Can alternative medical methods evoke somatosensory responses and functional improvement?

Background: Evidence-based scientific studies focusing on complementary alternative medicine (CAM) and potential functional improvement after an insult of the central nervous system are lacking.

Aims: We aim to demonstrate that functional recovery after stimulation applied as a CAM treatment through cauterization might trigger neural repair and regenerative paths similarly as acupuncture, cupping, electrical or magnetic stimulations. Those paths are important in recovery of function.

Oedema-based model for diffuse low-grade gliomas: application to clinical cases under radiotherapy.

Objectives: Diffuse low-grade gliomas are characterized by slow growth. Despite appropriate treatment, they change inexorably into more aggressive forms, jeopardizing the patient's life. Optimizing treatments, for example with the use of mathematical modelling, could help to prevent tumour regrowth and anaplastic transformation.

The biomechanical properties of canine skin measured in situ by uniaxial extension.

Introduction: A uniaxial extension system was setup to analyze the mechanical properties of dog skin.

Material And Methods: Pads were glued onto dog skin with constant reproducible geometrical parameters and the extension force was measured as a function of the extension values. Forty-one sites (82 cycling tests) were investigated in situ on 11 canine cadavers, half of them after surgically isolating the test area from the surrounding skin.

Analyzing huge pathology images with open source software.

Background: Digital pathology images are increasingly used both for diagnosis and research, because slide scanners are nowadays broadly available and because the quantitative study of these images yields new insights in systems biology. However, such virtual slides build up a technical challenge since the images occupy often several gigabytes and cannot be fully opened in a computer's memory. Moreover, there is no standard format.