Until 4 decades ago, the rates of stroke in low- and middle-income countries were considerably lower than those in more economically robust countries. In the intervening years, however, the rates of stroke in places such as southern India and rural South Africa have approximately doubled, whereas stroke rates in more economically developed nations have decreased. What is far more striking is that

INTRODUCTION: Complications after lumbar anaesthesia and epidural blood patch have been described in patients with congenital small spinal canal and increased epidural fat or epidural lipomatosis. These conditions, whether occurring separately or in combination, require magnetic resonance imaging for diagnosis and grading, but their clinical significance is still unclear. CASE PRESENTATION: A 35-y

This paper presents an iterative detector that, by thresholding the output of the matched filter, gives maximum-likelihood sequence detector (MLSD) decisions on binary, antipodally modulated symbols that have been corrupted by intersymbol interference and additive Gaussian noise. The detector will make decisions on some, but often not all, of the symbols in a transmitted sequence, and those decisi

A passive system is one that cannot produce energy, a property that naturally poses constraints on the system. A system in convolution form is fully described by its transfer function, and the class of Herglotz functions, holomorphic functions mapping the open upper half plane to the closed upper half plane, is closely related to the transfer functions of passive systems. Following a well-known re

Adeno-associated virus type 2 (AAV-2) capsid proteins have eight sequence motifs that are potential sites for O- or N-linked glycosylation. Three are in prominent surface locations, close to the sites of cellular receptor attachment and to neutralizing epitopes on or near protrusions surrounding the three-fold axes, raising the possibility that AAV-2 might use glycosylation as a means of immune es

Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato is a tick-borne pathogen that causes Lyme disease. The characterization of membrane proteins from this and other pathogens may yield a better understanding of the mechanisms of infection and information useful for vaccine design. Characterization of the highly hydrophobic Borrelia outer membrane component P13 from a mutant (OspA- OspB- OspC- and OspD-) strain was un

Popular Science AbstractHow well bees can see the world?aBees such as bumblebees and honeybees are some of the most important pollinators. They pollinate by using different sensory cues from the flowers, primarily vision and olfaction. In my PhD I was interested in understanding how well bees can see while they are inspecting flowers as well as while they are performing high-speed flight maneuversBees use multiple sensory modalities to perform day-to-day tasks. Light allows them to perceive objects and the general features of their surroundings, enabling them to find food and to navigate safely across the landscape. Although both these tasks involve vision, the requirements of the visual system differ depending upon what the bee wants to achieve; locate a flower to feed from or adjust its

This paper sets up a framework for designing a massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) testbed by investigating hardware and system-level requirements such as processing complexity, duplexing mode and frame structure. Taking these into account, a generic system and processing partitioning is proposed which allows flexible scaling and processing distribution onto a multitude of physically sep

Resource management is an essential building block of any modern computer and communication network. In this thesis, the results of our research in the following two tracks are summarized in four papers. The first track includes three papers and covers modeling, prediction and control for multi-tier computing systems. In the first paper, a NARX-based multi-step-ahead response time predictor for si

Purpose: The aim of this study was to compare the diagnostic performance of the three software packages 4DMSPECT (4DM), Emory Cardiac Toolbox (ECTb), and Cedars Quantitative Perfusion SPECT (QPS) for quantification of myocardial perfusion scintigram (MPS) using a large group of consecutive patients. Methods: We studied 1,052 consecutive patients who underwent 2-day stress/rest 99mTc-sestamibi MPS

Mitochondrial disorders are among the most prevalent inborn errors of metabolism but largely lack treatments and have poor outcomes. High-fat, low-carbohydrate ketogenic diets (KDs) have shown beneficial effects in mouse models of mitochondrial myopathies, with induction of mitochondrial biogenesis as the suggested main mechanism. We fed KD to mice with respiratory chain complex III (CIII) deficie

Fluctuating climate is a hallmark of Earth. As one transcends deep into Earth time, however, both the evidence for and the causes of climate change become difficult to establish. We report geochemical and sedimentological evidence for repeated, short-term climate fluctuations from the exceptionally well-preserved ∼1.4-billion-year-old Xiamaling Formation of the North China Craton. We observe two p

Exceptionally preserved fossil biotas of the Burgess Shale and a handful of other similar Cambrian deposits provide rare but critical insights into the early diversification of animals. The extraordinary preservation of labile tissues in these geographically widespread but temporally restricted soft-bodied fossil assemblages has remained enigmatic since Walcott's initial discovery in 1909. Here, w

Elevated molybdenum (Mo) contents in organic-rich sediments are indicative of deposition from an anoxic and sulfide-rich (euxinic) water-column. This can be used for tracing past euxinic conditions in ancient oceans from sedimentary archives. Conventional analytical detection of elevated molybdenum levels is, however, expensive and cannot be directly performed in the field. Here, we show that hand

The end-Ordovician extinction consisted of two discrete pulses, both linked, in various ways, to glaciation at the South Pole. The first phase, starting just below the Normalograptus extraordinarius Zone, particularly affected nektonic and planktonic species, while the second pulse, associated with the Normalograptus persculptus Zone, was less selective. Glacially induced cooling and oxygenation a