A tale of two cultures: How L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza bridged the gap between science and the humanities.

This article retraces the career of geneticist L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza, from his days as a student researcher to his tenure as a Stanford University professor, and beyond. We show how Cavalli-Sforza's untiring curiosity, enthusiasm, and global knowledge led him to make incisive contributions to topics as diverse as bacterial genetics and human evolution, both biological and cultural.

Somatic tinnitus prevalence and treatment with tinnitus retraining therapy.

Objectives: Somatic tinnitus originates from increased activity of the dorsal cochlear nucleus, a cross-point between the somatic and auditory systems. Its activity can be modified by auditory stimulation or somatic system manipulation. Thus, sound enrichment and white noise stimulation might decrease tinnitus and associated somatic symptoms.

Production of a toxic metabolite in 2,4-D-resistant GM crop plants.

This Note questions the safety of crop plants engineered with transgenes coding for the degradation of the herbicide 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) into its cytotoxic metabolite 2,4-dichlorophenol (2,4-DCP).

The rate of electrical energy dissipation (power) and the RC constant unify all electroporation parameters.

Electroporation parameters can be optimized by coupling RC constant values with the amount of electrical power dissipation in the electroporation medium. Electroporation efficiency increases more steeply with power at low power values.

[Somatic tinnitus (review). A consequence of plasticity and bimodal integration in the dorsal cochlear nucleus].

Somatic tinnitus is a peculiar tinnitus type that can be defined as a tinnitus that can be modulated in intensity and/or pitch by manipulating some regions of the head and neck but also as tinnitus associated with facial pain or dysesthesis in the same area. Those areas are innervated by the trigeminal nerve and the cervical plexus. This can be explained by functional connections between the trigeminal system and the auditory brainstem and mid-brain.

Electric field-mediated DNA encapsulation into large liposomes.

Large, ethidium bromide-loaded liposomes electrically pulsed in the presence of externally added DNA display the bright fluorescence of DNA-ethidium bromide complexes. Sonication of these liposomes increases the fluorescence of trapped DNA-ethidium bromide complexes by no more than about 40%. These results are thus in agreement with a mechanism involving electropores for DNA uptake but do not support an alternative mechanism, invoking invagination and pinching-off of the lipid bilayer, through which internalized DNA is shielded from the liposome contents.

Coat protein-mediated resistance to pea enation mosaic virus in transgenic Pisum sativum L.

Pea (Pisum sativum L.) plants were transformed in planta by injection/electroporation of axillary meristems with a chimeric pea enation mosaic virus (PEMV) coat protein gene contruct. R1 progenies of these plants were shown to harbor the transgene by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and genomic Southern analysis, while transgene expression was demonstrated by western blot analysis.

Half-embryo cocultivation technique for estimating the susceptibility of pea (Pisum sativum L.) and lentil (Lens culinaris Medik.) cultivars to Agrobacterium tumefaciens.

Longitudinally sliced embryonic axes from pea and lentil mature seeds cocultivated with A. tumefaciens carrying a gus reporter gene in its T-DNA provided a convenient means to evaluate the efficiency of gene transfer to tissues in different cultivars and cocultivation conditions. Use of this technique demonstrated wide variation in susceptibility to Agrobacterium among several pea and lentil commercial genotypes.

Auditory arousal thresholds are higher when infants sleep in the prone position.

Objective: To evaluate the possibility that infants sleeping in the prone position have higher arousal thresholds to auditory challenges than when sleeping in the supine position.

Study Design: Polygraphic recordings were performed for 1 night in 25 healthy infants with a median age of 9 weeks. The infants were exposed to white noises of increasing intensities while sleeping successively in the prone and supine positions, or vice versa.

Gene transfer by electroporation.

Electroporation of cells in the presence of DNA is widely used for the introduction of transgenes either stably or transiently into bacterial, fungal, animal, and plant cells. A review of the literature shows that electroporation parameters are often reported in an incomplete or incorrect manner, forcing researchers to rely too much on a purely empirical trial and error approach. The goal of this article is to provide the reader with an understanding of electrical circuits used in electroporation experiments as well as physical and biological aspects of the electroporation process itself.

Transgenic grain legumes obtained by in planta electroporation-mediated gene transfer.

Electroporation-mediated gene transfer into intact plant tissues was demonstrated in pea, cowpea, lentil, and soybean plants. Transient expression of a chimeric gus reporter gene was used to monitor the uptake and expression of the introduced DNA in electroporated nodal axillary buds in vivo. The branches that grew out of the nodal meristems were chimeric and expressed the introduced gene up to 20 d after electroporation.

Intelligibility in noise using multimicrophone hearing aids.

Difficulty understanding speech in background noise remains the most frequent complaint of people with hearing impairment. We examined the performance on a speech in noise test of two groups of listeners: one hearing impaired and the other normal hearing. The results showed a significant difference.

Electroporation-mediated gene transfer into intact nodal meristems in planta. Generating transgenic plants without in vitro tissue culture.

Transient expression and stable integration and expression of transgenes were observed in the tissues and offspring of certain leguminous plants after electroporation of DNA into intact nodal meristems in planta. The method described in this article thus allows the study of transgene expression in tissues differentiating from meristematic cells present in the treated buds. In addition, transgenic plants can be recovered in the offspring of electroporated individuals.

[Mesenteric venous infarction and antithrombin III deficiency: description of 2 cases and literature review].

Congenital deficiency of antithrombin III, the main physiological inhibitor of blood coagulation, enhances recurrent venous thromboses, usually in the mesenteric network. Two such cases are reported.

Surgical pathology of aorta and arteries of the lower limbs in the elderly.

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Atraumatic splenic rupture in the course of a pneumonia with Streptococcus pneumoniae. Case report and literature review.

Atraumatic splenic ruptures in the course of infectious diseases are rare but have been reported. Various germs of viruses can be at the origin of such rupture. The more often quoted viral disease is infectious mononucleosis.

Expression in cowpea seedlings of chimeric transgenes after electroporation into seed-derived embryos.

Cowpea (Vigna unguiculata Walp) embryos mechanically isolated from mature seeds and incubated in the presence of plasmid DNA harboring chimeric gus genes were shown to germinate into seedlings expressing β-glucuronidase activity in a variety of tissues, including the apical meristem. Embryo electroporation in the presence of DNA and protectants such as spermine and Lipofectin(TM) increased both the proportion of embryo-derived seedlings expressing the chimeric gene and the level of gene expression. Microscopic observations of thin sections showed that the blue crystals representing the end product of transgene activity on X-glu were exclusively located inside the treated cells.

[Surgical interruption of the inferior vena cava].

The historical review of the different techniques of inferior vena cava interruption allows to take into consideration the improvement in the treatment and prophylaxis of thromboembolism. On the one hand, technological progresses led to less invasive, often endoluminal surgical procedures. On the other hand, owing to administration of anticoagulant and fibrinolytic drugs, the indications of permanent and temporary vena cava filters become clearer and more precise.

Transient expression and histological localization of a gus chimeric gene after direct transfer to mature cowpea embryos.

Transient expression of a chimeric gus reporter gene was demonstrated in cowpea embryonic cells after direct gene transfer. This report shows that seed-derived embryos express the reporter gene at high frequency after passive or electroporation-mediated DNA transfer.

[Neonatal ovarian cyst. Case report and literature review].

The authors report a case of antenatal ultrasound diagnosis of a large fetal ovarian cyst; surgical extirpation in the neonatal period due to locoregional complications. Review of the literature; diagnosis, treatment, complications.

[Malignant retroperitoneal paraganglioma. Case report and literature review].

The authors report a case with a retroperitoneal recurrent malignant non-secretory neuroendocrine tumor. The diagnosis of this rare pathology is based on immunohistochemical and electron microscopic techniques. Due to radio- and chemotherapeutic resistance of the tumor, the therapy has to be surgical.

[Proposal for an original method of high-frequency audiometry using mathematical equations].

Many studies have established high-frequency audiometry norms. Unfortunately the majority presents different averages for each decade, sex and frequency together with standard deviations. In order to solve these problems we established our norms on a widespread audiometer for each sex based on a strictly normal hearing sample.