Differential regulation of morphine antinociceptive effects by endogenous enkephalinergic system in the forebrain of mice

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Mice lacking the preproenkephalin (<it>ppENK</it>) gene are hyperalgesic and show more anxiety and aggression than wild-type (WT) mice. The marked behavioral changes in <it>ppENK </it>knock-out (KO) mice appeared to occur in supraspinal response to painful stimuli. However the functional role of enkephalins in the supraspinal nociceptive processing and their underlying mechanism is not clear. The aim of present study was to compare supraspinal nociceptive and morphine antinociceptive responses between WT and <it>ppENK </it>KO mice.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The genotypes of bred KO mice were confirmed by PCR. Met-enkephalin immunoreactive neurons were labeled in the caudate-putamen, intermediated part of lateral septum, lateral globus pallidus, intermediated part of lateral septum, hypothalamus, and amygdala of WT mice. Met-enkephalin immunoreactive neurons were not found in the same brain areas in KO mice. Tail withdrawal and von Frey test results did not differ between WT and KO mice. KO mice had shorter latency to start paw licking than WT mice in the hot plate test. The maximal percent effect of morphine treatments (5 mg/kg and 10 mg/kg, i.p.) differed between WT and KO mice in hot plate test. The current source density (CSD) profiles evoked by peripheral noxious stimuli in the primary somatosenstory cortex (S1) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) were similar in WT and KO mice. After morphine injection, the amplitude of the laser-evoked sink currents was decreased in S1 while the amplitude of electrical-evoked sink currents was increased in the ACC. These differential morphine effects in S1 and ACC were enhanced in KO mice. Facilitation of synaptic currents in the ACC is mediated by GABA inhibitory interneurons in the local circuitry. Percent increases in opioid receptor binding in S1 and ACC were 5.1% and 5.8%, respectively.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The present results indicate that the endogenous enkephalin system is not involved in acute nociceptive transmission in the spinal cord, S1, and ACC. However, morphine preferentially suppressed supraspinal related nociceptive behavior in KO mice. This effect was reflected in the potentiated differential effects of morphine in the S1 and ACC in KO mice. This potentiation may be due to an up-regulation of opioid receptors. Thus these findings strongly suggest an antagonistic interaction between the endogenous enkephalinergic system and exogenous opioid analgesic actions in the supraspinal brain structures.</p

A Parallel Thrombolysis Protocol with Nurse Practitioners As Coordinators Minimized Door-to-Needle Time for Acute Ischemic Stroke

Introduction. Quick thrombolysis after stroke improved clinical outcomes. The study objective was to shorten door-to-needle time for thrombolysis. Methods. After identifying the sources of in-hospital delays, we developed a protocol with a parallel algorithm and recruited nurse practitioners into the acute stroke team. We applied the new protocol on stroke patients from October 2009 to September 2010. Patients from the previous two years were used for comparison. Results. For ischemic stroke patients within 3 hours of onset, the median time from arrival to computed tomography scanning was reduced from 29 to 20 minutes (P < 0.001) and the median time from arrival to neurology evaluation decreased from 61 to 43 minutes (P < 0.001). For those patients who received thrombolysis, the median door-to-needle time was shortened from 68.5 to 58 minutes (P < 0.05). Conclusions. The parallel thrombolysis protocol successfully improved the median door-to-needle time to below the guideline-recommended 60 minutes

Preparation and Characterization of Carrot Nanocellulose and Ethylene/Vinyl Acetate Copolymer-Based Green Composites

This study aims to investigate the effect of nanocellulose on the properties and physical foaming of ethylene/vinyl acetate (EVA) copolymer. The nanocellulose is prepared from waste carrot residue using the 2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidine-1-oxyl (TEMPO) oxidation method (CT) and is further modified through suspension polymerization of methyl methacrylate (MMA) monomer (CM). The obtained nanocellulose samples (CT or CM) are added to EVA to create a series of nanocomposites. Moreover, the EVA and CM/EVA composite were further foamed using supercritical carbon dioxide physical foaming. TEM results show that the average diameters of CT and CM are 24.35 ± 3.15 nm and 30.45 ± 1.86 nm, respectively. The analysis of mechanical properties demonstrated that the tensile strength of pure EVA increased from 10.02 MPa to 13.01 MPa with the addition of only 0.2 wt% of CM. Furthermore, the addition of CM to EVA enhanced the melt strength of the polymer, leading to improvements in the physical foaming properties of the material. The results demonstrate that the pore size of the CM/EVA foam material is smaller than that of pure EVA foam. Additionally, the cell density of the CM/EVA foam material can reach 3.23 × 1011 cells/cm3

DESIGN OF SIMULATIVE PITCHING MACHINE AND IT'S EFFECT

The purpose of this study was to design a simulative device that attached on pitching machine to create the similar pitching motion of real pitcher, and to investigate the subsequent training effect. A photo sensor and automatic switch were used in the design of a simulative device in this study. When light from the photo sensor was cut off by the pitcher's throwing arm, the automatic switch would be turned on immediately and allow a ball to roll down into the pitching machine. Twelve collegiate baseball batters were divided into three groups. A cross-over experimental design was used. Each group involved one of three types of practice after one days rest. The three groups were Type-A: do nothing. Type-B: batting practice by traditional pitching machine. Type-C: batting practice by simulative pitching machine. Each batter hit six balls before and after batting practice for investigating training effect and two baseball experts evaluated batting performance. The results showed that there was significantly increased batting performance after Type-B and Type-C practice (p < .05). Type-C achieved significantly higher batting scores than type-A and Type-B (p < .05) methods. The results suggest that batting practice using a pitching machine with simulative device was an effective batting training method

Transformer-based Variable-rate Image Compression with Region-of-interest Control

This paper proposes a transformer-based learned image compression system. It is capable of achieving variable-rate compression with a single model while supporting the region-of-interest (ROI) functionality. Inspired by prompt tuning, we introduce prompt generation networks to condition the transformer-based autoencoder of compression. Our prompt generation networks generate content-adaptive tokens according to the input image, an ROI mask, and a rate parameter. The separation of the ROI mask and the rate parameter allows an intuitive way to achieve variable-rate and ROI coding simultaneously. Extensive experiments validate the effectiveness of our proposed method and confirm its superiority over the other competing methods.Comment: Accepted to IEEE ICIP 202

TransTIC: Transferring Transformer-based Image Compression from Human Visualization to Machine Perception

This work aims for transferring a Transformer-based image compression codec from human vision to machine perception without fine-tuning the codec. We propose a transferable Transformer-based image compression framework, termed TransTIC. Inspired by visual prompt tuning, we propose an instance-specific prompt generator to inject instance-specific prompts to the encoder and task-specific prompts to the decoder. Extensive experiments show that our proposed method is capable of transferring the codec to various machine tasks and outshining the competing methods significantly. To our best knowledge, this work is the first attempt to utilize prompting on the low-level image compression task

Synthesis and Characterization of N,N,O-Tridentate Aminophenolate Zinc Complexes and Their Catalysis in the Ring-Opening Polymerization of Lactides

A series of aminophenolate ligands with various pendant groups and associated ethyl Zn complexes were synthesized and studied as catalysts for the ring-opening polymerization (ROP) of lactides (LAs). The thiophenylmethyl group (L4ZnEt) increased the catalytic activity more than the benzyl group (L1ZnEt) did, and 2-fluorobenzyl (L3ZnEt) and 2-methoxybenzyl (L2ZnEt) groups had the opposite effect. In addition, the LA polymerization mechanism proved by Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and Density Function Theory was that LA was attracted by H···O bond of an α-hydrogen of the LA molecule and the phenoxyl oxygen of the catalyst. After the dissociation of amino group from the Zn atom, the benzyl alcohol initiated LA without replacing the ethyl group of Zn complex. It is the first case where the ethyl group is regarded as a ligand and cannot be replaced by benzyl alcohol, and this information is very important for the mechanism study of ROP

Acute necrotizing eosinophilic myocarditis in a young woman

Abstract Eosinophilic myocarditis is recognized by severe heart failure and marked eosinophilia infiltration resulting from different etiologies. Acute necrotizing eosinophilic myocarditis, the initial presentation of the disease, is rare and often fatal, with unique echocardiographic pictures, and followed by endocardial thrombosis and chronic endomyocardial fibrosis. We report a young female with acute lymphoblastic leukemia who presented fever and acute heart failure syndrome. The echocardiography showed severe left ventricle diastolic dysfunction with preserved ejection fraction. Systemic eosinophilia and the unique echocardiographic images made the diagnosis of acute necrotizing eosinophilic myocarditis. The patient survived after intensive cytotoxic chemotherapy including high-dose steroid