BACKGROUND Primary lateral sclerosis (PLS) is a progressive upper motor neuron neurodegenerative condition. The diagnosis is made using clinical history, objective neurological assessment, and exclusion of other neurodegenerative disorders. OBJECTIVE To evaluate the role of fluorodeoxyglucose F18 positron emission tomography and 3-dimensional stereotactic surface projection in the diagnosis o...

Understanding the processes that determine the distribution of populations is a fundamental goal in ecology. In this study, I determined the relative contribution of space and the biotic and abiotic environment to the distribution of the palm-leaf skeletonizer Homaledra sabalella (PLS; Lepidoptera: Coleophoridae) among patchily distributed dwarf palmettos (Sabal minor; Arecaceae). Based on surv...

Partial least squares (PLS) has proven to be a important multivariate analytic tool for positron emission tomographic and, more recently, event-related potential (ERP) data. The application to ERP incorporates the ability to analyze space and time together, a feature that has obvious appeal for event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data. This paper presents the extension of...

Segmentation is a critical issue for PLS path modeling. Group specific model estimates can significantly differ from other groups or the overall model estimates (Ringle, Wende, & Will, 2007). Sequential segmentation strategies on the manifest data level, such as K-means or tree clustering, usually fail to identify groups of data with distinctive inner path model estimates (Ringle, 2006). The au...

In many domains (marketing, social sciences, etc.) the variables of interest are often not directly observable. Complex causal relationships between such latent variables may be modeled by means of Structural Equation Models (SEM). Two different methodologies exist for the estimation of such models: SEM-ML (Maximum Likelihood Approach to Structural Equation Models), also known as LISREL (Linear...

Primary lateral sclerosis (PLS) has been regarded as a rare, extreme form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Like ALS, it is a clinical diagnosis without established biomarkers. We sought to explore loss of cerebral myelin in relation to clinical features, including cognitive impairment, in cases of both ALS and PLS. A novel MRI sequence (mcDESPOT) sensitive to water pools within myelin an...

A multivariate dominant factor based non-linearized PLS model is proposed. The intensities of different lines were taken to construct a multivariate dominant factor model, which describes the dominant concentration information of the measured species. In constructing such a multivariate model, non-linear transformation of multi characteristic line intensities according to the physical mechanism...

Plasmalogens (Pls) belong to a subclass of glycerophospholipids, and widely distributed in human and animal tissues (Nagan & Zoeller, 2001). Although the clinical significance of these phospholipids is recognized in relation to peroxisomal disorders (Wanders & Waterham, 2006), the physiopathological roles of Pls are not fully understood. Recently, serum (or plasma) Pls have gained interest in s...