The objective of this study was to examine the effects of follicular cells on the in vitro development of porcine preantral follicles. In Experiment 1, one preantral follicle alone (Trt 1) was ...cocultured with a follicle of the same size with oocytes (Trt 2) or without oocytes (Trt 3). Preantral follicles cultured alone in vitro for 12 days had greater follicle diameters (1017±96
μm versus 706±69 or 793±72
μm,
P<0.05), growth rates (201±0.3 versus 103±0.2 or 128±0.2,
P<0.05) and oocyte survival rates (73% versus 48, or 25%,
P<0.05) than other groups. The inhibitory effects of follicle cells on the growth of preantral follicles and oocyte survival rates were not enhanced by the addition of oocytectomized preantral follicles (Experiment 2). Follicles were cocultured with different sources of follicular cells in other experiments. Coculture with cumulus cells enhanced oocyte survival compared to the control (without coculture) and mural follicular cell groups (Experiment 3). The growth and survival rates of oocytes collected from the group of follicles cocultured with cumulus cells from large antral follicles (>3
mm) were greater (
P<0.05) than those from small antral follicles (<3
mm), or than the control group (without cumulus cells, experiment 4). No significant differences in the follicular diameters (674±30
μm versus 638±33 and 655±28
μm) and growth rate (105% versus 94 and 105%) were observed among the preantral follicles of the different treatments (
P>0.05). Taken together, coculture with the cells from large antral follicles (>3
mm) exerted a significant positive effect on oocyte survival. The growth and oocyte survival of preantral follicle cocultured with the same size of follicles (with or without oocyte) were inhibited. Growth and survival rates of preantral follicles and oocytes are improved by coculturing them with the cumulus cells derived from larger antral follicles.
Acute exposure to bright light at night reduces the nocturnal decline of core body temperature (cBT) and inhibits melatonin secretion in men. Since inhibition of melatonin secretion by ...beta-adrenergic blockade reduces the nocturnal decline of cBT by 40% in women, experiments were performed to investigate whether the thermoregulatory effect of light is mediated by modifications of melatonin secretion in cycling women. Results show that the elevation of cBT induced by nocturnal exposure to bright light (3000 lux) can be reversed completely by circumventing the decline of serum melatonin levels with concurrent oral administration of melatonin. Our finding establishes melatonin as the mediator of the effect of light on cBT in women and provides a rationale for the use of orally administered melatonin as an aid in the reentrainment of the cBT rhythm in desynchronized conditions.
CT-guided transthoracic lung biopsy is becoming a widely accepted procedure for the diagnosis of pulmonary lesions. The rate of severe complications following such a procedure has been reported. Of ...these complications, air embolism is the most likely to be fatal. We report a case of right coronary air embolism resulting in myocardial infarction after a CT-guided percutaneous needle biopsy of the lung. The patient died from underlying malignant disease 4 months later.
Several kinases have been shown to phosphorylate tau protein at Ser-262, an important site involved in the regulation of the binding of tau to microtubules. In this study we compared the ...phosphorylation of tau at Ser-262 by CaMKII, PhK and PKA in vitro as determined by radioimmunoblots developed by the monoclonal antibody 12E8 which recognizes P-Ser-262 and P-Ser-356; and Ab-262, a polyclonal antibody which is specific to unphosphorylated Ser-262 in tau. We found that the phosphorylation at Ser-262 was several times more effective by CaMKII than PKA or PhK. Employing rat brain extract as a source of all brain kinases and KN-62, a specific inhibitor of CaMKII, we found that CaMKII accounts for ∼45% of phosphorylation at Ser-262. Furthermore, in rat brain slices kept metabolically active in oxygenated artificial CSF, phosphorylation of tau at Ser-262 was (i) increased up to 120% in the presence of bradykinin, a CaMKII activator, and (ii) inhibited by ∼35% in the presence of KN-62. Thus, CaMKII is a major tau Ser-262 kinase in mammalian brain.
This paper presents a procedure for estimating an accurate model of the CT imaging process including spectral effects. As raw projection data are typically unavailable to the end-user, we adopt a ...post-processing approach that utilizes the reconstructed images themselves. This approach includes errors from x-ray scatter and the nonidealities of the built-in soft tissue correction into the beam characteristics, which is crucial to beam hardening correction algorithms that are designed to be applied directly to CT reconstructed images. We formulate this approach as a quadratic programming problem and propose two different methods, dimension reduction and regularization, to overcome ill conditioning in the model. For the regularization method we use a statistical procedure, Cross Validation, to select the regularization parameter. We have constructed step-wedge phantoms to estimate the effective beam spectrum of a GE CT-I scanner. Using the derived spectrum, we computed the attenuation ratios for the wedge phantoms and found that the worst case modeling error is less than 3% of the corresponding attenuation ratio. We have also built two test (hybrid) phantoms to evaluate the effective spectrum. Based on these test phantoms, we have shown that the effective beam spectrum provides an accurate model for the CT imaging process. Last, we used a simple beam hardening correction experiment to demonstrate the effectiveness of the estimated beam profile for removing beam hardening artifacts. We hope that this estimation procedure will encourage more independent research on beam hardening corrections and will lead to the development of application-specific beam hardening correction algorithms.
This study tracked the individual criteria of four DSM-IV personality disorders-borderline, schizotypal, avoidant, and obsessive-compulsive personality disorders-and how they change over 2 years.
...This clinical sample of patients with personality disorders was derived from the Collaborative Longitudinal Personality Disorders Study and included all participants with borderline, schizotypal, avoidant, or obsessive-compulsive personality disorder for whom complete 24-month blind follow-up assessments were obtained (N=474). The authors identified and rank-ordered criteria for each of the four personality disorders by their variation in prevalence and changeability (remission) over time.
The most prevalent and least changeable criteria over 2 years were paranoid ideation and unusual experiences for schizotypal personality disorder, affective instability and anger for borderline personality disorder, feeling inadequate and feeling socially inept for avoidant personality disorder, and rigidity and problems delegating for obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. The least prevalent and most changeable criteria were odd behavior and constricted affect for schizotypal personality disorder, self-injury and behaviors defending against abandonment for borderline personality disorder, avoiding jobs that are interpersonal and avoiding potentially embarrassing situations for avoidant personality disorder, and miserly behaviors and strict moral behaviors for obsessive-compulsive personality disorder.
These patterns highlight that within personality disorders the relatively fixed criteria are more trait-like and attitudinal, whereas the relatively intermittent criteria are more behavioral and reactive. These patterns suggest that personality disorders are hybrids of traits and symptomatic behaviors and that the interaction of these elements over time helps determine diagnostic stability. These patterns may also inform criterion selection for DSM-V.
The attentional blink refers to a deficit in reporting a second target that follows a first target within a few hundred milliseconds, when both targets occur in a sequence of distractors shown ...serially at rates of about 10 items per second. In four experiments, phonological similarity of post-Target 1 distractors impaired dual target report within the interval in which the attentional blink occurs. Similarity of letter targets had a smaller, less reliable effect on performance. Phonological similarity of letter distractors did not affect single target identification (Experiment 3), but it continued to impair dual target report (Experiment 5), even when the targets belonged to a different category-namely, digits. The results demonstrated that, not only targets, but also distractors are encoded phonologically, despite the fact that distractors are irrelevant and never have to be reported.
Use of thermally treated waste biological sludge as dye absorbent Annadurai, G.; Juang, R.S.; Yen, P.S. ...
Advances in environmental research : an international journal of research in environmental science, engineering and technology,
05/2003, Letnik:
7, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The capacity of adsorbent recycled from microwave thermal treatment to remove a synthetic dye, Rhodamine 6G, from a water bath, was examined. The acidified, dewatered sludge was microwave heated for ...1–4 min. Batch adsorption tests were conducted on this sludge at various pH values and solution temperatures. Equilibrium of dye adsorption was obtained in 30 h. Three kinetic models—pseudo first-order, pseudo second-order and intra-particle diffusion—were applied to elucidate the adsorption kinetic data. Experimental results indicate that higher adsorption efficiency could be derived at higher pH/temperature levels. Moreover, the sample treated for 1 min by microwaves adsorbed more dye than did the sample so treated for 4 min. Sludge samples were also characterized to interpret the experimental findings. Energy cost analysis demonstrated the feasibility of the present microwave process.
The Collaborative Longitudinal Personality Disorders Study (CLPS; Gunderson et al., 2000) was developed to fill gaps in our understanding of the nature, course, and impact of personality disorders ...(PDs). Here, we review published findings to date, discuss their implications for current conceptualizations of PDs, and raise questions that warrant future consideration. We have found that PDs are more stable than major depressive disorder, but that meaningful improvements are possible and not uncommon. We have confirmed also that PDs constitute a significant public health problem, with respect to associated functional impairment, extensive treatment utilization, negative prognostic impact on major depressive disorder, and suicide risk. At the same time, we have demonstrated that dimensional models of PDs have clinical validity that categories do not, especially greater temporal stability. Furthermore, dimensional personality traits appear to be the foundation of behaviors described by many PD criteria. Taken together, our results lead us to hypothesize that PDs may be reconceptualized as hybrids of stable personality traits and intermittently expressed symptomatic behaviors.
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