Incidence of idiopathic syrinx in pediatric patients diagnosed with VACTERL association.

Objective: While the association of a syrinx with a tethered spinal cord in the context of VACTERL (vertebral defects [V], imperforate anus or anal atresia [A], cardiac malformations [C], tracheoesophageal defects [T] with or without esophageal atresia [E], renal anomalies [R], and limb defects [L]) association is known, the incidence of idiopathic syrinxes among these patients has not previously been reported. The authors aimed to characterize the incidence of syrinxes and the pattern of congenital anomalies in pediatric patients with VACTERL association, with a specific focus on the presence of idiopathic syrinxes in this population.

Methods: An institutional database was retrospectively queried for all pediatric patients with VACTERL association.

Can GPT-3.5 generate and code discharge summaries?

Objectives: The aim of this study was to investigate GPT-3.5 in generating and coding medical documents with International Classification of Diseases (ICD)-10 codes for data augmentation on low-resource labels.

Materials And Methods: Employing GPT-3.

Educational Interventions for Rapid Response Team Members: A Narrative Literature Review.

Background: Research continues to be conducted on rapid response systems as patient outcomes associated with rapid response team activations are still not consistently showing benefit. One particular area of focus that is a growing area is the literature regarding training and education for individual team members of the rapid response team.

Objective: The purpose of this narrative review was to describe the current literature regarding educational interventions for rapid response team members.

Assessment of abdominal lesions in pigs with wounded umbilical outpouchings transported to slaughter.

Background: Umbilical outpouchings (UOs) in pigs are of welfare and production concern in Danish pig herds. One of the challenges is the transportation of these animals due to the size of the UOs and ulcerations on them. With certain precautions and an approval from a veterinarian, pigs with UOs may be transported, however, UOs are associated with several intra-abdominal lesions, e.

Discovery of Streptomyces species CS-62, a novel producer of the Acinetobacter baumannii selective antibiotic factumycin.

Narrow-spectrum antibiotics are of great interest given their ability to spare the microbiome and decrease widespread antibiotic resistance compared to broad-spectrum antibiotics. Herein, we screened an in-house library of Actinobacteria strains for selective activity against Acinetobacter baumannii and successfully identified Streptomyces sp. CS-62 as a producer of a natural product with this valuable activity.

Warming temperatures exacerbate effects of microplastics in a widespread zooplankton species.

The emergence of microplastics as a global contaminant of concern has coincided with climate change induced temperature warming in aquatic ecosystems. Warmer temperatures have been previously demonstrated to increase the toxicity of certain contaminants, but it is currently unclear if microplastics are similarly affected by temperature. As aquatic organisms simultaneously face microplastic pollution and both increasing and variable temperatures, understanding how temperature affects microplastic toxicity is pertinent in this era of human-induced global change.

A unidirectional mapping of ICD-8 to ICD-10 codes, for harmonized longitudinal analysis of diseases.

Periodic revisions of the international classification of diseases (ICD) ensure that the classification reflects new practices and knowledge; however, this complicates retrospective research as diagnoses are coded in different versions. For longitudinal disease trajectory studies, a crosswalk is an essential tool and a comprehensive mapping between ICD-8 and ICD-10 has until now been lacking. In this study, we map all ICD-8 morbidity codes to ICD-10 in the expanded Danish ICD version.

A Review of Bicarbonate Use in Common Clinical Scenarios.

Background: The use of sodium bicarbonate to treat metabolic acidosis is intuitive, yet data suggest that not all patients benefit from this therapy.

Objective: In this narrative review, we describe the physiology behind commonly encountered nontoxicologic causes of metabolic acidosis, highlight potential harm from the indiscriminate administration of sodium bicarbonate in certain scenarios, and provide evidence-based recommendations to assist emergency physicians in the rational use of sodium bicarbonate.

Discussion: Sodium bicarbonate can be administered as a hypertonic push, as a resuscitation fluid, or as an infusion.

Impacts of fast production of afucosylated antibodies and Fc mutants in ExpiCHO-S™ for enhancing FcγRIIIa binding and NK cell activation.

This study has employed mammalian transient expression systems to generate afucosylated antibodies and antibody Fc mutants for rapid candidate screening in discovery and early development. While chemical treatment with the fucose analogue 2-fluoro-peracetyl-fucose during transient expression only partially produced antibodies with afucosylated N-glycans, the genetic inactivation of the FUT8 gene in ExpiCHO-S™ by CRISPR/Cas9 enabled the transient production of fully afucosylated antibodies. Human IgG and murine IgG generated by the ExpiCHOfut8KO cell line possessed a 8-to-11-fold enhanced FcγRIIIa binding activity in comparison with those produced by ExpiCHO-S™.

Pulsatile tympanic membrane displacement is associated with cognitive score in healthy subjects.

To test the hypothesis that pulsing of intracranial pressure has an association with cognition, we measured cognitive score and pulsing of the tympanic membrane in 290 healthy subjects. This hypothesis was formed on the assumptions that large intracranial pressure pulses impair cognitive performance and tympanic membrane pulses reflect intracranial pressure pulses. 290 healthy subjects, aged 20-80 years, completed the Montreal Cognitive Assessment Test.

Personal and household PM and black carbon exposure measures and respiratory symptoms in 8 low- and middle-income countries.

Background: Household air pollution (HAP) from cooking with solid fuels has been associated with adverse respiratory effects, but most studies use surveys of fuel use to define HAP exposure, rather than on actual air pollution exposure measurements.

Objective: To examine associations between household and personal fine particulate matter (PM) and black carbon (BC) measures and respiratory symptoms.

Methods: As part of the Prospective Urban and Rural Epidemiology Air Pollution study, we analyzed 48-h household and personal PM and BC measurements for 870 individuals using different cooking fuels from 62 communities in 8 countries (Bangladesh, Chile, China, Colombia, India, Pakistan, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe).

A custom nasal obturator for velopharyngeal dysfunction: A dental technique.

Removable nasal obturators provide a treatment option for a range of patients presenting with velopharyngeal dysfunction without eliminating the possibility for future surgery, speech therapy, or the provision of other devices. The presented technique describes the fabrication of a 1-piece silicone nasal obturator to reduce hypernasality and nasal airflow errors without causing significant hyponasality. The obturator has minimal visibility and minimal risk of inhalation.

Multinational prediction of household and personal exposure to fine particulate matter (PM) in the PURE cohort study.

Introduction: Use of polluting cooking fuels generates household air pollution (HAP) containing health-damaging levels of fine particulate matter (PM). Many global epidemiological studies rely on categorical HAP exposure indicators, which are poor surrogates of measured PM levels. To quantitatively characterize HAP levels on a large scale, a multinational measurement campaign was leveraged to develop household and personal PM exposure models.

Measuring and predicting personal and household Black Carbon levels from 88 communities in eight countries.

Black Carbon (BC) is an important component of household air pollution (HAP) in low- and middle- income countries (LMICs), but levels and drivers of exposure are poorly understood. As part of the Prospective Urban and Rural Epidemiological (PURE) study, we analyzed 48-hour BC measurements for 1187 individual and 2242 household samples from 88 communities in 8 LMICs (Bangladesh, Chile, China, Colombia, India, Pakistan, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe). Light absorbance (10 m) of collected PM filters, a proxy for BC concentrations, was calculated via an image-based reflectance method.

Estimating confidence intervals for cerebral autoregulation: a parametric bootstrap approach.

Cerebral autoregulation (CA) refers to the ability of the brain vasculature to control blood flow in the face of changing blood pressure. One of the methods commonly used to assess cerebral autoregulation, especially in participants at rest, is the analysis of phase derived from transfer function analysis (TFA), relating arterial blood pressure (ABP) to cerebral blood flow (CBF). This and other indexes of CA can provide consistent results when comparing groups of subjects (e.

Speech Outcomes Following Orticochea Pharyngoplasty in Patients With History of Cleft Palate and Noncleft Velopharyngeal Dysfunction.

Objective: To report speech outcomes following Orticochea pharyngoplasty in 43 patients with cleft palate and noncleft velopharyngeal dysfunction.

Design: A retrospective surgical audit of patients undergoing Orticochea pharyngoplasty between 2004 and 2012, with speech as a primary outcome measure.

Setting: Patients known to a regional UK cleft center.

Probing the Solar Meridional Circulation Using Fourier Legendre Decomposition.

We apply the helioseismic methodology of Fourier Legendre decomposition to 88 months of Dopplergrams obtained by the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) as the basis of inferring the depth variation of the mean meridional flow, as averaged between 20° and 60° latitude and in time, in both the northern and southern hemispheres. We develop and apply control procedures designed to assess and remove center-to-limb artifacts using measurements obtained by performing the analysis with respect to artificial poles at the east and west limbs. Forward modeling is carried out using sensitivity functions proportional to the mode kinetic energy density to evaluate the consistency of the corrected frequency shifts with models of the depth variation of the meridional circulation in the top half of the convection zone.

Average motion of emerging solar active region polarities: II. Joy's law.

Context: The tilt of solar active regions described by Joy's law is essential for converting a toroidal field to a poloidal field in Babcock-Leighton dynamo models. In thin flux tube models the Coriolis force causes what we observe as Joy's law, acting on east-west flows as they rise towards the surface.

Aims: Our goal is to measure the evolution of the average tilt angle of hundreds of active regions as they emerge, so that we can constrain the origins of Joy's law.

Historically Black Schools of Medicine Radiology Residency Programs: Contributions and Lessons Learned.

Introduction: Black radiologists remain significantly underrepresented in the radiology workforce, despite a 1973 plea by Black radiologists of the National Medical Association to increase training programs for minority radiologists.

Objective: The authors provide a qualitative narrative that highlights the radiology residency programs of three historically Black schools of medicine (HBSOM) in the U.S.

A vascular subtraction method for improving the variability of evoked tympanic membrane displacement measurements.

Objective: Evoked tympanic membrane displacement (TMD) measurements show a correlation with intracranial pressure (ICP). Attempts to use these measurements for non-invasive monitoring of ICP in patients have been limited by high measurement variability. Pulsing of the tympanic membrane at the cardiac frequency has been shown to be a significant source of the variability.

Imidazoline ligand BU224 reverses cognitive deficits, reduces microgliosis and enhances synaptic connectivity in a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease.

Background And Purpose: Activation of type 2 imidazoline receptors has been shown to exhibit neuroprotective properties including anti-apoptotic and anti-inflammatory effects, suggesting a potential therapeutic value in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Here, we explored the effects of the imidazoline-2 ligand BU224 in a model of amyloidosis.

Experimental Approach: Six-month-old female transgenic 5XFAD and wild-type (WT) mice were treated intraperitoneally with 5-mg·kg BU224 or vehicle twice a day for 10 days.