Publications by authors named "Silvera M"

Article Synopsis
  • Researchers studied the role of the gene pretaporter in Drosophila, a model organism for Parkinson's Disease, finding that it impacts the severity of symptoms seen in flies with mutations in the parkin gene.
  • By creating double mutants for pretaporter and parkin, they used various assays to analyze neuron loss, survival, and motor function.
  • The results indicated that lack of pretaporter protects dopaminergic neurons from degeneration in parkin mutants, potentially making them resilient to neurodegeneration.
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The protein Pretaporter, is thought to reside in the endoplasmic reticulum and relocate to the plasma membrane during apoptosis. However, very little is known about its subcellular distribution in different cell types and conditions. Here, we present the first report of Pretaporter´s subcellular distribution in the salivary gland cells of third-instar larvae, finding it enriched in cell membranes, apical granules, and unexpectedly within cell nuclei.

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The accelerated deterioration of roads is conditioned by parameters such as climate change, poor construction, and heavy vehicle traffic. Two relevant measures to monitor the condition of a road are the International Roughness Index (IRI) and the number of functional failures in a segment, mainly potholes, since they are associated with higher risks such as accidents or damage to vehicle mechanics. In the state of the art, pothole detection or International Roughness Index (IRI) calculation algorithms are proposed, but they use vehicles designed to produce less vibration and use phones that decrease the performance of the embedded sensors.

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Junior Neuroradiology investigators face a rapidly expanding universe of potential journals for manuscript submission. Each journal possesses many unique features, including scope/breadth of research focus, willingness to accept specific types of articles (for example, Review Articles, or Case Reports), status of indexing on major academic indices, scholarly relevance (usually defined as Impact Factor) and access type (Open Access, subscription, or Hybrid Access). An uninformed choice of target journal can burden not only Editors and Reviewers but also increase the effort and frustration level of relatively inexperienced investigators and ultimately result in a worthy manuscript not getting published.

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The forests of Amazonia are among the most biodiverse plant communities on Earth. Given the immediate threats posed by climate and land-use change, an improved understanding of how this extraordinary biodiversity is spatially organized is urgently required to develop effective conservation strategies. Most Amazonian tree species are extremely rare but a few are common across the region.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates how facial expressions can influence the understanding of simple sentences, using brain activity measurements called event-related brain potentials (ERPs).
  • Participants were asked to make different facial expressions while judging sentence correctness, with conditions including frowning, smiling, or maintaining a neutral face.
  • The results showed that the brain activity related to language processing differed based on facial expression, with frowning leading to stronger responses, suggesting that emotions or physical effort in facial expressions can affect language comprehension.
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Objective: To assess and contrast the incidence and severity of abnormalities on cerebral magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) between infants with mild, moderate, and severe neonatal encephalopathy who received therapeutic hypothermia.

Study Design: This retrospective cohort studied infants with mild, moderate, and severe neonatal encephalopathy who received therapeutic hypothermia at a single tertiary neonatal intensive care unit between 2013 and 2015. Two neuroradiologists masked to the clinical condition evaluated brain MRIs for cerebral injury after therapeutic hypothermia using the Barkovich classification system.

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Background: Spinal fractures are uncommon manifestations of child abuse and elimination of the lateral views of the spine from the initial skeletal survey protocol has been recommended.

Objective: To establish the prevalence of spinal fractures detected on skeletal surveys performed for suspected child abuse and their association with intracranial injury (ICI).

Materials And Methods: The ACR standardized skeletal surveys and neuroimaging studies of 751 children (ages 0-4 years) were reviewed.

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Marfan syndrome is an autosomal dominant connective tissue disorder commonly due to mutation of the fibrillin-1 (FBN-1) gene that causes disruption of elastic fibers in large- and medium-size arteries and predisposes to aneurysm formation and arterial dissection. Cardiovascular complications occur in most patients with Marfan syndrome, but interestingly, neurovascular complications of Marfan syndrome are rare. We present a novel case of an adolescent with Marfan syndrome with spontaneous intracranial cerebral artery dissection and ischemic stroke with hemorrhagic transformation.

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Objective: We report the presentation and management of an 18-year-old male, who presented with bilateral carotid body paragangliomas and a unilateral jugular body paraganglioma.

Method: A comprehensive review of the medical literature concerning paragangliomas in the pediatric and adult population is discussed.

Results: Presentations of multiple paragangliomas in an 18-year-old have never been described.

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Objective: To provide an up to date review of the literature on aneurysmal bone cysts, including their diagnosis, pathology, pathophysiology, radiology and management.

Method: Retrospective review of six cases over a 15-year period.

Results: Six patients (age range, eight months to 17 years; mean, 9.

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We describe the CT and MRI findings of a thoracolumbar neurocentral synchondrosis fracture-dislocation in an abused infant. The morphologic features of this classically described fracture, and the associated cervical and sacral spine injuries displayed on cross-sectional imaging, provide compelling evidence for a mechanism of massive hyperflexion and axial spinal loading.

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The aim of our study was to determine whether maternal hydration status prior to prenatal sonography affects fetal renal pelvic diameter. The renal pelvic diameters of fetuses from two different institutions were compared prospectively. At one institution 74 women were asked to drink 32 to 48 ounces of water prior to undergoing sonography (hydration group), whereas at the second institution, no specific hydration regimen was requested of 176 subjects.

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IL-1 is a key cytokine that promotes pulmonary inflammation and fibrosis, as a result of its ability to stimulate lung fibroblast proliferation and collagen synthesis, two hallmarks of fibrosis. The IL-1 receptor antagonist (IL-1Ra) is an important natural inhibitor of IL-1-mediated functions. In models of pulmonary fibrosis induced by chemotherapeutic agents or noxious particles, administration of IL-1Ra significantly ameliorates lung fibrosis.

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Transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-beta) and interleukin-1 (IL-1) are essential participants in the development of pulmonary fibrosis. Administration of inhibitors to either cytokine can prevent the onset and progression of lung fibrosis in animal models. In this report, stable Thy-1+ and Thy-1- murine lung fibroblast subpopulations were analyzed for expression of the three mammalian TGF-beta isoforms.

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This review article highlights the evidence supporting the concept that, like lymphocytes, fibroblasts also consist of subpopulations with unique phenotypes and functions. A new view of the fibroblast is that they are dynamic and consist of subsets which produce cytokines and interact with the immune system. For example, murine lung fibroblasts separated by fluorescence-activated cell sorting on the basis of the thymocyte-1 antigen are heterogeneous in their morphology, expression of surface markers, antigen presentation to T lymphocytes, ability to synthesize collagen, and cytokine production.

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Tracheal anastomoses were performed in 19 lambs (mean age 4 weeks, mean weight 9.8 kg) to compare polydioxanone (PDS) and polyglactin 910 (Vicryl) suture material (Ethicon, Inc., Somerville, N.

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