Neck atonia with a focal stimulation-induced seizure arising from the SMA: pathophysiological considerations.

A 28-year-old patient with pharmacoresistant non-lesional right frontal epilepsy underwent extra-operative intracranial EEG recordings and electrical cortical stimulation (ECS) to map eloquent cortex. Right supplementary motor area (SMA) ECS induced a brief seizure with habitual symptoms involving neck tingling followed by asymmetric tonic posturing. An additional feature was neck atonia. During atonia and sensory aura, discharges were seen in the mesial frontal electrodes and precentral gyrus. Besides motor signs, atonia, although rare and not described in the neck muscles, and sensations have been reported with SMA stimulation. The mechanisms underlying neck atonia in seizures arising from the SMA can be explained by supplementary negative motor area (SNMA) - though this was not mapped in electrodes overlying the ictal onset zone in our patient - or primary sensorimotor cortex activation through rapid propagation. Given the broad spectrum of signs elicited by SMA stimulation and rapid spread of seizures arising from the SMA, caution should be taken to not diagnose these as non-epileptic, as had previously occurred in this patient

3D printing tablets: Predicting printability and drug dissolution from rheological data

Rheology is an indispensable tool for formulation development, which when harnessed, can both predict a material’s performance and provide valuable insight regarding the material’s macrostructure. However, rheological characterizations are under-utilized in 3D printing of drug formulations. In this study, viscosity measurements were used to establish a mathematical model for predicting the printability of fused deposition modelling 3D printed tablets (Printlets). The formulations were composed of polycaprolactone (PCL) with different amounts of ciprofloxacin and polyethylene glycol (PEG), and different molecular weights of PEG. With all printing parameters kept constant, both binary and ternary blends were found to extrude at nozzle temperatures of 130, 150 and 170 °C. In contrast PCL was unextrudable at 130 and 150 °C. Three standard rheological models were applied to the experimental viscosity measurements, which revealed an operating viscosity window of between 100 and 1000 Pa·s at the apparent shear rate of the nozzle. The drug release profiles of the printlets were experimentally measured over seven days. As a proof-of-concept, machine learning models were developed to predict the dissolution behaviour from the viscosity measurements. The machine learning models were discovered to accurately predict the dissolution profile, with the highest f2 similarity score value of 90.9 recorded. Therefore, the study demonstrated that using only the viscosity measurements can be employed for the simultaneous high-throughput screening of formulations that are printable and with the desired release profile

Quadratic Word Equations with Length Constraints, Counter Systems, and Presburger Arithmetic with Divisibility

Word equations are a crucial element in the theoretical foundation of constraint solving over strings, which have received a lot of attention in recent years. A word equation relates two words over string variables and constants. Its solution amounts to a function mapping variables to constant strings that equate the left and right hand sides of the equation. While the problem of solving word equations is decidable, the decidability of the problem of solving a word equation with a length constraint (i.e., a constraint relating the lengths of words in the word equation) has remained a long-standing open problem. In this paper, we focus on the subclass of quadratic word equations, i.e., in which each variable occurs at most twice. We first show that the length abstractions of solutions to quadratic word equations are in general not Presburger-definable. We then describe a class of counter systems with Presburger transition relations which capture the length abstraction of a quadratic word equation with regular constraints. We provide an encoding of the effect of a simple loop of the counter systems in the theory of existential Presburger Arithmetic with divisibility (PAD). Since PAD is decidable, we get a decision procedure for quadratic words equations with length constraints for which the associated counter system is \emph{flat} (i.e., all nodes belong to at most one cycle). We show a decidability result (in fact, also an NP algorithm with a PAD oracle) for a recently proposed NP-complete fragment of word equations called regular-oriented word equations, together with length constraints. Decidability holds when the constraints are additionally extended with regular constraints with a 1-weak control structure.Comment: 18 page

Pressure-assisted microsyringe 3D printing of oral films based on pullulan and hydroxypropyl methylcellulose

Oral films (OFs) continue to attract attention as drug delivery systems, particularly for pedatric and geriatric needs. However, immiscibility between different polymers limits the full potential of OFs from being explored. One example is pullulan (PUL), a novel biopolymer which often has to be blended with other polymers to reduce cost and alter its mechanical properties. In this study, the state-of-the-art in fabrication techniques, three-dimensional (3D) printing was used to produce hybrid film structures of PUL and hydroxypropyl methylcellulose (HPMC), which were loaded with caffeine as a model drug. 3D printing was used to control the spatial deposition of films. HPMC was found to increase the mean mechanical properties of PUL films, where the tensile strength, elastic modulus and elongation break increased from 8.9 to 14.5 MPa, 1.17 to 1.56 GPa and from 1.48% to 1.77%, respectively. In addition, the spatial orientation of the hybrid films was also explored to determine which orientation could maximize the mechanical properties of the hybrid films. The results revealed that 3D printing could modify the mechanical properties of PUL whilst circumventing the issues associated with immiscibility

Clinical yarning with Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples-a systematic scoping review of its use and impacts.

OBJECTIVES: To explore how clinical yarning has been utilised as a health intervention for Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples and if there are any reported impacts yarning might have on health outcomes. STUDY DESIGN: Systematic scoping review of published literature. DATA SOURCES: A one-word search term "yarning" was applied in Scopus, EMBASE, CINAHL, MEDLINE, International Pharmaceutical Abstracts, Australian Public Affairs Information Service-Health, and the Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Health Bibliography databases. Databases were searched from inception to May 20, 2020. STUDY SELECTION: Studies were included where clinical yarning had been used as a health intervention. Inclusion and exclusion criteria were developed and applied according to PRISMA systematic and scoping review reporting methods. DATA SYNTHESIS: A total of 375 manuscripts were found from the initial data search. After removal of duplicates and removal of manuscripts based on abstract review, a total of 61 studies underwent full-text review. Of these, only five met the inclusion criteria of utilising yarning as a clinical intervention. Four of these studies described consumer self-reported health outcomes, with only one study looking at improvements in objective physiological health outcomes. CONCLUSIONS: Whilst clinical yarning may be a culturally appropriate intervention in healthcare, there are limited studies that have measured the impact of this intervention. Further research may be needed to ascertain the true benefits of this intervention

Peramalan Volatilitas Indeks Harga Saham Menggunakan Model Asimetrik Garch (Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity) Dengan Distribusi Skewed Student-t

The condition of Indonesian economic in the last fiew years fluctuatics following konjungtur cycle. Besides in economic problem, non economic problem such as social and politic are also influence that fluctuation. It means, the instability had influenced of stock exchange practition in analyzing and predicting return. Financial data, such as stock exchange price indices often has heteroscedasticity. One of modeling technique to analyze the condition is using GARCH models. Unfortunately, GARCH models often do not fully capture the thick tails property of high frequency financial time series. To cope this weakness, we'll an Asymmetric GARCH model will be used. Using Box-Jenkins methods, the Composite Price Indices have mean model ARIMA (10 17 69,1,0). With the same data we can having GARCH (2,1) model. The Asymmetric GARCH (AGARCH) model in this research was not properly proper to model the Composite Price Indices Volatility

Molecular identification of Sarcocystis wobeseri-like parasites in a new intermediate host species, the white-tailed sea eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla)

A reintroduced white-tailed sea eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla) in moderate body condition was found dead and submitted for post-mortem examination. There were no signs of disease on gross pathological examination. Histopathological examination however revealed the presence of encysted protozoan parasites in pectoral and cardiac muscle sections. Polymerase chain reaction amplification of extracted genomic DNA and sequencing of four regions: the 18S rDNA, 28S rDNA, internal transcribed spacer (ITS) 1, and RNA polymerase B (rpoB) loci, confirmed the presence of a Sarcocystis species in pectoral and cardiac muscle which appeared phylogenetically similar to Sarcocystis wobeseri. This is the first report of S. wobeseri-like infection in a white-tailed sea eagle revealing a new intermediate host species for this parasite

Stellar Dynamics and Black Holes

Chandrasekhar's most important contribution to stellar dynamics was the concept of dynamical friction. I briefly review that work, then discuss some implications of Chandrasekhar's theory of gravitational encounters for motion in galactic nuclei.Comment: Talk presented at the "Chandrasekhar Centenary Conference" (2010

Analysis of cybersecurity threats in Industry 4.0: the case of intrusion detection

Nowadays, industrial control systems are experiencing a new revolution with the interconnection of the operational equipment with the Internet, and the introduction of cutting-edge technologies such as Cloud Computing or Big data within the organization. These and other technologies are paving the way to the Industry 4.0. However, the advent of these technologies, and the innovative services that are enabled by them, will also bring novel threats whose impact needs to be understood. As a result, this paper provides an analysis of the evolution of these cyber-security issues and the requirements that must be satis ed by intrusion detection defense mechanisms in this context.Springer ; Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech