Fatal case of subdural empyema caused by Campylobacter rectus and Slackia exigua

We report a fatal subdural empyema caused by Campylobacter rectus in a 66-year-old female who developed acute onset of confusion, dysarthria, and paresis in her left extremities. A CT scan showed hypodensity in a crescentic formation with a mild mid-line shift. She had a bruise on her forehead caused by a fall several days before admission, which initially raised subdural hematoma (SDH) diagnosis, and a burr hole procedure was planned. However, her condition deteriorated on the admission night, and she died before dawn. An autopsy revealed that she had subdural empyema (SDE) caused by Campylobacter rectus and Slackia exigua. Both microorganisms are oral microorganisms that rarely cause extra-oral infection. In our case, head trauma caused a skull bone fracture, and sinus infection might have expanded to the subdural space causing SDE. CT/MRI findings were not typical for either SDH or SDE. Early recognition of subdural empyema and prompt initiation of treatment with antibiotics and surgical drainage is essential for cases of SDE. We present our case and a review of four reported cases

Exploring the association between number of teeth, food intake, and cognitive function: A 9-year longitudinal study

Mameno T., Moynihan P., Nakagawa T., et al. Exploring the association between number of teeth, food intake, and cognitive function: A 9-year longitudinal study. Journal of Dentistry 145, 104991 (2024); https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdent.2024.104991.Objectives: This study aimed to investigate the association between the number of teeth, food intake, and cognitive function in Japanese community-dwelling older adults. Methods: This 9-year longitudinal study included a total of 293 analyzable participants who participated in baseline and follow-up surveys. Dental status (number of teeth and periodontal pocket depth), dietary assessment using the brief-type self-administered diet history questionnaire, cognitive function, and the following confounding factors were evaluated: educational level, financial satisfaction, living situation, smoking and drinking habits, history of chronic diseases, apolipoprotein E-ε4 carrier, body mass index, handgrip strength, instrumental activities of daily living, and depressive symptomatology. The Japanese version of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment was used to evaluate cognitive function. A multinomial logistic regression analysis for the intake level of each food categorized into three groups (low, moderate, high), and a generalized estimating equation (GEE) for cognitive function over nine years were performed. Results: After controlling for confounding factors, the number of teeth was shown to be associated with the intake of green-yellow vegetables and meat. Furthermore, the GEE indicated that the lowest quartile of intake of green-yellow vegetables significantly associated with lower cognitive function (unstandardized regression coefficient [B] = -0.96, 95 % confidence interval [CI]: -1.72 to -0.20), and the lowest quartile of intake of meat significantly associated with lower cognitive function (B = -1.42, 95 % CI: -2.27 to -0.58). Conclusions: The intake of green and yellow vegetables and meat, which is influenced by the number of teeth, was associated with cognitive function in Japanese community-dwelling older adults. Clinical Significance: There are few studies that have examined the association between oral health, food intake, and cognitive function. This 9-year longitudinal study suggests that it is important to maintain natural teeth to enable the functional means to consume green-yellow vegetables and meat, and thereby help maintain cognitive function

Comparison of Pressure-Retarded Osmosis Performance between Pilot-Scale Cellulose Triacetate Hollow-Fiber and Polyamide Spiral-Wound Membrane Modules

Pressure-retarded osmosis (PRO) has recently received attention because of its ability to generate power via an osmotic pressure gradient between two solutions with different salinities: high- and low-salinity water sources. In this study, PRO performance, using the two pilot-scale PRO membrane modules with different configurations—five-inch cellulose triacetate hollow-fiber membrane module (CTA-HF) and eight-inch polyamide spiral-wound membrane modules (PA-SW)—was evaluated by changing the draw solution (DS) concentration, applied hydrostatic pressure difference, and the flow rates of DS and feed solution (FS), to obtain the optimum operating conditions in PRO configuration. The maximum power density per unit membrane area of PA-SW at 0.6 M NaCl was 1.40 W/m2 and 2.03-fold higher than that of CTA-HF, due to the higher water permeability coefficient of PA-SW. In contrast, the maximum power density per unit volume of CTA-SW at 0.6 M NaCl was 4.67 kW/m3 and 6.87-fold higher than that of PA-SW. The value of CTA-HF increased to 13.61 kW/m3 at 1.2 M NaCl and was 12.0-fold higher than that of PA-SW because of the higher packing density of CTA-HF

Comparison of Pressure-Retarded Osmosis Performance between Pilot-Scale Cellulose Triacetate Hollow-Fiber and Polyamide Spiral-Wound Membrane Modules

Pressure-retarded osmosis (PRO) has recently received attention because of its ability to generate power via an osmotic pressure gradient between two solutions with different salinities: high- and low-salinity water sources. In this study, PRO performance, using the two pilot-scale PRO membrane modules with different configurations—five-inch cellulose triacetate hollow-fiber membrane module (CTA-HF) and eight-inch polyamide spiral-wound membrane modules (PA-SW)—was evaluated by changing the draw solution (DS) concentration, applied hydrostatic pressure difference, and the flow rates of DS and feed solution (FS), to obtain the optimum operating conditions in PRO configuration. The maximum power density per unit membrane area of PA-SW at 0.6 M NaCl was 1.40 W/m2 and 2.03-fold higher than that of CTA-HF, due to the higher water permeability coefficient of PA-SW. In contrast, the maximum power density per unit volume of CTA-SW at 0.6 M NaCl was 4.67 kW/m3 and 6.87-fold higher than that of PA-SW. The value of CTA-HF increased to 13.61 kW/m3 at 1.2 M NaCl and was 12.0-fold higher than that of PA-SW because of the higher packing density of CTA-HF

Three-rods test as drivers' license vision test from the viewpoint of reproducibility, eye deviation, and functional visual acuity

Background: Three-rods test is required as depth perception vision test to obtain motor vehicle license to drive taxies, buses, and trucks in Japan. Functional visual acuity is measured automatically by successive visual target presentation in a fixed period of time. This study examined three-rods test from the viewpoint of reproducibility, eye deviation, and functional visual acuity to assess the feasibility for drivers' license vision test. Methods: At three-rods test, a central rod was moved at the speed of 50 mm/sec forward and backward automatically against two fixed rods on both sides inside an illuminated box. An examinee at the distance of 2.5 m observed the rods inside the box from a small window and pushed a button to stop the central rod in alignment with the fixed rods. Erred distance of the central rod from the fixed rods as a mean of 4 measurements was used. At functional visual acuity test, an examinee moved a joystick to the same direction as Landolt-C opening as a visual target which was sequentially presented every 2 seconds for 30 times in 1 minute. Results: The mean erred distance of three-rods test was reproducible between two tests done on separate occasions (n = 44, ρ = 0.679, P < 0.0001, Spearman rank correlation). Exophoria induced by wearing 4-prism-diopter base-out prism did not significantly influence the mean erred distance while vertical diplopia induced by wearing 4-prism-diopter base-up prism disrupted the measurement (n = 9). The mean erred distance of three-rods test was better correlated with functional visual acuity tested with both eyes open than with conventional visual acuity with both eyes open (n = 17, ρ = 0.2 versus ρ = 0.179). Conclusion: In the context of the small sample size in the present study, the three-rods test was reproducible, and testable in the presence of phoria, but not testable in diplopia, indicating the feasibility as a depth perception vision test

Effect of DS Concentration on the PRO Performance Using a 5-Inch Scale Cellulose Triacetate-Based Hollow Fiber Membrane Module

In this study, pressure-retarded osmosis (PRO) performance of a 5-inch scale cellulose triacetate (CTA)-based hollow fiber (HF) membrane module was evaluated under a wide range of operating conditions (0.0&ndash;6.0 MPa of applied pressure, 0.5&ndash;2.0 L/min feed solution (FS) inlet flow rate, 1.0&ndash;6.0 L/min DS inlet flow rate and 0.1&ndash;0.9 M draw solution (DS) concentration) by using a PRO/reverse osmosis (RO) hybrid system. The subsequent RO system for DS regeneration enabled the evaluation of the steady-stated module performance. In the case of pilot-scale module operation, since the DS dilution and the feed solution (FS) up-concentration had occurred and was not negligible, unlike the lab-scale experiment, PRO performance strongly depended on operating conditions such as inlet flow rates of both the DS and FS concentration. To compare the module performance with different configurations, we proposed a converted parameter in which a difference of the packing density between the spiral wound (SW) and the HF module was fairly considered. In the case of HF configuration, because of high packing density, volumetric-based performance was higher than that of SW module, that is, the required number of the module would be less than that of SW module in a full-scale PRO plant

Hardware-oriented stereo vision algorithm based on 1-D guided filtering and its FPGA implementation,&quot;ICECS

Abstract-This paper presents a novel hardware-oriented stereo vision system based on 1-D cost aggregation. Many researchers have implemented hardware efficient stereo matching to realize real-time systems. However, such methods require a large amount of memory. We proposed a system that is based on a hardware-software hybrid architecture for memory reduction. It consisted of grayscale 1-D cost aggregation HW and 2-D disparity refinement SW. The 1-D processing reduced the size of RAM in our HW to 266 kb with an input image size of 1024×768. We achieved the average error rate for the Middlebury datasets as 6.24%. The processing time was 56.6 ms for the 1024×768 images and an average of 8.6 ms for the Middlebury datasets which have an average size of 400×380. Using the resolution of Middlebury datasets, our system can perform real-time depth-aided image processing

EMpowerment of PArents in THe Intensive Care: A multi-centre validation study in Japan

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