Hierarchical oriented predictions for resolution scalable lossless and near-lossless compression of CT and MRI biomedical images.

We propose a new hierarchical approach to resolution scalable lossless and near-lossless (NLS) compression. It combines the adaptability of DPCM schemes with new hierarchical oriented predictors to provide resolution scalability with better compression performances than the usual hierarchical interpolation predictor or the wavelet transform. Because the proposed hierarchical oriented prediction (HOP) is not really efficient on smooth images, we also introduce new predictors, which are dynamically optimized using a least-square criterion.

Bacteremic infection with Pantoea ananatis.

A 73-year-old man was hospitalized for dyspnea and bilateral ankle edema. During his hospital stay he presented anal hemorrhage and developed a high fever after colonoscopy. A set of aerobic and anaerobic blood culture bottles yielded a pure culture of gram-negative rods, susceptible to all antibiotics tested.

Isolation of Buttiauxella gaviniae from a spinal cord patient with urinary bladder pathology.

A gram-negative Buttiauxella gaviniae-like organism (LBV449) was isolated from a urine sample of a patient suffering from urine bladder pathology and neurological problems. The isolate was positive for adonitol fermentation and L-arginine dihydrolase and negative for melibiose and L-ornithine decarboxylase. The API 20E code was 3004113.

Methicillin resistance of bacteria isolated from vitreous fluid from patients undergoing vitrectomy.

Purpose: The aim of this study was to compare the resistance patterns of bacteria in vitreous fluid from patients undergoing vitrectomy for diagnostic reasons, with bacteria of other nosocomial infections.

Methods: Vitreous fluid samples (n=144) were obtained from 133 patients undergoing vitrectomy for endophthalmitis, and 11 for uveitis as suspected endophthalmitis. They were Gram stained and cultured.

Functional downregulation of the E-cadherin/catenin complex leads to loss of contact inhibition of motility and of mitochondrial activity, but not of growth in confluent epithelial cell cultures.

When epithelial cells reach confluency in vitro, a number of energy-requiring activities such as growth and motility are contact-inhibited. We investigated the possible role of the E-cadherin/catenin complex, which acts as an invasion suppressor, in contact inhibition. Three strategies for modulation of the complex were used.

Adaptive motion-compensated wavelet filtering for image sequence coding.

This paper deals with new advances made in the field of discrete spatio-temporal filters applied to digital image sequences. Within time-varying images, the temporal correlation of the information is folded within the spatio-temporal domain by motions originating from both camera and object displacements. The spatio-temporal video information can be therefore reformulated in terms of motion trajectories and intensity variations along these trajectories.

Large chorioangioma associated with hydrops fetalis: prenatal diagnosis and management.

A large chorioangioma located at the insertion area of the umbilical cord was diagnosed at 19 weeks of gestation by ultrasound and color Doppler ultrasound. This chorioangioma led to a progressively appearing hydrops fetalis and to fetal distress. The infant presented at birth with edemas and ascites associated with severe hemolytic anemia and thrombocytopenia.

Tamoxifen restores the E-cadherin function in human breast cancer MCF-7/6 cells and suppresses their invasive phenotype.

Tamoxifen is an antiestrogen used in adjuvant therapy of breast carcinoma and could potentially prevent the development of mammary cancer. While it is widely clinically used, its exact mechanisms of action are not yet fully elucidated. MCF-7/6 cells are estrogen receptor-positive invasive human breast cancer cells with a functionally inactive cell surface E-cadherin.

Multiconstraint Wiener-based motion compensation using wavelet pyramids.

We have investigated an original motion estimation method that exploits several frequency subbands of wavelet pyramids using a multigrid-multiconstraint strategy. A recursive and iterative solution based on the Wiener approach allows to take into account the reconstruction quality criterion that is crucial to image coding. Experiments show its performances in terms of compression ratio, reconstruction quality, and reduction of implementation complexity compared to a monoresolution case.

[Infantile polycystic hepatorenal disease. 2 consecutive cases in a patient. Ultrasonic diagnosis and indication for elective pregnancy termination].

We report a case of infantile polycystic kidney disease, during the course of two consecutive pregnancies in the same woman. Observed rates of recurrence in families at risk is higher than theoretical rates (25%). Antenatal ultrasound can show signs of bilateral involvement, which is always lethal and generally leads to elective termination of pregnancy.

IL-4 and IL-13 exhibit comparable abilities to reduce pyrogen-induced expression of procoagulant activity in endothelial cells and monocytes.

Endotoxin (LPS), interleukin-1 beta (IL-1) and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF) increased the expression of tissue factor, a membrane-anchored glycoprotein that initiates blood coagulation on the surface of cultured bovine aortic endothelial cells (ABAE) and human monocytes. These compounds simultaneously reduced the amount of thrombomodulin on the endothelial cell surface, further contributing to the procoagulant activity of the endothelium or monocytes. On endothelial cells and monocytes, interleukin-4 (IL-4) and interleukin-13 (IL-13), a newly described lymphokine, both strongly inhibited LPS-induced tissue factor expression, a similar activity also being obtained with regard to the pyrogenic effects of IL-1 or TNF.

Interleukin-13 is a new human lymphokine regulating inflammatory and immune responses.

The discovery of new cytokines normally relies on a prior knowledge of at least one of their biological effects, which is used as a criterion either for the purification of the protein or for the isolation of the complementary DNA by expression cloning. However, the redundancy of cytokine activities complicates the discovery of novel cytokines in this way, and the pleiotropic nature of many cytokines means that the principal activities of a new cytokine may bear little relation to that used for its isolation. We have adopted an alternative approach which relies on differential screening of an organized subtracted cDNA library from activated peripheral blood mononuclear cells, using the inducibility of lymphokine messenger RNAs by anti-CD28 as a primary screening criterion.

Shared idiotope on monoclonal anti-Ia.7 antibodies reactive with determinants in a structural domain of the I-E molecules.

In previous studies, heterologous anti-idiotypic (anti-Id) antisera against the C3H.SW 14-4-4S or the A.TH 41.

Rat monoclonal antibodies to mouse IgG1, IgG2a, IgG2b, and IgG3 subclasses, and kappa chain isotypic determinants.

Rats of the LOU/Ws1 strain were immunized with mixtures of mouse monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) of various isotypes, and their spleen cells were fused with the rat myeloma Y3.Ag1.2.