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At least 433 records · Page 24Linked to original sources
PubMed2004

Complex flagellar motions and swimming patterns of the flagellates Paraphysomonas vestita and Pteridomonas danica.

Most flagellates with hispid flagella, that is, flagella with rigid filamentous hairs (mastigonemes), swim in the direction of the flagellar wave propagation with an anterior position of the flagellum. Previous analysis was based on planar wave propagation showing that the mastigonemes pull fluid along the flagellar axis. In the present study, we investigate the flagellar motions and swimming patterns for two flagellates with hispid flagella: Paraphysomonas vestita and Pteridomonas danica. Studies were carried out using normal and high-speed video recording, and particles were added to visualize flow around cells generating feeding currents. When swimming or generating flow, P. vestita was able to pull fluid normal to, and not just along, the flagellum, implying the use of the mastigonemes in an as yet un-described way. When the flagellum made contact with food particles, it changed the flagellar waveform so that the particle was fanned towards the ingestion area, suggesting mechano-sensitivity of the mastigonemes. Pteridomonas danica was capable of more complex swimming than previously described for flagellated protists. This was associated with control of the flagellar beat as well as an ability to bend the plane of the flagellar waveform.

Animals↗
PubMed2006

Recovery of components of memory in post-traumatic amnesia.

PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: Post-traumatic amnesia by definition indicates significant impairment of new learning ability, however very few studies have, examined the natural history and resolution of memory and new learning during PTA. Those studies which have, tended to examine orientation separately from the memory processes required to achieve orientation. Analysis of the order of recovery of the items of the Westmead PTA scale was used to examine recovery of memory and new learning capacity. METHODS: The results of daily assessment of 34 patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI) on the Westmead PTA scale were analysed for order of recovery. RESULTS: The pattern of rank order of item recovery indicated that Date of Birth recovered consistently first. There was variability in the remaining items, however items reflecting long-term memory tended to recover second and items reflecting simple new learning followed. Recall of all three pictures reflecting complex new learning recovered last. CONCLUSION: The pattern of recovery of memory and new learning during PTA reflects a number of complex, inter-related variables including; the familiarity with the information, amount of rehearsal both before and since the accident and the number of cues available in the environment.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2005

Bridging the gap between doctors and policymakers: the use of scientific knowledge in local school health care policy in The Netherlands.

BACKGROUND: The decentralization of school health care policy in The Netherlands was followed by an increase in diversity, which was most often not evidence-based. This study aims to clarify the use of scientific knowledge in school health care policy-making processes: multi-actor processes in networks, trying to solve certain problems. METHODS: Case-study design in four Municipal Health Service regions, using documents and half-structured interviews as data sources. RESULTS: Scientific knowledge is used by only 42% of the actors in 58% of decision-making rounds in policy-making processes. 'Recent' regional data on health indicators are used more often than 'established' (inter)national knowledge of theoretical models. Mainly school health professionals use knowledge as a resource to influence the policy process. Other actors (e.g. managers and municipalities) use formal power, money or 'initiative' as their main resources. Powerful actors put forward less scientific knowledge than actors in dependent positions. Individual actors with a combined scientific and political frame of reference put forward knowledge most frequently, especially in complex networks with many actors, more than one powerful actor, more than one arena, more than one dominant resource and more than one dominant frame of reference. CONCLUSION: The use of scientific knowledge in school health care policy-making processes can and must be improved. Liaison officers can bridge the gap between doctors and policymakers, especially in complex policy networks. They combine a scientific and a political frame of reference and act upon scientific knowledge as a resource in their efforts to influence the policy-making process.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2007

[Surgical treatment of morbid obesity].

BACKGROUND: Patients with morbid obesity are prone to weight-related disease, reduced quality of life and shortened life expectancy. Long-term weight loss is unsatisfactory with conservative treatment and weight-reducing surgery is increasingly performed in all Norwegian health regions. METHODS: This review is based on electronic database searches. We describe the two procedures most commonly performed in Norway, i.e. gastric bypass and biliopancreatic diversion with duodenal switch, including preoperative workup and expected results after surgery. The domestic use of different surgical techniques is also outlined. RESULTS: In Norway, around 750 bariatric procedures were planned in 2006. Gastric bypass yields a weight reduction of 30% two years after the operative. Resolution of type 2-diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and obstructive sleep apnea has been demonstrated in most patients. A majority of patients report improved quality of life. Procedure-related mortality is less than 1% and surgical complications occur in approximately 20%. Nutritional deficiencies are frequent. Weight loss is somewhat greater after biliopancreatic diversion with duodenal switch, but the procedure is more complex. Life-long follow-up is recommended after bariatric surgery. INTERPRETATION: In selected patients with morbid obesity, bariatric surgery is a viable treatment. However, prospective long- term studies are needed.

Bariatric Surgery↗
PubMed2003

Spirochete-platelet attachment and thrombocytopenia in murine relapsing fever borreliosis.

Thrombocytopenia is common in persons infected with relapsing fever Borreliae. We previously showed that the relapsing fever spirochete Borrelia hermsii binds to and activates human platelets in vitro and that, after platelet activation, high-level spirochete-platelet attachment is mediated by integrin alpha IIb beta 3, a receptor that requires platelet activation for full function. Here we established that B hermsii infection of the mouse results in severe thrombocytopenia and a functional defect in hemostasis caused by accelerated platelet loss. Disseminated intravascular coagulation, immune thrombocytopenic purpura, or splenic sequestration did not play a discernible role in this model. Instead, spirochete-platelet complexes were detected in the blood of infected mice, suggesting that platelet attachment by bacteria might result in platelet clearance. Consistent with this, splenomegaly and thrombocytopenia temporally correlated with spirochetemia, and the severity of thrombocytopenia directly correlated with the degree of spirochetemia. Activation of platelets and integrin alpha IIb beta 3 were apparently not required for bacterium-platelet binding or platelet clearance because the bacterium-bound platelets in the circulation were not activated, and platelet binding and thrombocytopenia during infection of beta 3-deficient and wild-type mice were indistinguishable. These findings suggest that thrombocytopenia of relapsing fever is the result of platelet clearance after beta 3-independent bacterial attachment to circulating platelets.

Animals↗
PubMed2004

Control of systemic B cell-mediated autoimmune disease by nonmyeloablative conditioning and major histocompatibility complex-mismatched allogeneic bone marrow transplantation.

Systemic autoimmune disease (AID) can be controlled with conventional therapies in most patients. However, relapses are common, leading to progressive disability and premature death. Nonmyeloablative conditioning and allogeneic bone marrow transplantation (BMT) could be an effective treatment for severe AID, because of mild toxicity of the conditioning and the potential benefits of donor chimerism. We examined the effects of this treatment in experimental autoimmune arthritis. Our results demonstrate the induction of complete donor chimerism and significant suppression of disease activity. No clinical graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) was observed. The beneficial effects were most likely caused by the elimination of plasma cells producing pathogenic autoantibodies, because these antibodies disappeared rapidly after BMT. Although this type of treatment was effective in organ-specific T-cell-mediated AID, the present study provides convincing evidence that nonmyeloablative conditioning and allogeneic BMT can effectively treat severe B-cell-mediated AID with a systemic inflammatory component.

Animals↗
PubMed2004

Heavy metal exposure affects the humoral immune response in a free-living small songbird, the great tit (Parus major).

Although many studies have investigated possible effects of heavy metal contamination on components of the immune system in captive birds, studies on the effects of chronic exposure to heavy metals on the immune system of free-living birds are rare. Therefore we studied the effect of heavy metal exposure on the humoral immune responsiveness in free-living great tit (Parus major) populations from four study sites along a pollution gradient near a metallurgic smelter. Although there were no differences in body condition or hematocrit values among great tits from the four study sites, the heavy metal exposure appeared to affect an individual's humoral immune responsiveness, as measured by antibody titers to sheep red blood cells. Great tits from the study site farthest away from the smelter complex had a significantly higher immune responsiveness than birds from the two areas closest to the metallurgic smelter. Further work is now necessary to establish a causal association between heavy metal contamination and immunosuppression.

Animals↗
PubMed2003

C-H bond activation by unsymmetrical 2-(N-arylimino)pyrrolide Pt complexes: geometric effects on reactivity.

Reactions of chloroplatinum methyl complexes with N-(arylimino)pyrrolide anions afford cis and trans neutral platinum methyl complexes. Isomers with methyl trans to the pyrrolide nitrogen activate benzene C-H bonds at 85 degrees C more than 80 times faster than the corresponding cis isomer. In addition, reactions of platinum dimethyl complexes with N-(arylimino)pyrroles (Ar = 4-substituted phenyl) in C6D6 at ambient temperature give unlabeled methane and cis methyl complex containing heavily deuterated Pt-Me. In contrast, bulky aryl substituents give methane isotopomers and trans-Pt-Ph product. The origins of these observations are discussed.

Journal Article↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Vulnerability of waterborne diseases to climate change in Canada: a review.

This project addresses two important issues relevant to the health of Canadians: the risk of waterborne illness and the health impacts of global climate change. The Canadian health burden from waterborne illness is unknown, although it presumably accounts for a significant proportion of enteric illness. Recently, large outbreaks with severe consequences produced by E. coli O157:H7 and Cryptosporidium have alarmed Canadians and brought demands for political action. A concurrent need to understand the health impacts of global climate changes and to develop strategies to prevent or prepare for these has also been recognized. There is mounting evidence that weather is often a factor in triggering waterborne disease outbreaks. A recent study of precipitation and waterborne illness in the United States found that more than half the waterborne disease outbreaks in the United States during the last half century followed a period of extreme rainfall. Projections of international global climate change scenarios suggest that, under conditions of global warming most of Canada may expect longer summers, milder winters, increased summer drought, and more extreme precipitation. Excess precipitation, floods, high temperatures, and drought could affect the risk of waterborne illness in Canada. The existing scientific information regarding most weather-related adverse health impacts and on the impacts of global climate change on health in Canada is insufficient for informed decision making. The results of this project address this need through the investigation of the complex systemic interrelationships between disease incidence, weather parameters, and water quality and quantity, and by projecting the potential impact of global climate change on those relationships.

Animals↗
PubMed2005

Quality, risk management and governance in mental health: an overview.

OBJECTIVE: To consider the origin, current emphasis and relevance of the concepts of quality, risk management and clinical governance in mental health. CONCLUSIONS: Increasingly, health service boards and management teams are required to give attention to clinical governance rather than corporate governance alone. Clinical governance is a unifying quality concept that aims to produce a structure and systems to assure and improve the quality of clinical services by promoting an integrated and organization-wide approach towards continuous quality improvement. Many psychiatrists will find the reduction in clinical autonomy, the need to consider the welfare of the whole population as well as the individual patient for whom they are responsible, and the requirement that they play a part in a complex systems approach to quality improvement to be a challenge. Avoiding or ignoring this challenge will potentially lead to conflict with modern management approaches and increased loss of influence on future developments in mental health services.

Australia↗
PubMed2005

General practice as a complex system: a novel analysis of consultation data.

BACKGROUND: Complex systems have specific properties of robustness and self organisation which arise from interacting components within the overall system and which govern the system's behaviour. These are typically associated with a power law distribution of event sizes. Commentators have suggested that health systems are complex, but there has been limited quantitative investigation of this issue. OBJECTIVES: To test the hypothesis that consultation patterns in primary care follow a power law distribution typical of a complex system. METHODS: Analysis of 142,050 episodes of non-pathological back pain in routinely collected New Zealand national data. Calculation of the distribution of the duration and number of GP consultations for each illness episode. Secondary analysis of a published UK dataset of consultation rates for 44,000 patients in four general practices. RESULTS: Number of consultations per episode of back pain demonstrated excellent fit with a power law in the full dataset (r2 = 0.96) and all but one subgroups (r2 = 0.90-0.99). The number of consultations per patient from four UK practices was suggestive of a power law distribution (r2 = 0.88-0.93). CONCLUSIONS: Consultation patterns in general practice show measurable properties of a complex system. The consistency of the distribution across different population groups suggests that attempts to manage consultation patterns should focus on the whole system of patients, rather than upon individuals or subgroups of the patient population.

Accidents↗
PubMed2004

Protein profiling in brain tumors using mass spectrometry: feasibility of a new technique for the analysis of protein expression.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this research was to perform a preliminary assessment of protein patterns in primary brain tumors using a direct-tissue mass spectrometric technique to profile and map biomolecules. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN: We examined 20 prospectively collected, snap-frozen normal brain and brain tumor specimens using matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) mass spectrometry (MS), and compared peptide and protein expression in primary brain tumor and nontumor brain tissues. RESULTS: MS can be used to identify protein expression patterns in human brain tissue and tumor specimens. The mass spectral patterns can reliably identify glial neoplasms of similar histological grade and differentiate them from tumors of different histological grades as well as from nontumor brain tissues. Initial bioinformatics cluster analysis algorithms classified tumor and nontumor tissues into similar groups comparable with their histological grade. CONCLUSIONS: We describe a novel tool for the analysis of protein expression patterns in human glial neoplasms. Initial results demonstrate that MALDI-MS technology can significantly aid in the process of unraveling and understanding the molecular complexities of gliomas. MALDI-MS accurately and reliably identified normal and neoplastic tissues, and could be used to discriminate between tumors of increasing grades.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

Burkholderia fungorum septicemia.

We report the first case of community-acquired bacteremia with Burkholderia fungorum, a newly described member of the Burkholderia cepacia complex. A 9-year-old girl sought treatment with septic arthritis in her right knee and ankle with soft tissue involvement. Commercial identification systems did not identify the causative microorganism.

Anti-Bacterial Agents↗
PubMed2007

Developmentally regulated histone modifications in Drosophila follicle cells: initiation of gene amplification is associated with histone H3 and H4 hyperacetylation and H1 phosphorylation.

We have used gene amplification in Drosophila follicle cells as a model of metazoan DNA replication to address whether changes in histone modifications are associated with replication origin activation. We observe that replication initiation is associated with distinct histone modifications. Acetylated lysines K5, K8, and K12 on histone H4 and K14 on histone H3 are specifically enriched during replication initiation at the amplification origins. Strikingly, H4 acetylation persists at an amplification origin well after replication forks have progressed significantly outward from the origin, indicating that H4 acetylation is associated with origin regulation and not histone deposition at the replication forks. Origin recognition complex subunit 2 (orc2) mutants with severe amplification defects do not abolish H4 acetylation, whereas the dup/cdt1 mutant delays the appearance of acetylation foci, and mutants in rbf result in temporal persistence. These data indicate that core histone acetylation is associated with origin activity. Furthermore, follicle cells undergoing gene amplification exhibit high levels of histone H1 phosphorylation. The patterns of H1 phosphorylation provide insights into cell cycle states during amplification, as H1 kinase activity in follicle cells is responsive to high Cyclin E activity, and it can be abolished by overexpressing the retinoblastoma homolog, Rbf, that represses Cyclin E. These data suggest that amplification origins are able to initiate when the cells are in a late S-phase, when the genome is normally not licensed for replication.

Acetylation↗
PubMed2005

Theoretical study of the electronic spectra of square-planar platinum (II) complexes based on the two-component relativistic time-dependent density-functional theory.

In the present work the electronic spectra of [PtCl(4)](2-), [PtBr(4)](2-), and [Pt(CN)(4)](2-) are studied with a recently proposed relativistic time-dependent density-functional theory (TDDFT) based on the two-component zeroth-order regular approximation and a noncollinear exchange-correlation (XC) functional. The contribution to the double group excited states in terms of singlet and triplet single group excited states is estimated through the inner product of the transition density matrix obtained from two-component and scalar relativistic TDDFT calculations to better understand the double group excited states. Spin-orbital coupling effects are found to be very important in order to simulate the electronic spectra of these complexes. The results show that the two-component TDDFT formalism can afford excitation energies with high accuracy for the transition-metal systems studied here when use is made of a proper XC potential.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2002

Microbial behavior in a heterogeneous world.

Most microorganisms are motile during at least part of their life cycle, because they need to find optimal conditions in a patchy world. The sheer volume of microorganisms in the biosphere means that their motile sensory behavior also contributes to the global transformation and cycling of matter. How microorganisms move and how they orient themselves using environmental cues are integral to understanding the complex structure and function of microbial communities, but although motility in response to external stimuli was first described more than 120 years ago, understanding of the cellular and molecular mechanisms involved has only been achieved more recently.

Anaerobiosis↗
PubMed2004

Characterization of the interactions between mammalian PAZ PIWI domain proteins and Dicer.

PAZ PIWI domain (PPD) proteins, together with the RNA cleavage products of Dicer, form ribonucleoprotein complexes called RNA-induced silencing complexes (RISCs). RISCs mediate gene silencing through targeted messenger RNA cleavage and translational suppression. The PAZ domains of PPD and Dicer proteins were originally thought to mediate binding between PPD proteins and Dicer, although no evidence exists to support this theory. Here we show that PAZ domains are not required for PPD protein-Dicer interactions. Rather, a subregion of the PIWI domain in PPD proteins, the PIWI-box, binds directly to the Dicer RNase III domain. Stable binding between PPD proteins and Dicer was dependent on the activity of Hsp90. Unexpectedly, binding of PPD proteins to Dicer inhibits the RNase activity of this enzyme in vitro. Lastly, we show that PPD proteins and Dicer are present in soluble and membrane-associated fractions, indicating that interactions between these two types of proteins may occur in multiple compartments.

Animals↗