"Spring-back" closure associated with open-door cervical laminoplasty.

Background Context: Spring-back complication after open-door laminoplasty as described by Hirabayashi is a well-known risk, but its definition, incidence, and associated neurologic outcome remain unclear.

Objective: To investigate the incidence and the neurologic consequence of spring-back closure after open-door laminoplasty.

Study Design: A retrospective radiographic and clinical review.

Prolonged overcirculation-induced pulmonary arterial hypertension as a cause of right ventricular failure.

Aims: Three-month chronic systemic-to-pulmonary shunting in growing piglets has been reported as an early pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) model with preserved right ventricular (RV) function. We sought to determine whether prolonged shunting might be associated with more severe PAH and RV failure.

Methods And Results: Fourteen growing piglets were randomized to a sham operation or the anastomosis of the left innominate artery to the pulmonary arterial trunk.

Olfactory neuroepithelium-derived neural progenitor cells as a model system for investigating the molecular mechanisms of neuropsychiatric disorders.

Objective: Most expression profiling studies of neuropsychiatric disorders have used RNA from postmortem brain tissue. Such studies are confounded by terminal events, environmental variables, such as drug use or abuse, postmortem interval, and tissue pH. To address these limitations, we have explored the use of cultured neuronal cells derived from olfactory neuroepithelium (CNON) from nasal biopsies as an alternate source of RNA.

[Clinical research of Dahuang Fuzi decoction in auxiliary treatment of severe acute pancreatitis: a multi-center observation in 206 patients].

Objective: To observe the efficacy of Dahuang Fuzi decoction in patients with severe acute pancreatitis (SAP), and to provide valuable medical evidences for a treatment of SAP with combined traditional Chinese and western medicine.

Methods: A prospective, multi-center, randomized, controlled clinical trial was designed. Two hundred and six adult patients with SAP admitted to intensive care unit (ICU) in three tertiary university teaching hospitals in Dalian from January 2007 to February 2010 were randomly divided into two groups: soapsuds enema control group (control group, n=101) and Dahuang Fuzi decoction enema study group (study group, n=105).

[Expression and significance of phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase/protein kinase B signal transduction pathway in severe acute pancreatitis-associated lung injury].

Objective: To investigate the expression and significance of phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase/protein kinase B (PI3K/PKB) signal transduction pathway in severe acute pancreatitis-associated lung injury.

Methods: Twenty-four healthy male Changbai pigs were randomized into four groups: sham operation group (n = 6), ALI group (n = 6), ALI plus LPS (lipopolysaccharide) group (n = 6) and ALI plus Wortmannin group (n = 6). The expression levels of PI3K and PKB were determined by both RT-PCR and Western blot.

A high performance liquid chromatography method for simultaneous determination of rosiglitazone and gemfibrozil in human plasma.

A high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method was developed for the simultaneous determination of rosiglitazone and gemfibrozil in human plasma using alpha-asarone as an internal standard (IS). Plasma samples were pretreated by protein precipitation. The analytes were separated on a Macherey-Nagel Nucleodur C(18) (250 mm x 4.

A phase 1 trial of PfCP2.9: an AMA1/MSP1 chimeric recombinant protein vaccine for Plasmodium falciparum malaria.

Apical Membrane Antigen 1 (AMA1) and Merozoite Surface Protein 1 (MSP1) were produced as a recombinant fusion protein and formulated with the adjuvant Montanide ISA 720 with the aim of replicating the structure present in the parasite protein. A previous trial with this construct demonstrated the vaccine was safe and immunogenic but was associated with injection site reactogenicity. This Phase 1a dose-escalating, double blind, randomized, controlled trial of PfCP2.

New irrigation methods sustain malaria control in Sichuan Province, China.

Malaria appears to have been all but eradicated from certain areas of Sichuan Province mainly as a consequence of draining a sufficient proportion of rice paddy fields. The two main malaria vectors, both members of the Anopheles hyrcanus group, breed prolifically in rice paddy fields, which farmers have traditionally kept flooded all year round to ensure an adequate water supply. Over the last three decades, the irrigation network has been gradually extended, thus ensuring water security and increasing the area of arable land that could be farmed by intermittent wet/dry irrigation (IWDI).

Height measurement of microchip connecting pins by use of stereovision.

A stereovision method for estimating the height of connecting pins on a microchip is described. The technique uses a centroidal method to simplify the calculation. A few seconds are required for a Pentium 586 PC to calculate the heights of 300 connecting pins on a 50 mm x 50 mm microchip.

Shape measurement by use of liquid-crystal display fringe projection with two-step phase shifting.

The use of an optical fringe projection method with two-step phase shifting for three-dimensional (3-D) shape measurement of small objects is described. In this method, sinusoidal linear fringes are projected onto an object's surface by a programmable liquid-crystal display (LCD) projector and a long-working-distance microscope (LWDM). The image of the fringe pattern is captured by another LWDM and a CCD camera and processed by a phase-shifting technique.

Proposed algorithm for phase unwrapping.

A new, to our knowledge, two-dimensional phase-unwrapping algorithm is proposed. The algorithm, which is based on the global continuity of physical information (e.g.