A review of diagnostic and functional imaging in headache

The neuroimaging of headache patients has revolutionised our understanding of the pathophysiology of primary headaches and provided unique insights into these syndromes. Modern imaging studies point, together with the clinical picture, towards a central triggering cause. The early functional imaging work using positron emission tomography shed light on the genesis of some syndromes, and has recently been refined, implying that the observed activation in migraine (brainstem) and in several trigeminal-autonomic headaches (hypothalamic grey) is involved in the pain process in either a permissive or triggering manner rather than simply as a response to first-division nociception per se. Using the advanced method of voxel-based morphometry, it has been suggested that there is a correlation between the brain area activated specifically in acute cluster headache — the posterior hypothalamic grey matter — and an increase in grey matter in the same region. No structural changes have been found for migraine and medication overuse headache, whereas patients with chronic tension-type headache demonstrated a significant grey matter decrease in regions known to be involved in pain processing. Modern neuroimaging thus clearly suggests that most primary headache syndromes are predominantly driven from the brain, activating the trigeminovascular reflex and needing therapeutics that act on both sides: centrally and peripherally

Long-time impurity confinement as a precursor to disruptions in ohmically heated tokamaks

It has been observed in several tokamaks that the confinement of test impurities increases dramatically when operating near density limits. The characteristics of the working gas transport coefficients also change character under these conditions. These changes appear to be caused by a suppression of the anomalous transport mechanisms. This series of vugraphs investigates the role of these changes in initiating disruptions

Gettering in ISX-B

Gettering is used in the ISX-B tokamak to reduce the impurity concentration. This paper documents the gettering process used, and compares the expected changes in recycling and radiation with those observed experimentally. The enlargement of the operating regime (1/q, anti n/sub e/ R/B/sub phi/ space) is discussed. Finally, the effect on one of the objectives of the experimental program, that of obtaining high values of beta, is described

ESR1 and ESR2 gene markers are not associated with number of piglets born alive in Italian Large White sows

Many studies have reported that markers in the <em>estrogen</em> <em>receptor</em> <em>1</em> (<em>ESR1</em>) and <em>estrogen recepto</em>r <em>2</em> (<em>ESR2</em>) genes are associated with litter size in pigs, even if inconsistent results have been obtained in different populations. We analysed the <em>ESR1 Pvu</em>II and the <em>ESR2</em> AF164957:c.949G>A polymorphisms in Italian Large White (ITLW) sows to evaluate if these markers are associated with number of piglets born alive at first litter (NBA1). First, both polymorphisms were genotyped by selective genotyping in a total of 440 sows chosen according to the extreme and divergent estimated breeding value (EBV) for NBA1 (220 sows with low EBV and 220 sows with high EBV). For the <em>ESR1</em> polymorphism, no allele and genotype frequency differences were observed between the two groups (allele A= 0.62 and allele B= 0.38 in both two groups). For the <em>ESR2</em> polymorphism, a trend of different allele frequency between the two tails was identified (P = 0.052). However, no significant association between the same <em>ESR2</em> marker and EBV NBA1 was detected analyzing 1772 ITLW sows (allele A= 0.59 and allele G= 0.41). As the two investigated polymorphisms were not associated with NBA1 EBVs, they seem not useful for marker assisted selection to improve this trait in the ITLW breed