Subcaliber discarding sabot airgun projectiles.

Medical literature abounds with reports on injuries and fatalities caused by airgun projectiles. While round balls or diabolo pellets have been the standard projectiles for airguns for decades, today, there are a large number of different airgun projectiles available. A very uncommon--and until now unique--discarding sabot airgun projectile (Sussex Sabo Bullet) was introduced into the market in the 1980s.

Retinal arteriolar dilation to flicker light is reduced on short-term retesting.

Purpose: To investigate the impact of retesting frequency over a short period on flicker light-induced retinal vasodilation.

Methods: Twenty healthy participants were included. The retinal vascular response to flicker light stimulation was assessed three times (at baseline and after 5 and 30 minutes of rest [tests 1, 2, and 3, respectively]) in each participant using the Dynamic Vessel Analyzer.

Local and global fiber tractography in patients with epilepsy.

Background And Purpose: Fiber tractography is increasingly used in the preoperative evaluation of endangered fiber bundles. From a clinical point of view, an accurate and methodologically transparent procedure is desired. Our aim was to evaluate the recently described global tracking algorithm compared with other established methods, such as deterministic and probabilistic tractography.

Ballistic parameters of .177 (4.5 mm) caliber plastic-sleeved composite projectiles compared to conventional lead pellets.

The capability of conventional air gun lead pellets (diabolo pellets) to cause severe injuries or fatalities even at low kinetic energy levels is well documented in medical literature. Modern composite hunting pellets, usually a metal core (made of steel, lead, zinc, or a zinc and aluminum alloy) encased in a plastic sleeve, are of special forensic and traumatological interest. These projectiles are advertised by the manufacturers to discharge at higher velocities than conventional air gun pellets, thus generating very high tissue-penetrating capabilities.

Prolonged cardiac arrest and resuscitation by extracorporeal life support: favourable outcome without preceding anticoagulation in an experimental setting.

State-of-the-art cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) restores circulation with inconsistent blood-flow and pressure. Extracorporeal life support (ECLS) following CPR opens the opportunity for "controlled reperfusion". In animal experiments investigating CPR with ECLS, systemic anticoagulation before induced cardiac arrest is normal, but a major point of dispute, since preliminary heparinization in patients undergoing unwitnessed cardiac arrest is impossible.

Global tracking in human gliomas: a comparison with established tracking methods.

Purpose: Global tracking (GT) is a recently published fibre tractography (FT) method that takes simultaneously all fibres into account during their reconstruction. The purpose of this study was to compare this new method with fibre assignment by continuous tracking (FACT) and probabilistic tractography (PT) for the detection of the corticospinal tract (CST) in patients with gliomas.

Methods: Tractography of the CST was performed in 17 patients with eight low grade and nine anaplastic astrocytomas located in the motor cortex or the corticospinal tract.

Multiplex nested RT-PCR for detecting avian influenza virus, infectious bronchitis virus and Newcastle disease virus.

In this study, multiplex nested RT-PCR (mnRT-PCR) was applied to simultaneous detect multiplex PCR with the higher sensitivity of nested PCR that is required for avian influenza, infectious bronchitis and Newcastle disease virus using two steps of amplification. For the first PCR, primers that were specific for each virus were newly designed from the nucleoprotein gene of AIV, the nucleocapsid protein gene of IBV and the fusion protein gene of NDV to amplify products of 665, 386 and 236 nucleotides, respectively. The multiplex PCR step provides mass amplification using common primers, which increased markedly the sensitivity of the test.

The Protective Effect of Eupatilin against Hydrogen Peroxide-Induced Injury Involving 5-Lipoxygenase in Feline Esophageal Epithelial Cells.

In this study, we focused to identify whether eupatilin (5,7-dihydroxy-3',4',6-trimethoxyflavone), an extract from Artemisia argyi folium, prevents H(2)O(2)-induced injury of cultured feline esophageal epithelial cells. Cell viability was measured by the conventional MTT reduction assay. Western blot analysis was performed to investigate the expression of 5-lipoxygenase by H(2)O(2) treatment in the absence and presence of inhibitors.

Symptomatic cerebral vasospasm following resection of a medulloblastoma in a child.

Background: Vasospasm may occur following intracranial tumor resection but is uncommon following resection of tumors in the posterior fossa.

Methods: Case report.

Results: Here, we report an unusual pediatric case of symptomatic cerebral vasospasm following resection of a posterior fossa medulloblastoma in a 10-year-old child.

Neurogenic pulmonary edema and acute respiratory distress syndrome in a healthy child with febrile status epilepticus.

Neurogenic pulmonary edema is a clinical syndrome that manifests as an acute onset of pulmonary edema in the setting of a central nervous system injury, without cardiac dysfunction. Neurogenic pulmonary edema is rare in children, and the mechanism is still not completely understood.  The clinical pathology overlaps with acute lung injury and acute respiratory distress syndrome.

Arterial input function measurements for bolus tracking perfusion imaging in the brain.

Imaging of cerebral perfusion by tracking the first passage of an exogenous paramagnetic contrast agent (termed dynamic susceptibility contrast, MRI) has been used in the clinical practice for about a decade. However, the primary goal of dynamic susceptibility contrast MRI to directly quantify the local cerebral blood flow remains elusive. The major challenge of dynamic susceptibility contrast MRI is to measure the contrast inflow to the brain, i.

Serum apolipoproteins are associated with systemic and retinal microvascular function in people with diabetes.

Serum apolipoprotein (apo)AI and -B have been shown to be associated with diabetic retinopathy, but the underlying mechanisms are unclear. We investigated whether apoAI and apoB levels are associated with measures of systemic and retinal microvascular function in patients with diabetes. We recruited 224 diabetic patients (85 type 1 and 139 type 2) and assessed serum lipids and lipoproteins from fasting blood, skin responses to sodium nitroprusside (endothelium independent) and acetylcholine (ACh) (endothelium dependent) iontophoresis, flicker-light-induced retinal vasodilatation, and retinal vascular tortuosity.

A density-based segmentation for 3D images, an application for X-ray micro-tomography.

Density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise (DBSCAN) is an unsupervised classification algorithm which has been widely used in many areas with its simplicity and its ability to deal with hidden clusters of different sizes and shapes and with noise. However, the computational issue of the distance table and the non-stability in detecting the boundaries of adjacent clusters limit the application of the original algorithm to large datasets such as images. In this paper, the DBSCAN algorithm was revised and improved for image clustering and segmentation.

Alloy nanoparticle plasmon resonance for enhancing broadband antireflection of laser-textured silicon surfaces.

In this paper, Ag-Au alloy nanoparticles (NPs) were fabricated by dewetting process to enhance the broadband antireflection performance of textured silicon surfaces. The alloy NPs presented a large range of shapes and sizes, which provided an average reflectance (AR) below 4% over the spectral range of 300~1200 nm, a decrease of ~50% and ~90% as compared to the corresponding monometallic NPs and the original flat Si surfaces, respectively. The superior broadband antireflection demonstrated by the alloy NPs are attributed to the enhanced light trapping by alloy nanoparticle plasmon resonance.

Stability of white matter changes related to Huntington's disease in the presence of imaging noise: a DTI study.

Movement artifacts and other sources of noise are a matter of concern particularly in the neuroimaging research of movement disorders such as Huntington's disease (HD). Using diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) and fractional anisotropy (FA) as a compound marker of white matter integrity, we investigated the effect of movement on HD specific changes in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data and how post hoc compensation for it affects the MRI results. To this end, we studied by 3T MRI: 18 early affected, 22 premanifest gene-positive subjects, 23 healthy controls (50 slices of 2.

Diabetic retinopathy is related to both endothelium-dependent and -independent responses of skin microvascular flow.

Objective: Endothelial dysfunction has been hypothesized as a possible pathogenic factor in the development of diabetic retinopathy (DR). We examined the relationship of DR to endothelium-dependent and endothelium-independent responses in skin microvascular flow.

Research Design And Methods: Participants consisted of 224 individuals with diabetes: 85 with type 1 diabetes and 139 with type 2 diabetes.

Analysis of drug-resistant strains of Mycobacterium leprae in an endemic area of Vietnam.

Background: Multidrug therapy has effectively reduced the number of leprosy cases in the world. However, the rate of reduction has decelerated over the years, giving early detection of Mycobacterium leprae and epidemiological study of relapse renewed relevance in attempts to eliminate the disease.

Methods: A molecular epidemiological survey for drug-resistant M.

Serum apolipoprotein AI and B are stronger biomarkers of diabetic retinopathy than traditional lipids.

Objective: To describe and compare the associations of serum lipoproteins and apolipoproteins with diabetic retinopathy.

Research Design And Methods: This was a cross-sectional study of 224 diabetic patients (85 type 1 and 139 type 2) from a diabetes clinic. Diabetic retinopathy was graded from fundus photographs according to the Airlie House Classification system and categorized into mild, moderate, and vision-threatening diabetic retinopathy (VTDR).

'Flow out technique' for safe and complete removal of ophthalmic viscosurgical devices after phacoemulsification cataract surgery.

Objective: Ophthalmic viscosurgical devices (OVDs) are widely used in phacoemulsification cataract surgery. The adverse effects of OVDs retained after cataract surgery are well known, and complete OVD removal should be achieved in every case.

Methods: We describe a novel and simple technique using a two-handed irrigation and aspiration (I/A) for safer removal of OVDs.

Retinopathy signs in people without diabetes: the multi-ethnic study of atherosclerosis.

Objective: To describe the prevalence of retinopathy and associations with cardiovascular risk factors in persons without diabetes in 4 racial/ethnic groups (white, black, Hispanic, and Chinese).

Design: Population-based, cross-sectional study.

Participants: We included 6176 subjects aged 45-84 years without diabetes, selected from 6 United States communities.

A randomised trial evaluating the safety and immunogenicity of the novel single oral dose typhoid vaccine M01ZH09 in healthy Vietnamese children.

Background: The emergence of drug resistant typhoid fever is a major public health problem, especially in Asia. An oral single dose typhoid vaccine would have major advantages. M01ZH09 is a live oral single dose candidate typhoid vaccine containing Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi (Ty2 aroC(-)ssaV(-)) ZH9 with two independently attenuating deletions.

Retinal vascular caliber and brachial flow-mediated dilation: the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis.

Background And Purpose: Retinal vascular caliber changes have been shown to predict stroke, but the underlying mechanism of this association is unknown. We examined the relationship between retinal vascular caliber with brachial flow-mediated dilation (FMD), a measure of systemic endothelial function.

Methods: The Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA) is a population-based study of persons 45 to 84 years of age residing in 6 US communities free of clinical cardiovascular disease at baseline.

A centrifuge method to measure particle cohesion forces to substrate surfaces: the use of a force distribution concept for data interpretation.

Adhesion, agglomeration and de-agglomeration of micronized particles and larger carrier particles are of special importance during manufacturing of pharmaceutical products when the inherent cohesion property of fine particles challenges the content uniformity of dry mixtures. To characterize particle-particle adhesion, measurements with atomic force microscopy (AFM) and a centrifuge method were performed using microcrystalline cellulose as model material. The variations in AFM measurements were too large to draw a conclusion.

Intramolecular imino Diels-Alder approach to the synthesis of the aspidosperma alkaloid from 3,5-dibromo-2-pyrone.

A new synthetic route to the key framework of aspidosperma alkaloid was devised from the cycloadduct of 3-(2-nitrophenyl)-5-bromo-2-pyrone via intramolecular imino Diels-Alder reaction.