Appendicolith classification: physical and chemical properties of appendicoliths in patients with CT diagnosed acute appendicitis - a prospective cohort study.

Objective: Appendicoliths are associated with a more complicated course of acute appendicitis and failure of non-operative treatment. We aimed to update the appendicolith classification originally described in 1966 and to assess the association of appendicolith characteristics with appendicitis severity.

Design: This prospective predefined MAPPAC-trial (ClinicalTrials.

Intelligent digital tools for screening of brain connectivity and dementia risk estimation in people affected by mild cognitive impairment: the AI-Mind clinical study protocol.

More than 10 million Europeans show signs of mild cognitive impairment (MCI), a transitional stage between normal brain aging and dementia stage memory disorder. The path MCI takes can be divergent; while some maintain stability or even revert to cognitive norms, alarmingly, up to half of the cases progress to dementia within 5 years. Current diagnostic practice lacks the necessary screening tools to identify those at risk of progression.

Sediment profile dating and reconstructing nuclear events from annually laminated lake sediments in northern Finland.

The sediments deposited in Lake Kevojärvi (69°45N, 27°00'E) in northernmost Finland were investigated for radioactivity. Freeze cores recovered from the 35-m deep basin has preserved a distinct succession of annual laminations deposited between 1909 and 2015. The basic varve structure is composed of a detrital snowmelt layer and an organic-rich post-snowmelt layer lying on top of the snowmelt layer.

Shorter Cold Ischemia Time in Deceased Donor Kidney Transplantation Reduces the Incidence of Delayed Graft Function Especially Among Highly Sensitized Patients and Kidneys From Older Donors.

Background: Long cold ischemia time (CIT) is the most important factor contributing to delayed graft function (DGF) after kidney transplant. Improvements in pretransplant procedures may reduce CIT and improve clinical outcome.

Materials And Methods: Pretransplant histocompatibility tests were modernized at our laboratory in 2015, leading to significant decrease of time consumed for these enabling earlier surgery.

Task-Modulated Corticocortical Synchrony in the Cognitive-Motor Network Supporting Handwriting.

Both motor and cognitive aspects of behavior depend on dynamic, accurately timed neural processes in large-scale brain networks. Here, we studied synchronous interplay between cortical regions during production of cognitive-motor sequences in humans. Specifically, variants of handwriting that differed in motor variability, linguistic content, and memorization of movement cues were contrasted to unveil functional sensitivity of corticocortical connections.

Beyond rest and quiescence (endodormancy and ecodormancy): A novel model for quantifying plant-environment interaction in bud dormancy release.

Bud dormancy of plants has traditionally been explained either by physiological growth arresting conditions in the bud or by unfavourable environmental conditions, such as non-growth-promoting low air temperatures. This conceptual dichotomy has provided the framework also for developing process-based plant phenology models. Here, we propose a novel model that in addition to covering the classical dichotomy as a special case also allows the quantification of an interaction of physiological and environmental factors.

Cortical Tracking of Global and Local Variations of Speech Rhythm during Connected Natural Speech Perception.

During natural speech perception, listeners must track the global speaking rate, that is, the overall rate of incoming linguistic information, as well as transient, local speaking rate variations occurring within the global speaking rate. Here, we address the hypothesis that this tracking mechanism is achieved through coupling of cortical signals to the amplitude envelope of the perceived acoustic speech signals. Cortical signals were recorded with magnetoencephalography (MEG) while participants perceived spontaneously produced speech stimuli at three global speaking rates (slow, normal/habitual, and fast).

The right hemisphere is highlighted in connected natural speech production and perception.

Current understanding of the cortical mechanisms of speech perception and production stems mostly from studies that focus on single words or sentences. However, it has been suggested that processing of real-life connected speech may rely on additional cortical mechanisms. In the present study, we examined the neural substrates of natural speech production and perception with magnetoencephalography by modulating three central features related to speech: amount of linguistic content, speaking rate and social relevance.

ROS signalling in a destabilised world: A molecular understanding of climate change.

Climate change results in increased intensity and frequency of extreme abiotic and biotic stress events. In plants, reactive oxygen species (ROS) accumulate in proportion to the level of stress and are major signalling and regulatory metabolites coordinating growth, defence, acclimation and cell death. Our knowledge of ROS homeostasis, sensing, and signalling is therefore key to understanding the impacts of climate change at the molecular level.

A multimodal spectral approach to characterize rhythm in natural speech.

Human utterances demonstrate temporal patterning, also referred to as rhythm. While simple oromotor behaviors (e.g.

Task-sensitive reconfiguration of corticocortical 6-20 Hz oscillatory coherence in naturalistic human performance.

Electrophysiological oscillatory coherence between brain regions has been proposed to facilitate functional long-range connectivity within neurocognitive networks. This notion is supported by intracortical recordings of coherence in singled-out corticocortical connections in the primate cortex. However, the manner in which this operational principle manifests in the task-sensitive connectivity that supports human naturalistic performance remains undercharacterized.

Corticomuscular coherence is tuned to the spontaneous rhythmicity of speech at 2-3 Hz.

Human speech features rhythmicity that frames distinctive, fine-grained speech patterns. Speech can thus be counted among rhythmic motor behaviors that generally manifest characteristic spontaneous rates. However, the critical neural evidence for tuning of articulatory control to a spontaneous rate of speech has not been uncovered.

Modeling fallout of anthropogenic 129I.

Despite the relatively well-recognized emission rates of the anthropogenic 129I, there is little knowledge about the temporal fallout patterns and magnitude of fluxes since the start of the atomic era atthe early 1940s. We here present measurements of annual 129I concentrations in sediment archives from Sweden and Finland covering the period 1942-2006. The results revealed impression of 129I emissions from the nuclear reprocessing facility at Sellafield and La Hague and a clear Chernobyl fallout enhancement during 1986.

Motor cortex dynamics in visuomotor production of speech and non-speech mouth movements.

We investigated timing and hemispheric balance of motor cortex activation when kinetically similar speech and non-speech mouth movements and sequences of such movements were triggered by visually presented letter- and symbol-strings. As an index of motor cortex activation, we used magnetoencephalographic recording of task-related change of precentral 20 Hz (16-24 Hz) activity. Suppression of the 20 Hz rhythm revealed pre-movement activation in the face representation areas that was tied to visual instruction, not movement onset.

Effect of diabetes on outcome and changes in quality of life after coronary artery bypass grafting.

Background: An increasing proportion of patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting are diabetics who are known to carry a higher mortality and morbidity in association with operation, but data on whether health-related quality of life improves similarly after coronary artery bypass grafting in diabetic and nondiabetic patients are limited. We assessed in detail changes in health-related quality of life (RAND-36 Health Survey) during the first year after coronary artery bypass grafting.

Methods: Seventy-four of the 508 patients (14.

Improved health-related quality of life after coronary artery bypass grafting is unrelated to use of cardiopulmonary bypass.

This prospective study was instituted to assess whether the use of the on-pump method or the off-pump method affects changes in health-related quality of life (QOL) as evaluated a year after coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery. Data including preoperative risk factors and postoperative morbidity up to discharge were collected from 508 CABG patients operated in the Heart Center of a university hospital and further treated in secondary referral hospitals. Four hundred and fifty-two (89.

Perioperative myocardial infarction has negative impact on health-related quality of life following coronary artery bypass graft surgery.

Objective: Perioperative myocardial infarction (PMI) is a well-described complication of coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG). Data on its effect on patients' subsequent health-related quality of life (QOL) and on other related consequences is deficient. The aim here was to evaluate in a prospective follow-up design the risk factors for and consequences of PMI and especially its possible impact on health-related QOL.

Learning new names for new objects: cortical effects as measured by magnetoencephalography.

We tracked the evolvement of naming-related cortical dynamics with magnetoencephalography when five normal adults successfully learned names and/or meanings of unfamiliar objects. In all subjects, the learning of new names was associated with pronounced cortical effects. The learning effect was of long latency and emerged as a change of activation in the same cortical network that was active during naming of familiar items.

Changes in health-related quality of life and functional capacity following coronary artery bypass graft surgery.

Objective: Improvement in survival and quality of life are the primary indications for coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) operations. Among elderly patients the main goal of surgery is not necessarily to prolong life, but to improve the health-related quality of life. Factors associated with mortality and morbidity following CABG surgery have been well defined, but the quality of life and functional capacity in elderly patients undergoing CABG are poorly documented.

Changes in eating and weight control habits after myocardial infarction.

The focus of this study was to describe changes the patients make in eating and weight control habits 3--4 months after diagnosis of myocardial infarction, and to identify difficulties associated with the reported changes 1 month later. Subjects were 50 male patients (mean age 48 years, mean body mass index 27.9kg/m(2)) participating in an in-patient cardiac rehabilitation programme.