Design and In Vivo Verification of a CMOS Bone-Guided Cochlear Implant Microsystem.

Objective: To develop and verify a CMOS bone-guided cochlear implant (BGCI) microsystem with electrodes placed on the bone surface of the cochlea and the outside of round window for treating high-frequency hearing loss.

Methods: The BGCI microsystem consists of an external unit and an implanted unit. The external system-on-chip is designed to process acoustic signals through an acquisition circuit and an acoustic DSP processor to generate stimulation patterns and commands that are transmitted to the implanted unit through a 13.

Regulated and Functional Expression of the Corepressor MTA3 in Rodent Testis.

Metastasis-associated protein (MTA)3 is a subunit of the Mi-2/nucleosome remodeling and deacetylase protein complex, with relevant roles in the regulation of cancerous epithelial to mesenchymal transition in an estrogen-dependent manner, recently involved in the modulation of different physiological processes. Although these findings connect MTA3 expression with hormonal signaling in various systems, little is known about whether this relationship is conserved in testis where hormonal action is intensive. We, therefore, document here for the first time the expression of Mta3/MTA3 in mammalian testes, where MTA3 protein was identified mainly in interstitial Leydig cells.

A microfabricated coil for implantable applications of magnetic spinal cord stimulation.

In this paper, a microfabricated inductive coil comprising of 125-turn coil windings and a MnZn-based magnetic core in a volume of 200 mm(3) is presented for the magnetic neural stimulation in a spinal cord. The coil winding with the parallel-linkage design instead of the typical serial-linkage one is proposed not only to provide better design flexibility to the current mode driving circuit but also to simplify the fabrication process of the 3-D inductive coil, which can further advance the coil miniaturization. Experimental results show the microcoil with a 1.

The myocardial protective effects of a moderate-potassium blood cardioplegia in pediatric cardiac surgery: a randomized controlled trial.

Background: We investigated the myocardial protective effect of a moderate-potassium cold blood cardioplegic solution (K+, 10 mmol/L) in pediatric cardiac surgery.

Methods: Sixty-eight pediatric patients with congenital heart disease and undergoing open heart surgery with cardiopulmonary bypass were randomly allocated to the high potassium (HP [K+, 20 mmol/L, n=31]) cold blood cardioplegia group or the moderate potassium (MP [K+, 10 mmol/L, n=37]) cold blood cardioplegia group. Heart arresting time, rhythm recovery time, mechanical ventilation time, inotropic drug use in the intensive care unit, perioperative serum cardiac troponin I concentrations, morbidities, and mortalities were compared between the two groups.

Different neuroprotection and therapeutic time windows by two specific diazepam regimens on retinal ganglion cells after optic nerve transection in adult rats.

Purpose: To compare neuroprotection and therapeutic time windows of two diazepam regimens on retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) after rat optic nerve transection (ONT).

Methods: Adult rats received initial intraperitoneal diazepam injections 30 minutes before left ONT, followed by daily diazepam (regimen-A) or every 8 hours for 3 days (regimen-B) until they were killed at day 7 or 14. Initial diazepam in regimen-A and regimen-B was delayed to 3, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12 and 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12 hours after ONT and these animals survived for 7 days.

[Gene expression of Notch1 and Jagged1 in children with acute leukemia].

Objective: To study the gene expression of Notch1 and Jagged1 in children with acute leukemia (AL) and their possible roles in the pathogenesis of AL.

Methods: Mononuclear cells from bone marrow or peripheral blood of 47 children with AL and 20 controls (normal children or children with nonmalignant hematologic disease) were collected from February 2009 to July 2011. A two-step method to semi-quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) was used to detect the gene expression of Notch1 and Jagged1.

[Expression of cdx2 gene in pediatric patients with leukemia and its clinical significance].

This study was aimed to investigate the expression of cdx2 gene in pediatric patients with acute leukemia and its clinical implication. The bone marrow and peripheral blood were collected from 33 newly diagnosed pediatric patients with acute leukemia, the cdx2 gene expression in each AL subtypes and normal controls was detected by RT-PCR, the relationship between cdx2 expression and response to treatment was observed. The results showed that the expression of cdx2 was positive in 25 out of 30 AL cases (83.

Evidence for heterogeneity of astrocyte de-differentiation in vitro: astrocytes transform into intermediate precursor cells following induction of ACM from scratch-insulted astrocytes.

Our previous study definitely demonstrated that the mature astrocytes could undergo a de-differentiation process and further transform into pluripotential neural stem cells (NSCs), which might well arise from the effect of diffusible factors released from scratch-insulted astrocytes. However, these neurospheres passaged from one neurosphere-derived from de-differentiated astrocytes possessed a completely distinct characteristic in the differentiation behavior, namely heterogeneity of differentiation. The heterogeneity in cell differentiation has become a crucial but elusive issue.

[Genetic diversity of human Parvovirus B19 VP1 unique region].

Objective: Human Parvovirus B19 (HPV B19) is a small (23 nm), non-enveloped DNA virus found in 1974. It has been proved that HPV B19 is associated with a variety of childhood diseases, such as erythema infectious, transient aplastic crisis, aplastic anemia, idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura and arthropathy, etc. There have been no any effective vaccines to prevent HPV B19 infection so far.