes. The simulation results show the performance of the algorithm with respect to load balance, scalability and efficiency

A Specification-based Anycast Scheme for Scalable Resource Discovery in Distributed Systems

Anycast is a powerful paradigm for managing and locating resources in large scale distributed computing systems. This paper presents a novel specification-based anycasting scheme for resource discovery in such environments. The effectiveness of our proposal is demonstrated through simulation results, in which we observed a remarkable performance enhancement in different aspects (such as discovery latency, discovery cost, discovery load, etc.) over similar non-anycast based discovery methods

Biodiversity monitoring in wastewater oxidation ponds

In order to study the relationship between Wastewater Oxidation Ponds efficiency and maturation ponds ecological communities, two AGERE systems from Braga neighbouring villages were selected: Cabreiros, CAB and Tebosa, TEB. Every two weeks sampling campaigns were realized (March - July 2007) to gather wastewater simple samples at the systems inflow and outflow. Determinations of Biochemical and Chemical Oxygen Demand and Total Suspended Solids (BOD5, COD and TSS mg/L), Recovered Heterotrophics and Total and Fecal Coliforms (RH, TC and FC, CFU ml/L) were performed at UM-Biology Lab. The removal efficiencies were 10% higher at CAB for BOD5 and COD and 10% higher at TEB for TSS. RH removal was mostly higher than 95%, but on CAB 6 and 9 samples, was respectively null and weak. During almost all the sampling period TC and FC removal were about 100% at both systems, but on samples 6 and 9, TC and FC CFU/ml were higher at CAB outflow than at inflow. Samples from maturation ponds were also gathered and maintained in the lab for a month, as microcosms. The daily microscopic analysis showed that in CAB maturation pond Euglena, Scenedesmus and diatoms are generally predominant whereas in TEB maturation pond the constant presence of Lemna was concomitant with a lesser density and diversity of algae. The samples 6 and 9 from CAB maturation pond, showed an absence of eucaryotic heterotrophics probably associated with the weak or even null removal of TC and FC

cohort study with 6 months of Treatment follow-up

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