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The Syrian hamster embryo (SHE) assay (pH 6.7) is an in vitrocandidate to replace in vivocarcinogenicity tests. However, the conventional method of visual scoring of foci (non-transformed vs.transformed colonies) can be time-consuming and is open to subjectivity. Infrared (IR) spectroscopy has the potential to provide objective assessment of such SHE colonies with the added advantage of potentially providing mechanistic information. In this study, SHE cells were treated with one of eight different chemical regimens, allowed in culture to attach and form foci on IR-reflective glass slides; these were subsequently interrogated by attenuated total reflection (ATR) Fourier-transform IR (FTIR) spectroscopy. Derived mid-IR spectra (n= 13 406) were subjected to chemometric analysis focusing primarily on the extraction of biochemical information related to test agent treatment and/or morphological transformation. The use of ATR-FTIR spectroscopy with chemometrics to analyze the SHE assay is a novel approach to toxicological assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Thoracic endovascular aortic repair (TEVAR) is a promising alternative tothe traditional open surgical approach, though spinal cord ischemia remains a challengingcomplication. Spinal cord ischemia has been treated using lumbar cerebral spinal fluid(CSF) drainage.Methods: We report a case of delayed spinal cord ischemia that was successfully treatedwith vasopressor therapy alone, supporting aggressive blood pressure augmentation asa primary intervention to increase spinal cord perfusion.Results: The pathophysiology of spinal cord ischemia after TEVAR is presented alongwith our treatment protocol. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract In this paper, we address the problem of image content characterization in the compressed domain for the facilitation of similarity matching in content-based image retrieval. Specifically, given the disparity of the content characterization power of compressed domain approaches and those based on pixel-domain features, with the latter being usually considered as the more superior one, our objective is to transform the selected set of compressed domain feature histograms in such a way that the retrieval result based on these features is compatible with their spatial domain counterparts. Since there are a large number of possible transformations, we adopt a genetic algorithm approach to search for the optimal one, where each of the binary strings in the population represents a candidate transformation. The fitness of each transformation is defined as a function of the discrepancies between the spatial-domain and compressed-domain retrieval results. In this way, the GA mechanism ensures that transformations which best approximate the performance of spatial domain retrieval will survive into the next generation and are allowed through the operations of crossover and mutation to generate variations of themselves to further improve their performances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Content-based image retrieval (CBIR) is a process of retrieving images from an image database by exploiting the content of the images (typically the querying of an image). CBIR avoids many problems associated with traditional ways of retrieving images by keywords. Thus, a growing interest in the area of CBIR has been established in recent years. In this paper, a novel object-oriented framework (CBIRFrame) is built for CBIR applications development. We discuss the motivations for CBIRFrame before discussing its design in detail. Two applications of CBIRFrame are also briefly discussed to show the effectiveness of applying CBIRFrame to real applications. Finally, we outline the possible uses of the design of CBIRFrame for other types of domains, such as content-based retrieval of video clips. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An abstract of the study "Diagnosis of 5a-Reductase 2 Deficiency: Is Measurement of Dihydrotestosterone Essential?" is presented.