Dystonia and the Role of Deep Brain Stimulation

Dystonia is a painful, disabling disease whose cause in many cases remains unknown. It has historically been treated with a variety methodologies including baclofen pumps, Botox injection, peripheral denervation, and stereotactic surgery. Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is emerging as a viable treatment option for selected patients with dystonia. Results of DBS for dystonia appear to be more consistently superior in patients with primary versus secondary forms of the disorder. Patients with secondary dystonia, due to a variety of causes, may still be candidates for DBS surgery, although the results may not be as consistently good. The procedure is relatively safe with a small likelihood of morbidity and mortality. A randomized trial is needed to determine who are the best patients and when it is best to proceed with surgery

Grading And Assessments: Correlations Of Variables Affecting Teaching And Course Assessments

Faculty assessments are a hot topic in academia. Mostly considered an unproven statistic holding the professor hostage for a good grade, the benefits are still in discussion.  At course end, we expect students to have the ability to analyze what we think they should have learned.  In reality, most students do not have the maturity to realize correlation for what you put into your education is what you get out.  Consensus is that it does not happen the way we plan.  Adding to the assessment issue is the clear fact that today most universities are adjunct professor-driven. Given these facts, the authors have statistically studied teaching assessments and associated grade point averages (GPA) representing academic rigor at a major non-profit university over the past three years.  The authors’ hypothesis is that there is no correlation between the two statistics.  This paper reviews the literature, provides the study methodology, and presents the findings

Renewing the Exploration Approach for Mid-Enthalpy Systems: Examples from Northern England and Scotland

After a promising start in the 1970s and 80s, the UK rather fell behind other countries in the search for viable mid-enthalpy geothermal resources. This situation began to turn around in 2004, when the first of three deep geothermal exploration boreholes were drilled in northern England. What distinguished these from earlier drilling in Cornwall was the deliberate search for naturallyhigh permeability associated with major faults, especially those that have undergone strike-slip reactivation during the Cenozoic. Boreholes at Eastgate in the North Pennines targeted buried radiothermal granite, whereas the 1,821m-deep Science Central Borehole in Newcastle upon Tyne targeted a postulated deep sedimentary aquifer (the Fell Sandstones), which were inferred to be connected laterally to the granitic heat source by a major fault (the reactivation of the Iapetus geo-suture). The drilling was in both cases rewarded with impressive heat flows, and in the case of Eastgate with what is believed to be the highest permeability yet found in a deep granite batholith anywhere in the world. In parallel with these developments, a re-assessment was made of the preexisting geothermal heat flow database for the UK, applying newly-standardised correction protocols for palaeoclimatic and topographic distortions, which were found to be particularly marked in Scotland (where only shallow boreholes had been used to establish geothermal gradients in the original 1980s analysis), Similar prospects in northern England (similar to that drilled at Science Central) are now the focus of commercial exploration efforts. Appraisal of fault dispositions relative to the present-day maximum compressive stress azimuth are being used to identify the most promising areas for intersecting fault-related permeability at depth. New geophysical tools – most notably atomic dielectric resonance scanning – are also being appraised for their ability to directly detect features (such as hot brines) which are indicative of localised convection in target fault zones and aquifers

Analysis of observations of the middle atmosphere from satellites

Satellite data are being used to investigate problems in middle atmosphere chemistry and dynamics. Efforts have been focused primarily on studies to determine the quality of observed distributions of trace species and derived dynamical quantities. Those data have been used as diagnostics for model-derived constituent profiles and fields and for improving our understanding of some of the fundamental processes occurring in the middle atmosphere. Temperatures and derived winds from Nimbus 7 Limb Infrared Monitoring of the Stratosphere (LIMS) data were compared with long-time series of rawinsonde data at Invercargill, New Zealand, and Berlin, West Germany, and the results are excellent for both quantities. It was also demonstrated that more highly-derived dynamical quantities can be obtained reliably from those LIMS fields. Furthermore, both the diabatic and residual-mean circulations derived using LIMS data agree qualitatively with changes in the distribution of trace species determined independently with the Nimbus 7 SAMS and LIMS experiments. Subsequently, an examination of LIMS data at mid to high latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere has revealed a synoptic-scale, upper stratospheric instability during late autumn that is associated with the development of the stratospheric polar jet. Investigation of this phenomenon continues with Stratospheric Sounding Unit (SSU) data sets

The Role of Surgery, Radiosurgery and Whole Brain Radiation Therapy in the Management of Patients with Metastatic Brain Tumors

Brain tumors constitute the most common intracranial tumor. Management of brain metastases has become increasingly complex as patients with brain metastases are living longer and more treatment options develop. The goal of this paper is to review the role of stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS), whole brain radiation therapy (WBRT), and surgery, in isolation and in combination, in the contemporary treatment of brain metastases. Surgery and SRS both offer management options that may help to optimize therapy in selected patients. WBRT is another option but can lead to late toxicity and suboptimal local control in longer term survivors. Improved prognostic indices will be critical for selecting the best therapies. Further prospective trials are necessary to continue to elucidate factors that will help triage patients to the proper brain-directed therapy for their cancer

Who the hell was that? Stories, bodies and actions in the world

This article explores a two-way relationship between stories and the experiential actions of bodies in the world. Through an autoethnographic approach, the article presents a series of interlinked story fragments in an effort to show and evoke a feel for the ways in which stories, bodies, and actions influence and shape each other over time. It offers some reflections on the experiences the stories portray from the perspective of a social constructionist conception of narrative theory and suggest that while stories exert a powerful influence on the actions of our bodies, our bodies intrude on or ‘talk back’ to this process because bodies have an existence beyond stories

Short-term studies underestimate 30-generation changes in a butterfly metapopulation

Most studies of rare and endangered species are based on work carried out within one generation, or over one to a few generations of the study organism. We report the results of a study that spans 30 generations (years) of the entire natural range of a butterfly race that is endemic to 35 km2 of north Wales, UK. Short-term studies (surveys in single years and dynamics over 4 years) of this system led to the prediction that the regional distribution would be quite stable, and that colonization and extinction dynamics would be relatively unimportant. However, a longer-term study revealed unexpectedly high levels of population turnover (local extinction and colonization), affecting 18 out of the 20 patches that were occupied at any time during the period. Modelling the system (using the 'incidence function model' (IFM) for metapopulations) also showed higher levels of colonization and extinction with increasing duration of the study. The longer-term dynamics observed in this system can be compared, at a metapopulation level, with the increased levels of variation observed with increasing time that have been observed in single populations. Long-term changes may arise from local changes in the environment that make individual patches more or less suitable for the butterfly, or from unusual colonization or extinction events that take metapopulations into alternative states. One implication is that metapopulation and population viability analyses based on studies that cover only a few animal or plant generations may underestimate extinction threats

Preliminary measurements of the edge magnetic field pitch from 2-D Doppler backscattering in MAST and NSTX-U

The Synthetic Aperture Microwave Imaging (SAMI) system is a novel diagnostic consisting of an array of 8 independently-phased antennas. At any one time, SAMI operates at one of 16 frequencies in the range 10-34.5GHz. The imaging beam is steered in software post-shot to create a picture of the entire emission surface. In SAMI’s active probing mode of operation, the plasma edge is illuminated with a monochromatic source and SAMI reconstructs an image of the Doppler back-scattered (DBS) signal. By assuming that density fluctuations are extended along magnetic field lines, and knowing that the strongest back-scattered signals are directed perpendicular to the density fluctuations, SAMI’s 2-D DBS imaging capability can be used to measure the pitch of the edge magnetic field. In this paper we present preliminary pitch angle measurements obtained by SAMI on the Mega-Amp Spherical Tokamak (MAST) at Culham Centre for Fusion Energy and on the National Spherical Torus Experiment Upgrade at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. The results demonstrate encouraging agreement between SAMI and other independent measurements

Nucleon scattering with higgsino and wino cold dark matter

Neutralinos that are mostly wino or higgsino are shown to be compatible with the recent DAMA annual modulation signal. The nucleon scattering rates for these dark matter candidates are typically an order of magnitude above the oft-considered bino. Although thermal evolution of higgsino and wino number densities in the early universe implies that they are not viable dark matter candidates, non-thermal sources, such as from gravitino or moduli decay in anomaly mediated supersymmetry breaking, suggest that they can be the dominant source of cold dark matter. Their stealthiness at high energy colliders gives even more impetus to analyze nucleon scattering detection methods. We also present calculations for their predicted scattering rate with Germanium detectors, which have yet to see evidence of WIMP scattering.Comment: 16 pages, LaTex, 4 figures, uses feynMF, minor changes made for PRD publicatio