Robust undulatory locomotion through neuromechanical adjustments in a dissipative medium.

Dissipative environments are ubiquitous in nature, from microscopic swimmers in low-Reynolds-number fluids to macroscopic animals in frictional media. In this study, we consider a mathematical model of a slender elastic locomotor with an internal rhythmic neural pattern generator to examine various undulatory locomotion such as swimming and crawling behaviours. By using local mechanical load as mechanosensory feedback, we have found that undulatory locomotion robustly emerges in different rheological media.

RetroFun-RVS: A Retrospective Family-Based Framework for Rare Variant Analysis Incorporating Functional Annotations.

A large proportion of genetic variations involved in complex diseases are rare and located within noncoding regions, making the interpretation of underlying biological mechanisms a daunting task. Although technical and methodological progress has been made to annotate the genome, current disease-rare-variant association tests incorporating such annotations suffer from two major limitations. First, they are generally restricted to case-control designs of unrelated individuals, which often require tens or hundreds of thousands of individuals to achieve sufficient power.

Treatment-emergent central sleep apnea in patients treated with a mandibular advancement device.

Objectives: Treatment-emergent central sleep apnea (TECSA) is well established in continuous positive airway pressure therapy but was barely studied in mandibular advancement device (MAD) treatment. This study aims to evaluate the prevalence of TECSA in patients treated with a MAD and to determine its risk factors and clinical relevance.

Materials And Methods: A total of 139 patients from the IRSR Pays de la Loire Sleep Cohort suffering from snores or obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS) and treated with a custom-made titratable MAD were included.

Transport and inhibition of the sphingosine-1-phosphate exporter SPNS2.

Sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P) is a signaling lysolipid critical to heart development, immunity, and hearing. Accordingly, mutations in the S1P transporter SPNS2 are associated with reduced white cell count and hearing defects. SPNS2 also exports the S1P-mimicking FTY720-P (Fingolimod) and thereby is central to the pharmacokinetics of this drug when treating multiple sclerosis.

Intracerebroventricular anaerobic dopamine in Parkinson's disease with L-dopa-related complications: a phase 1/2 randomized-controlled trial.

Continuous compensation for cerebral dopamine deficiency represents an ideal treatment for Parkinson's disease. Dopamine does not cross the digestive and blood-brain barriers and is rapidly oxidized. The new concept is the intracerebroventricular administration of anaerobic dopamine (A-dopamine) using an abdominal pump connected to a subcutaneous catheter implanted in the third ventricle, near the striatum.