Characterizing neuromorphologic alterations with additive shape functionals

The complexity of a neuronal cell shape is known to be related to its function. Specifically, among other indicators, a decreased complexity in the dendritic trees of cortical pyramidal neurons has been associated with mental retardation. In this paper we develop a procedure to address the characterization of morphological changes induced in cultured neurons by over-expressing a gene involved in mental retardation. Measures associated with the multiscale connectivity, an additive image functional, are found to give a reasonable separation criterion between two categories of cells. One category consists of a control group and two transfected groups of neurons, and the other, a class of cat ganglionary cells. The reported framework also identified a trend towards lower complexity in one of the transfected groups. Such results establish the suggested measures as an effective descriptors of cell shape

Lipid Sources in Finishing Diets for Yearling Steers

Adding Synergy2 to a corn-based finishing diet to provide 1.12% lipid did not significantly increase steer performance in this trial or in pooled results between this trial and one reported in 1995. However, numerical increases were observed in daily gain and feed dry matter intake for Synergy when compared to control values. Pooled results for additions of pork fat (white grease) to provide 1.12 or 2.24% lipid were intermediate to those for the control and Synergy treatments. Any performance benefit attributed to Synergy may be as much from its effect on dry matter intake as it is from nutrient addition

Cull Dry Edible Beans in Growing Calf Rations

Including cull dry edible beans into diets for steer calves in two yearly trials produced slightly different results. In the first year, calculated net energy levels were higher in diets with 5 or 10% dry beans and daily gains were equal or better than for the no-bean diets. In the second year, with equal net energy values in rations containing 0, 7.5 or 15% dry beans, daily gains and feed intake decreased linearly with dry bean additions. Feed efficiency was improved as bean level increased

Cull Dry Edible Beans in Growing Calf Rations

Including cull dry edible beans into diets for steer calves in two yearly trials produced slightly different results. In the first year, calculated net energy levels were higher in diets with 5 or 10% dry beans and daily gains were equal or better than for the no-bean diets. In the second year, with equal net energy values in rations containing 0, 7.5 or 15% dry beans, daily gains and feed intake decreased linearly with dry bean additions. Feed efficiency was improved as bean level increased

Sustainable Land Use: Methodology and Application

The chapters in this volume are edited versions of papers presented at the NATO Ad- vanced Research Workshop on Environmental Change Adaptation and Security held in Budapest, Hungary, from October 16 - 18, 1997. As is evident in this volume, the papers ranged from descriptions of environmental and health issues in Russia and Eastern Europe to models of sustainable land use. This diversity of perspectives on environ- ment and security is indicative of both the breadth of this new area of research as well as the varied background of the researchers involved. The discussions at the NATO workshop were remarkably animated and exciting, not surprising given the interest in the topic. I think this vitality is reflected in the papers in this volume as well. The main purpose of the NATO ARW is to foster research links among researchers from NATO countries and Central and Eastern European States, Russia, and the Newly Independent States. In editing this volume, a decision was made to keep to the spirit of this purpose and-if at all possible-include all papers prepared for the workshop. This required extensive editing and rewriting of some of the papers (and consequent delays in production). A determination was made early in the process by the workshop steering committee that the value of publishing the entire collection of articles out- weighed the advantages of accepting only a limited number

The effect of dendritic morphology on pattern recognition in the presence of active conductances

© 2011 de Sousa et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Poster presented at CNS 2011Peer reviewe

Influence of gender on the performance of urine dipstick and automated urinalysis in the diagnosis of urinary tract infections at the emergency department

BACKGROUND: Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are frequently encountered at the Emergency Department (ED). Given the anatomical differences between men and women, we aimed to clarify differences in the diagnostic performance of urinary parameters at the ED. METHODS: A cohort study of adults presenting at the ED with fever and/or clinical suspected UTI. Performance of urine dipstick (UD) and automated urinalysis (UF-1000i) were analysed for the total study population and men and women separately. We focused on 1) UTI diagnosis and 2) positive urine culture (UC, ≥105 CFU/ml) as outcome. RESULTS: In 360 of 917 cases (39.3%) UTI was established (men/women 35.1%/43.6%). Diagnostic accuracy of UD was around 10% lower in women compared to men. Median automated leucocyte and bacterial count were higher in women compared to men. Diagnostic performance by receiver operating analysis was 0.851 for leucocytes (men/women 0.879/0.817) and 0.850 for bacteria (men/women 0.898/0.791). At 90% sensitivity, cut-off values of leucocyte count (men 60/µL, women 43/µL), and bacterial count (men 75/µL, women 139/µL) showed performance differences in favour of men. In both men and women, diagnostic performance using specified cut-off values was not different between normal and non-normal bladder evacuation. UC was positive in 327 cases (men/women 149/178), as with UTI diagnosis, diagnostic values in men outperformed women. CONCLUSIONS: Overall diagnostic accuracy of urinary parameters for diagnosing UTI is higher in men. The described differences in cut-off values for leukocyte and bacterial counts for diagnosing UTI necessitates gender-specific cut-off values, probably reflecting the influence of anatomical and urogenital differences

Searching for plasticity in dissociated cortical cultures on multi-electrode arrays

We attempted to induce functional plasticity in dense cultures of cortical cells using stimulation through extracellular electrodes embedded in the culture dish substrate (multi-electrode arrays, or MEAs). We looked for plasticity expressed in changes in spontaneous burst patterns, and in array-wide response patterns to electrical stimuli, following several induction protocols related to those used in the literature, as well as some novel ones. Experiments were performed with spontaneous culture-wide bursting suppressed by either distributed electrical stimulation or by elevated extracellular magnesium concentrations as well as with spontaneous bursting untreated. Changes concomitant with induction were no larger in magnitude than changes that occurred spontaneously, except in one novel protocol in which spontaneous bursts were quieted using distributed electrical stimulation

Syndromic Surveillance for Local Outbreaks of Lower-Respiratory Infections: Would It Work?

Background: Although syndromic surveillance is increasingly used to detect unusual illness, there is a debate whether it is useful for detecting local outbreaks. We evaluated whether syndromic surveillance detects local outbreaks of lower-respiratory infections (LRIs) without swamping true signals by false alarms. Methods and Findings: Using retrospective hospitalization data, we simulated prospective surveillance for LRI-elevations. Between 1999–2006, a total of 290762 LRIs were included by date of hospitalization and patients place of residence (>80% coverage, 16 million population). Two large outbreaks of Legionnaires disease in the Netherlands were used as positive controls to test whether these outbreaks could have been detected as local LRI elevations. We used a space-time permutation scan statistic to detect LRI clusters. We evaluated how many LRI-clusters were detected in 1999–2006 and assessed likely causes for the cluster-signals by looking for significantly higher proportions of specific hospital discharge diagnoses (e.g. Legionnaires disease) and overlap with regional influenza elevations. We also evaluated whether the number of space-time signals can be reduced by restricting the scan statistic in space or time. In 1999–2006 the scan-statistic detected 35 local LRI clusters, representing on average 5 clusters per year. The known Legionnaires' disease outbreaks in 1999 and 2006 were detected as LRI-clusters, since cluster-signals were generated with an increased proportion of Legionnaires disease patients (p:<0.0001). 21 other clusters coincided with local influenza and/or respiratory syncytial virus activity, and 1 cluster appeared to be a data artifact. For 11 clusters no likely cause was defined, some possibly representing as yet undetected LRI-outbreaks. With restrictions on time and spatial windows the scan statistic still detected the Legionnaires' disease outbreaks, without loss of timeliness and with less signals generated in time (up to 42% decline). Conclusions: To our knowledge this is the first study that systematically evaluates the performance of space-time syndromic surveillance with nationwide high coverage data over a longer period. The results show that syndromic surveillance can detect local LRI-outbreaks in a timely manner, independent of laboratory-based outbreak detection. Furthermore, since comparatively few new clusters per year were observed that would prompt investigation, syndromic hospital-surveillance could be a valuable tool for detection of local LRI-outbreaks. (aut. ref.

Optimization of neuronal morphologies for pattern recognition

© 2010 de Sousa et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.Poster presented at CNS 2010Peer reviewe