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Context:Delayed, postoperative, spine infections are rare, most commonly occurring secondary to fastidious, less virulent pathogens. The etiology may involve a distant infectious focus, not related to the index operation. Patients may present months, or even years postoperatively with pain related to mechanical implant failure, often without additional signs of systemic infection.Findings:We present the case of a 59-year-old male who developed rapid disk degeneration and implant failure seven months following instrumented lumbar fusion surgery. The causal organism was found to be Micromonas micros, an anaerobic bacterium typically located in the oral cavity and associated with periodontal disease. The patient was found to have extensive oral caries, which were presumed to have occurred secondary to poor oral hygiene and his use of fentanyl lozenges for chronic back pain. The patient was treated with revision staged spinal surgery and long-term intravenous antibiotics.Conclusion/clinical relevance:This case highlights an unusual etiology of delayed postoperative spinal implant failure and provides evidence for periodontal disease as a source of hematogenous seeding in postoperative spinal infections. The orthopaedist should also be aware of the potential relationship between poor oral hygiene and the use of high sugar content fentanyl lozenges in treating chronic back pain in these patients.

Low back pain is one of the most prevalent complaints of athletes at all levels of competition. The purpose of this literature review is to provide an overview of sport-specific injuries and treatment outcomes that can be used by healthcare providers to better recognize injury patterns and treatment options for different groups of athletes. To our knowledge, no prior comprehensive review of lumbar spine injuries in sports is currently available in the literature, and it is essential that healthcare providers understand the sport-specific injury patterns and treatment guidelines for athletes presenting with low back pain following an athletic injury. Injury mechanisms were found to vary significantly by sport, although some broad recommendations can be made with regards to optimal treatment for these injuries and return to play. Additionally, it was found that certain treatments were more beneficial and resulted in higher rates of return to play depending on the specific sport of the injured athlete. Healthcare providers need to be aware of the different injury patterns seen in specific sports in order to properly evaluate and treat these injuries. Furthermore, an individualized treatment plan needs to be selected in a sport-specific context in order to meet the needs of the athlete in the short and long term.

Two books on geography offer solutions to two issues schools face: the Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED) inspection and academic needs in the classroom. Mauree Weldon and Roy Richardson's 'Key Strategies: Planning Primary Geography' could meet the first with its direct and plain language presentation of the subject. Alan Blyth and Jeremy Krause's 'Primary Bookshelf: Primary Geography; A Developmental Approach' is more geared to the second.

Study Design: Retrospective, multicenter review of the spinopelvic parameters in young children with scoliosis. Objectives: To describe sagittal alignment of the spine and pelvis in young children with scoliosis. Summary of Background Data: The natural history of spinopelvic parameters has been defined for the first 10 years of life in normal children; however, they have not been described for children with scoliosis. Such information is important because these values can be used as a baseline for the assessment of radiographic outcomes after surgical intervention. Methods: Seven measures of sagittal alignment were taken from standing lateral radiographs of 80 children with scoliosis (coronal Cobb angle greater than 50°) and compared with age-matched normal children described in the literature. Statistical analysis was performed using 2-tailed Student t tests (level of significance =.05) and Pearson correlation coefficient. Results: Patients had a mean age of 4.8 years (range, 1 — 10 years) and a mean Cobb angle of 72.0° ±16°. Mean sagittal spine parameters were sagittal balance (2.2 ±4 cm), thoracic kyphosis (38.0° ±20.8°), and lumbar lordosis (49.0° ±16.6°). These values were similar to those of children without scoliosis. Mean sagittal pelvic parameters were: pelvic incidence (46.5° ±15.8°), pelvic tilt (10.7° ± 13.6°), sacral slope (35.5° ± 12.1°), and pelvic radius (55.7° ± 21.3°). Pelvic incidence was not significantly different from that of age-matched

The Glyndebourne Borehole was drilled by the British Geological Survey in 1973 but the analysis of the foraminifera and ostracods remains unpublished: documented only in an un-published PhD thesis. The Gault Clay Formation, though thicker than that at Copt Point (Folkestone, U.K.), still has a number of hiatuses, especially near the base of the Middle Albian and at the Middle-Upper Albian boundary. The absence of the distinctive, glauconitic, 'Bed Xll' near the base of the Dispar Zone and the resulting differences in the ranges of key taxa has proved problematic. Throughout the remainder of the succession the distribution of the foraminifera closely follows that recorded at other locations in S.E. England (most notably Folkestone) but the uppermost Albian remains an issue for future research. The hiatus at the Albian-Cenomanian boundary was predicted by comparison to the succession at Beachy Head (Eastbourne), located a few kilometres to the south, and is much better understood in terms of biostratigraphy.

In the article, the author discusses the custom of Halloween in Great Britain that was introduced in other countries like the U.S., Australia, and France. Also cited are the supernatural beings like vampires, werewolves, zombies, and witches, the campaigns against witches in Great Britain in the 16th to 18th centuries, the witches' marks put in homes, farms, and barns to deter the witches, and the Cresswell Crags in Nottinghamshire, England, which features protected cave marks.

ABSTRACTNS1, the major nonstructural parvovirus protein of the minute virus of mice, is a multifunctional protein responsible for several aspects of viral replication. NS1 transactivates the P38promoter (used to express the structural proteins), as well as its own strong promoter, P4. To study the mechanism of activation and to map regions of NS1 responsible for transactivation, NS1 and various deletions of NS1 were cloned in frame with the GAL4DBand cotransfected into COS-7 and LA9 cells with a synthetic GAL4-responsive reporter plasmid. These studies showed NS1 can directly activate transcription through its 129 carboxyl-terminal amino acid residues. Any deletion from this region of the C terminus, even as few as 8 amino acids, completely abolishes transactivation. A yeast two-hybrid system used to identify protein-protein interactions demonstrated that NS1 is able to dimerize when expressed in yeast cells. However, only an almost complete NS11–638bait was able to interact with the full-length NS1. A two-hybrid screen identified a HeLa cell cDNA clone (NS1-associated protein 1 [NSAP1]) that interacts with NS11–276and NS11–638. An additional sequence was predicted from human EST (expressed sequence tag) data, and the cDNA was estimated to be at least 2,221 bp long, potentially encoding a 562-amino-acid protein product. A polyclonal antibody raised to a synthetic peptide within NSAP1 recognizes an ~65-kDa cellular protein. This NSAP1 cDNA has not previously been characterized, but the predicted protein sequence is 80% identical to the recently identified heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoprotein (hnRNP) R (W. Hassfeld et al., Nucleic Acids Res. 26:439–445, 1998). NSAP1 contains four ribonucleoprotein domains, as well as a highly repetitive C-terminal region. A closely related mouse cDNA (deduced from murine EST data) encodes a protein with only a single amino acid residue change from the human protein. NSAP1 is predicted to be a 65-kDa polynucleotide binding protein, and it likely functions in the regulation of splicing and/or transport of mRNAs from the nucleus.