Equine Protozoal Myeloencephalitis: An Updated Consensus Statement with a Focus on Parasite Biology, Diagnosis, Treatment, and Prevention

Equine protozoal myeloencephalitis (EPM) remains an important neurologic disease of horses. There are no pathognomonic clinical signs for the disease. Affected horses can have focal or multifocal central nervous system (CNS) disease. EPM can be difficult to diagnose antemortem. It is caused by either of 2 parasites, Sarcocystis neurona and Neospora hughesi, with much less known about N. hughesi. Although risk factors such as transport stress and breed and age correlations have been identified, biologic factors such as genetic predispositions of individual animals, and parasite-specific factors such as strain differences in virulence, remain largely undetermined. This consensus statement update presents current published knowledge of the parasite biology, host immune response, disease pathogenesis, epidemiology, and risk factors. Importantly, the statement provides recommendations for EPM diagnosis, treatment, and prevention

No improvement in long-term wear and revision rates with the second-generation Biomet cup (RingLoc) in young patients: 141 hips followed for median 12 years

Optimising joint reconstruction management in arthritis and bone tumour patient

Minimal stress shielding with a Mallory-Head titanium femoral stem with proximal porous coating in total hip arthroplasty

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>As longevity of cementless femoral components enters the third decade, concerns arise with long-term effects of fixation mode on femoral bone morphology. We examined the long-term consequences on femoral remodeling following total hip arthroplasty with a porous plasma-sprayed tapered titanium stem.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Clinical data and radiographs were reviewed from a single center for 97 randomly selected cases implanted with the Mallory-Head Porous femoral component during primary total hip arthroplasty. Measurements were taken from preoperative and long-term follow-up radiographs averaging 14 years postoperative. Average changes in the proximal, middle and diaphyseal zones were determined.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>On anteroposterior radiographs, the proximal cortical thickness was unchanged medially and the lateral zone increased 1.3%. Middle cortical thickness increased 4.3% medially and 1.2% laterally. Distal cortical thickness increased 9.6% medially and 1.9% laterally. Using the anteroposterior radiographs, canal fill at 100 mm did not correlate with bony changes at any level (Spearman's rank correlation coefficient of -0.18, 0.05, and 0.00; p value = 0.09, 0.67, 0.97). On lateral radiographs, the proximal cortical thickness increased 1.5% medially and 0.98% laterally. Middle cortical thickness increased 2.4% medially and 1.3% laterally. Distal cortical thickness increased 3.5% medially and 2.1% laterally. From lateral radiographs, canal fill at 100 mm correlated with bony hypertrophy at the proximal, mid-level, and distal femur (Spearman's rank correlation coefficient of 0.85, 0.33, and 0.28, respectively; p value = 0.001, 0.016, and 0.01, respectively).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Stress shielding is minimized with the Mallory-Head titanium tapered femoral stem with circumferential proximal plasma-sprayed coating in well-fixed and well-functioning total hip arthroplasty. Additionally, the majority of femora demonstrated increased cortical thickness in all zones around the stem prosthesis. Level of Evidence: Therapeutic Level III.</p

The Adventure of Relevance: Speculative Reconstructions in Contemporary Social Science

At a time when the institutional and intellectual futures of the social sciences are under threat, there has been growing concern among researchers and policy makers around the question of how to foster and enhance the relevance of their knowledge-practices. This thesis problematises such demands by elaborating a concept of ‘relevance’ that renders it not the product of a subjective act of interpretation, but an event that is part and parcel of the immanent processes by which the facts that compose situations come (in)to matter. By expanding on the work of William Connolly, Gilles Deleuze, John Dewey, Donna Haraway, William James, Michel Serres, Isabelle Stengers and Alfred North Whitehead, among others, I follow the implications of the concept of relevance through a speculative exploration of modes of knowledge-making in contemporary social science. As I show, such an exploration requires a transformation of the ethos with which social scientific inquiries are identified. If the former could be characterised as an ‘ethics of estrangement’ whereby to inquire is to estrange oneself from an apparent reality in order to gain access to a realm of social causes and reasons, an ethos oriented by the concept of relevance must reject that bifurcation of reality and cultivate, instead, a deep empiricism that is both singularly attentive to the coming into matter of the facts that compose a situation, and inventive of propositions that may contribute to the possible transformation of those situations that demand inquiry. It is this latter ethos, one which I call an ‘adventure’, that my thesis develops

A sociological dilemma: race, segregation, and US sociology

US sociology has been historically segregated in that, at least until the 1960s, there were two distinct institutionally organized traditions of sociological thought – one black and one white. For the most part, however, dominant historiographies have been silent on that segregation and, at best, reproduce it when addressing the US sociological tradition. This is evident in the rarity with which scholars such as WEB Du Bois, E Franklin Frazier, Oliver Cromwell Cox, or other ‘African American Pioneers of Sociology’, as Saint-Arnaud calls them, are presented as core sociological voices within histories of the discipline. This article addresses the absence of African American sociologists from the US sociological canon and, further, discusses the implications of this absence for our understanding of core sociological concepts. With regard to the latter, the article focuses in particular on the debates around equality and emancipation and discusses the ways in which our understanding of these concepts could be extended by taking into account the work of African American sociologists and their different interpretations of core themes

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Stimulation of Midbrain Dopaminergic Structures Modifies Firing Rates of Rat Lateral Habenula Neurons

Ventral tegmental area (VTA) and substantia nigra pars compacta (SNpc) are midbrain structures known to be involved in mediating reward in rodents. Lateral habenula (LHb) is considered as a negative reward source and it is reported that stimulation of the LHb rapidly induces inhibition of firing in midbrain dopamine neurons. Interestingly, the phasic fall in LHb neuronal activity may follow the excitation of dopamine neurons in response to reward-predicting stimuli. The VTA and SNpc give rise to dopaminergic projections that innervate the LHb, which is also known to be involved in processing painful stimuli. But it's unclear what physiological effects these inputs have on habenular function. In this study we distinguished the LHb pain-activated neurons of the Wistar rats and assessed their electrophysiological responsiveness to the stimulation of the VTA and SNpc with either single-pulse stimulation (300 µA, 0.5 Hz) or tetanic stimulation (80 µA, 25 Hz). Single-pulse stimulation that was delivered to either midbrain structure triggered transient inhibition of firing of ∼90% of the LHb pain-activated neurons. However, tetanic stimulation of the VTA tended to evoke an elevation in neuronal firing rate. We conclude that LHb pain-activated neurons can receive diverse reward-related signals originating from midbrain dopaminergic structures, and thus participate in the regulation of the brain reward system via both positive and negative feedback mechanisms

X-ray emission from the Sombrero galaxy: discrete sources

We present a study of discrete X-ray sources in and around the bulge-dominated, massive Sa galaxy, Sombrero (M104), based on new and archival Chandra observations with a total exposure of ~200 ks. With a detection limit of L_X = 1E37 erg/s and a field of view covering a galactocentric radius of ~30 kpc (11.5 arcminute), 383 sources are detected. Cross-correlation with Spitler et al.'s catalogue of Sombrero globular clusters (GCs) identified from HST/ACS observations reveals 41 X-rays sources in GCs, presumably low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs). We quantify the differential luminosity functions (LFs) for both the detected GC and field LMXBs, whose power-low indices (~1.1 for the GC-LF and ~1.6 for field-LF) are consistent with previous studies for elliptical galaxies. With precise sky positions of the GCs without a detected X-ray source, we further quantify, through a fluctuation analysis, the GC LF at fainter luminosities down to 1E35 erg/s. The derived index rules out a faint-end slope flatter than 1.1 at a 2 sigma significance, contrary to recent findings in several elliptical galaxies and the bulge of M31. On the other hand, the 2-6 keV unresolved emission places a tight constraint on the field LF, implying a flattened index of ~1.0 below 1E37 erg/s. We also detect 101 sources in the halo of Sombrero. The presence of these sources cannot be interpreted as galactic LMXBs whose spatial distribution empirically follows the starlight. Their number is also higher than the expected number of cosmic AGNs (52+/-11 [1 sigma]) whose surface density is constrained by deep X-ray surveys. We suggest that either the cosmic X-ray background is unusually high in the direction of Sombrero, or a distinct population of X-ray sources is present in the halo of Sombrero.Comment: 11 figures, 5 tables, ApJ in pres