BACKGROUND Identifying patients in the immunosuppressive phase of sepsis is essential for development of immunomodulatory therapies. Little data exists comparing the ability of the two most well-studied markers of sepsis-induced immunosuppression, human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-DR expression and lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-ɑ) production, to predict mortality...

BACKGROUND Exercise has shown positive training effects on obesity-related inflammation, however, resistance training has shown mixed results concerning adipocytokine levels. AIMS The purpose of this pilot study was to explore the effects of resistance training on blood adipocytokine concentrations in obese youth, with specific examination of the relationship between these biomarkers and impr...

OBJECTIVES To explore influence of carbohydrates/fat proportions, dietary ingredients on telomere length shortening, oxidative stress and inflammation in a Chinese population with different glucose tolerance status. METHODS Five hundred and fifty-six Chinese subjects without diabetes history underwent a 75 g, 2 h Oral Glucose Tolerance Test (OGTT). Subjects with diabetes (n = 159), pre-diabet...

​ *Corresponding author's address: Linguistics, University of Southern California, 3601 Watt Way, GFS 301, Los Angeles, CA 90089-1693, [email protected] In General American English (GAE), only two full vowels [ɑ, ɔ] occur in syllables ending in [ɹ] plus a non-coronal consonant, e.g. , . An articulatory study of rhotic production by three speakers of GAE was conducted using real-time s...

The effects of background noise on speech-evoked cortical auditory evoked potentials (CAEPs) can provide insight into the physiology of the auditory system. The purpose of this study was to determine background noise effects on neural coding of different phonemes within a syllable. CAEPs were recorded from 15 young normal-hearing adults in response to speech signals /s/, /ɑ/, and /sɑ/. Signals ...

BACKGROUND Missed abortion is a common occurrence for otherwise healthy women. Immunological factor is one of the most important reasons. Tumor necrosis factor-α-induced protein-8 like-2 (TIPE2) is a novel negative immune regulator related to several human diseases. However, the expression level and clinical significance of TIPE2 in missed abortion remain unclear. METHODS The expression of TI...

In some languages (such as Dutch), speakers produce duration differences between vowels, but it is unclear whether they also encode short versus long speech sounds into different phonological categories. To examine whether they have abstract representations for 'short' versus 'long' contrasts, we assessed Dutch listeners' perceptual sensitivity to duration in two vowel qualities: [a] and [ɑ], a...

This study examines cross-generational changes in the vowel systems in central Ohio, southeastern Wisconsin and western North Carolina. Speech samples from 239 speakers, males and females, were divided into three age groups: grandparents (66-91 years old), parents (35-51) and children (8-12). Acoustic analysis of vowel dynamics (i.e., formant movement) was undertaken to explore variation in the...