Targeted molecular therapeutics for Parkinson's Disease: A role for antisense oligonucleotides?

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a prevalent neurodegenerative disorder characterized by marked heterogeneity in clinical symptoms and a complex genetic background..

Energy properness and Sasakian-Einstein metrics

In this paper, we show that the existence of Sasakian-Einstein metrics is closely related to the properness of corresponding energy functionals. Under the condition that admitting no nontrivial Hamiltonian holomorphic vector field, we prove that the existence of Sasakian-Einstein metric implies a Moser-Trudinger type inequality. At the end of this paper, we also obtain a Miyaoka-Yau type inequality in Sasakian geometry.Comment: 27 page

Incorporating image quality in multi-algorithm fingerprint verification

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/11608288_29Proceedings of International Conference, ICB 2006, Hong Kong (China)The effect of image quality on the performance of fingerprint verification is studied. In particular, we investigate the performance of two fingerprint matchers based on minutiae and ridge information as well as their score-level combination under varying fingerprint image quality. The ridge-based system is found to be more robust to image quality degradation than the minutiae-based system. We exploit this fact by introducing an adaptive score fusion scheme based on automatic quality estimation in the spatial frequency domain. The proposed scheme leads to enhanced performance over a wide range of fingerprint image quality.This work has been supported by Spanish MCYT TIC2003-08382-C05-01 and by European Commission IST-2002-507634 Biosecure NoE projects

The Yuan-Tseh Lee Array for Microwave Background Anisotropy

The Yuan-Tseh Lee Array for Microwave Background Anisotropy (AMiBA) is the first interferometer dedicated to studying the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation at 3mm wavelength. The choice of 3mm was made to minimize the contributions from foreground synchrotron radiation and Galactic dust emission. The initial configuration of seven 0.6m telescopes mounted on a 6-m hexapod platform was dedicated in October 2006 on Mauna Loa, Hawaii. Scientific operations began with the detection of a number of clusters of galaxies via the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect. We compare our data with Subaru weak lensing data in order to study the structure of dark matter. We also compare our data with X-ray data in order to derive the Hubble constant.Comment: accepted for publication in ApJ (13 pages, 7 figures); a version with high resolution figures available at http://www.asiaa.sinica.edu.tw/~keiichi/upfiles/AMiBA7/pho_highreso.pd

Acute reversible seronegative cerebellar ataxia in a young woman with ovarian teratoma

We report a case of a young woman with acute reversible cerebellar ataxia secondary to ovarian teratoma with no identifiable serum antibodies

Fabry heterozygote mimicking multiple sclerosis

Fabry’s disease (FD) is a recognised mimic of multiple sclerosis (MS). It is an X-linked storage lysosomal disorder with deficiency of α-galactosidase A and enzyme replacement therapy is available. Patients with FD may satisfy modified McDonald criteria if the diagnosis of FD has not been pursued. We present a case of FD in a 65-year-old woman masquerading as benign MS for 40 years. She has recurrent posterior circulation stroke-like symptoms, hearing loss and acroparaesthesia, but typical radiological features of MS on MRI brain. Later she developed an ischaemic stroke, infiltrative cardiomyopathy and chronic renal failure. There was a missense mutation at p.R342Q in the galactodisdase alpha (GLA) gene. Neurologists need to consider FD and look for red flags in atypical MS cases and should not be over-reliant on MRI findings. Missed diagnosis of FD could lead to unnecessary immunosuppression, inappropriate disease counselling and missed treatment opportunity

Preliminary study on biodegradation of phenanthrene by bacteria isolated from mangrove sediments in Hong Kong

Elevated concentrations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) have been found in mangrove sediments due to anthropogenic pollution, and microbial degradation has been suggested as the best way to remove PAHs from contaminated sediments. The degradation of phenanthrene, a model PAH compound by bacteria, either the enriched mixed culture or individual isolate isolated from surface mangrove sediments was examined. The effects of salinity, initial phenanthrene concentrations and the addition of glucose on biodegradation potential were also investigated. Results show that surface sediments collected from four mangrove swamps in Hong Kong had different degree of PAH contamination and had different indigenous phenanthrene-degrading bacterial consortia. The enriched bacteria could use phenanthrene as the sole carbon source for growth and degrade this PAH compound accordingly. A significant positive relationship was found between bacterial growth and percentages of phenanthrene degradation. The phenanthrene biodegradation ability of the enriched mixed bacterial culture was not related to the degree of PAH contamination in surface sediments. The growth and biodegradation percentages of the enriched mixed culture were not higher than that of the individual isolate especially at low salinity (0 and 10 ppt). High salinity (35 ppt) inhibited growth and biodegradation of phenanthrene of a bacterial isolate but less inhibitory effect was found on the mixed culture. The inhibitory effects of salinity could be reduced with the addition of glucose. © 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved

Natural history of benign multiple sclerosis: Clinical and HLA correlates in a Western Australian cohort

Background Benign multiple sclerosis (BMS) is a controversial term that has been used for MS patients with minimal disability decades after disease onset. Herein, we evaluated disease status after 20 years in a Western Australian cohort defined as BMS based on an Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) score ≤ 3.0 at 10 years from onset. Methods MS patients with an EDSS score ≤ 3.0 at 10 years from onset and minimum of 20 years follow up were included in the study. The 20-year EDSS score was considered the primary outcome. Associations with demographic and clinical characteristics and HLA-DRB1 genotype were investigated. Results Among 120 patients with a benign course at 10 years, 78 (65%) remained benign at the 20-year follow up, but patients with an EDSS ≥ 2.5 were more likely to go on to develop more severe disability in the next decade. When considering factors associated with an increase in EDSS score ≤ 1 from 10 to 20 years, indicating limited progression, apart from the EDSS score at 10 years, poly-symptomatic presentation (p = 0.004) and cerebellar/brainstem mono-symptomatic presentation (p = 0.016) were independently associated with more rapid progression compared with other mono-symptomatic presentations. Carriage of the high risk HLA-DRB1*1501 allele was marginally associated with slower progression. Conclusions In this geographically isolated MS cohort of predominantly Anglo-Celtic origin clinical progression in the benign MS group was similar to that in other published series from Western countries. These results are in keeping with the view that patients labeled as benign MS are part of a heterogeneous continuum of disease progression and do not possess unique clinical characteristics. Possible genetic determinants of a benign course warrant further investigation