L-deprenyl, A Selective MAO-B Inhibitor

Monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs) are now recognized as effective medications in the treatment of major depression (1). However, their clinical use has been limited by the risk of severe hypertensive reactions to oral tyramine challenge. Prevention of this so-called cheese effect requires adherence to diet restrictions that can lead to problems with patient compliance to MAOIs. L-deprenyl is a selective MAO-B inhibitor that is reportedly free of the cheese effect (2). This review will discuss the clinical and theoretical importance of this interesting drug

Managing and Querying Multi-Version XML Data with Update Logging

With the increasing popularity of storing content on the WWW and intranet in XML form, there arises the need for the control and management of this data. As this data is constantly evolving, users want to be able to query previous versions, query changes in documents, as well as to retrieve a particular document version efficiently. This paper proposes a version management system for XML data that can manage and query changes in an effective and meaningful manner

Diagnosing faults in autonomous robot plan execution

A major requirement for an autonomous robot is the capability to diagnose faults during plan execution in an uncertain environment. Many diagnostic researches concentrate only on hardware failures within an autonomous robot. Taking a different approach, the implementation of a Telerobot Diagnostic System that addresses, in addition to the hardware failures, failures caused by unexpected event changes in the environment or failures due to plan errors, is described. One feature of the system is the utilization of task-plan knowledge and context information to deduce fault symptoms. This forward deduction provides valuable information on past activities and the current expectations of a robotic event, both of which can guide the plan-execution inference process. The inference process adopts a model-based technique to recreate the plan-execution process and to confirm fault-source hypotheses. This technique allows the system to diagnose multiple faults due to either unexpected plan failures or hardware errors. This research initiates a major effort to investigate relationships between hardware faults and plan errors, relationships which were not addressed in the past. The results of this research will provide a clear understanding of how to generate a better task planner for an autonomous robot and how to recover the robot from faults in a critical environment

Comparative efficacy of escitalopram in the treatment of major depressive disorder

Mazen K Ali, Raymond W LamDepartment of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia, and Mood Disorders Centre, University of British Columbia Hospital, Vancouver, CanadaBackground: Escitalopram is an allosteric selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) with some indication of superior efficacy in the treatment of major depressive disorder. In this systematic review, we critically evaluate the evidence for comparative efficacy and tolerability of escitalopram, focusing on pooled and meta-analysis studies.Methods: A literature search was conducted for escitalopram studies that quantitatively synthesized data from comparative randomized controlled trials in MDD. Studies were excluded if they did not focus on efficacy, involved primarily subgroups of patients, or synthesized data included in subsequent studies. Outcomes extracted from the included studies were weighted mean difference or standard mean difference, response and remission rates, and withdrawal rate owing to adverse events.Results: The search initially identified 24 eligible studies, of which 12 (six pooled analysis and six meta-analysis studies) met the criteria for review. The pooled and meta-analysis studies with citalopram showed significant but modest differences in favor of escitalopram, with weighted mean differences ranging from 1.13 to 1.73 points on the Montgomery Asberg Depression Rating Scale, response rate differences of 7.0%–8.3%, and remission rate differences of 5.1%–17.6%. Pooled analysis studies showed efficacy differences compared with duloxetine and with serotonin noradrenaline reuptake inhibitors combined, but meta-analysis studies did not. The effect sizes of the efficacy differences increased in the severely depressed patient subgroups.Conclusion: Based on pooled and meta-analysis studies, escitalopram demonstrates superior efficacy compared with citalopram and with SSRIs combined. Escitalopram shows similar efficacy to serotonin noradrenaline reuptake inhibitors but the number of trials in these comparisons is limited. Efficacy differences are modest but clinically relevant, especially in more severely depressed patients.Keywords: escitalopram, depressive disorders, meta-analysis, pooled analysis, efficacy, antidepressant

Mahayana Buddhist ethics as imperatively religious: a hermeneutical study of the Avatamsaka Sutra

Through a study of the Avatamsaka Sutra, one finds that the ethics of Mahayana Buddhism cannot be reduced to a mere intellectual movement, or be compatible with a secular philosophy as some scholars in recent years have interpreted Buddhism to be. Through this hermeneutic exercise, this essay defends the ethics of the Mahayana tradition as fundamentally grounded and inseparable from Buddhist religious doctrine

The consecration and problem of the individual and self, and freedom through ‘Spiritual Law’

Luiz Costa Lima, in his study of Montaigne, Kant, Schlegel and Kafka, hopes to find ‘a less imperial, less imposing idea of truth, one that is historically and culturally mutable, and that is powerless to control ‘nontrue’ discourses.’ This paper seeks to take Costa Lima’s writing of the ‘oscillating’ Law of Montaigne in a slightly different direction by offering an alternative conception of the religious Law that Montaigne did not foresee. This study focuses on Montaigne’s consecration of the individual through the literature of the autobiographical essay, on the cost of the Law’s destruction (in particular, that of Western Christendom), and then Kafka’s struggle of the self after two centuries. It then seeks a new ‘Middle Ground’ within the literary interplay between the consecration of the individual, the destruction of the old Law, and the spiritual autobiography and religiousethical-aesthetic language of Thomas Merton. Under this conception of Law and language, both imagination and knowledge find the greatest fulfilment and freedom. The paper therefore seeks a heuristic answer in addressing Costa Lima’s ideas within the framework of Montaigne and the literary individual’s freedom though spiritual law

Love and enlightenmet

Skilful means is an important doctrine in Mahayana Buddhism. It gives the movement its pedagogical skill in teaching Dharma and spiritual care. This paper examines the importance of the Jyotis narrative in the Skill-in-Means Sutra, in which a monk violates celibacy for the sake of a woman’s happiness. This essay ties the idea of skill-in-means more intimately with modern Buddhism, examining its legitimacy as an ethical system and its role in spiritual education and care

Use of antibiotics by primary care doctors in Hong Kong

© 2009 Lam et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licens

Computer-implemented system and method for automated and highly accurate plaque analysis, reporting, and visualization

A computer-implemented system and method of intra-oral analysis for measuring plaque removal is disclosed. The system includes hardware for real-time image acquisition and software to store the acquired images on a patient-by-patient basis. The system implements algorithms to segment teeth of interest from surrounding gum, and uses a real-time image-based morphing procedure to automatically overlay a grid onto each segmented tooth. Pattern recognition methods are used to classify plaque from surrounding gum and enamel, while ignoring glare effects due to the reflection of camera light and ambient light from enamel regions. The system integrates these components into a single software suite with an easy-to-use graphical user interface (GUI) that allows users to do an end-to-end run of a patient record, including tooth segmentation of all teeth, grid morphing of each segmented tooth, and plaque classification of each tooth image