Posterior maxillary alveolar vertical distraction osteogenesis by bi-directional distractor

AbstractA patient with severe posterior maxillary hypoplasia was simulated using a 3-dimensional model by rapid prototyping, and segmental vertical distraction osteogenesis was planned to advance the posterior maxillary segment. The bi-directional distractor was adapted to the alveolar ridge and zygomatic buttress. After a 7-day latency period, we started distraction at a rate of 0.35mm every 12h. 12mm of advancement of the posterior maxillary segment was achieved. This distraction osteogenesis using a bi-directional distractor with proper therapeutic planning and good surgical technique will help ensure adequate vector control to predictably regenerate the hard and soft tissues during alveolar distraction

Developmental expression of GLUT3 glucose transporter in the rat brain

AbstractThe ontogeny of the GLUT3 glucose transporter gene and protein expression was studied in rat brain. Northern blot analysis using total RNA from rat brains at different developmental stages revealed that the levels of GLUT3 mRNA were very low during the embryonic stage and increased towards the postnatal stage. Immunohistochemistry using a specific antibody showed that the expression of GLUT3 protein was barely detectable in the embryonic stage, but was clearly detected on the plasma membrane of neuronal cells from 10 days after birth to the adult. Expression of GLUT3 mRNA and protein in the cerebral neuronal cell cultures was also examined during the maturation of neurons. GLUT3 glucose transporter of primary neuronal cultured cerebral cortical neurons was only detected in mature neurons after they were cultured for 14 days. These results indicate that GLUT3 plays an important role in glucose homeostasis postnatally in neurons of the rat brain

4th Workshop on human activity sensing corpus and applications: towards open-ended context awareness

Current motion sensors in wearable devices are primarily used for simple orientation and motion sensing. They provide however signals related to more complex and subtle human behaviours which will enable next-generation human-oriented computing in scenarios of high societal value. This requires large scale human activity corpuses and improved methods to recognise activities and their context. This workshop deals with the challenges of designing reproducible experimental setups, running large-scale dataset collection campaigns, designing robust activity and context recognition methods and evaluating systems in the real world. As a special topic, we wish to reflect on the challenges and approaches to recognise activities outside of a pre-defined set to achieve an open-ended activity and context awareness. Following the success of previous years, this workshop is the place to share experiences on human activity corpus and their applications and to discuss the future of activity sensing, in particular towards open-ended contextual intelligence

Colonization by Clostridium difficile of neonates in a hospital, and infants and children in three day-care facilities of Kanazawa, Japan

The intestinal-carriage rates of i>Clostridium difficile in neonates hospitalized in the University Hospital’s Center for Perinatal and Reproductive Health and in infants and children enrolled in two day-nurseries and a kindergarten were examined. Swab samples from the floors of these facilities were also analyzed to determine the extent of environmental contamination by this organism. C. difficile was found in the stool of only one of 40 neonates during the normal 1-week stay in the hospital after delivery. The isolate from the neonate was identical to that of her mother, as determined by PCR ribotyping, pulsed-field gel electrophoresis analysis, and toxin gene type, suggesting that the C. difficile-positive neonate acquired the organism from her mother rather than from the environment. By contrast, 47 (48.0%) of the 98 infants and children, comprising 50 enrolled in two daynurseries who were ≤3 years old and 48 enrolled in a kindergarten who were 2–5 years old, carried C. difficile. The carriage rate in infants under 2 years of age was much higher (84.4%) than in children 2 years old and older (30.3%). When analyzed according to age group, the carriage rates were 100, 75.0, 45.5, 24.0, 38.5, and 23.5% in infants and children 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 years old, respectively. The observation that several children were colonized with the same type of C. difficile strain in each day-care facility, and that the floors of day-nursery A and kindergarten C were contaminated with C. difficile strains identical to those colonizing the intestines of children enrolled in those facilities suggests that cross-infection of C. difficile among children occurs through C. difficile-carrying children or their contaminated environments. [Int Microbiol 2005; 8(1):43-48