A developmental ERP study of verbal and non-verbal semantic processing.

To clarify how different the processing of verbal information is from the processing of meaningful non-verbal information, the present study characterized the developmental changes in neural responses to words and environmental sounds from pre-adolescence (7-9 years) through adolescence (12-14 years) to adulthood (18-25 years). Children and adults' behavioral and electrophysiological responses (the N400 effect of event-related potentials) were compared during the processing of words and environmental sounds presented in semantically matching and mismatching picture contexts. Behavioral accuracy of picture-sound matching improved until adulthood, while reaction time measures leveled out by age 12.

Outcome and quality of life in patients treated for abdominal aortic aneurysms: a single center experience.

Background: Durability of protection and long-term quality of life (QoL) are critical outcome parameters of abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) repair. The aim of the present study was to compare results of endovascular and open aneurysm repair (EVAR and OR) with adjusted standard populations, including stratification for urgency of presentation.

Methods: Retrospective analysis of prospectively collected data of 401 consecutive patients presenting with AAA between January 1998 and December 2002.

Which agents cause reactive airways dysfunction syndrome (RADS)? A systematic review.

Aim: To identify those agents reported as being associated with reactive airways dysfunction syndrome (RADS).

Methods: A systematic review was undertaken. Abstracts were screened and those selected reviewed against pre-determined diagnostic criteria for RADS.

pRB-E2F1 complexes are resistant to adenovirus E1A-mediated disruption.

Disruption of pRB-E2F interactions by E1A is a key event in the adenoviral life cycle that drives expression of early viral transcription and induces cell cycle progression. This function of E1A is complicated by E2F1, an E2F family member that controls multiple processes besides proliferation, including apoptosis and DNA repair. Recently, a second interaction site in pRB that only contacts E2F1 has been discovered, allowing pRB to control proliferation separately from other E2F1-dependent activities.

Complications associated with the arterial puncture closure device--Angio-Seal.

Background: Arterial puncture closure devices (APCD) are frequently used after cardiac catheterization. Here, the diagnosis and therapy of femoral artery complications after the use of the Angio-Seal APCD is reported.

Patients And Methods: The Angio-Seal APCD was deployed in 1600 patients undergoing transfemoral catheterization.

Loss of ATRX leads to chromosome cohesion and congression defects.

Alpha thalassemia/mental retardation X linked (ATRX) is a switch/sucrose nonfermenting-type ATPase localized at pericentromeric heterochromatin in mouse and human cells. Human ATRX mutations give rise to mental retardation syndromes characterized by developmental delay, facial dysmorphisms, cognitive deficits, and microcephaly and the loss of ATRX in the mouse brain leads to reduced cortical size. We find that ATRX is required for normal mitotic progression in human cultured cells and in neuroprogenitors.

Formation of Fmoc-beta-alanine during Fmoc-protections with Fmoc-OSu.

During the Fmoc-protection of H-alpha-Me-Val-OH, an unknown side product was found and isolated. The characterization using various analytical methods led unambiguously to the result that Fmoc-beta-Ala-OH was formed during the reaction. The reagent Fmoc-OSu was proven to be the source of Fmoc-beta-Ala-OH, following a mechanism that involved many deprotonation and elimination steps and a Lossen-type rearrangement as key sequence.

Aortic neck dilatation after endovascular abdominal aortic aneurysm repair: a word of caution.

Continuing aortic neck dilatation, most probably an expression of ongoing aneurysmal wall degeneration of the infrarenal aortic segment, has been shown to seriously impair clinical results after endovascular abdominal aortic aneurysm repair. However, conflicting data on the extent and clinical relevance on this observation have recently been published. This article reviews the recent literature, summarizing our current understanding of the role of aortic neck dilatation after open surgical and endovascular abdominal aortic aneurysm repair.

Influence of stent type on hemodynamic depression after carotid artery stent placement.

Purpose: To assess the effect of stent type on hypotension and bradycardia after carotid artery stent placement.

Materials And Methods: A retrospective analysis on a prospectively maintained database was conducted in 256 patients (126 men; mean age, 71.8 years +/- 8.

Revascularization for chronic critical lower limb ischemia in octogenarians is worthwhile.

Objective: Advanced age is considered a relative contraindication for surgical revascularization in patients with peripheral arterial occlusive disease. Our aim was to analyze the usefulness of endovascular and surgical revascularization in patients older than 80 years with chronic critical leg ischemia (CLI). Our hypothesis was that the clinical benefit of lower extremity revascularization is limited in octogenarians.

Aortitis following percutaneous aortic side branch embolization prior to endovascular repair of infrarenal aortic aneurysm.

Purpose: To report two cases of life-threatening aortic infection after percutaneous endovascular coil embolization prior to endovascular abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) repair (EVAR).

Case Report: Two 76-year-old patients were readmitted 5 days and 3 weeks, respectively, after technically successful percutaneous coil embolization of aortic side branches in advance of scheduled EVAR. In the first patient, the right hypogastric artery, the inferior mesenteric artery (IMA), and a lumbar artery had been embolized, whereas in the second patient only the right hypogastric artery and the IMA had been occluded.

Benchmarking self-reported practice regarding Scottish Executive guidance on hepatitis C-infected health care workers.

Background: The 2002 Scottish Executive guidance 'hepatitis C-infected health care workers' advised NHS Scotland occupational health departments regarding screening health care workers (HCW) who perform or who may perform exposure-prone procedures (EPPs) for hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. In 2004, 2 years following the launch of the guidance, there was anecdotal evidence of challenges to implementation and clinical and ethical concerns regarding the screening process.

Aim: To benchmark the implementation of the Executive guidance on hepatitis C-infected HCW in NHS Scotland.

Novel insight into the pathobiology of abdominal aortic aneurysm and potential future treatment concepts.

The patient with abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) commonly is a nondiabetic, white man with a history of smoking. Moreover, AAA represents a leading cause of death in elderly men in Western countries. The purpose of this manuscript is to review current evidence as to the pathobiology of AAA as well as potential future drug targets to prevent progression of AAA.

The development of sentence interpretation: effects of perceptual, attentional and semantic interference.

How does the development and consolidation of perceptual, attentional, and higher cognitive abilities interact with language acquisition and processing? We explored children's (ages 5-17) and adults' (ages 18-51) comprehension of morphosyntactically varied sentences under several competing speech conditions that varied in the degree of attentional demands, auditory masking, and semantic interference. We also evaluated the relationship between subjects' syntactic comprehension and their word reading efficiency and general 'speed of processing'. We found that the interactions between perceptual and attentional processes and complex sentence interpretation changed considerably over the course of development.

Frequency of Basic English Grammatical Structures: A Corpus Analysis.

Many recent models of language comprehension have stressed the role of distributional frequencies in determining the relative accessibility or ease of processing associated with a particular lexical item or sentence structure. However, there exist relatively few comprehensive analyses of structural frequencies, and little consideration has been given to the appropriateness of using any particular set of corpus frequencies in modeling human language. We provide a comprehensive set of structural frequencies for a variety of written and spoken corpora, focusing on structures that have played a critical role in debates on normal psycholinguistics, aphasia, and child language acquisition, and compare our results with those from several recent papers to illustrate the implications and limitations of using corpus data in psycholinguistic research.

Characterization of an E2F1-specific binding domain in pRB and its implications for apoptotic regulation.

The retinoblastoma protein (pRB) has the dual capability to negatively regulate both E2F-induced cell cycle entry and E2F1-induced apoptosis. In this report, we characterize a unique pRB-E2F1 interaction. Using mutagenesis to disrupt E2F1 binding, we find that the ability of pRB to regulate E2F1-induced apoptosis is diminished when this interaction is lost.

Structure-function analysis of the retinoblastoma tumor suppressor protein - is the whole a sum of its parts?

Biochemical analysis of the retinoblastoma protein's function has received considerable attention since it was cloned just over 20 years ago. During this time pRB has emerged as a key regulator of the cell division cycle and its ability to block proliferation is disrupted in the vast majority of human cancers. Much has been learned about the regulation of E2F transcription factors by pRB in the cell cycle.

Internal iliac artery embolization before endovascular repair of aortoiliac aneurysms with a nitinol vascular occlusion plug.

Purpose: To evaluate the acute and midterm effectiveness of a novel vascular occlusion device for embolization of the internal iliac artery (IIA) before endovascular repair of aortoiliac aneurysms.

Materials And Methods: Between March 2005 and April 2006, nine men (mean age, 75 years +/- 5; range, 66-83 y) with aortoiliac aneurysms underwent bifurcated endovascular stent-graft procedures. All these patients were referred specifically for embolization.

Small is beautiful: why profundaplasty should not be forgotten.

Background: Surgical profundaplasty (SP)is used mainly as an adjunct to endovascular management of peripheral vascular disease (PAD) today. Results from earlier series of profundaplasty alone have been controversial, especially regarding its hemodynamic effect. The question is: Can profundaplasty alone still be useful? Our aim was to evaluate its role in the modern management of vascular patients.

What is involved and what is necessary for complex linguistic and nonlinguistic auditory processing: evidence from functional magnetic resonance imaging and lesion data.

We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in conjunction with a voxel-based approach to lesion symptom mapping to quantitatively evaluate the similarities and differences between brain areas involved in language and environmental sound comprehension. In general, we found that language and environmental sounds recruit highly overlapping cortical regions, with cross-domain differences being graded rather than absolute. Within language-based regions of interest, we found that in the left hemisphere, language and environmental sound stimuli evoked very similar volumes of activation, whereas in the right hemisphere, there was greater activation for environmental sound stimuli.

Influence of pulmonary status and diabetes mellitus on aortic neck dilatation following endovascular repair of abdominal aortic aneurysms: a EUROSTAR report.

Purpose: To elucidate the association of impaired pulmonary status (IPS) and diabetes mellitus (DM) with clinical outcome and the incidences of aortic neck dilatation and type I endoleak after elective endovascular infrarenal aortic aneurysm repair (EVAR).

Methods: In 164 European institutions participating in the EUROSTAR registry, 6383 patients (5985 men; mean age 72.4+/-7.

Gene-environment interactions in parkinsonism and Parkinson's disease: the Geoparkinson study.

Objectives: To investigate associations of Parkinson's disease (PD) and parkinsonian syndromes with polymorphic genes that influence metabolism of either foreign chemical substances or dopamine and to seek evidence of gene-environment interaction effects that modify risk.

Methods: A case-control study of 959 prevalent cases of parkinsonism (767 with PD) and 1989 controls across five European centres. Occupational hygienists estimated the average annual intensity of exposure to solvents, pesticides and metals, (iron, copper, manganese), blind to disease status.

Environmental risk factors for Parkinson's disease and parkinsonism: the Geoparkinson study.

Objective: To investigate the associations between Parkinson's disease and other degenerative parkinsonian syndromes and environmental factors in five European countries.

Methods: A case-control study of 959 prevalent cases of parkinsonism (767 with Parkinson's disease) and 1989 controls in Scotland, Italy, Sweden, Romania and Malta was carried out. Cases were defined using the United Kingdom Parkinson's Disease Society Brain Bank criteria, and those with drug-induced or vascular parkinsonism or dementia were excluded.

Surgical or endovascular revascularization in patients with critical limb ischemia: influence of diabetes mellitus on clinical outcome.

Objective: The optimal revascularization strategy in diabetic patients with chronic critical limb ischemia (CLI) is unclear. This study assessed the efficacy of tailored endovascular-first vs surgical-first revascularization stratified for the presence of diabetes.

Methods: This prospective cohort study, with 1-year follow up, was conducted in a tertiary referral center in a consecutive series of 383 patients (45.

Intraobserver and interobserver variability of 64-row computed tomography abdominal aortic aneurysm neck measurements.

Background: Integrity of the abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) neck is crucial for the long-term success of endovascular AAA repair (EVAR). However, suitable tools for reliable assessment of changes in small aortic volumes are lacking. The purpose of this study was to assess the intraobserver and interobserver variability of software-enhanced 64-row computed tomographic angiography (CTA) AAA neck volume measurements in patients after EVAR.