Mcphersondohn1519

OBJECTIVE Spinal cord injury (SCI) disrupts the communication between brain and body parts innervated from below-injury spinal segments, but rarely results in complete anatomical transection of the spinal cord. The aim of this study was to investigate residual somatosensory conduction in clinically complete SCI, to corroborate the concept of sensory discomplete SCI. METHODS We used fMRI with a somatosensory protocol in which blinded and randomized tactile and nociceptive stimulation was applied on both legs (below-injury level) and one arm (above-injury level) in eleven participants with chronic complete SCI. check details The experimental design accounts for possible confounding mechanical (e.g. vibration) and cortico-cortical top-down mechanisms (e.g. attention/expectation). RESULTS Somatosensory stimulation on below-level insensate body regions activated the somatotopically corresponding part of the contralateral primary somatosensory cortex in six out of eleven participants. CONCLUSIONS Our results represent afferent-driven cortical activation through preserved somatosensory connections to the brain in a subgroup of participants with clinically complete SCI, i.e. sensory discomplete SCI. SIGNIFICANCE Identifying patients with residual somatosensory connections might open the door for new rehabilitative and restorative strategies as well as inform research on SCI-related conditions such as neuropathic pain and spasticity. OBJECTIVE To investigate the clinical and EEG features of Encephalopathy with Status Epilepticus during slow Sleep (ESES) related to CNKSR2 pathogenic variants. METHODS Detailed clinical history, repeated wakefulness/overnight sleep EEGs, brain MRI were collected in five patients, including one female, with CNKSR2-related ESES. RESULTS Neurodevelopment in infancy was normal in two patients, delayed in three. Epilepsy onset (age range 2-6 years) was associated with appearance or aggravation of cognitive impairment, language regression and/or behavioral disorders. Worsening of epilepsy and of cognitive/behavioral disturbances paralleled by enhancement of non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep-related, frontally predominant, EEG epileptic discharges [spike-wave-index (SWI) range 60-96%] was consistent with ESES. In three patients, episodes of absence status epilepticus or aggravation of atypical absences occurred, in this latter case associated with striking increment of awake SWI. Speech/oro-motor dyspraxia was diagnosed in four patients. In two patients, long-term follow-up showed epilepsy remission and persistence of mild/moderate cognitive disorders and behavioral disturbances into adulthood. CONCLUSIONS Novel findings of our study are occurrence also in females, normal neurodevelopment before epilepsy onset, epilepsy aggravation associated with enhanced awake SWI, mild/moderate evolution in adulthood and language disorder due to speech/oro-motor dyspraxia. SIGNIFICANCE Our findings expand the phenotypic spectrum of CNKSR2-related ESES. OBJECTIVE The functional connectivity of the brain in chronic pancreatitis (CP) remains unknown. This study aimed to investigate functional connectivity in CP patients using resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and explore the associations to clinical parameters and altered cerebral metabolites. METHODS Seed-based and ROI-to-ROI analyses were performed to assess connectivity within and between the default mode network (DMN) and salience network (SN). Additionally, functional connectivity in these networks were investigated in relation to clinical parameters (CP etiology, pain, medication, etc.) and cerebral glutamate/creatine level in the anterior cingulate cortex. RESULTS Thirty CP patients and 23 healthy controls were analyzed. CP patients showed hyper-connectivity in DMN and SN as compared to healthy controls. Furthermore, CP patients had reduced anti-correlated functional connectivity between DMN and SN (all P ≤ 0.009). The altered DMN connectivity correlated to glutamate/creatine level (r = 0.503, P = 0.020) in patients with pain, but not to the clinical parameters. CONCLUSIONS CP patients had altered functional connectivity within and between brain networks. Altered DMN functional connectivity had an association to cerebral metabolic changes. SIGNIFICANCE Altered functional connectivity in CP share similarities with other chronic pain conditions, and support our understanding of altered brain circuitry associated with the CP disease. In this work, in-syringe membrane solid-phase extraction (MSPE) device was fabricated for the on-site sampling of sulfamethoxazole (SMX) in food samples followed by solid-phase fluorescence spectra analysis. The samples and fluorescamine (FA) were added to a syringe for derivation. Then, the derivative of SMX was extracted by a membrane in the syringe SPE device. Subsequently, the derivative on the membrane was measured immediately without additional elution procedure. The method was successfully applied in plasma, milk, and egg samples for the trace SMX detection, with the recovery of 98%-102%, RSDs from 1% to 6%. Compared with liquid chromatography, direct detection of the concentrated analyte significantly improved the sensitivity. Moreover, fluorescamine made it unnecessary to separate SMX from the interference. Consequently, it was a time-saving, low-cost, and easy-operation method, which demonstrated the potential of in-syringe SPE as a promising candidate for on-site analysis. The increase in coffee consumption has led to increased production of coffee waste. Methods to recycle coffee waste are constantly being researched. Coffee powder is a porous material that can effectively be used to absorb sound. In this study, sound-absorbing panels were developed using coffee waste combined with resin. A sound absorption characterization of the new material was performed. Then, the noise reduction potential using coffee-waste sound absorbers was investigated in cafés. A café has several noise sources, such as coffee machines, music, and the voices of people. The noise reduction effect was evaluated using the ODEON simulation software together with the improvement in both the clarity and reverberation time in a case study café. In the investigated room, the acoustic definition (D50) increased up to 0.8, while the reverberation time (RT) reduced to 0.6 s. The results of this study demonstrate that the noise generated in the café was reduced by recycling the coffee waste produced as a by-product in the same building. Finally, this study presents a new construction material manufactured through coffee waste that is in turn applied to cafés where the coffee waste itself is produced. In artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) the toxic metal mercury is used for gold extraction. The objective of this cross-sectional study was to assess mercury concentrations in urine and blood and mercury-related symptoms of participants identifying themselves as miners from Kadoma and Shurugwi, Zimbabwe. Moreover, we aimed to explore possible risk factors influencing mercury body burden. In 2019, urine and blood samples of 207 participants were collected and analyzed for mercury using atomic absorption spectroscopy. All participants answered questions regarding their exposure risks. The median urine mercury value was 4.75 μg/L with a maximum of 612 μg/L. Median mercury concentration in creatinine corrected urine values was 3.98 μg/g with a maximum value of 478 μg/g. The median blood mercury value was 2.70 μg/L with a maximum of 167 μg/L. Correlations between exposure risks factors such as the lack of retort use and elevated mercury values were demonstrated. ASGM is very common in Zimbabwe. Thus, mercury exposure is a major occupational health risk for miners. Moreover, this study emphasizes the impact of exposure risk factors on the mercury body burden. A laboratory bioassay was conducted to investigate the ecotoxicity of a chromium-enriched superfood, Spirulina platensis, on the meiofauna collected from the Ghar El Melh lagoon, Tunisia. After 1 month of exposure, the abundances of meiobenthic taxa and the taxonomic and morpho-functional diversity of nematodes showed significant differences between the Spirulina and Spirulina + chromium groups. The nematodes were more tolerant of all types of stressors compared to harpacticoids, polychaetes, and oligochaetes, and the lowest taxonomic and morpho-functional diversity of nematodes was observed in the highest sedimentary concentration of S. platensis (50% DW). The mixed treatments may have been richer in micro-habitats and subject to low selective pressure, thereby hosting nematodes with a wide range of adaptations. The responses of the nematode species differed depending on their functional traits. Spirulina enriched with chromium induced two responses for the same feeding group high toxicity for Daptonema fallax and low toxicity for two Theristus species (T. flevensis and T. modicus). The ecotoxicity of the Spirulina/chromium mixtures were lower than that of Spirulina alone, suggesting mutual neutralization between these two elements. The association between functional traits and taxonomic diversity showed that the effects of the mixtures were not additive and that one of the stressors camouflaged the effect of the other. Our findings should encourage the commercialization of chromium-enriched S. platensis owing to its lower ecotoxicity than Spirulina alone. Parkinson's disease (PD) is a long-term degenerative disease that primarily affects the motor system of the central nervous system. This disease is difficult to diagnose and is one of the common diseases in the public. In this paper, we have proposed a novel data sampling method for the classification of Parkinson disease based on the acoustic features from the speech signals. In the proposed data sampling method, the one against all (OGA) has been used to divide the dataset into five equal parts. With applying the OGA to the PD dataset having two classes (healthy and Parkinson disease), the minority and majority classes have been obtained. First of all, for healthy class in the dataset (first case), five equal partitions have been composed and then for PD class in the dataset (second case), five equal partitions have been composed. To classify the these all data partitions, we have used three different classifiers including the weighted k-NN (nearest neighbor), Logistic Regression (LR), and support vector maof classifier algorithms as the data pre-processing method in the classification of Parkinson's disease with acoustic features. BACKGROUND After approximately 24 weeks of gestation, human cutaneous wounds and incisions heal by scar formation. Continued or unregulated stimulation of tissue fibroblasts is thought to lead to an activated state with ongoing collagen deposition resulting in a visible hypertrophic scar. There is evidence that mechanical forces as sensed by fibroblasts lead to downstream events such as excessive extracellular matrix deposition. Mechanical forces acting on the wound fibroblast are exerted by underlying muscles as well as intrinsic forces found in the dermal component of the surrounding skin. Under static conditions, collagen is oriented parallel to the direction of strain. In an effort to minimize resultant scar formation various and often contradictory lines of non-extension, lines of least tension, have been described for planning optimal surgical incisions. HYPOTHESIS We hypothesize that it is possible to avoid longitudinal stretch on incisions and thereby minimize resultant pathologic scars if defined anatomical considerations are respected.