Short Report: Association Between Chloroquine and Amodiaquine Resistance and Allelic Variation in the Plasmodium Falciparum Multiple Drug Resistance 1 Gene and the Chloroquine Resistance Transporter Gene in Isolates from the Upper Nile in Southern Sudan.

Amodiaquine, a 4-aminoquinoline compound, is being considered as an alternative to chloroquine and pyrimethamine/sulfadoxine where resistance in Plasmodium falciparum to both drugs has been selected. Although amodiaquine is more potent than chloroquine, its effectiveness is reduced in areas where chloroquine resistance is high. We report an association of the P. falciparum chloroquine resistance transporter (pfcrt) gene and the P. falciparum multiple drug resistance 1 (pfmdr1) gene, two chloroquine resistance markers, with chloroquine and amodiaquine efficacy in vivo in southern Sudan. The data show that the allele of the pfcrt gene with a lysine to threonine change at codon 76 is strongly associated with both chloroquine and amodiaquine resistance. No such association was observed with the pfmdr1 gene

Incremental Distance Transforms (IDT)

A new generic scheme for incremental implementations of distance transforms (DT) is presented: Incremental Distance Transforms (IDT). This scheme is applied on the cityblock, Chamfer, and three recent exact Euclidean DT (E2DT). A benchmark shows that for all five DT, the incremental implementation results in a significant speedup: 3.4×−10×. However, significant differences (i.e., up to 12.5×) among the DT remain present. The FEED transform, one of the recent E2DT, even showed to be faster than both city-block and Chamfer DT. So, through a very efficient incremental processing scheme for DT, a relief is found for E2DT’s computational burden

Cardiovascular effects of an intubating dose of rocuronium 0.6 mg kg(-1) in anaesthetized patients, paralysed with vecuronium

We have studied, in adult patients, ASA I-II, the cardiovascular effects of an intubating dose of rocuronium 0.6 mg kg(-1). After induction, patients were paralysed with vecuronium and the trachea intubated. Heart rate (HR) and non-invasive mean arterial pressure (MAP) were measured every 1 min. After stabilization of HR and MAP, defined a

Children’s comprehension monitoring of multiple situational dimensions of a narrative

Narratives typically consist of information on multiple aspects of a situation. In order to successfully create a coherent representation of the described situation, readers are required to monitor all these situational dimensions during reading. However, little is known about whether these dimensions differ in the ease with which they can be monitored. In the present study, we examined whether children in Grades 4 and 6 monitor four different dimensions (i.e., emotion, causation, time, and space) during reading, using a self-paced reading task containing inconsistencies. Furthermore, to explore what causes failure in inconsistency detection, we differentiated between monitoring processes related to availability and validation of information by manipulating the distance between two pieces of conflicting information. The results indicated that the monitoring processes varied as a function of dimension. Children were able to validate emotional and causal information when it was still active in working memory, but this was not the case for temporal and spatial information. When context and target information were more distant from each other, only emotionally charged information remained available for further monitoring processes. These findings show that the influence of different situational dimensions should be taken into account when studying children’s reading comprehension

Continuous affect state annotation using a joystick-based user interface

Ongoing research at the DLR (German Aerospace Center) aims to employ affective computing techniques to ascertain the emotional states of users in motion simulators. In this work, a novel user feedback interface employing a joystick to acquire subjective evaluation of the affective experience is presented. This interface allows the subjects to continuously annotate their affect states, elicited in this scenario by watching video clips. Several physiological parameters (e.g. heart rate, electrodermal activity, respiration rate, etc.) were acquired during the viewing session. A statistical analysis is presented, which shows expected patterns in data that validate the design and methodology of the experiment and lay the groundwork for further experiments to be undertaken at the DLR