2,003 research outputs found
Successful Periodic Continence
Editor\u27s Note: The explanation given below was presented by Dr. Keefe at a meeting of physicians interested in Pre-Can a Conference work in the Archdiocese of New York, May 31 of this year. The Linacre Quarterly includes same to inform other doctors who answer patients\u27 questions in this regard
Interactive Visualization Lab
ABSTRACT This presentation describes the philosophy and ongoing interdisciplinary research projects of the Interactive Visualization Lab at the University of Minnesota
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Characterizing Mycobacterium avium subspecies hominissuis (MAH) Microaggregate Induction of Innate Immunity
Bacterial aggregation is a strategy employed by many pathogens to establish infection. Mycobacterium avium subsp. hominissuis (MAH) undergoes a phenotypic change, microaggregation, when exposed to the respiratory epithelium. This aggregation is an important step in the pathogenesis of the infection, laying the foundation for biofilm formation. We therefore compared how non-aggregated, or planktonic bacteria, and microaggregated MAH can establish lung infections by evaluating mucosal epithelial cell and phagocytic cell responses. Human mucosal lung epithelial cells (BEAS-2B) recognition of MAH mostly occurs through toll-like receptors 1 and 2, which was confirmed through qRT-PCR, reverse-transcriptase PCR, and Western blotting. For both phenotypes, MAP Kinases 1 and 3 are phosphorylated at 30 minutes post infection, and active at the transcriptional level 2 hours post infection. Microaggregate infected BEAS-2B cells up-regulated CCL5, IL-1β, and TNF-α cDNA, while planktonic infected cells only up-regulated IL-1β cDNA at 2 hours post infection. Microaggregates are associated with increased uptake by macrophages (THP-1 cells) after 1 hour compared to planktonic bacteria (8.83% vs. 5.00%, P < 0.05). In addition, the microaggregate phenotype, when internalized by macrophages, had reduced intracellular growth compared to planktonic bacteria. The intracellular replication, however, increased 4-fold as determined at day 6 post infection, when the host cells were treated with microaggregate supernatant, obtained from the incubation of MAH with HEp-2 epithelial cells. Moreover, when microaggregate supernatant was used to form biofilm, planktonic and microaggregated bacteria had higher biofilm mass as compared to wild type MAH in HBSS. Microaggregate supernatant also induces the production of both pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines, however, MAH infection decreased the level of pro-inflammatory cytokine secretion. The results suggest that epithelial recognition is occurring during MAH infection, and the microaggregate phenotype stimulates an inflammatory response. In addition, the initial bacterial interaction with the mucosal epithelium and development of the microaggregate phenotype has a potential role in pathogenesis, allowing for more robust biofilm formation and establishment of infection
Energy recovery in individuals with knee osteoarthritis.
OBJECTIVE: Pathological gaits have been shown to limit transfer between potential (PE) and kinetic (KE) energy during walking, which can increase locomotor costs. The purpose of this study was to examine whether energy exchange would be limited in people with knee osteoarthritis (OA). METHODS: Ground reaction forces during walking were collected from 93 subjects with symptomatic knee OA (self-selected and fast speeds) and 13 healthy controls (self-selected speed) and used to calculate their center of mass (COM) movements, PE and KE relationships, and energy recovery during a stride. Correlations and linear regressions examined the impact of energy fluctuation phase and amplitude, walking velocity, body mass, self-reported pain, and radiographic severity on recovery. Paired t-tests were run to compare energy recovery between cohorts. RESULTS: Symptomatic knee OA subjects displayed lower energetic recovery during self-selected walking speeds than healthy controls (PÂ =Â 0.0018). PE and KE phase relationships explained the majority (66%) of variance in recovery. Recovery had a complex relationship with velocity and its change across speeds was significantly influenced by the self-selected walking speed of each subject. Neither radiographic OA scores nor subject self-reported measures demonstrated any relationship with energy recovery. CONCLUSIONS: Knee OA reduces effective exchange of PE and KE, potentially increasing the muscular work required to control movements of the COM. Gait retraining may return subjects to more normal patterns of energy exchange and allow them to reduce fatigue
Poster: Getting All Your Bats in a Row: Optimizing Layout in Chronophotographic Style Visualizations
Biases in research: risk factors for non-replicability in psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy research
Replicability of findings is an essential prerequisite of research. For both basic and clinical research, however, low replicability of findings has recently been reported. Replicability may be affected by research biases not sufficiently controlled for by the existing research standards. Several biases such as researcher allegiance or selective reporting are well-known for affecting results. For psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy research, specific additional biases may affect outcome (e.g. therapist allegiance, therapist effects or impairments in treatment implementation). For meta-analyses further specific biases are relevant. In psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy research these biases have not yet been systematically discussed in the context of replicability. Using a list of 13 biases as a starting point, we discuss each bias's impact on replicability. We illustrate each bias by selective findings of recent research, showing that (1) several biases are not yet sufficiently controlled for by the presently applied research standards, (2) these biases have a pernicious effect on replicability of findings. For the sake of research credibility, it is critical to avoid these biases in future research. To control for biases and to improve replicability, we propose to systematically implement several measures in psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy research, such as adversarial collaboration (inviting academic rivals to collaborate), reviewing study design prior to knowing the results, triple-blind data analysis (including subjects, investigators and data managers/statisticians), data analysis by other research teams (crowdsourcing), and, last not least, updating reporting standards such as CONSORT or the Template for Intervention Description and Replication (TIDieR)
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