Brain abscess caused by
Listeria monocytogenes
(LM) is a rare, yet serious condition with high mortality if not recognized and treated timely. We present a series of three cases of LM brain abscesses ...and describe their characteristic radiological appearances which can be considered very typical. LM abscesses frequently present as markedly irregular formations, revealing characteristic worm-like tubular pattern of chaotic curvilinear arrangement. Knowledge of this imaging pattern can be very helpful in early recognition of LM abscesses whose initial differential diagnosis can often be misleading initially.
The paper presents the result of experiments that were designed with the goal of revealing the association between texts published in online environments (Yahoo! Finance, Facebook, and Twitter) and ...changes in stock prices of the corresponding companies at a micro level. The association between lexicon detected sentiment and stock price movements was not confirmed. It was, however, possible to reveal and quantify such association with the application of machine learning-based classification. From the experiments it was obvious that the data preparation procedure had a substantial impact on the results. Thus, different stock price smoothing, lags between the release of documents and related stock price changes, five levels of a minimal stock price change, three different weighting schemes for structured document representation, and six classifiers were studied. It has been shown that at least part of the movement of stock prices is associated with the textual content if a proper combination of processing parameters is selected.
Abstract Objective To evaluate the prevalence of spoke-wheel pattern and typical symptoms of focal nodular hyperplasia (FNH) by means of dynamic contrast-enhanced ultrasonography (CEUS) in relation ...to lesion size. Methods Twenty-eight patients were included in the trial, in whom, based on the CEUS, we raised suspicion of hypervascularized liver lesion; there were 30 lesions altogether. The final diagnosis of FNH was verified by means of CT, MRI or lesion biopsy. Majority of patients (26) were females, compared to 2 male, with average age of 33.3 years. Average lesion size was 45.6 mm. Besides the ultrasound examination, we used also “blood pool” ultrasound contrast agent of second generation, sulphur hexafluoride (BR1); we evaluated enhancement of the lesion until the late stage—within 5 min from application. Results In lesions larger than 3 cm ( n = 20), stellate vascular enhancement was found in 19 cases (95.0%) early in arterial phase. As for lesions smaller than 3 cm ( n = 10), spoke-wheel pattern was observed only in 3 cases (30%) and lesions smaller than 2 cm practically did not show this phenomenon at all ( n = 1; 17%). Generally, symptom of spoke-wheel pattern was observed in 22 cases, i.e. in 73.3%. In total, central scar was present in 63.3% ( n = 19) of cases. In lesions larger than 3 cm, it was present in 85.0% ( n = 17), in lesions smaller than 3 cm in 20% ( n = 2). Conclusion Contrast-enhanced ultrasonography can be the final diagnostic method for FNH larger than 3 cm which has typical spoke-wheel vessel structure on CEUS. If this phenomenon is not present and the central scar is not visible, specific diagnosis of FNH cannot be based solely on CEUS findings.
Customers of various services are often invited to type a summarizing review via an Internet portal. Such reviews, written in natural languages, are typically unstructured, giving also a numeric ...evaluation within the scale “good” and “bad.” The more reviews, the better feedback can be acquired for improving the service. However, after accumulating massive data, the non-linearly growing processing complexity may exceed the computational abilities to analyze the text contents. Decision tree inducers like c5 can reveal understandable knowledge from data but they need the data as a whole. This article describes an application of windowing, which is a technique for generating dataset subsamples that provide enough information for an inducer to train a classifier and get results similar to those achieved by training a model from the entire dataset. The windowing results, significantly reducing the complexity of the learning problem, are demonstrated using hundreds of thousands reviews written in English by hotel-service customers. A user obtains knowledge represented by significant words. The results show classification accuracy errors, training and testing time, tree sizes, and words relevant for the review meaning in dependence on the training subsample size. Finally, a method of suitable training-set size estimation is suggested.
The objective is to study the effect of after-birth oral colonization by a probiotic Escherichia coli strain in infants of allergic mothers to reduce occurrence of allergy later in life.
In a ...controlled clinical trial, 158 infants were randomly divided into groups of (i) 56 colonized infants of allergic mothers, (ii) 57 control infants of allergic mothers, and (iii) 45 control infants of healthy mothers. Incidence rates of bacterial pathogens in stool and levels of anti-E. coli immunoglobulins and some cytokines in serum were determined, and secretory IgA was monitored in stool filtrates and maternal milk. Clinical check-ups of infants aged 4 days, 3 and 6 months, 2, 3 and 5 years were carried out and clinical symptoms of allergy were monitored. One milliliter of the probiotic E. coli strain was administered to infants of allergic mothers at first within 48 h after birth and subsequently 3 times a week over a period of 4 weeks. Control infants of allergic and healthy mothers were monitored in these intervals as well.
Presence of the E. coli strain was monitored in stool samples throughout the study. At the conclusion of the study, allergy symptoms were found in 14 infants of control allergic mothers, 7 infants of healthy mothers, and in 2 colonized infants of allergic mothers. Colonization affected levels of several cytokines and specific anti-E. coli antibodies.
After birth, targeted colonization of the intestine by a probiotic E. coli strain can be an effective means of allergy prevention in infants of allergic mothers.
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