objective: silybum marianum has been used for centuries in herbal medicine for treatment of liver diseases. currently, there is no data available on the possible effects of silymarin on fetal development. this study aimed to investigate the teratogenic effect of silymarin on balb/c mice fetuses. materials and methods: a total of 40 pregnant mice were divided into 4 groups of 10 mice each. three...

The presence of a vertebral compression fracture is highly indicative of osteoporosis and represents the single most robust predictor for development of a second osteoporotic fracture in the spine or elsewhere. Less than one third of vertebral compression fractures are diagnosed clinically. We present an automated method for detecting spine compression fractures in Computed Tomography (CT) scan...

In this Letter we present the explicit construction of a saltatory traveling pulse of nonconstant profile in an idealized model of dendritic tissue. Excitable dendritic spine clusters, modeled with integrate-and-fire (IF) units, are connected to a passive dendritic cable at a discrete set of points. The saltatory nature of the wave is directly attributed to the breaking of translation symmetry ...

Dendritic spines are the primary site of excitatory input on most principal neurons. Long-lasting changes in synaptic activity are accompanied by alterations in spine shape, size and number. The responsiveness of thin spines to increases and decreases in synaptic activity has led to the suggestion that they are 'learning spines', whereas the stability of mushroom spines suggests that they are '...

The thermodynamics of protein folding are dictated by a complex interplay of interatomic interactions and physical forces. A variety of unnatural protein-like oligomers have the capacity to manifest defined folding patterns. While the energetics of folding in natural proteins is well studied, little is known about the forces that govern folding in modified backbones. Here, we explore the thermo...

Minimally invasive spine surgery has its roots in the mid-twentieth century with a few surgeons and a few techniques, but it has now developed into a large field of progressive spinal surgery. A wide range of techniques are now called "minimally invasive," and case reports are submitted constantly with new "minimally invasive" approaches to spinal pathology. As minimally invasive spine surgery ...

A grid comb model is a generalization of the well known comb model, and it consists of N backbones. For N=1 the system reduces to the comb model where subdiffusion takes place with the transport exponent 1/2. We present an exact analytical evaluation of the transport exponent of anomalous diffusion for finite and infinite number of backbones. We show that for an arbitrarily large but finite num...

An efficient and practical catalytic system for the anti-Markovnikov ruthenium-catalyzed hydroarylation of styrenes with acetophenone, allowing a straightforward access to bibenzyl backbones, is described for the first time: this process, involving regioselective C-H bond activation, is complementary to a Friedel-Crafts type reaction giving the branched adduct.