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S. googdbody and L. culveri, the two species from most saline environments (marine/estuarine), showed higher CAA than N. fluviatilis, which, in turn, displayed a hyperosmotic gradient to water of salinity 15. Cells from S. goodbody and L. culveri showed regulatory volume decrease upon swelling, with S. goodbody showing the largest volume increase. As in other more studied marine invertebrate groups, polychaetes also show variability in their osmoregulatory physiology, related to distinct saline challenges faced in their coastal habitats. © 2020 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Individuals that inhabit broad elevational ranges may experience unique environmental challenges. Because temperature decreases with increased elevation the ectotherms living at high elevations have to manage limited activity time and high thermoregulatory effort. The resting metabolic rate (RMR) of a postabsorptive animal is related to its total energy requirements as well as many other fitness traits. Mesquite lizards (Sceloporus grammicus, Wiegmann 1828) living on La Malinche Volcano, Mexico inhabit a wide elevational range with some populations apparently thriving above the tree line. We measured the RMR of lizards from different elevations (i.e., 2600 m, 3200 m, and 4100 m) at four ecologically relevant temperatures (i.e., 15, 25, 30, and 35°C) and found that RMR of mesquite lizards increased with temperature and body mass. More importantly, lizards from the high-elevation population had mass specific RMR that was higher at all temperatures. While the higher RMRs of high-elevation populations imply higher metabolic costs at a given temperature these lizards were also smaller. Both of these traits may allow these high elevation populations to thrive in the face of the thermal challenges imposed by their environment. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.In medical image processing, image fusion is the process of combining complementary information from different or multimodality images to obtain an informative fused image in order to improve clinical diagnostic accuracy. In this paper, we propose a two-stage fusion framework for computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance (MR) images. First, the intensity and geometric structure features in both CT and MR images are extracted by the saliency detection method and structure tensor, respectively, and an initial fused image is obtained. Then, the initial fused image is optimized by a variational model which contains a fidelity term and a regularization term. The fidelity term is to retain the intensity of the initial fused image, and the regularization term is to constrain the gradient information of the fused image to approximate the MR image. The primal-dual algorithm is proposed to solve the variational problem. The proposed method is applied on five pairs of clinical medical CT and MR-T1\MR-T2 images, and the comparison metrics SF, MI, Q A B / F , Q W , and VIFF are calculated for assessment. Compared with seven state-of-the-art methods, the proposed method shows a comprehensive advantage in preserving the salient intensity features, as well as texture structure information, not only in visual effects but also in objective assessments. © 2020 The Authors. Journal of Applied Clinical Medical Physics published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of American Association of Physicists in Medicine.Two novel HLA alleles were detected using two next generation sequencing technologies. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.INTRODUCTION Relationship between bone mineral density (BMD) and physical function has been revealed in general population and various diseases. However, there is lack of research investigating the correlation between BMD and respiratory function, one of few measurable physical parameters in advanced Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) patients. OBJECTIVE The purpose of the study is to determine whether pulmonary function parameters, including respiratory muscle strength is related to BMD. selleck chemicals DESIGN Retrospective observational study SETTING A tertiary university hospital PATIENTS DMD patients who were over 20 years of age, nonambulatory, and supported by mechanical ventilators. INTERVENTIONS The patients' age, weight, and pulmonary function as well as the BMD of the first and the fourth lumbar vertebra were assessed. Pulmonary function includes forced vital capacity (FVC), unassisted and assisted peak cough flow (UPCF and APCF), maximal expiratory pressure (MEP), and maximal inspiratory pressure (MIP). OUTCOME MEASURES A bivariate correlation for BMD and other pulmonary parameters was calculated, and hierarchical regression analysis was used to determine predictors of spine Z-score. RESULTS It was observed that the decrease in the spine BMD was not significantly correlated with age. However, the body mass index (BMI) and all parameters of pulmonary function were correlated with BMD. Partial correlation analysis adjusted by BMI showed that UPCF and APCF were powerful predictors of spine BMD. CONCLUSIONS The BMD of the lumbar spine correlated with BMI and PCF in DMD patients at an advanced stage. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.The aim of this study was to explore the clinical characteristics and treatment of acquired thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP). The clinical manifestations, laboratory findings, differential diagnoses, therapeutic methods, and prognosis of 55 patients with acquired TTP were retrospectively analyzed. Among the 55 TTP patients, 17 were males and 38 were females, with a mean age of 40 ± 15 years. Twenty-one patients had the Triad syndrome, which included neurological syndromes, microangiopathic hemolytic anemia, and thrombocytopenia. Twenty-three patients had the Quinary syndrome, which included fever, microangiopathic hemolytic anemia, thrombocytopenia, renal insufficiency, and neurological symptoms. Twenty-eight patients received the measurement for a disintegrin and metalloprotease with a thrombospondin type 1 motif, member 13 (ADAMTS13) activity and 23 patients had less then 10% of the normal range. ADAMTS13 inhibitor was tested in 20 patients and was positive in 18 patients. Both ADAMTS13 activity and ADAMTS13 inhibitor were examined in 20 patients and 90% of the patients showed double positive results.