A serious games platform for cognitive rehabilitation with preliminary evaluation

In recent years Serious Games have evolved substantially, solving problems in diverse areas. In particular, in Cognitive Rehabilitation, Serious Games assume a relevant role. Traditional cognitive therapies are often considered repetitive and discouraging for patients and Serious Games can be used to create more dynamic rehabilitation processes, holding patients' attention throughout the process and motivating them during their road to recovery. This paper reviews Serious Games and user interfaces in rehabilitation area and details a Serious Games platform for Cognitive Rehabilitation that includes a set of features such as: natural and multimodal user interfaces and social features (competition, collaboration, and handicapping) which can contribute to augment the motivation of patients during the rehabilitation process. The web platform was tested with healthy subjects. Results of this preliminary evaluation show the motivation and the interest of the participants by playing the games.- This work has been supported by FCT - Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia in the scope of the projects: PEst-UID/CEC/00319/2015 and PEst-UID/CEC/00027/2015. The authors would like to thank also all the volunteers that participated in the study

Role of autophagy in the progress of coronary total occlusion

WOS: 000425183100007PubMed ID: 29455545OBJECTIVE: In this study, we measured the level of autophagy enzyme in patients with coronary artery disease (CAD) and investigated whether the role of autophagy existed in the progress of coronary collateral and coronary total occlusion (TO). METHODS: Overall, 115 participants were included in this study. They were divided into the three groups: group 1: patients had chronic TO (n=49); group 2: patients had acute TO such as myocardial infarction (n=36); and group 3: participants were normal controls (n=30). The enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) kit for autophagy-related protein 5 (ATG5) in the plasma was studied for these three groups. RESULTS: Autophagy levels were significantly different between the groups (13.7 +/- 5.3, 11.7 +/- 3.4, and 7.5 +/- 3 ng/mL, respectively; p<0.001). In the subgroup analysis, we found significant positive correlations between the level of autophagy and Rentrop score in the Group 1 (r=0.463, p<0.001). CONCLUSION: In the present study, autophagy levels were higher in the patients with CAD than in healthy controls. In addition, serum autophagy levels showed a significant positive correlation with the Rentrop score. An increased autophagy level may be considered an important activator and marker of the atherosclerotic inflammatory process in CAD

Effect of Colchicine and Atorvastatin on Cell Death Mechanisms During Inflammatory Processes in Atheroschlerosis

European Biotechnology Congress -- APR 11-13, 2019 -- Valencia, SPAINOzdas, Sule Beyhan/0000-0002-4821-4388WOS: 000491118400093[No abstract available

In vitro fertilization of vitrified mouse oocytes

Mammalian oocytes have tendency to lose their natural structure and degenerate during the manipulations before and after freezing (Parks and Ruffing, 1992). This study was to find out the invitro fertilization percentage of mouse oocutes after freezing in VS1 medium by vitrification technique

The Effect of Streptomycin on Freezing Rainbow Trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) Sperm

Mature male and female rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) were used to study the effect of different concentrations of streptomycin in a cryopreservation solution on the sperm motility, motility duration, and fertilization rate of rainbow trout. 300mM glucose and 10% DMSO containing diluent was used as a cryopreservation solution. Three different concentrations (3600, 7200 and 10800 &mu;g/ml) of streptomycin were added to the diluent. Our study showed that various concentrations of streptomycin in cryopreservation solution caused a significant reduction in the percentage and duration of rainbow trout spermatozoa motility after freezing-thawing. The percentage of egg fertilization also decreased. When streptomycin-containing groups were compared with each other, a statistical difference was found (p&lt;0.05). However, no statistical difference was observed in terms of the percentage of eyed-embryos