Clinical evidence available for the assessment of medical devices (MDs) is frequently insufficient. New MDs should be subjected to high quality clinical studies to demonstrate their benefit to patients. The randomized controlled trial (RCT) is the study design reaching the highest level of evidence in order to demonstrate the efficacy of a new MD. However, the clinical context of some MDs makes...

In this study, we introduce a new type of surface curves called $D$-type curve. This curve is defined by the property that the unit Darboux vector $vec{W}_{0} $ of a surface curve $vec{r}(s)$ and unit surface normal $vec{n} $ along the curve $vec{r}(s)$ satisfy the condition $leftlangle vec{n} ,vec{W}_{0} rightrangle =text{constant}$. We point out that a $D$-type curve is a geodesic curve or an...

The Caspase Recruitment Domain (CARD) from the innate immune receptor NOD1 was crystallized with Ubiquitin (Ub). NOD1 CARD was present as a helix-swapped homodimer similar to other structures of NOD1 CARD, and Ub monomers formed a homodimer similar in conformation to Lys48-linked di-Ub. The interaction between NOD1 CARD and Ub in the crystal was mediated by novel binding sites on each molecule....

Human aging brings with it declines in sensory function, both in vision and in hearing, as well as a general slowing in a variety of perceptual and cognitive operations. Yet in spite of these declines, language comprehension typically remains well preserved in normal aging. We review data from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to describe a two-component model of sentence comprehensi...

The present study examined age differences in the timing and neural recruitment within lateral and medial PFC while younger and older adults hedonically regulated their responses to unpleasant film clips. When analyses focused on activity during the emotional peak of the film clip (the most emotionally salient portion of the film), several age differences emerged. When comparing regulation to p...

Context can drastically influence responses to environmental stimuli. For example, a gunshot should provoke a different response at a public park than a shooting range. Little is known about how contextual processing and neural correlates change across human development or about individual differences related to early environmental experiences. Children (N = 60; 8-19 years, 24 exposed to interp...

There has been a recent proliferation of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies that interpret between-group or within-group differences in brain response patterns as evidence for compensatory neural recruitment. However, it is currently a challenge to determine whether these observed differences are truly attributable to compensatory neural recruitment or whether they are indicat...

Recent evidence has shown that older adults fail to show adaptation in the right fusiform gyrus (FG) to the same face presented repeatedly, despite accurate detection of the previously presented face. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate whether this phenomenon is associated with age-related reductions in face specificity in brain activity and whether older adults compen...