EMG/ENG services rendered by clinical neurophysiology technologists in solo practice

CITATION: Bill, P. L. A., et al. 1998. EMG/ENG services rendered by clinical neurophysiology technologists in solo practice. South African Medical Journal, 88(11):1360.The original publication is available at http://www.samj.org.za[No abstract available]Publisher’s versio

Familial cortical myoclonic tremor and epilepsy: Description of a new South African pedigree with 30 year follow up

Aim: The aims of this study were to report the index case of a South African family with cortical myoclonic tremor and epilepsy, to describe the pedigree with the clinical findings and results of additional investigations, and to report the unique follow-up evaluation of affected and unaffected family members after 30 years. Methods: The index case led to evaluation of the clinical files of patients from 1978/1979 and clinical assessment and investigation of patients from this cohort as well as newly identified family members. Patients were examined clinically; cortical myoclonic tremor severity was scored by using the Fahn-Tolosa- Marin-Tremor Rating Scale and the Myoclonus Rating Scale. Cortical origin of myoclonus was proven. Statistical analyses were done to assess the impact of cortical myoclonic tremor on quality of life. Conclusion: Clinical data was available for 23 patients. Increase in cortical myoclonic tremor and age showed a statistically significant correlation with worsening of the sub-score for Quality of Life (FTMTRS) and myoclonus rating scale. After 30 years eleven of fourteen patients could be followed up. Progression of cortical myoclonic tremor severity was noted but epilepsy control was adequate with all patients reporting less than two seizures per year. No clinical features of neurodegeneration were found. Discussion: We describe the initial presentation and 30 year follow-up of a four generation South African family with FCMTE. The unique long term follow up of this pedigree supports previous findings that the condition does not cause additional progressive neurological deterioration and quality of life is mostly influenced by worsening of the cortical myoclonic tremor with age. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserve

Huntington's Disease Genetic Heterogeneity In African Patients

SUMMARY Huntington’s disease has been reported to occur rarely in black patients. A new genetic variant “Huntington’s disease like 2” (HDL2), occurring more frequently in Blacks, has recently been described. The absence of an expanded tri-nucleotide repeat at the chromosome 4 HD locus was previously regarded as a way of excluding classical Huntington’s disease (HD). The objective of this paper is to describe a number of black patients with genetically proven Huntington’s disease and review its occurrence in Africa. Methods: Eleven black families (twelve subjects), with genetically proven Huntington’s disease are described, nine from the Dr George Mukhari Hospital and two from private practice in Tshwane. Results: Chorea was present in all 12 patients and cognitive decline in nine. Nine had an age of onset between 30-50 years. Six families exhibited expansion of the trinucleotide repeat at the chromosome 4, IT 15 gene (HD) and five a Junctophilin (JPH3) trinucleotide expansion at chromosome 16 (HDL2). The HDL2 subtype showed a tendency towards a later age of onset. Conclusions: The clinical presentation of the two genotypes (i.e., HD or HDL2) appears to be similar. The actual rate of occurrence of Huntington’s disease in Blacks may require reassessment. With the number of Huntington’s chorea patients occurring in our area (Garankuwa), the possibility of clustering of the condition arises

Reconfigurable distributed storage for dynamic networks

Abstract. This paper presents a new algorithm, RDS (Reconfigurable Distributed Storage), for implementing a reconfigurable distributed shared memory in an asynchronous dynamic network. The algorithm guarantees atomic consistency (linearizability) in all executions in the presence of arbitrary crash failures of processors and message loss and delays. The algorithm incorporates a quorum-based read/write algorithm and an optimized consensus protocol, based on Paxos. RDS achieves the design goals of: (i) allowing read and write operations to complete rapidly, and (ii) providing long-term fault tolerance through reconfiguration, a process that evolves the quorum configurations used by the read and write operations. The new algorithm improves on previously developed alternatives by using a more efficient reconfiguration protocol, thus guaranteeing better fault tolerance and faster recovery from network instability. This paper presents RDS, a formal proof of correctness, conditional performance analysis, and experimental results

Playing Cards with Hintikka:An Introduction to Dynamic Epistemic Logic

This contribution is a gentle introduction to so-called dynamic epistemic logics, that can describe how agents change their knowledge and beliefs. We start with a concise introduction to epistemic logic, through the example of one, two and finally three players holding cards; and, mainly for the purpose of motivating the dynamics, we also very summarily introduce the concepts of general and common knowledge. We then pay ample attention to the logic of public announcements, wherein agents change their knowledge as the result of, indeed, public announcements. One crucial topic in that setting is that of unsuccessful updates: formulas that become false when announced. The Moore-sentences that were already extensively discussed at the conception of epistemic logic in [15] give rise to such unsuccessful updates. After that, we present a few examples of more complex epistemic updates. Our closing observations are on recent developments that link the ‘standard’ topic of (theory) belief revision [1] to the dynamic epistemic logics introduced here

Privacy Policies with Modal Logic: The Dynamic Turn

Privacy policies are often defined in terms of permitted messages. Instead, in this paper we derive dynamically the permitted messages from static privacy policies defined in terms of permitted and obligatory knowledge. With this new approach, we do not have to specify the permissions and prohibitions of all message combinations explicitly. To specify and reason about such privacy policies, we extend a multi-modal logic introduced by Cuppens and Demolombe with update operators modeling the dynamics of both knowledge and privacy policies. We show also how to determine the obligatory messages, how to express epistemic norms, and how to check whether a situation is compliant with respect to a privacy policy.We axiomatize and prove the decidability of our logic