Soil bacterial communities associated with natural and commercial Cyclopia spp.

The commercially important plants in the genus Cyclopia spp. are indigenous to the Cape Floristic Region of South Africa and are used to manufacture an herbal tea known as honeybush tea. Growing in the low nutrient fynbos soils, these plants are highly dependent on symbiotic interactions with soil microorganisms for nutrient acquisition.

Association between eye position on brain scan and hospital mortality in acute intracerebral hemorrhage.

Background And Purpose: Conjugate eye deviation (CED) and horizontal skew deviation are often seen in patients with intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH), but its prognostic significance is unclear. In this study, the association between brain scan assessed eye position and hospital mortality in patients with supratentorial ICH was tested.

Methods: A retrospective analysis was performed in 316 patients with supratentorial ICH.

A Direct Comparison of Real-World and Virtual Navigation Performance in Chronic Stroke Patients.

Objectives: An increasing number of studies have presented evidence that various patient groups with acquired brain injury suffer from navigation problems in daily life. This skill is, however, scarcely addressed in current clinical neuropsychological practice and suitable diagnostic instruments are lacking. Real-world navigation tests are limited by geographical location and associated with practical constraints.

A Zebrafish Loss-of-Function Model for Human CFAP53 Mutations Reveals Its Specific Role in Laterality Organ Function.

Establishing correct left-right asymmetry during embryonic development is crucial for proper asymmetric positioning of the organs. Congenital heart defects, such as dextrocardia, transposition of the arteries, and inflow or outflow tract malformations, comprise some of the most common birth defects and may be attributed to incorrect establishment of body laterality. Here, we identify new patients with dextrocardia who have mutations in CFAP53, a coiled-coil domain containing protein.

Distance comparisons in virtual reality: effects of path, context, and age.

In this large scale, individual differences study (N = 521), the effects of cardinal axes of an environment and the path taken between locations on distance comparisons were assessed. The main goal was to identify if and to what extent previous findings in simple 2D tasks can be generalized to a more dynamic, three-dimensional virtual reality environment. Moreover, effects of age and gender were assessed.

Genetics of congenital heart disease: the contribution of the noncoding regulatory genome.

Congenital heart disease (CHD) is the most common type of birth defect. The advent of corrective cardiac surgery and the increase in knowledge concerning the longitudinal care of patients with CHD has led to a spectacular increase in life expectancy. Therefore, >90% of children with CHD, who survive the first year of life, will live into adulthood.

Binding Temporal Context in Memory: Impact of Emotional Arousal as a Function of State Anxiety and State Dissociation.

Encoding of stressful experiences plays an important role in the development of posttraumatic stress disorder. A crucial aspect of memory encoding is binding: the "gluing" of the temporal and spatial elements of an episode into a cohesive unit. This study investigated the effect of emotional arousal on temporal binding and examined whether temporal binding varied as a function of state anxiety and/or state dissociation.

Procedural Learning and Memory Rehabilitation in Korsakoff's Syndrome - a Review of the Literature.

Korsakoff's syndrome (KS) is a chronic neuropsychiatric disorder caused by alcohol abuse and thiamine deficiency. Patients with KS show restricted autonomy due to their severe declarative amnesia and executive disorders. Recently, it has been suggested that procedural learning and memory are relatively preserved in KS and can effectively support autonomy in KS.

Shared and distinct anatomical correlates of semantic and phonemic fluency revealed by lesion-symptom mapping in patients with ischemic stroke.

Semantic and phonemic fluency tasks are frequently used to test executive functioning, speed and attention, and access to the mental lexicon. In semantic fluency tasks, subjects are required to generate words belonging to a category (e.g.

Learning your way in a city: experience and gender differences in configurational knowledge of one's environment.

Males tend to outperform females in their knowledge of relative and absolute distances in spatial layouts and environments. It is unclear yet in how far these differences are innate or develop through life. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether gender differences in configurational knowledge for a natural environment might be modulated by experience.

Dual-Energy CT: What the Neuroradiologist Should Know.

Because of the different attenuations of tissues at different energy levels, dual-energy CT offers tissue differentiation and characterization, reduction of artifacts, and remodeling of contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), hereby creating new opportunities and insights in CT imaging. The applications for dual-energy imaging in neuroradiology are various and still expanding. Automated bone removal is used in CT angiography and CT venography of the intracranial vessels.

How coordinate and categorical spatial relations combine with egocentric and allocentric reference frames in a motor task: effects of delay and stimuli characteristics.

This study explores how people represent spatial information in order to accomplish a visuo-motor task. To this aim we combined two fundamental components of the human visuo-spatial system: egocentric and allocentric frames of reference and coordinate and categorical spatial relations. Specifically, participants learned the position of three objects and then had to judge the distance (coordinate information) and the relation (categorical information) of a target object with respect to themselves (egocentric frame) or with respect to another object (allocentric frame).

Macromolecular prodrugs of ribavirin: towards a treatment for co-infection with HIV and HCV.

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) represent tremendous healthcare burdens with a large proportion of patients hosting the two viruses at the same time. An altered hepatic function and immunity as well as cross-interference of drugs make treatment of co-infection increasingly challenging. Herein we report the first design of macromolecular prodrugs (MP) with concurrent success in fighting HIV and alleviating hepatitis (liver inflammation).

Enhancement of MHC-I antigen presentation via architectural control of pH-responsive, endosomolytic polymer nanoparticles.

Protein-based vaccines offer a number of important advantages over organism-based vaccines but generally elicit poor CD8(+) T cell responses. We have previously demonstrated that pH-responsive, endosomolytic polymers can enhance protein antigen delivery to major histocompatibility complex class I (MHC-I) antigen presentation pathways thereby augmenting CD8(+) T cell responses following immunization. Here, we describe a new family of nanocarriers for protein antigen delivery assembled using architecturally distinct pH-responsive polymers.

Does a change in bone mineral density occur in the mandible of Göttingen minipigs after irradiation in correlation with radiation dose and implant surgery?

Purpose: To date, studies have not agreed on the effects of irradiation on bone mineral density. The aim of our study was to investigate the changes in mandibular bone mineral density after irradiation at various doses with and without surgery.

Materials And Methods: We implemented a descriptive animal experiment.

Distinct anatomical correlates of discriminability and criterion setting in verbal recognition memory revealed by lesion-symptom mapping.

Recognition memory, that is, the ability to judge whether an item has been previously encountered in a particular context, depends on two factors: discriminability and criterion setting. Discriminability draws on memory processes while criterion setting (i.e.

Route learning in Korsakoff's syndrome: Residual acquisition of spatial memory despite profound amnesia.

Korsakoff's syndrome (KS) is characterized by explicit amnesia, but relatively spared implicit memory. The aim of this study was to assess to what extent KS patients can acquire spatial information while performing a spatial navigation task. Furthermore, we examined whether residual spatial acquisition in KS was based on automatic or effortful coding processes.

Identification of TBX5 mutations in a series of 94 patients with Tetralogy of Fallot.

Tetralogy of Fallot (TOF) (OMIM #187500) is the most frequent conotruncal congenital heart defect (CHD) with a range of intra- and extracardiac phenotypes. TBX5 is a transcription factor with well-defined roles in heart and forelimb development, and mutations in TBX5 are associated with Holt-Oram syndrome (HOS) (OMIM#142900). Here we report on the screening of 94 TOF patients for mutations in TBX5, NKX2.

The Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) is superior to the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) in detection of Korsakoff's syndrome.

The Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) and Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) are brief screening instruments for cognitive disorders. Although these instruments have frequently been used in the detection of dementia, there is currently little knowledge on the validity to detect Korsakoff's syndrome (KS) with both screening instruments. KS is a chronic neuropsychiatric disorder associated with profound declarative amnesia after thiamine deficiency.

Liposomal drug deposits in poly(dopamine) coatings: effect of their composition, cell type, uptake pathway considerations, and shear stress.

Implantable devices equipped with coatings which have the ability to carry and deliver active compounds are of great interest. We report the assembly of liposome-containing poly(dopamine) films, and their interaction with adhering cells. The liposome composition is varied by adding lipophilic dopamine-conjugates and charged lipids.

HCN4 mutations in multiple families with bradycardia and left ventricular noncompaction cardiomyopathy.

Background: Familial forms of primary sinus bradycardia have sometimes been attributed to mutations in HCN4, SCN5A, and ANK2. In these studies, no structural cardiac alterations were reported in mutation carriers. However, a cluster of reports in the literature describe patients presenting with sinus bradycardia in association with left ventricular noncompaction cardiomyopathy (LVNC), pointing to a shared genetic cause.