Acute aortic dissection mimicking as ureteral calculus

AbstractAcute aortic dissection is an uncommon but life-threatening emergency, which is often missed in up to 38% of patients on initial evaluation, and in up to 28% of patients the diagnosis is made at autopsy. Painless aortic dissection has been reported, but is relatively uncommon. The mortality rates are estimated at 50% by 48 hours and increase by 1% per hour if undiagnosed. We report a case of atypical aortic dissection who presented to ER with subtle unspecific renal colicky like pain as a primary symptom, which had made the prompt diagnosis very challenging and difficult

Hepatocellular carcinoma detected by regular surveillance: Does timely confirmation of diagnosis matter?

AbstractBackgroundAlthough current guidelines recommended surveillance of hepatocellular carcinoma, prognosis in patients undergoing enhanced follow-up has yet to be evaluated.AimsExamine outcomes of hepatocellular carcinoma diagnosed during enhanced follow-up.MethodsDuring 2010–2012, 194 patients underwent ultrasonography surveillance were diagnosed with hepatocellular carcinoma and divided into: (A) immediate diagnosis (N=105, 54.1%) after positive ultrasonography, (B) enhanced follow-up: (N=38, 19.6%) for initial negative recall procedures, (C) late call back: (N=28, 14.4%) recall procedures were deferred after positive ultrasonography, and (D) beyond ultrasonography: (N=23, 11.9%) surveillance ultrasonography had been negative.ResultsMedian time from positive ultrasonography to confirmation of hepatocellular carcinoma were 9.5 months (2–67) in the Group B and 6.5 months (3–44) in the Group C. Stage distribution and 3-year survival rates were similar amongst all Groups. Surveillance intervals longer than 6 months were associated with the non-curative stage (3.7% vs. 12.5%, p=0.04). Nine (4.6%) patients underwent surveillance were diagnosed as Barcelona-Clinic Liver Cancer stage C.ConclusionEnhanced follow-up by current guidelines is appropriate that treatment can be deferred until a definite diagnosis. Despite optimal surveillance interval and recall policies, few non-curative stage diagnoses seemed inevitable under current standard of care

EFFECTS ON POSTURAL CONSTRAINTS ON OVERARM THROWING

This study explored the effects of postural constraints on overarm throwing. 10 participants were required to perform an overarm throwing movement by 3 tasks which under postural constraints. Tasks were including trunk-fixed, sitting, and standing. 10 pieces of 3D motion capture system were used to record the maximum velocity of body segments as data and one-way repeated measures ANOVA (a=.05) with HSD post-hoc tests was conducted to analysis the data. Therefore, the results indicated that the performance of overarm throwing by 3 tasks were different significantly, which proved the kinetic chain formed by links connected in series gave body segments more velocities. Moreover, it meat trunk and lower limbs played the roles to transport velocity as performing overarm throwing

Cytokine Profile in Plasma Extracellular Vesicles of Parkinson's Disease and the Association with Cognitive Function

Plasma extracellular vesicles (EVs) containing various molecules, including cytokines, can reflect the intracellular condition and participate in cell-to-cell signaling, thus emerging as biomarkers for Parkinson’s disease (PD). Inflammation may be a crucial risk factor for PD development and progression. The present study investigated the role of plasma EV cytokines as the biomarkers of PD. This cross-sectional study recruited 113 patients with PD, with mild to moderate stage disease, and 48 controls. Plasma EVs were isolated, and the levels of cytokines, including pro-interleukin (IL)-1β, IL-6, IL-10, tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α, and transforming growth factor (TGF)-β1, were evaluated. Patients with PD had significantly increased plasma EV pro-IL-1β and TNF-α levels compared with controls after adjustment for age and sex. Despite the lack of a significant association between plasma EV cytokines and motor symptom severity in patients with PD, cognitive dysfunction severity, assessed using the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) and Montreal Cognitive Assessment, was significantly associated with plasma EV pro-IL-1β, IL-6, IL-10, and TNF-α levels. This association was PD specific and not found in controls. Furthermore, patients with PD cognitive deficit (MMSE < 26) exhibited a distinguished EV cytokine profile compared to those without cognitive deficit. The findings support the concept of inflammatory pathogenesis in the development and progression of PD and indicate that plasma EV cytokines may serve as PD biomarkers in future

Reconstruction for Mandibular Implant Failure

Mandibular defects may result from tumor ablations, trauma, or radiation necrosis. Significant segmental mandibular loss or hemimandibular loss may sometimes be replaced with mandibular implants by ENT surgeons/oral surgeons/head and neck surgeons. However, this may bring about mandibular implant failure in long-term follow-up. Mandibular implant failures usually manifest as: soft tissue atrophy, mandibular implant extrusion, infection, facial nerve involvement, facial asymmetry, derangement of occlusion and mastication, orocutaneous fistula, etc. Over 30 years, the authors have treated 102 patients with mandibular implant failure. Reconstruction may involve removal of the mandibular implant and immediate replacement of the mandibular defect with a piece of vascularized bone flap, not only to compensate for bone loss but also to replace neighboring soft tissue and possible skin defects. Frequently used flaps have been vascularized iliac bone (89/102) or vascularized fibula grafts (13/102). During follow-up, iliac bone flap reconstruction has yielded more favorable results due to its ample bone bulk and adequate soft tissue coverage. Fibula flaps with osteotomies have been associated with an increasing incidence of malunion/nonunion and subsequent easy deformation

Do resting brain dynamics predict oddball evoked-potential?

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The oddball paradigm is widely applied to the investigation of cognitive function in neuroscience and in neuropsychiatry. Whether cortical oscillation in the resting state can predict the elicited oddball event-related potential (ERP) is still not clear. This study explored the relationship between resting electroencephalography (EEG) and oddball ERPs. The regional powers of 18 electrodes across delta, theta, alpha and beta frequencies were correlated with the amplitude and latency of N1, P2, N2 and P3 components of oddball ERPs. A multivariate analysis based on partial least squares (PLS) was applied to further examine the spatial pattern revealed by multiple correlations.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Higher synchronization in the resting state, especially at the alpha spectrum, is associated with higher neural responsiveness and faster neural propagation, as indicated by the higher amplitude change of N1/N2 and shorter latency of P2. None of the resting quantitative EEG indices predict P3 latency and amplitude. The PLS analysis confirms that the resting cortical dynamics which explains N1/N2 amplitude and P2 latency does not show regional specificity, indicating a global property of the brain.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>This study differs from previous approaches by relating dynamics in the resting state to neural responsiveness in the activation state. Our analyses suggest that the neural characteristics carried by resting brain dynamics modulate the earlier/automatic stage of target detection.</p

A role of ygfZ in the Escherichia coli response to plumbagin challenge

Plumbagin is found in many herbal plants and inhibits the growth of various bacteria. Escherichia coli strains are relatively resistant to this drug. The mechanism of resistance is not clear. Previous findings showed that plumbagin treatment triggered up-regulation of many genes in E. coli including ahpC, mdaB, nfnB, nfo, sodA, yggX and ygfZ. By analyzing minimal inhibition concentration and inhibition zones of plumbagin in various gene-disruption mutants, ygfZ and sodA were found critical for the bacteria to resist plumbagin toxicity. We also found that the roles of YgfZ and SodA in detoxifying plumbagin are independent of each other. This is because of the fact that ectopically expressed SodA reduced the superoxide stress but not restore the resistance of bacteria when encountering plumbagin at the absence of ygfZ. On the other hand, an ectopically expressed YgfZ was unable to complement and failed to rescue the plumbagin resistance when sodA was perturbed. Furthermore, mutagenesis analysis showed that residue Cys228 within YgfZ fingerprint region was critical for the resistance of E. coli to plumbagin. By solvent extraction and HPLC analysis to follow the fate of the chemical, it was found that plumbagin vanished apparently from the culture of YgfZ-expressing E. coli. A less toxic form, methylated plumbagin, which may represent one of the YgfZ-dependent metabolites, was found in the culture supernatant of the wild type E. coli but not in the ΔygfZ mutant. Our results showed that the presence of ygfZ is not only critical for the E coli resistance to plumbagin but also facilitates the plumbagin degradation

The influence of serotonin transporter polymorphisms on cortical activity: A resting EEG study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The serotonin transporter gene (<it>5-HTT</it>) is a key regulator of serotonergic neurotransmission and has been linked to various psychiatric disorders. Among the genetic variants, polymorphisms in the <it>5-HTT </it>gene-linked polymorphic region (<it>5-HTTLPR</it>) and variable-number-of-tandem-repeat in the second intron (<it>5-HTTVNTR</it>) have functional consequences. However, their genetic impact on cortical oscillation remains unclear. This study examined the modulatory effects of <it>5-HTTLPR </it>(L-allele carriers vs. non-carriers) and <it>5-HTTVNTR </it>(10-repeat allele carriers vs. non-carriers) polymorphism on regional neural activity in a young female population.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Blood samples and resting state eyes-closed electroencephalography (EEG) signals were collected from 195 healthy women and stratified into 2 sets of comparisons of 2 groups each: L-allele carriers (<it>N </it>= 91) vs. non-carriers for <it>5-HTTLPR </it>and 10-repeat allele carriers (<it>N </it>= 25) vs. non-carriers for <it>5-HTTVNTR</it>. The mean power of 18 electrodes across theta, alpha, beta, gamma, gamma1, and gamma2 frequencies was analyzed. Between-group statistics were performed by an independent t-test, and global trends of regional power were quantified by non-parametric analyses.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Among <it>5-HTTVNTR </it>genotypes, 10-repeat allele carriers showed significantly low regional power at gamma frequencies across the brain. We noticed a consistent global trend that carriers with low transcription efficiency of 5-HTT possessed low regional powers, regardless of frequency bands. The non-parametric analyses confirmed this observation, with <it>P </it>values of 3.071 × 10^-8and 1.459 × 10^-12for <it>5-HTTLPR </it>and <it>5-HTTVNTR</it>, respectively.</p> <p>Conclusions and Limitations</p> <p>Our analyses showed that genotypes with low 5-HTT activity are associated with less local neural synchronization during relaxation. The implication with respect to genetic vulnerability of 5-HTT across a broad range of psychiatric disorders is discussed. Given the low frequency of 10-repeat allele of <it>5-HTTVNTR </it>in our research sample, the possibility of false positive findings should also be considered.</p

An Intelligent Manufacturing System for Injection Molding

In recent years, the great trends of industry 4.0, internet of things (IoT), big data analytics, and cloud computing, the design and development of plastic injection molding (PIM) products has been more requested to achieve the requirements of light, thin, short, small, multi-function, high-precision, energy-saving, and obliged to fulfill a large number of customized production. To tackle this arduous challenge, effectively developing a novel PIM intelligent manufacturing system will play a crucial role. The aim of the proposed study is to carry on building an intelligent manufacturing system (IMS) for PIM industry, which is composed of three subsystems: a multiple response optimization systems of PIM, a database management system of process parameters, and a PIM real-time monitoring and control system. Firstly, the multiple response optimization systems present an intelligent optimization system to find optimal process parameters of multiple quality characteristics in the PIM process. Secondly, the database management system allows for saving the experimental data, PIM process parameter settings and quality goals. The third is a PIM real-time monitoring and control system, which establishes a graphic monitoring and control interface to real-time monitor the parameters of PIM machine and the optimal process parameter settings. The proposed PIM intelligent manufacturing systems enable the functions of real-time monitoring, process parameter optimization and database management, which can assure better PIM product quality and yield rate, effectively reduce the manufacturing cost, and promote the competition of the PIM industry in the future

Contralateral versus ipsilateral protective effect against muscle damage of the elbow flexors and knee extensors induced by maximal eccentric exercise

The present study compared the ipsilateral repeated bout effect (IL-RBE) and contralateral repeated bout effect (CL-RBE) of the elbow flexors (EF) and knee flexors (KF) for the same interval between bouts to shed light on their mechanisms. Fifty-two healthy sedentary young (20–28 years) men were randomly assigned to the IL-EF, IL-KF, CL-EF, and CL-KF groups (n = 13/group). Thirty maximal eccentric contractions of the EF were performed in IL-EF and CL-EF, and 60 maximal eccentric contractions of the KF were performed in IL-KF and CL-KF, with a 2-week interval between bouts. Changes in muscle damage markers such as maximal voluntary contraction (MVC) torque, muscle soreness, and plasma creatine kinase activity, and proprioception measures before to 5 days post-exercise were compared between groups. Changes in all variables were greater (p \u3c 0.05) after the first than second bout for all groups, and the changes were greater (p \u3c 0.05) for the EF than KF. The changes in all variables after the second bout were greater (p \u3c 0.05) for the CL than IL condition for both EF and KF. The magnitude of the average protective effect was similar between CL-EF (33%) and CL-KF (32%), but slightly greater (p \u3c 0.05) for IL-EF (67%) than IL-KF (61%). These demonstrate that the magnitude of CL-RBE relative to IL-RBE was similar between the EF and KF (approximately 50%), regardless of the greater muscle damage for the EF than KF. It appears that the CL-RBE is more associated with neural adaptations at cerebrum, cerebellum, interhemispheric inhibition, and coricospinal tract, but the IL-RBE is induced by additional adaptations at muscles