Background and purpose: Seizures are important neurologic complications of spontaneous aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH). A better understanding of the risk factors of seizures following ...aneurysmal SAH is needed to predict those who will require treatment.
Methods: A total of 137 adult patients were enrolled in this two‐year retrospective study. Baseline prognostic variables were analyzed based on Cox’s proportional hazards model after a minimum of one‐year follow‐up.
Results: Seizures occurred in 21 patients who had SAH, including acute symptomatic seizures in 11.7% (16/137) and unprovoked seizures in 3.6% (5/137). None progressed to status epilepticus during hospitalization. After a minimum of one‐year follow‐up, the mean Glasgow Outcome Score was 3.5 ± 1.4 for patients with seizures and 3.1 ± 1.1 for those without.
Conclusions: Higher mean World Federation of Neurological Societies grade on presentation was predictive of seizure, but seizure itself was not a significant prognostic predictor after a minimum of one‐year follow‐up. Regarding potential side effects of anti‐epileptic drugs, anti‐epileptic therapy should be carefully administered to patients with seizures after aneurysmal SAH.
Summary
What is known and Objective: An ideal Health Care Service is a service system that focuses on patients. Patients in Taiwan have the freedom to fill their prescriptions at any pharmacies ...contracted with National Health Insurance. Each of these pharmacies uses its own computer system. So far, there are at least ten different systems on the market in Taiwan. To transmit the prescription information from the hospital to the pharmacy accurately and efficiently presents a great issue.
Methods: This study consisted of two‐dimensional applications using a QR‐code to capture Patient’s identification and prescription information from the hospitals as well as using a webcam to read the QR‐code and transfer all data to the pharmacy computer system. Two hospitals and 85 community pharmacies participated in the study.
Results and Discussion: During the trial, all participant pharmacies appraised highly of the accurate transmission of the prescription information. The contents in QR‐code prescriptions from Taipei area were picked up efficiently and accurately in pharmacies at Taichung area (middle Taiwan) without software system limit and area limitation. The QR‐code device received a patent (No. M376844, March 2010) from Intellectual Property Office Ministry of Economic Affair, China.
What is new and Conclusion: Our trial has proven that QR‐code prescription can provide community pharmacists an efficient, accurate and inexpensive device to digitalize the prescription contents. Consequently, pharmacists can offer better quality of pharmacy service to patients.
Summary Objective Although anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury is a well-recognized risk factor for developing knee post-traumatic osteoarthritis (PTOA), the process in the patellofemoral (PF) ...joint after ACL injury is still under-researched. Our aim was to investigate the perfusion changes in PF subchondral bone marrow in the rat ACL transection (ACLX) model of PTOA using dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI). Design Eighteen male Sprague Dawley rats were randomly separated into three groups ( n = 6 each group): a normal control group and groups receiving ACLX and sham-surgery, respectively, in the right knee. Perfusion parameters in the patellar and femoral subchondral bone marrows of all rats were measured on DCE-MRI at 0, 4, 8, and 16 weeks after respective treatment. After the last MRI at week 16, the rats were sacrificed and their right knees were harvested for histologic examination. In addition, to observe the long-term histologic change in PF joints, 9 additional rats ( n = 3 in each group) were included and sacrificed at week 32 for histologic examination. Results In the ACLX group vs the sham and control groups, the perfusion parameters were significantly changed in both patellar and femoral subchondral bone marrows at week 16. Histologic examination revealed cartilage defects in ACLX rats at 32 weeks after surgery. Conclusions These data point to a possible functional relationship between subchondral bone marrow perfusion abnormalities and cartilage breakdown in PTOA. Moreover, the perfusion parameters derived from DCE-MRI can potentially serve as biomarkers of early OA.
The annotation of short-reads metagenomes is an essential process to understand the functional potential of sequenced microbial communities. Annotation techniques based solely on the identification ...of local matches tend to confound local sequence similarity and overall protein homology and thus don't mirror the complex multidomain architecture and the shuffling of functional domains in many protein families. Here, we present MetaGeneHunt to identify specific protein domains and to normalize the hit-counts based on the domain length. We used MetaGeneHunt to investigate the potential for carbohydrate processing in the mouse gastrointestinal tract. We sampled, sequenced, and analyzed the microbial communities associated with the bolus in the stomach, intestine, cecum, and colon of five captive mice. Focusing on Glycoside Hydrolases (GHs) we found that, across samples, 58.3% of the 4,726,023 short-read sequences matching with a GH domain-containing protein were located outside the domain of interest. Next, before comparing the samples, the counts of localized hits matching the domains of interest were normalized to account for the corresponding domain length. Microbial communities in the intestine and cecum displayed characteristic GH profiles matching distinct microbial assemblages. Conversely, the stomach and colon were associated with structurally and functionally more diverse and variable microbial communities. Across samples, despite fluctuations, changes in the functional potential for carbohydrate processing correlated with changes in community composition. Overall MetaGeneHunt is a new way to quickly and precisely identify discrete protein domains in sequenced metagenomes processed with MG-RAST. In addition, using the sister program "GeneHunt" to create custom Reference Annotation Table, MetaGeneHunt provides an unprecedented way to (re)investigate the precise distribution of any protein domain in short-reads metagenomes.
A promising accelerator light source mechanism called steady‐state microbunching (SSMB) is being actively studied. With the combination of strong coherent radiation from microbunching and high ...repetition rate of a storage ring, high‐average‐power narrow‐band radiation can be anticipated from an SSMB storage ring, with wavelengths ranging from THz to soft X‐ray. Such a novel light source could provide new opportunities for accelerator photon science like high‐resolution angle‐resolved photoemission spectroscopy and industrial applications like extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography. In this paper, a theoretical and numerical study of the average and statistical properties of coherent radiation from SSMB are presented. The results show that 1 kW average‐power quasi‐continuous‐wave EUV radiation can be obtained from an SSMB ring provided that an average current of 1 A and a microbunch train with bunch length of 3 nm can be formed at the radiator which is assumed to be an undulator. Together with the narrow‐band feature, the EUV photon flux can reach 6 × 1015 photons s−1 within a 0.1 meV energy bandwidth, which is three orders of magnitude higher than that in a conventional synchrotron source and is appealing for fundamental condensed matter physics and other research. In this theoretical investigation, we have generalized the definition and derivation of the transverse form factor of an electron beam which can quantify the impact of its transverse size on coherent radiation. In particular, it has been shown that the narrow‐band feature of SSMB radiation is strongly correlated with the finite transverse electron beam size. Considering the pointlike nature of electrons and quantum nature of radiation, the coherent radiation fluctuates from microbunch to microbunch, or for a single microbunch from turn to turn. Some important results concerning the statistical properties of SSMB radiation are presented, with a brief discussion on its potential applications, for example the beam diagnostics. The presented work is of value for the development of SSMB to better serve potential synchrotron radiation users. In addition, this also sheds light on understanding the radiation characteristics of free‐electron lasers, coherent harmonic generation, etc.
The radiation properties of a novel high‐power accelerator light source are presented. Potential applications include high‐resolution angle‐resolved photoemission spectroscopy and extreme ultraviolet lithography.
Nitrous Acid (HONO) plays an important role in tropospheric chemistry as a precursor of the hydroxyl radical (OH), the most important oxidizing agent in the atmosphere. Nevertheless, the formation ...mechanisms of HONO are still not completely understood. Recent field observations found unexpectedly high daytime HONO concentrations in both urban and rural areas, which point to unrecognized, most likely photolytically enhanced HONO sources. Several gas-phase, aerosol, and ground surface chemistry mechanisms have been proposed to explain elevated daytime HONO, but atmospheric evidence to favor one over the others is still weak. New information on whether HONO formation occurs in the gas-phase, on aerosol, or at the ground may be derived from observations of the vertical distribution of HONO and its precursor nitrogen dioxide, NO2, as well as from its dependence on solar irradiance or actinic flux. Here we present field observations of HONO, NO2 and other trace gases in three altitude intervals (30–70 m, 70–130 m and 130–300 m) using UCLA's long path DOAS instrument, as well as in situ measurements of OH, NO, photolysis frequencies and solar irradiance, made in Houston, TX, during the Study of Houston Atmospheric Radical Precursor (SHARP) experiment from 20 April to 30 May 2009. The observed HONO mixing ratios were often ten times larger than the expected photostationary state with OH and NO. Larger HONO mixing ratios observed near the ground than aloft imply, but do not clearly prove, that the daytime source of HONO was located at or near the ground. Using a pseudo steady-state (PSS) approach, we calculated the missing daytime HONO formation rates, Punknown, on four sunny days. The NO2-normalized Punknown, Pnorm, showed a clear symmetrical diurnal variation with a maximum around noontime, which was well correlated with actinic flux (NO2 photolysis frequency) and solar irradiance. This behavior, which was found on all clear days in Houston, is a strong indication of a photolytic HONO source. HONO/NO2 ratios also showed a clear diurnal profile, with maxima of 2–3% around noon. PSS calculations show that this behavior cannot be explained by the proposed gas-phase reaction of photoexcited NO2 (NO2*) or any other gas-phase or aerosol photolytic process occurring at similar or longer wavelengths than that of HONO photolysis. HONO formation by aerosol nitrate photolysis in the UV also seems to be unlikely. Pnorm correlated better with solar irradiance (average R2 = 0.85/0.87 for visible/UV) than with actinic flux (R2 = 0.76) on the four sunny days, clearly pointing to HONO being formed at the ground rather than on the aerosol or in the gas-phase. In addition, the observed HONO/NO2 diurnal variation can be explained if the formation of HONO depends on solar irradiance, but not if it depends on the actinic flux. The vertical mixing ratio profiles, together with the stronger correlation with solar irradiance, support the idea that photolytically enhanced NO2 to HONO conversion on the ground was the dominant source of HONO in Houston.
Summary
New variants of porcine epidemic diarrhoea virus (PEDV), which emerged in Taiwan in late 2013, have caused a high morbidity and mortality in neonatal piglets. To investigate the molecular ...characteristics of the spike (S) gene of the emerging Taiwan PEDV strains for a better understanding of the genetic diversity and relationship among the Taiwan new variants and the global PEDVs, full‐length S genes of PEDVs from nine 1–7 day‐old piglets from three pig farms in the central and southern Taiwan were sequenced and analysed. The result of phylogenetic analysis of the S gene showed that all the Taiwan PEDV strains were closely related to the non‐S INDEL strains from US, Canada and China, suggesting a common ancestor for these strains. As compared with the historic PEDVs and CV777‐based vaccine strains, the nine Taiwan PEDV variants shared almost the same genetic signatures as the global non‐S INDEL strains, including a series of insertions, deletions and mutations in the amino terminal as well as identical mutations in the neutralizing epitopes of the S gene. The high similarity of the S protein among the Taiwan and the globally emerged non‐S INDEL PEDV strains suggests that the Taiwan new variants may share similar pathogenesis and immunogenicity as the global outbreak variants. The development of a novel vaccine based on the Taiwan or the global non‐S INDEL strains may be contributive to the control of the current global porcine epidemic diarrhoea outbreaks.
Purpose
Occult inguinal hernias (IH) predispose peritoneal dialysis (PD) patients to the symptomatic IH formation after starting PD, which may cause complications. We conducted a retrospective study ...to assess the benefit/risk profile of routine laparoscopic examination for occult IH (RLEOH) with a synchronous repair in patients receiving PD catheter placement.
Methods
432 patients were enrolled in this study. Patients with an internal hernia sac at all sizes were deemed to have occult IH. We retrospectively reviewed data including demographic characteristics and operative details. We also measured incidence rates of symptomatic IH, metachronous IH repair, and catheter survival over a follow-up period after starting PD.
Results
These patients were classified into the RLEOH group (
n
= 365) and the non-RLEOH group (
n
= 67). The RLEOH group was subdivided into occult IH with a synchronous repair (
n
= 17; the subgroup A), no occult IH (
n
= 339; the subgroup B), and occult IH without a synchronous repair (
n
= 9; the subgroup C). The incidence rates of symptomatic IH developed after staring PD in subgroups A, B, and C were 0, 5.6, and 22.2%, respectively, whereas that in the non-RLEOH group was 13.4%. The RLEOH group had a reduced hazard ratio for metachronous IH repair compared with the non-RLEOH group (HR = 0.426; 95% CI 0.195–0.930,
p
= 0.032). None of our patients suffered from herniorrhaphy-related complications.
Conclusion
RLEOH with a synchronous repair during PD catheter insertion confers clinical benefits in reducing the risk of developing IH after starting PD and the need for a metachronous repair. This is a safe and reasonable approach.
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