A cross-species compendium of proteins/gene products related to cold stress identified by bioinformatic approaches.

The purpose of this investigation was to construct a compendium of low temperature responsive proteins/gene products across species as identified by bioinformatics based approaches, thus allowing low temperature researchers a searchable database. Another purpose was to identify specific low temperature responsive proteins/gene products across at least two different species. We generated a database containing 2030 low temperature responsive protein/gene product entries, of which 1353 were up-regulated and 549 were down-regulated in response to various cold exposures across 34 different species; including bacteria (9 species), yeast (1 species), animals (including nematodes (1 species), collembola (2 species), insects (5 species), fish (1 species), amphibians (1 species), reptiles (1 species), mammals (2 species)), and plants (moss (1 species), gymnosperms (1 species) and angiosperms (9 species)).

Visual attention: the past 25 years.

This review focuses on covert attention and how it alters early vision. I explain why attention is considered a selective process, the constructs of covert attention, spatial endogenous and exogenous attention, and feature-based attention. I explain how in the last 25 years research on attention has characterized the effects of covert attention on spatial filters and how attention influences the selection of stimuli of interest.

Relative and absolute stability in perceived parenting behaviour: a longitudinal study with children and adolescents.

Patterns of relative and absolute stability in parental behaviour with children and adolescents are reported. The sample comprised 523 youth (58.7% girls).

Orbitofrontal dysfunction predicts poor prognosis in chronic migraine with medication overuse.

Chronic migraine patients are at risk of developing a medication overuse. Brain functional studies in these patients have demonstrated an orbitofrontal hypometabolism, persistent after overuse cessation. Orbitofrontal dysfunction is also present in addiction and thus could predispose migraineurs to medication overuse.

Safety and effectiveness of donepezil on behavioral symptoms in patients with Alzheimer disease.

The objective of this study was to evaluate the prevalence and treatment responsiveness of neuropsychiatric symptoms in patients with mild to moderately severe Alzheimer disease recruited in a naturalistic treatment setting in Spain. All the patients, who matched the prescribing recommendations for donepezil and were able to participate in the study, received donepezil (5 to 10 mg/d) for 6 months. The primary outcome measure was the incidence of adverse events.

Migration and ramification of microglia in quail embryo retina organotypic cultures.

Organotypic cultures of retina explants preserve the complex cellular microenvironment of the retina and have been used as a tool to assess the biological functions of some cell types. However, studies to date have shown that microglial cells activate quickly in response to the retina explantation. In this study, microglial cells migrated and ramified in quail embryo retina organotypic cultures (QEROCs) according to chronological patterns bearing a resemblance to those in the retina in situ, despite some differences in cell density and ramification degree.

Exogenous attention enhances 2nd-order contrast sensitivity.

Natural scenes contain a rich variety of contours that the visual system extracts to segregate the retinal image into perceptually coherent regions. Covert spatial attention helps extract contours by enhancing contrast sensitivity for 1st-order, luminance-defined patterns at attended locations, while reducing sensitivity at unattended locations, relative to neutral attention allocation. However, humans are also sensitive to 2nd-order patterns such as spatial variations of texture, which are predominant in natural scenes and cannot be detected by linear mechanisms.

[Otoplasty without cartilage section using the Mustardé technique. Presentation of our experience].

Background: Some loop ear surgical procedures include cartilage section or abrasion, while others involve antihelix folding by simple suture.

Methods: Our results with the Mustardé technique are presented. This procedure avoids an aggressive action on the ear cartilage and makes antihelix folding easier.

[Utilization of an emergency department by elderly people in a university hospital in Santiago de Chile].

Introduction: An increase in visits to Emergency Departments by older adults has been reported, but there are no data available on this in countries in the early phases of demographic and epidemiological transition. This paper describes the characteristics of people over 60 years-old (AM) who visited the Emergency Department of the Hospital Clínico Universitario de la Pontificia Universidad Católica, Chile (SU-PUC), compared to those less than 60 years-old (AJ).

Material And Methods: Demographic data and reasons for admission and re-admission were collected retrospectively from the SU-PUC monthly statistics report.

Involvement of ryanodine receptors in neurotrophin-induced hippocampal synaptic plasticity and spatial memory formation.

Ryanodine receptors (RyR) amplify activity-dependent calcium influx via calcium-induced calcium release. Calcium signals trigger postsynaptic pathways in hippocampal neurons that underlie synaptic plasticity, learning, and memory. Recent evidence supports a role of the RyR2 and RyR3 isoforms in these processes.

[A novel method for targeting and characterizing healthy older people].

Background: there is no established definition of healthy aging in clinical practice, although it is a World Health Organization goal.

Aim: to develop a clinical protocol to identify healthy older people living in the community and study their clinical, laboratory and functional characteristics.

Material And Methods: healthy people aged 60 years or older, were invited to participate in the study, by newspapers and radio, if they selfperceived as healthy, lived in the community, were functionally independent and had low disease burden.

The inter-generic fungicidal activity of Xanthophyllomyces dendrorhous.

In this study, the existence of intra-specific and inter-generic fungicidal activity in Xanthophyllomyces dendrorhous and Phaffia rhodozyma strains isolated from different regions of the earth was examined. Assays were performed under several culture conditions, showing that all the analyzed X. dendrorhous and P.

Tracking without perceiving: a dissociation between eye movements and motion perception.

Can people react to objects in their visual field that they do not consciously perceive? We investigated how visual perception and motor action respond to moving objects whose visibility is reduced, and we found a dissociation between motion processing for perception and for action. We compared motion perception and eye movements evoked by two orthogonally drifting gratings, each presented separately to a different eye. The strength of each monocular grating was manipulated by inducing adaptation to one grating prior to the presentation of both gratings.

Antitumoral alkylphospholipids induce cholesterol efflux from the plasma membrane in HepG2 cells.

Alkylphospholipid (APL) analogs are promising candidates in the search for treatments of cancer. Previous studies conducted in our laboratory indicate that, after prolonged treatment, they alter cholesterol homeostasis in HepG2 cells. Here we describe the effects that different APLs exert upon this cell line after a 1-h exposure in a serum-free medium, including 1) a rapid, significant increase in cholesterol efflux into the extracellular medium, which consequently provoked a depletion of cholesterol in the plasma membrane (further assays conducted in an attempt to return to control cholesterol levels were only partially successful); 2) use of methyl-β-cyclodextrin, which indicated that APLs acted in a way similar to this agent that is used frequently to modulate membrane cholesterol levels; 3) the phosphorylation of Akt that showed that this critical regulator for cell survival was modulated by changes in cholesterol levels induced in the plasma membrane by APLs; and 4) membrane cholesterol depletion that is not related to the impairment of cholesterol traffic produced by APLs.

[Systemic inflammation among stable ex smokers with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease].

Background: Low grade systemic inflammation is commonly observed in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

Aim: To evaluate the extent of systemic inflammation in a group of ex-smokers with COPD in stable condition and its relation with pulmonary function and clinical manifestations.

Patients And Methods: We studied 104 ex-smokers aged 69 ± 8 years (62 males) with mild to very severe COPD and 52 healthy non-smoker subjects aged 66 ± 11 years (13 males) as control group.

Treatment of severe fungal keratitis with subconjunctival amphotericin B.

Purpose: To report the beneficial properties of subconjunctival amphotericin B as an adjunctive therapy in patients with severe fungal keratitis.

Methods: Case reports and review of medical literature. Four patients with advanced fungal keratitis were treated with repeated injections of subconjunctival amphotericin B in addition to topical and systemic antifungal treatment.

Complexes of hydroxy(thio)pyrone and hydroxy(thio)pyridinone with Zn(II) and Mo(VI). Thermodynamic stability and insulin-mimetic activity.

The development of metal-containing pharmaceuticals as insulin-mimetics has been the object of recent worldwide research. We have examined a series of zinc(II) and molybdenum(VI) complexes with model O,S-donor ligands (thiomaltol and 1,2-dimethyl-3-hydroxypyridine-4-thione (DMHTP)) and the corresponding O,O-analogues (maltol and DMHP) for their insulin-mimetic activity. Aimed at getting structure-activity relationships, some physical-chemical properties were also studied, such as metal-complex formation, speciation at different pH conditions and ligand lipophilicity.

When size matters: attention affects performance by contrast or response gain.

Covert attention, the selective processing of visual information in the absence of eye movements, improves behavioral performance. We found that attention, both exogenous (involuntary) and endogenous (voluntary), can affect performance by contrast or response gain changes, depending on the stimulus size and the relative size of the attention field. These two variables were manipulated in a cueing task while stimulus contrast was varied.

Inhibitory plasticity underlies visual deprivation-induced loss of receptive field refinement in the adult superior colliculus.

Increasing evidence shows that sensory experience is not necessary for initial patterning of neural circuitry but is essential for maintenance and plasticity. We have investigated the role of visual experience in development and plasticity of inhibitory synapses in the retinocollicular pathway of an altricial rodent, the Syrian hamster. We reported previously that visual receptive field (RF) refinement in superior colliculus (SC) occurs with the same time course in long-term dark-reared (LTDR) as in normally-reared hamsters, but RFs in LTDR animals become unrefined in adulthood.

Redox control of brain calcium in health and disease.

Calcium ion is a highly versatile cellular messenger. Calcium signals-defined as transient increments in intracellular-free calcium concentration-elicit a multiplicity of responses that depend on cell type and signal properties such as their intensity, duration, cellular localization, and frequency. The vast literature available on the role of calcium signals in brain cells, chiefly centered on neuronal cells, indicates that calcium signals regulate essential neuronal functions, including synaptic transmission, gene expression, synaptic plasticity processes underlying learning and memory, and survival or death.

Using a self-organizing map algorithm to detect age-related changes in functional connectivity during rest in autism spectrum disorders.

Healthy individuals show robust functional connectivity during rest, which is stronger in adults than in children. Connectivity occurs between the posterior and anterior portions of the default network, a group of structures active in the absence of a task, including the posterior cingulate cortex and the superior frontal gyrus. Previous studies found weaker posterior-anterior connectivity in the default network in adults and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders (ASD).

Neural activation to emotional faces in adolescents with autism spectrum disorders.

Background: Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) involve a core deficit in social functioning and impairments in the ability to recognize face emotions. In an emotional faces task designed to constrain group differences in attention, the present study used functional MRI to characterize activation in the amygdala, ventral prefrontal cortex (vPFC), and striatum, three structures involved in socio-emotional processing in adolescents with ASD.

Methods: Twenty-two adolescents with ASD and 20 healthy adolescents viewed facial expressions (happy, fearful, sad and neutral) that were briefly presented (250 ms) during functional MRI acquisition.

Far field intensity distributions due to spatial self phase modulation of a Gaussian beam by a thin nonlocal nonlinear media.

In this work we present a simple model that can be used to calculate the far field intensity distributions when a Gaussian beam cross a thin sample of nonlinear media but the response can be nonlocal.