Effects of Prednisone on a Patient with Dysferlinopathy Assessed by Maximal Voluntary Isometric Contraction: Alternate-Day Low-Dose Administration for a 17-Year Period

Glucocorticoids are candidates for the pharmacological treatment of dysferlinopathy. Deflazacort, however, showed a worse effect on muscle strength than placebo. Alternate-day low-dose prednisone may have beneficial effects with fewer adverse effects. The outcomes for a female patient with dysferlinopathy (limb-girdle muscular dystrophy type 2B) were assessed by maximal voluntary isometric contraction (MVIC) using a newly devised chair and arm table with push-pull type strain gauges. Grip strength was also measured isometrically. Prednisone 15 mg was started orally at the age of 24 years and was taken every other day in the morning until 41 years of age. The MVIC of flexion of the knees and elbows increased gradually and significantly. The MVIC of extension of the knees and elbows increased to a lesser extent. Isometric grip strength showed no remarkable increase, but strength was sustained over 10 years. Muscle fiber types account for these differences. The beneficial effects of alternate-day prednisone treatment on dysferlinopathy are reported

Multiple Buffering for Parallel Approximate Sequence Matching using Disk-based Suffix Tree on Multi-core CPU

Suffix trees, which are trie structures that presentthe suffixes of sequences (e.g., strings), are widely used for sequencesearch in different application domains such as, text datamining, bioinformatics and computational biology. In particular,suffix trees are useful in bioinformatics applications, because theycan search similar sub-sequences and extract frequent sequencepatterns efficiently. In recent years, efficient construction of asuffix tree that allows faster sequence searches has becomeone of the most important challenges, because the numberand size of the data that are stored in sequence databaseshave been increasing exponentially. This paper proposes a novelparallelization model for approximate sequence matching thatuses disk-based suffix trees, which are built on hard disks not onmemory, on a multi-core CPU. In the proposed parallelizationmodel, we divide an entire sequence database into two or moresub-databases called partitions. For each partition, we builda disk-based suffix tree and define a task as an approximatesequence matching on one disk-based suffix tree. Moreover,the proposed parallelization model involves a multiple bufferingmanagement system to avoid conflicts among CPU-cores. Weevaluated the proposed parallelization model using an actualamino acid sequence database on a PC. The experimental resultsshow a substantial improvement in computation performance

The Shift from Centralized to Peer-to-Peer Communication in an Online Community: Participants as a Useful Aspect of Genre Analysis

In this paper we analyzed an online community based on a mailing list that was created as an internal marketing tool for launching a new network service. We focused on the change in communication over time among dispersed Sales representatives and the employees in a centralized Service Department. We conducted a genre analysis based on content (what), purpose (why), timing (when), form (how) and participants (who communicates to whom) (Yates and Orlikowski, 2002). Analyzing the participants in a genre and how those participants changed over time highlighted a shift from centralized to dispersed, peer-to-peer communication in this community. We highlight implications both for genre analysis and for organizational practice

The Role of an Online Community in Relation to Other Communication Channels in a Business Development Case

We investigated how sales representatives (Salespeople) and members of a service business development department (the Service Dept.) communicated within an informal online community, particularly in relation to their use of other informal and formal communication channels. We found that while the Service Dept. developed formal communication channels in order to fulfill the information needs of Sales, some types of information were apparently more effectively provided by the online community. The result suggests that an online community may play an important role both in making visible information needs, and in providing information that can’t be better provided by the formal organization

Gastrointestinal Cancer Metastasis

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Stoma-Closure-Induced Fulminant Pseudomembranous Colitis Recovered by Adjunctive Intracolic Vancomycin with Postural Change

A 67-year-old man with a history of low anterior resection and diverting loop transverse colostomy for rectal carcinoma developed fulminant pseudomembranous colitis after stoma closure. Oral administration of vancomycin at 0.5 g every 6 h and colonoscopy with intracolic vancomycin administration was unsuccessful, but continuation of intracolic vancomycin with postural change resulted in dramatic recovery. Postural change may extend the efficacy of intracolic vancomycin, and intracolic vancomycin should be considered as an option between conventional therapy and surgical intervention for pseudomembranous colitis

ASCA Observations of Three Shakhbazyan's Compact Groups of Galaxies

X-ray observations of three Shakhbazyan's Compact Groups of Galaxies, SCGG 202, SCGG 205, and SCGG 223, are presented for the first time. Extended X-ray emission was detected from SCGG 202 and SCGG 223 with 0.5-2 keV luminosity of 1E42 erg/s and 3E42 erg/s (for H_0 = 75 km/s/Mpc), respectively, while no significant emission was detected from SCGG 205 with an upper limit of 0.7E42 erg/s. The X-ray spectra of SCGG 202 and SCGG 223 can be described with thin-thermal plasma emission with temperature about 1 keV. X-ray properties of SCGG 202 and SCGG 223 are in good agreement with those of other known groups of galaxies, proving the physical nature of their grouping.Comment: text 8 pages, 4 figures, submitted to PAS