Efficacy of LSVT LOUD on Phonatory Control and Voice Quality in Patients with Primary Progressive Apraxia of Speech: Case Studies.

Primary progressive apraxia of speech (PPAOS) is a neurodegenerative syndrome characterized by the progressive and initially isolated or predominant onset of difficulties in the planning/programming of movements necessary for speech production and can be accompanied by dysarthria. To date, no study has used an evidence-based treatment to address phonation control in patients with PPAOS. The aim of this study was to evaluate the feasibility and efficacy of LSVT LOUD as a treatment for phonatory control in speakers with PPAOS.

A versatile 2A peptide-based strategy for ectopic expression and endogenous gene tagging in .

Nearly all expression vectors currently available for were conceived to produce a single primary transcript containing the genes of interest along with those that confer antibiotic resistance. However, since each messenger RNA (mRNA) matures separately, drug selection will only guarantee the expression of those derived from the selectable marker. Therefore, commonly a considerable fraction of the cells recovered after selection with these expression vectors, although resistant do not express the protein of interest.

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis-Bulbar Dysfunction Index-Remote: Test-Retest and Interrater Reliability of Candidate Items.

Purpose: The primary aim of this study was to establish the reliability of candidate items as a step in the development of the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis-Bulbar Dysfunction Index-Remote (ALS-BDI-Remote), a novel tool being developed for the detection and monitoring of bulbar signs and symptoms in remote settings.

Method: The set of candidate items included 40 items covering three domains: cranial nerve examination, auditory-perceptual evaluation, and functional assessment. Forty-eight participants diagnosed with ALS and exhibiting a range of bulbar disease severity were included.

Speech timing and monosyllabic diadochokinesis measures in the assessment of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in Canadian French.

Purpose: The primary objective of this study was to determine if speech and pause measures obtained using a passage reading task and timing measures from a monosyllabic diadochokinesis (DDK) task differ across speakers of Canadian French diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) presenting with and without bulbar symptoms, and healthy controls. The secondary objective was to determine if these measures can reflect the severity of bulbar symptoms.

Method: A total of 29 Canadian French speakers with ALS (classified as bulbar symptomatic [ = 14] or pre-symptomatic [ = 15]) and 17 age-matched healthy controls completed a passage reading task and a monosyllabic DDK task (/pa/ and /ta/), for up to three follow-up visits.

3D Video Tracking Technology in the Assessment of Orofacial Impairments in Neurological Disease: Clinical Validation.

Purpose: This study sought to determine whether clinically interpretable kinematic features extracted automatically from three-dimensional (3D) videos were correlated with corresponding perceptual clinical orofacial ratings in individuals with orofacial impairments due to neurological disorders.

Method: 45 participants (19 diagnosed with motor neuron diseases [MNDs] and 26 poststroke) performed two nonspeech tasks (mouth opening and lip spreading) and one speech task (repetition of a sentence "Buy Bobby a Puppy") while being video-recorded in a standardized lab setting. The color video recordings of participants were assessed by an expert clinician-a speech language pathologist-on the severity of three orofacial measures: symmetry, range of motion (ROM), and speed.

DNA Damage-Induced RNAPII Degradation and Its Consequences in Gene Expression.

RPB1, the major and catalytic subunit of human RNA Polymerase II (RNAPII), is specifically degraded by the ubiquitin-proteasome system upon induction of DNA damage by different agents, such as ultraviolet (UV) light. The "last resort" model of RNAPII degradation states that a persistently stalled RNAPII is degraded at the site of the DNA lesion in order to facilitate access to Nucleotide Excision Repair (NER) factors, thereby promoting repair in template strands of active genes. Recent identification and mutation of the lysine residue involved in RPB1 ubiquitylation and degradation unveiled the relevance of RNAPII levels in the control of gene expression.

Head and neck cancers volume reduction: should we reduce our prophylactic node radiation to spare the antitumor immune response?

Radiotherapy for locally advanced head and neck cancer classically include large prophylactic node volume. However, the use of these large volumes can be responsible for significant toxicity. Furthermore, the disappointing results of radioimmunotherapy combinations in head and neck tumors raise concerns about radiotherapy's potential negative impact on the immune response when large lymph node volumes are treated.

Heterogeneity of repetition abilities in logopenic variant primary progressive aphasia.

The differential diagnosis of primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is challenging due to overlapping clinical manifestations of the different variants of the disease. This is particularly true for the logopenic variant of PPA (lvPPA), in which such overlap was reported with regard to impairments in repetition abilities. In this study, four individuals with lvPPA underwent standard neuropsychological and language assessments.

Speech rate increase in primary progressive apraxia of speech and its cost on articulatory accuracy.

Impaired articulation (e.g., articulatory accuracy) and prosody (e.

Influence of the design of fresh-cut food washing tanks on the growth kinetics of biofilms.

Mitigation of cross-contamination of fresh-cut food products at the washing step was studied by investigating how the vat design would affect the biofilm contamination surfaces. Hygienic design features such as no horizontal surfaces and only open angles exceeding 100° were proposed. The flow organization (velocity streamlines, wall shear stresses, and dynamics of the flow) was identified by means of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) calculation.

A Preliminary Look Into the Clinical Evolution of Motor Speech Characteristics in Primary Progressive Apraxia of Speech in Québec French.

Purpose This study aimed to track changes in acoustical and perceptual features of motor speech in patients with phonetic and prosodic primary progressive apraxia of speech (PPAOS) in Québec French over an 18-month period. Method A prospective multiple-case series with multiple testing periods, including four participants with a diagnosis of PPAOS, was conducted. Participants were 0.

Progressive apraxia of speech in Quebec French speakers: A case series.

Background: The term progressive apraxia of speech (PAOS) is used to describe speakers presenting with isolated or dominant apraxia of speech in the context of a neurodegenerative syndrome, including primary progressive apraxia of speech (PPAOS) and dominant progressive apraxia of speech (DAOS), respectively. Its motor speech profile has been increasingly explored in the last decade, but description remains vague and very English oriented, although the effect of speakers' language on motor speech phenotypes is increasingly recognized. Although some studies suggest that speakers presenting with isolated PAOS (PPAOS) versus dominant PAOS with concomitant aphasia (DAOS) should be differentiated, distinct characteristics of the two presentations are unclear.

Screening and Identification of Metacaspase Inhibitors: Evaluation of Inhibition Mechanism and Trypanocidal Activity.

A common strategy to identify new antiparasitic agents is the targeting of proteases, due to their essential contributions to parasite growth and development. Metacaspases (MCAs) are cysteine proteases present in fungi, protozoa, and plants. These enzymes, which are associated with crucial cellular events in trypanosomes, are absent in the human host, thus arising as attractive drug targets.

The internal structure and geodynamics of Mars inferred from a 4.2-Gyr zircon record.

Combining U-Pb ages with Lu-Hf data in zircon provides insights into the magmatic history of rocky planets. The Northwest Africa (NWA) 7034/7533 meteorites are samples of the southern highlands of Mars containing zircon with ages as old as 4476.3 ± 0.

Methods to Investigate the Global Atmospheric Microbiome.

The interplay between microbes and atmospheric physical and chemical conditions is an open field of research that can only be fully addressed using multidisciplinary approaches. The lack of coordinated efforts to gather data at representative temporal and spatial scales limits aerobiology to help understand large scale patterns of global microbial biodiversity and its causal relationships with the environmental context. This paper presents the sampling strategy and analytical protocols developed in order to integrate different fields of research such as microbiology, -omics biology, atmospheric chemistry, physics and meteorology to characterize atmospheric microbial life.

Simplified inducible system for Trypanosoma brucei.

Nowadays, most reverse genetics approaches in Trypanosoma brucei, a protozoan parasite of medical and veterinary importance, rely on pre-established cell lines. Consequently, inducible experimentation is reduced to a few laboratory strains. Here we described a new transgene expression system based exclusively on endogenous transcription activities and a minimum set of regulatory components that can easily been adapted to different strains.

Evidence for extremely rapid magma ocean crystallization and crust formation on Mars.

The formation of a primordial crust is a critical step in the evolution of terrestrial planets but the timing of this process is poorly understood. The mineral zircon is a powerful tool for constraining crust formation because it can be accurately dated with the uranium-to-lead (U-Pb) isotopic decay system and is resistant to subsequent alteration. Moreover, given the high concentration of hafnium in zircon, the lutetium-to-hafnium (Lu-Hf) isotopic decay system can be used to determine the nature and formation timescale of its source reservoir.

DNA-damage inducible protein 1 is a conserved metacaspase substrate that is cleaved and further destabilized in yeast under specific metabolic conditions.

Metacaspases, distant relatives of metazoan caspases, have been shown to participate in programmed cell death in plants and in progression of the cell cycle and removal of protein aggregates in unicellular eukaryotes. However, since natural proteolytic substrates have scarcely been identified to date, their roles in these processes remain unclear. Here, we report that the DNA-damage inducible protein 1 (Ddi1) represents a conserved protein substrate for metacaspases belonging to divergent unicellular eukaryotes (trypanosomes and yeasts).

L'apport critique de l'évaluation de la communication dans le diagnostic précoce de l'apraxie primaire progressive de la parole.

Primary progressive apraxia of speech (PPAoS) is a neurodegenerative syndrome characterized by speech apraxia at its onset; as it progresses, it often evolves into total mutism. Even though this syndrome is increasingly recognized, its early differential diagnostic is still complex. The objective of this study was to illustrate why a fine evaluation of speech and language is essential for the differential diagnosis of PPAoS.

Substrate specificity profiling of M32 metallocarboxypeptidases from Trypanosoma cruzi and Trypanosoma brucei.

Metallocarboxypeptidases (MCPs) of the M32 family, while broadly distributed among prokaryotic organisms, have so far been only found in a few eukaryotes including trypanosomatids. Among these organisms are human and animal pathogens of medical relevance such as Trypanosoma brucei and Trypanosoma cruzi, the respective causative agents of sleeping sickness and Chagas disease. The M32 MCP orthologues found in these parasites share 72% protein sequence identity.

Language disturbances after non-thalamic subcortical stroke: a review of the literature.

Language disorders following subcortical non-thalamic stroke show great variability across literature and a well-defined profile in these aphasic disturbances is yet to be established. The lack of recent and consistent literature on the subject complicates the management of subcortical aphasia. The aim of this study is to review the literature describing oral language disturbances following subcortical non-thalamic stoke affecting the basal ganglia and the surrounding white matter.

A novel stage-specific glycosomal nucleoside diphosphate kinase from Trypanosoma cruzi.

Nucleoside diphosphate kinases (NDPK) are key enzymes involved in the intracellular nucleotide maintenance in all living organisms, especially in trypanosomatids which are unable to synthesise purines de novo. Four putative NDPK isoforms were identified in the Trypanosoma cruzi Chagas, 1909 genome but only two of them were characterised so far. In this work, we studied a novel isoform from T.

Predicting the distribution of whey protein fouling in a plate heat exchanger using the kinetic parameters of the thermal denaturation reaction of β-lactoglobulin and the bulk temperature profiles.

Fouling of plate heat exchangers (PHE) is a severe problem in the dairy industry, notably because the relationship between the build-up of protein fouling deposits and the chemical reactions taking place in the fouling solution has not yet been fully elucidated. Experiments were conducted at pilot scale in a corrugated PHE, and fouling deposits were generated using a model β-lactoglobulin (β-LG) fouling solution for which the β-LG thermal denaturation reaction constants had been previously determined experimentally. Then 18 different bulk temperature profiles within the PHE were imposed.

[Cultivating confidence: a way forward in the face of therapeutic deadlocks].

The aftercare centre is a therapeutic tool which sometimes enables situations of therapeutic deadlock to be overcome. By focusing on the long term, the patient is able to undertake a sustainable transformation of their relationship with themselves and with others. However, this challenging work cannot be carried out without a foundation of respect for the caregiving teams with regard to their therapeutic capacity as well as trust in their partners.

Canadian Stroke Best Practice Recommendations: Mood, Cognition and Fatigue Following Stroke practice guidelines, update 2015.

Every year, approximately 62 000 people with stroke and transient ischemic attack are treated in Canadian hospitals, and the evidence suggests one-third or more will experience vascular-cognitive impairment, and/or intractable fatigue, either alone or in combination. The 2015 update of the Canadian Stroke Best Practice Recommendations: Mood, Cognition and Fatigue Module guideline is a comprehensive summary of current evidence-based recommendations for clinicians in a range of settings, who provide care to patients following stroke. The three consequences of stroke that are the focus of the this guideline (poststroke depression, vascular cognitive impairment, and fatigue) have high incidence rates and significant impact on the lives of people who have had a stroke, impede recovery, and result in worse long-term outcomes.