Inhibition of the enzyme(s) that produce the Amyloid beta (Aβ) peptide, namely BACE and γ-secretase, is considered an attractive target for Alzheimer's disease therapy. However, the optimal pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic modelling method to describe the changes in Aβ levels after drug treatment is unclear. In this study, turnover models were employed to ...

The xMAP-Luminex multiplex platform for measurement of Alzheimer's disease (AD) cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers using Innogenetics AlzBio3 immunoassay reagents that are for research use only has been shown to be an effective tool for early detection of an AD-like biomarker signature based on concentrations of CSF Aβ(1-42), t-tau and p-tau(181). ...

Outcome prediction following severe traumatic brain injury (sTBI) is a highly investigated field of research with a real breakthrough represented by the IMPACT prognostic calculator based upon admission data of more than 8500 patients. An increasing body of scientific evidence has shown that clinically meaningful biomarkers including glial fibrillary acidic ...

Because cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) is the biofluid which interacts most closely with the central nervous system, it holds promise as a reporter of neurological disease, for example multiple sclerosis (MScl). To characterize the metabolomics profile of neuroinflammatory aspects of this disease we studied an animal model of MScl-experimental autoimmune/allergic encephalomyelitis ...

We describe herein a novel life-size phantom model of the intracranial cavity and its validation. The cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) domains including ventricular, cysternal and subarachnoid spaces were derived via magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Brain mechanical properties and cranio-spinal compliance were set based on published data. Both bulk and pulsatile physiologic ...

Biosimilars are more affordable copycat versions of originator biological products in much the same way as generics are copies of small molecule pharmaceuticals. However, while generics are approved on the basis of structural and pharmacokinetic equivalence, the intricate structure of biological medicinal products and the complex nature of their manufacturing ...

BACKGROUND: Diagnosis of subarachnoid haemorrhage (SAH) is firstly based on imaging and secondly on spectrophotometry. Bilirubin may be detected in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) for up to two weeks after SAH. CSF pigment analysis is commonly performed according to the Chalmers manual technique but may be prone to operator error. ...

Bacteria are able to adapt to nutrient availability in the environment. For example, when nutritional conditions are not favorable, bacterial size can be reduced and duplication time can be significantly extended in comparison to rich growth conditions. These observations suggest that essential cellular processes like cell division, morphogenesis and chromosome ...

Animal studies have revealed seasonal patterns in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) monoamine (MA) turnover. In humans, no study had systematically assessed seasonal patterns in CSF MA turnover in a large set of healthy adults. Standardized amounts of CSF were prospectively collected from 223 healthy individuals undergoing spinal anesthesia for minor surgical ...

Biological invasions often damage island ecosystems. One such damaging consequence of biological invasions is hyperpredation. Hyperpredation is the increase in predation pressure from a generalist predator following the introduction of an alternative prey, typically a consequence of apparent competition between the two prey. Models for this have been devised that ...

Abstract Two different strategies for investigating the likely fate, after ingestion, of natural, bioactive berry constituents (anthocyanins and other non-nutritive flavonoids) are compared. A model of the human gastrointestinal tract (TIM-1) which mimicked the biological environment from the point of swallowing and ingestion through the duodenum, jejunum, and ileum (but ...

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: The study attempts to develop an ordinal logistic regression (OLR) model to identify the determinants of child malnutrition instead of developing traditional binary logistic regression (BLR) model using the data of Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey 2004. Methods: Based on weight-for-age anthropometric index (Z-score) child nutrition status is ...

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: Nutrition and mortality surveys are the main tools whereby evidence on the health status of populations affected by disasters and armed conflict is quantified and monitored over time. Several reviews have consistently revealed a lack of rigor in many surveys. We describe an algorithm for analyzing nutritional and ...

In population-based household surveys, for example, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), blood-related individuals are often sampled from the same household. Therefore, genetic data collected from national household surveys are often correlated due to two levels of clustering (correlation) with one induced by the multistage geographical cluster sampling, ...

To study environment characteristics favoring the toxic benthic dinoflagellate Ostreopsis cf. ovata, a survey was conducted in Monaco (NW Mediterranean Sea), in summers 2007 and 2008. Epiphytic and planktonic blooms occurred almost simultaneously and a high variation of abundances at low spatial scales was observed. An early and very marked ...

The role of the dairy cow is to help provide high quality protein and other nutrients for humans. We must select and manage cows with the goal of reaching the highest possible efficiency for any given environment. We have increased efficiency tremendously over the years, yet the variation in productive ...

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: The Public Population Project in Genomics (P3G) is an organisation that aims to promote collaboration between researchers in the field of population-based genomics. The main objectives of P3G are to encourage collaboration between researchers and biobankers, optimize study design, promote the harmonization of information use in biobanks, and ...

In recent years we have witnessed a considerable advance in the understanding of the processes involved in pubertal development. This is partially due to the discovery of the kisspeptin system and its fundamental role in the control of reproductive physiology. In addition, the suspected relationship between increasing rates of childhood ...

Health behaviour models typically neglect habitual action. The Self-Report Habit Index (SRHI) permits synthesis of evidence of the influence of habit on behaviour. The purpose of this study is to review evidence around mean habit strength, habit-behaviour correlations, and habit x intention interactions, from applications of the SRHI to dietary, ...

Background/Objectives:Global burdens of cardiovascular disease (CVD), diabetes and cancer are on the rise. Little quantitative data are available on the global impact of diet on these conditions. The objective of this study was to develop systematic and comparable methods to quantitatively assess the impact of suboptimal dietary habits on CVD, ...

Nutrition screening tool selection can be difficult. This review critically examines the relevance of validity, specifically concurrent (agreement between tools) and predictive validity (prediction of outcomes), which have been the focus of several recent studies. An operational framework for screening tool selection is provided to contextualise the findings. Studies of ...

Summary Background and objectives A specific method is required for estimating glomerular filtration rate GFR in hospitalized patients. Our objective was to validate the Chronic Kidney Disease Epidemiology Collaboration (CKD-EPI) equation and four cystatin C (CysC)-based equations in this setting. Design, setting, participants, & measurements This was an epidemiologic, cross-sectional ...

In inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), it is known that besides genetic and environmental factors (e.g. diet, drugs, stress), the microbiota play an important role in the pathogenesis. Patients with IBD have an altered microbiota (dysbiosis) and therefore, probiotics, defined as 'live micro-organisms that when administered in adequate amounts can confer ...

This article discusses reproductive toxicants as the potential, primary causes of observed reproductive abnormalities and other variables that can affect reproductive performance in ruminants. The causes of diminished reproductive performance in ruminants are often multifactorial. It is critical that producers and their veterinarians understand the potential effects of physiologic and ...

Specialization into reproductive and non-reproductive castes is one of the defining traits of eusocial insects. Knowledge of the proximal causes of caste differentiation is therefore central to achieving an understanding of the evolution of eusociality. Castes are an example of a polyphenism, multiple, discrete phenotypes arising from a single genotype ...

Whereas cost-effective interventions exist for the control of micronutrient malnutrition (MN), in low-resource settings field-friendly tools to assess the effect of these interventions are underutilized or not readily available where they are most needed. Conventional approaches for MN measurement are expensive and require relatively sophisticated laboratory instrumentation, skilled technicians, good ...

Dietary measurement error creates serious challenges to reliably discovering new diet-disease associations in nutritional cohort studies. Such error causes substantial underestimation of relative risks and reduction of statistical power for detecting associations. On the basis of data from the Observing Protein and Energy Nutrition Study, we recommend the following approaches ...

In the United States the preferred method of obtaining dietary intake data is the 24-hour dietary recall, yet the measure of most interest is usual or long-term average daily intake, which is impossible to measure. Thus, usual dietary intake is assessed with considerable measurement error. Also, diet represents numerous foods, ...

Oribatida are one of the main groups of Acari comprising mostly important decomposers in soils. Most species are particle feeders, an exceptional mode of nutrition in Arachnida. Hence, their feeding organs, the gnathosoma, are of special functional interest. We studied nearly all components using scanning and transmission electron microscopies as ...

Nutritional requirements are typically estimated based on feeding trials with animals or birds offered several levels of the critical nutrient(s). A nutrient response function is then fitted to data from the feeding trials. Modern computer techniques allow for a variety of functional forms to be used as nutrient response functions. ...

TNBS-induced colitis has characteristics resembling human Crohn's disease including transmural inflammation, ulceration, and fibrosis. Current treatments target acute symptoms but do not necessarily prevent fibrotic complications of the disease. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of pentoxifylline and its primary metabolite (M-1) on fibrosis in the ...

In this research work, the authors have presented the design and implementation of a recurrent neural network (RNN) based inferential state estimation scheme for an ideal reactive distillation column. Decentralized PI controllers are designed and implemented. The reactive distillation process is controlled by controlling the composition which has been estimated ...

Reptiles (lizards, snakes, turtles and crocodylians) are becoming increasing popular as models for developmental investigations. In this review the leopard gecko, Eublepharis macularius, is presented as a reptilian model for embryonic studies. We provide details of husbandry, breeding and modifications to two popular histological techniques (whole-mount histochemistry and immunohistochemistry). In ...

We have previously described (see companion paper, this issue) the utility of using perceptual signatures for defining and dissociating condition-specific neural functioning underlying early visual processes in autism and FXS. These perceptually-driven hypotheses are based on differential performance evidenced only at the earliest stages of visual information processing, mediated by ...

Posturography methods have been applied in clinical neurootology to evaluate the equilibrium function of patients. Methods of statistical analysis play an important role for improving data processing and to support the interpretation of the results. In contrast to conventional statistics, artificial neural networks are model-free and non-parametric. The aim of ...

Several models for simulation of personal exposure (PE) to particle-associated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) have been developed and tested. The modeling approaches include linear regression models (Model 1), time activity weighted models (Models 2 and 3), a hybrid model (Model 4), a univariate linear model (Model 5), and machine learning ...

Classifications of fish production methods, wild or farm-raised salmon, by elemental profiles or C and N stable isotope ratios combined with various modeling approaches were determined. Elemental analysis (As, Ba, Be, Ca, Co, Cd, Cr, Cu, Fe, K, Mg, Mn, Na, Ni, P, Pb, Sr, Ti, and Zn) of wild ...

By means of mathematical analysis and numerical experimentation, this study shows that the problems of non-uniqueness of solutions and data over-fitting, that plague the multilayer feedforward neural network for NonLinear Principal Component Analysis (NLPCA), are caused by inappropriate architecture of the neural network. A simplified two-hidden-layer feedforward neural network, which ...

Neural prosthetic systems seek to improve the lives of severely disabled people by decoding neural activity into useful behavioral commands. These systems and their decoding algorithms are typically developed "offline," using neural activity previously gathered from a healthy animal, and the decoded movement is then compared with the true movement ...

Neural cryptography deals with the problem of "key exchange" between two neural networks using the mutual learning concept. The two networks exchange their outputs (in bits) and the key between the two communicating parties is eventually represented in the final learned weights, when the two networks are said to be ...

Neuroimaging studies typically identify neural activity correlated with the predictions of highly parameterized models, like the many reward prediction error (RPE) models used to study reinforcement learning. Identified brain areas might encode RPEs or, alternatively, only have activity correlated with RPE model predictions. Here, we use an alternate axiomatic approach ...

The monitoring of atmospheric Alternaria spores is of major importance due to their adverse effects on crops and their role as human allergens. Most species act as plant pathogens, prompting considerable economic losses worldwide on important crops such as potato, tomato or wheat. Fungal spores can also have serious detrimental ...

In this brief, the problem of passivity analysis is investigated for a class of uncertain neural networks (NNs) with both discrete and distributed time-varying delays. By constructing a novel Lyapunov functional and utilizing some advanced techniques, new delay-dependent passivity criteria are established to guarantee the passivity performance of NNs. Essentially ...

This letter presents a unified convergence analysis of the split-complex nonlinear gradient descent (SCNGD) learning algorithms for complex-valued recurrent neural networks, covering three classes of SCNGD algorithms: standard SCNGD, normalized SCNGD, and adaptive normalized SCNGD. We prove that if the activation functions are of split-complex type and some conditions are ...

A tablet database containing several active ingredients for a standard tablet formulation was created. Tablet tensile strength (TS) and disintegration time (DT) were measured before and after storage for 30 days at 40 degrees C and 75% relative humidity. An ensemble artificial neural network (EANN) was used to predict responses ...

This letter develops a new mathematical cerebral activity model for the synaptic value of neural population.

This paper, presents a novel identification approach using fuzzy neural networks. It focuses on structure and parameters uncertainties which have been widely explored in the literatures. The main contribution of this paper is that an integrated analytic framework is proposed for automated structure selection and parameter identification. A kernel smoothing ...

In this paper, the viability of using Fuzzy-Rule-Based Regression Modeling (FRM) algorithm for tool performance and degradation detection is investigated. The FRM is developed based on a multi-layered fuzzy-rule-based hybrid system with Multiple Regression Models (MRM) embedded into a fuzzy logic inference engine that employs Self Organizing Maps (SOM) for ...

The neural crest is an evolutionary adaptation, with roots in the formation of mesoderm. Modification of neural crest behavior has been is critical for the evolutionary diversification of the vertebrates and defects in neural crest underlie a range of human birth defects. There has been a tremendous increase in our ...

This paper is concerned with the state estimation problem for a class of discrete-time stochastic neural networks (DSNNs) with random delays. The effect of both variation range and distribution probability of the time delay are taken into account in the proposed approach. The stochastic disturbances are described in terms of ...