What cardiologists need to know about cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR)

Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance (CMR) is increasingly used in the evaluation of patients with cardiac and aortic disease. The ability to characterise myocardial tissue, function and anatomy (in any plane) without any exposure to ionising radiation are the main advantages over other imaging modalities used in cardiology. In this article we discuss the principles underlying the imaging technique, safety issues, indications and strengths of CMR. It aims to provide a concise, practical overview for the general cardiologist

Design, Process Development and Fabrication of SU-8 based CMOS Compatible Capacitive MEMS Platform for Bio-sensing Applications

Bio sensors are integrated devices which could provide information about the composition of Biological samples (semi) quantitatively. The key element of Bio sensors are their transducers which are usually Micro or Nano scale structures with Biological recognition elements as part of them. Realization of a practical and usable Bio sensor involves a wide range of interdisciplinary activities. The emerging interdisciplinary fields of Nanotechnology and Nano fabrication has helped the heterogeneous integration of Biology with Engineering systems which was not possible earlier

CUSP: an algorithm to distinguish structurally conserved and unconserved regions in protein domain alignments and its application in the study of large length variations

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Distantly related proteins adopt and retain similar structural scaffolds despite length variations that could be as much as two-fold in some protein superfamilies. In this paper, we describe an analysis of indel regions that accommodate length variations amongst related proteins. We have developed an algorithm CUSP, to examine multi-membered PASS2 superfamily alignments to identify indel regions in an automated manner. Further, we have used the method to characterize the length, structural type and biochemical features of indels in related protein domains.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>CUSP, examines protein domain structural alignments to distinguish regions of conserved structure common to related proteins from structurally unconserved regions that vary in length and type of structure. On a non-redundant dataset of 353 domain superfamily alignments from PASS2, we find that 'length- deviant' protein superfamilies show > 30% length variation from their average domain length. 60% of additional lengths that occur in indels are short-length structures (< 5 residues) while 6% of indels are > 15 residues in length. Structural types in indels also show class-specific trends.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The extent of length variation varies across different superfamilies and indels show class-specific trends for preferred lengths and structural types. Such indels of different lengths even within a single protein domain superfamily could have structural and functional consequences that drive their selection, underlying their importance in similarity detection and computational modelling. The availability of systematic algorithms, like CUSP, should enable decision making in a domain superfamily-specific manner.</p

Pericardial tamponade masking associated pulmonary thrombo embolism in a case of adeno carcinoma of lung

This case report describes a patient admitted with shortness of breath of 15 days duration and found to have cardiac tamponade, which masked concomitant pulmonary embolism that was diagnosed by echocardiographic signs of dilate RA/RV with PAH only after successful pericardiocentesis. Subsequently patient was found to have widely metastatic adenocarcinoma of lungs. This case emphasizes the diagnostic challengewhen cardiac tamponade is associated with pulmonary thromboembolism and requires high index of clinical suspicion in patients with underlying malignancy

Length Variations amongst Protein Domain Superfamilies and Consequences on Structure and Function

International audienceno abstrac

Fuzzy Classification to Classify the Income Category Based On Entropy

The classification problem is one of the main issues in data mining because it aims to extract a classifier which can be used to predict the classes of objects whose class table are unknown. This paper deals with classifying the income database with the entropy based method for analyzing the income is high or low. This method incorporates two mathematical techniques Entropy and Information Gain (IG) with Interactive Dichotomize 3 Algorithm (ID3). Subsets are calculated through Entropy. We fix the threshold point based on the fuzzy approach and the factors are identified using IG. The ID3 algorithm is used to derive a decision tree which classifies the income. This method also helps to extract logical rules that could be used in classifying high or low based on income with various attributed.Facultad de Informátic

Protracted treatment with MDMA induces heteromeric nicotinic receptor up-regulation in rat brain: an autoradiography study.

Previous studies indicate that 3,4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine (MDMA, ecstasy) can induce heteromeric nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR, mainly of α4β2 subtype) up-regulation. In this study we treated Sprague-Dawley rats twice-daily for 10 days with either saline or MDMA (7 mg/kg) and killed them on day 11 to perform [125I]epibatidine binding autoradiograms on serial coronal slices. Results showed significant increases in nAChR density in the substantia nigra, ventral tegmental area, nucleus accumbens, olfactory tubercle, anterior caudate-putamen, somatosensory cortex, motor cortex, auditory cortex, retrosplenial cortex, laterodorsal thalamus nuclei, amygdala, postsubiculum and pontine nuclei. These increases ranged from 3% (retrosplenial cortex) to 30 and 33% (amygdala and substantia nigra). No increased α4 subunit immunoreactivity was found in up-regulated areas compared with saline-treated rats, suggesting a post-translational mechanism as occurs with nicotine. The percentage of up-regulation correlated positively with the density of serotonin transporters, according to the serotonergic profile of MDMA. The heteromeric nAChR increase in concrete areas could account, at least in part, for the reinforcing, sensitizing and psychiatric disorders observed after long-term treatment with MDMA

Microwave dielectric loss in oxides: Theory and experiment

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