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Influenza A (H1N1) virus was the most common cause of human influenza (flu) in 2009. We report a patient infected with influenza A virus who showed improvement in his pulmonary inflammation and fibrosis progression after switching to Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) therapy. Although antiviral drug and corticosteroids were administered, some disturbing respiratory illness and immune imbalance attributed to corticosteroids taken prompted him to seek for CHM therapy. After CHM treatment for three months, significant recovery in chest radiograph was noted, and the result of subsequent pulmonary function test showed improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dynamic oscillation of the Min system in Escherichia coli determines the placement of the division plane at the midcell. In addition to stimulating MinD ATPase activity, we report here that MinE can directly interact with the membrane and this interaction contributes to the proper MinDE localization and dynamics. The N-terminal domain of MinE is involved in direct contact between MinE and the membranes that may subsequently be stabilized by the C-terminal domain of MinE. In an in vitro system, MinE caused liposome deformation into membrane tubules, a property similar to that previously reported for MinD. We isolated a mutant MinE containing residue substitutions in R10, K11 and K12 that was fully capable of stimulating MinD ATPase activity, but was deficient in membrane binding. Importantly, this mutant was unable to support normal MinDE localization and oscillation, suggesting that direct MinE interaction with the membrane is critical for the dynamic behavior of the Min system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study which examines the effectiveness of the combination of the tuberculin skin test (TST) and a whole-blood interferon-gamma assay in the detection of latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI) in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients treated with adalimumab. Results of the study show that the application of TST for detecting LTBI is limited in RA patients.

The temporal variation of the surface morphology of Ta205 films on Si substrates has been measured using X-ray reflectivity at a fixed angle during radio-frequency magnetron sputtering. During an early stage of growth of polycrystalline Ta205, the variation of surface roughness revealed a morphology of island nucleation and island coalescence. For a thickness greater than 7 nm, the surface roughness increased, to more than 2 nm at a thickness of 80 nm. For crystalline Ta205 films, the density of sputtered Ta205 films increased and attained the bulk value for a film only at a thickness greater than 80 nm. For an amorphous sputtered film, the surface was less rough and the density was less than that for a crystalline film. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined the reliability, validity, and responsiveness of the Neonatal Oral-Motor Assessment Scale (NOMAS) in healthy preterm infants. Feeding records of 147 infants (71 males, 76 females; gestational age [GA] ≤ 36wks), taken from the day bottle-feeding was initiated to the day the infants were discharged, were used to examine the psychometric properties of the normal and disorganized categories of the NOMAS. The infants, with or without experience of breastfeeding, were all fed by bottle, with either formula and/or breast milk. GA ranged from 24 to 35.9 weeks (mean 29.7wks, SD 2.7) and birthweight ranged from 470g to 2570g (mean 1251.1g, SD 425.9). Postmenstrual age (PMA) at the starting point of bottle-feeding ranged from 29.4 to 40.1 weeks (mean 33.8wks, SD 1.7). We found that the NOMAS had satisfactory internal consistency (Cronbach's α >0.70) in the normal category for 32 to 35 weeks’PMA. Moderate correlations were found between scores on the NOMAS and feeding performance for all age groups except for PMA of ≥ 36 weeks (absolute Spearman's r s=0.51-0.69), indicating acceptable convergent validity. The NOMAS demonstrated moderate responsiveness to changes in oral-motor skills in every 2-week period, ranging from 32 to 36 weeks’PMA (standard response mean greater than 0.5). This study demonstrated that the normal and disorganized categories of the NOMAS are useful, with acceptable psychometric properties, in assessing oral-motor function in preterm infants aged 32 to 35 weeks’PMA. Future research on infants with abnormal oral-motor skills is needed to further validate psychometric properties of the dysfunction category of the NOMAS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work used three fungi, Rhizopus oligosorusBCRC 31996, Monascus pilosusBCRC31527, and Aspergillus sp.BCRC31742, to produce glucosamine by using submerged fermentation and flask cultures. The reaction of glucosamine with 1-naphthyl isothiocyanate as derivatizing agent was carried out in pyridine at 50 °C for 1 h. The derivative was accurately analyzed and quantified by using high performance liquid chromatography. The relative standard deviation of glucosamine determined between experimental and real values were less than 2%. The kinetic and strategy of producing glucosamine in a flask culture was investigated to achieve an optimum yield of glucosamine under different conditions including three kinds of fungi, medium, and pH values. The descending ability of producing glucosamine for the three fungi was Aspergillus sp.BCRC31742 > Monascus pilosusBCRC31527 > Rhizopus oligosorusBCRC 31996 under the conditions studied. The experimental result shows that the glucosamine concentration had an optimum value and was 3430 mg/L by using Aspergillus sp.BCRC31742 culture in glucose and peptone (GP) medium, the yield of which was the best amount using wild-type microorganisms in the past. The generation culture of fungi and the pH control played important roles in enhancing the yield of glucosamine. The specific growth rate of the microorganism and the biomass, content, yield, and productivity of glucosamine were calculated as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We describe a 60-year-old male patient with acute intermittent porphyria (AIP) who presented with initial abdominal pain and subsequent quadriplegia and respiratory failure. Small fiber neuropathy was demonstrated by measuring intra-epidermal nerve fiber density (IENFD) using protein gene product 9.5 (PGP 9.5) immunostaining on three consecutive skin punch biopsies of the distal lower limb. The biopsy findings demonstrated some correlation with progression of the patient’s clinical condition. Neuropathy in AIP can have a small-fiber component rather than being solely a large-fiber neuropathy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A fast and robust method to detect and recognize scaled and skewed road signs is proposed in this paper. In the detection stage, the input color image is first quantized in HSV color model. Border tracing those regions with the same colors as road signs is adopted to find the regions of interest (ROI). The ROIs are then automatically adjusted to fit road sign shape models so as to facilitate detection verification even for scaled and skewed road signs in complicated scenes. Moreover, the ROI adjustment and verification are both performed only on border pixels; thus, the proposed road sign detector is fast. In the recognition stage, the detected road sign is normalized first. Histogram matching based on polar mesh is then adopted to measure the similarity between the scene and model road signs to accomplish recognition. Since histogram matching is fast and has high tolerance to distortion and deformation while contextual information can still be incorporated into it in a natural and elegant way, our method has high recognition accuracy and fast execution speed. Experiment results show that the detection rate and recognition accuracy of our method can achieve 94.2% and 91.7%, respectively. On an average, it takes only 4–50 and 10 ms for detection and recognition, respectively. Thus, the proposed method is effective, yet efficient. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Imaging Syst Technol, 17, 28–39, 2007 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]