A Comparison of Radiosurgical Planning Techniques for the Treatment of Trigeminal Neuralgia.

Purpose: To survey and analyze the current peer-reviewed literature on physical aspects of radiosurgical treatment of trigeminal neuralgia (TN), and objectively determine the comparative differences between common treatment planning techniques/modalities when variability in computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging data sets and clinical approaches are minimized.

Methods And Materials: Example treatment plans were created from 8 distinct planning approaches on a unique computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging data set. Treatment plan selection comprised Gamma Knife, physical cone, and multileaf collimator-based plans.

Emerging Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances in Tap Water from the American Healthy Homes Survey II.

Humans experience widespread exposure to anthropogenic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) through various media, which can lead to a wide range of negative health impacts. Tap water is an important source of exposure in communities with any degree of contamination but routine or large-scale PFAS monitoring often depends on targeted analytical methods limited to measuring specific PFAS. We analyzed 680 tap water samples from the American Healthy Homes Survey II for PFAS using non-targeted analysis (NTA) to expand the range of detectable PFAS.

Microfluidic Cultures of Basal Forebrain Cholinergic Neurons for Assessing Retrograde Cell Death by Live Imaging.

Neurons are highly polarized cells, with axons that may innervate distant target regions. In the brain, basal forebrain cholinergic neurons (BFCNs) possess extensive axons that project to several target regions such as the cortex, hippocampus, and amygdala, and may be exposed to a specific microenvironment in their axon targets that may have retrograde effects on neuronal health. Interestingly, BFCNs express the pan-neurotrophin receptor p75NTR throughout life while also concomitantly co-expressing all Trk receptors, making them capable of responding to both mature and precursor neurotrophins to promote survival or apoptosis, respectively.

Ontogenetic correlates, not direct adaptation, explain the evolution of stelar morphology.

The primary vascular system of plants (the stele) has attracted interest from paleobotanists, developmental biologists, systematists, and physiologists for nearly two centuries. Ferns, with their diverse stelar morphology, deep evolutionary history, and prominent fossil record, have been a major focus in studies of the stele. To explain the diversity of stelar morphology, past adaptive hypotheses have invoked biomechanics, hydraulics, and drought tolerance as key selection pressures in the evolution of stelar complexity; but, these hypotheses often isolate the stele from a whole-plant developmental context, ignoring potential covariation between vascular patterning and shoot morphology.