Cognitive effects of calligraphy therapy for older people: a randomized controlled trial in Hong Kong

BACKGROUND: This pilot study investigated the effects of calligraphy therapy on cognitive function in older Hong Kong Chinese people with mild cognitive impairment. METHODS: A single-blind, randomized controlled trial was carried out in a sample of 31 adults aged 65 years or older with mild cognitive impairment. They were randomly assigned to receive either intensive calligraphy training led by a trained research assistant for eight weeks (calligraphy group, n = 14) or no calligraphy treatment (control group, n = 17). Participants' cognitive function was assessed by the Chinese version of the Mini-Mental State Examination (CMMSE) before and after calligraphy treatment. Repeated measures analysis of variance and paired samples t-tests were used to analyze the data. RESULTS: A significant interaction effect of time and intervention was detected [F (1, 29) = 9.11, P = 0.005, eta(2) = 0.24]. The calligraphy group was found to have a prominent increase in CMMSE global score, and scores in the cognitive areas of orientation, attention, and calculation after two months (DeltaM = 2.36, P < 0.01), whereas their counterparts in the control group experienced a decline in CMMSE score (DeltaM = -0.41, P < 0.05). CONCLUSION: Calligraphy therapy was effective for enhancing cognitive function in older people with mild cognitive impairment and should be incorporated as part of routine programs in both community and residential care settings. © 2011 Kwok et al, publisher and licensee Dove Medical Press Ltd.published_or_final_versio

Recommending anchor points in structure-preserving hypertext document retrieval

Traditional WWW search engines index and recommend individual Web pages to assist users in locating relevant documents. Users are often overwhelmed by the large answer set recommended by the search engines. The logical starting point of the hyper-document is thus hidden among the large basket of matching pages. Users need to spend a lot of effort browsing through the pages to locate the starting point, a very time consuming process. This paper studies the anchor point indexing problem. The anchor points of a given user query is a small set of key pages from which the larger set of documents that are relevant to the query can be easily reached. The use of anchor points help solve the problems of huge answer set and low precision suffered by most search engines by considering the hyper-link structures of the relevant documents, and by providing a summary view of the result set.published_or_final_versio

Spatial heterogeneity enhances and modulates excitability in a mathematical model of the myometrium

The muscular layer of the uterus (myometrium) undergoes profound changes in global excitability prior to parturition. Here, a mathematical model of the myocyte network is developed to investigate the hypothesis that spatial heterogeneity is essential to the transition from local to global excitation which the myometrium undergoes just prior to birth. Each myometrial smooth muscle cell is represented by an element with FitzHugh–Nagumo dynamics. The cells are coupled through resistors that represent gap junctions. Spatial heterogeneity is introduced by means of stochastic variation in coupling strengths, with parameters derived from physiological data. Numerical simulations indicate that even modest increases in the heterogeneity of the system can amplify the ability of locally applied stimuli to elicit global excitation. Moreover, in networks driven by a pacemaker cell, global oscillations of excitation are impeded in fully connected and strongly coupled networks. The ability of a locally stimulated cell or pacemaker cell to excite the network is shown to be strongly dependent on the local spatial correlation structure of the couplings. In summary, spatial heterogeneity is a key factor in enhancing and modulating global excitability

Improving quality of life through reducing post-operative bacterial infections

Session: Functionalization of Cells and Biomaterials: abstract no. 483INTRODUCTION: Metallic implants such as titanium alloy have been widely used in orthopaedic surgeries1. 2-5% of the patients acquire post-operative bacterial infections at implant site though prescription of antibiotics2. Patients may suffer from surgeries like debridement of wound, removal of problematic implant and insertion of new implant. To reduce bacterial infections and improve quality of life of patients, implant surfaces loaded with …postprintThe 2010 North America Conference of the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society (TERMIS-NA 2010), Orlando, FL., 5-8 December 2010

A DNA vaccine targeting TcdA and TcdB induces protective immunity against Clostridium difficile

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Computable analysis of linear rearrangement optimization

Optimization problems over rearrangement classes arise in various areas such as mathematics, fluid mechanics, biology, and finance. When the generator of the rearrangement class is two-valued, they reduce to shape optimization and free boundary problems which can exhibit intriguing symmetry breaking phenomena. A robust framework is required for computable analysis of these problems. In this paper, as a first step towards such a robust framework, we provide oracle Turing machines that compute the distribution function, decreasing rearrangement, and linear rearrangement optimizers, with respect to functions that are continuous and have no significant flat zones. This assumption on the reference function is necessary, as otherwise, the aforementioned operations may not be computable. We prove that the results can be computed to within any degree of accuracy, conforming to the framework of Type-II Theory of Effectivity

Computational modelling of cancerous mutations in the EGFR/ERK signalling pathway

This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund - Copyright @ 2009 Orton et al.BACKGROUND: The Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor (EGFR) activated Extracellular-signal Regulated Kinase (ERK) pathway is a critical cell signalling pathway that relays the signal for a cell to proliferate from the plasma membrane to the nucleus. Deregulation of the EGFR/ERK pathway due to alterations affecting the expression or function of a number of pathway components has long been associated with numerous forms of cancer. Under normal conditions, Epidermal Growth Factor (EGF) stimulates a rapid but transient activation of ERK as the signal is rapidly shutdown. Whereas, under cancerous mutation conditions the ERK signal cannot be shutdown and is sustained resulting in the constitutive activation of ERK and continual cell proliferation. In this study, we have used computational modelling techniques to investigate what effects various cancerous alterations have on the signalling flow through the ERK pathway. RESULTS: We have generated a new model of the EGFR activated ERK pathway, which was verified by our own experimental data. We then altered our model to represent various cancerous situations such as Ras, B-Raf and EGFR mutations, as well as EGFR overexpression. Analysis of the models showed that different cancerous situations resulted in different signalling patterns through the ERK pathway, especially when compared to the normal EGF signal pattern. Our model predicts that cancerous EGFR mutation and overexpression signals almost exclusively via the Rap1 pathway, predicting that this pathway is the best target for drugs. Furthermore, our model also highlights the importance of receptor degradation in normal and cancerous EGFR signalling, and suggests that receptor degradation is a key difference between the signalling from the EGF and Nerve Growth Factor (NGF) receptors. CONCLUSION: Our results suggest that different routes to ERK activation are being utilised in different cancerous situations which therefore has interesting implications for drug selection strategies. We also conducted a comparison of the critical differences between signalling from different growth factor receptors (namely EGFR, mutated EGFR, NGF, and Insulin) with our results suggesting the difference between the systems are large scale and can be attributed to the presence/absence of entire pathways rather than subtle difference in individual rate constants between the systems.This work was funded by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), under their Bioscience Beacon project programme. AG was funded by an industrial PhD studentship from Scottish Enterprise and Cyclacel

Beta defensin-2 is reduced in central but not in distal airways of smoker COPD patients

Background: Altered pulmonary defenses in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) may promote distal airways bacterial colonization. The expression/activation of Toll Like receptors (TLR) and beta 2 defensin (HBD2) release by epithelial cells crucially affect pulmonary defence mechanisms. Methods: The epithelial expression of TLR4 and of HBD2 was assessed in surgical specimens from current smokers COPD (s-COPD; n = 17), ex-smokers COPD (ex-s-COPD; n = 8), smokers without COPD (S; n = 12), and from non-smoker non-COPD subjects (C; n = 13). Results: In distal airways, s-COPD highly expressed TLR4 and HBD2. In central airways, S and s-COPD showed increased TLR4 expression. Lower HBD2 expression was observed in central airways of s-COPD when compared to S and to ex-s-COPD. s-COPD had a reduced HBD2 gene expression as demonstrated by real-time PCR on micro-dissected bronchial epithelial cells. Furthermore, HBD2 expression positively correlated with FEV1/FVC ratio and inversely correlated with the cigarette smoke exposure. In a bronchial epithelial cell line (16 HBE) IL-1β significantly induced the HBD2 mRNA expression and cigarette smoke extracts significantly counteracted this IL-1 mediated effect reducing both the activation of NFkB pathway and the interaction between NFkB and HBD2 promoter. Conclusions: This study provides new insights on the possible mechanisms involved in the alteration of innate immunity mechanisms in COPD. © 2012 Pace et al