We report three extremely rare cases of Streptococcus pneumoniae meningoencephalitis (SPM) after trans-sphenoidal surgery (TSS). Between 2004 and 2010, we experienced three cases of severe SPM after surgery out of 1,965 patients undergoing TSS (0.15%). The three cases included a 4-year-old boy with a large cystic craniopharyngioma, a 40-year-old man with a non-functioning pituitary adenoma, and...

XSLT is an increasingly popular language for processing XML data. It is widely supported by application platform software. However, little optimization effort has been made inside the current XSLT processing engines. Evaluating a very simple XSLT program on a large XML document with a simple schema may result in extensive usage of memory. In this paper, we present a novel notion of Streaming Pr...

A mitogenic substance on murine lymphocytes was detected in the culture supernate of Streptococcus pyogenes type 12 strain. This substance had a molecular weight of 28,000 and pI 9.2, and was designated as S. pyogenes mitogen (SPM). The proliferative response of C3H/HeN spleen cells began at 1 ng ml-1 and reached a maximal response at 100 ng ml-1 of SPM for 4 days culture. Anti-Thy 1.2 mAb and ...

Macrophages and dendritic cells (DC) are distributed throughout the body and play important roles in pathogen detection and tissue homeostasis. In tissues, resident macrophages exhibit distinct phenotypes and activities, yet the transcriptional pathways that specify tissue-specific macrophages are largely unknown. We investigated the functions and origins of two peritoneal macrophage population...

We analyze the use of kinematic constraints for articulated object tracking. Conditions for the occurrence of singularities in 3-D models are presented and their effects on tracking are characterized. We describe a novel 2-D Scaled Prismatic Model (SPM) for figure registration. In contrast to 3-D kinematic models, the SPM has fewer singularity problems and does not require detailed knowledge of...

R. Mutihac Electricity and Biophysics, University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania Objective Analysis of an fMRI block-based visual stimulation paradigm was comparatively performed by wavelet analysis and statistical parametric mapping (SPM) [1] based on Gaussian Random Field Theory (RFT). The voxels were isotropic and the same general linear model (GLM) was employed in both SPM and the discret...

The suspension-feeding Manila clam Ruditapes philippinarum is a native species of the western Pacific that is now widely distributed around the globe because of its commercial importance. To determine the adaptive physiological responses to changing thermal and nutritional conditions, clearance, filtration, feces production, ammonium excretion, respiration rates, and scope for growth (SFG) were...

Diagnostic accuracy in FDG-PET imaging highly depends on the operating procedures. In this clinical study on dementia, we compared the diagnostic accuracy at a single-subject level of a) Clinical Scenarios, b) Standard FDG Images and c) Statistical Parametrical (SPM) Maps generated via a new optimized SPM procedure. We evaluated the added value of FDG-PET, either Standard FDG Images or SPM Maps...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Spontaneous swallowing frequency has been described as an index of dysphagia in various health conditions. This study evaluated the potential of spontaneous swallow frequency analysis as a screening protocol for dysphagia in acute stroke. METHODS In a cohort of 63 acute stroke cases, swallow frequency rates (swallows per minute [SPM]) were compared with stroke and swall...