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What type of conceptual information about an object do we get at a brief glance? In two experiments, we investigated the nature of conceptual tokening-the moment at which conceptual information about an object is accessed. Using a masked picture-word congruency task with dichoptic presentations at "brief" (50-60 ms) and "long" (190-200 ms) durations, participants judged the relation between a picture (e.g., a banana) and a word representing one of four property types about the object: superordinate (fruit), basic level (banana), a high-salient (yellow), or low-salient feature (peel). In Experiment 1, stimuli were presented in black-and-white; in Experiment 2, they were presented in red and blue, with participants wearing red-blue anaglyph glasses. This manipulation allowed for the independent projection of stimuli to the left- and right-hemisphere visual areas, aiming to probe the early effects of these projections in conceptual tokening. Results showed that superordinate and basic-level properties elicited faster and more accurate responses than high- and low-salient features at both presentation times. This advantage persisted even when the objects were divided into categories (e.g., animals, vegetables, vehicles, tools), and when objects contained high-salient visual features. However, contrasts between categories show that animals, fruits, and vegetables tend to be categorized at the superordinate level, while vehicles tend to be categorized at the basic level. Also, for a restricted class of objects, high-salient features representing diagnostic color information (yellow for the picture of a banana) facilitated congruency judgments to the same extent as that of superordinate and basic-level labels. We suggest that early access to object concepts yields superordinate and basic-level information, with features only yielding effects at a later stage of processing, unless they represent diagnostic color information. We discuss these results advancing a unified theory of conceptual representation, integrating key postulates of atomism and feature-based theories., (© 2024 The Author(s). Cognitive Science published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Cognitive Science Society (CSS).)

How does the language comprehension system identify and interpret word constituents-or morphemes-during sentence reading? We investigated this question by employing words containing semantically ambiguous roots (e.g., bark , with meanings related to both "dog" and "tree") which are disambiguated when affixed by - ing (e.g., barking ; related to "dog" only). We aimed to understand whether higher-level access to the meaning of the root bark would be constrained by lower-level morphological affixation. In Experiment 1, using eye-tracking, participants read sentences containing words with semantically ambiguous roots, such as barking (a prime), combined with targets that were either related to two meanings of the root ( dog , tree ) or they were cloze and unrelated controls. All five eye-tracking measures we employed (first fixation duration, gaze duration, go-past time, total reading time, and regressions to target) showed no difference between the two root-related targets, which were slower than cloze, but faster than unrelated. Results show that even in cases where a meaning is inconsistent with the full word form (barking-tree ), both meanings of the ambiguous root are activated. These results were supported by Experiment 2, employing a maze task in which the time to select the cloze ( night ) continuation for the sentence He heard loud barking during the … was disrupted by the presence of distractors related to both meanings of bark. We discuss the implications of these findings for the nature of morphological parsing and lexical ambiguity resolution in sentence contexts. We suggest that word recognition and lexical access processes involve separating roots from affixes, yielding independent and exhaustive access to root meanings-even when they are ruled out by affixation and context. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH) is a rare genetic hyperinflammatory syndrome that occurs early in life. Macrophage activation syndrome (MAS) usually refers to a secondary form of HLH associated with autoimmunity, although there are other causes of secondary HLH, such as infections and malignancy. In this article, we reviewed the concepts, epidemiology, clinical and laboratory features, diagnosis, differential diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of HLH and MAS. We also reviewed the presence of MAS in the most common autoimmune diseases that affect children. Both are severe diseases that require prompt diagnosis and treatment to avoid morbidity and mortality., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Environmental conditions and available forage on pastures greatly differ between different farming systems, which can affect the behaviour of grazing cattle. The interplay between environment-, forage-, and animal-related variables may affect the use of feed and water resources in grazing-based systems. Hence, our objectives were (i) to study the differences between grazing-based systems and seasons in environment- and pasture-related variables as well as the behaviour, feed intake, performance, and water productivity of Nellore heifers, and (ii) to understand the interrelationships between these variables. The measurements were performed in a conventional grazing system (CON), an integrated crop-livestock (ICL), and a crop-livestock-forestry (ICLF) systems in the Brazilian Cerrado during the rainy and dry seasons. Ambient temperature and relative air humidity were hourly measured in both seasons. Forage biomass and sward height were determined every month. Forage samples were taken to determine the proportions of alive leaves, alive stems, and dead plant material and to analyse their nutritive value. Forage intake, drinking water intake, and liveweight changes were quantified in 12 Nellore heifers per system and season. Feeding behaviour was recorded by chewing sensors on nine continuous days in each season. Drinking water intake was measured by water meters attached to drinking water troughs, whereby trial cameras at the troughs recorded the frequency of drinking events of individual animals. Feed conversion efficiency and water productivity were estimated. The ICLF reduced the exposure time to high ambient temperatures so that heifers even grazed during the hottest hours. Forage biomass in ICL and CON had greater proportions of stem and dead plant material than in ICLF. Forage intake rate was greater and grazing events were longer for animals in ICLF than those in CON, whereas the daily number of grazing events was greater in CON. Feed conversion efficiency and water productivity were greater in integrated systems than in CON. Amongst studied variables, thermal environment and forage canopy structure with its proportions of dead plant material are the main driving factors for animal behaviour, forage intake rate, and animal performance. These variables reduce feed conversion efficiency and water productivity in grazing cattle. Further research should analyse strategies for promoting thermal comfort for the animals, increasing the proportions of alive biomass, and enhancing the nutritional value of pastures for more efficient use of forage and water resources in grazing-based systems., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Targeted knock-in of fluorescent reporters enables powerful gene and protein analyses in a physiological context. However, precise integration of long sequences remains challenging in vivo. Here, we demonstrate cloning-free and precise reporter knock-in into zebrafish genes, using PCR-generated templates for homology-directed repair with short homology arms (PCR tagging). Our novel knock-in reporter lines of vesicle-associated membrane protein (vamp) zebrafish homologues reveal subcellular complexity in this protein family. Our approach enables fast and efficient reporter integration in the zebrafish genome (in 10-40% of injected embryos) and rapid generation of stable germline-transmitting lines., Competing Interests: Competing interests The authors declare no competing or financial interests., (© 2023. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd.)

Conventional metaphors such as broken heart are interpreted rather fast and efficiently. This is because they might be stored as lexicalized, noncompositional expressions. If so, they require sense retrieval rather than sense creation. But can their literal meanings be recovered or "awakened"? We examined whether the literal meaning of a conventional metaphor could be triggered by a later cue. In a maze task, participants (N = 40) read sentences word by word (e.g., John is an early bird so he can . . .) and were presented with a two-word choice. Participants took longer and were less accurate when the correct word (attend) was paired with a literally-related distractor (fly) rather than an unrelated one (cry). This suggests that the literal meaning of a conventional metaphor is not circumvented, nor that metaphors simply involve sense retrieval. The metaphor awakening effect suggests that the mechanisms employed to process conventional metaphors are dynamic with both metaphorical sense and literal meaning being available., (© 2021. The Psychonomic Society, Inc.)

A sentence such as We finished the paper is indeterminate with regards to what we finished doing with the paper. Indeterminate sentences constitute a test case for two major issues regarding language comprehension: (1) how we compose sentence meaning; and (2) what is retained in memory about what we read in context over time. In an eye-tracking experiment, participants read short stories that were unexpectedly followed by one of three recognition probes: (a) an indeterminate sentence ( Lisa began the book ), that is identical to the one in the story; (b) an enriched but false probe ( Lisa began reading the book ); and (c) a contextually unrelated probe ( Lisa began writing the book ). The probes were presented either at the offset of the original indeterminate sentence in context or following additional neutral discourse. We measured accuracy, probe recognition time, and reading times of the probe sentences. Results showed that, at the immediate time point, participants correctly accepted the identical probes with high accuracy and short recognition times, but that this effect reversed to chance-level accuracy and significantly longer recognition times at the delayed time point. We also found that participants falsely accept the enriched probe at both time points 50% of the time. There were no reading-time differences between identical and enriched probes, suggesting that enrichment might not be an early, mandatory process for indeterminate sentences. Overall, results suggest that while context produces an enriched proposition, an un enriched proposition true to the indeterminate sentence also lingers in memory., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2021 Antal and de Almeida.)

What are the roles of semantic and pragmatic processes in the interpretation of sentences in context? And how do we attain such interpretations when sentences are deemed indeterminate? Consider a sentence such as " Lisa began the book " which does not overtly express the activity that Lisa began doing with the book. Although it is believed that individuals compute a specified event to enrich the sentential representation - yielding, e.g., " began [reading] the book " - there is no evidence that a default event meaning is attained. Moreover, if indeterminate sentences are enriched, it is not clear where the information required to generate enriched interpretations come from. Experiment 1 showed that, in isolation, there is no default interpretation for indeterminate sentences. The experiment also showed that biasing contexts constrain event interpretations and improve plausibility judgments, suggesting that event representations for indeterminate sentences are generated by context. In Experiment 2, participants heard biasing discourse contexts and later falsely recognized foil sentences containing the biased events (" Lisa began reading the book ") at the same proportion and with the same confidence as the original indeterminate sentence (" Lisa began the book "). We suggest that indeterminate sentences trigger event-enriching inferences but only in sufficiently constraining contexts. We also suggest that indeterminate sentences create two memory traces, one for the proposition consistent with the denotational, compositional meaning, and another for the proposition that is enriched pragmatically over time., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2021 Riven and de Almeida.)

We investigated the representation and breakdown of verb knowledge employing different syntactic and semantic classes of verbs in a group of individuals with probable Alzheimer's Disease (pAD). In an action naming task with coloured photographs (Fiez & Tranel, 1997. Standardized stimuli and procedures for investigating the retrieval of lexical and conceptual knowledge for action. Memory and Cognition , 25(4), 543-569. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03201129), pAD individuals were impaired for naming actions compared to objects. Verb tense was also affected, with simple-past (e.g., chopped ) being more difficult to name than the gerundial form (e.g., chopping ). Employing action-naming with short movies depicting events and states, we contrasted three verb classes based on their hypothetical structural and semantic/conceptual properties: argument structure, thematic structure, and conceptual templates. The three classes were: causatives ( peel ), verbs of perception ( hear ), and verbs of motion ( run ) Overall, results suggest that individuals with pAD are selectively impaired for verb tense and thematic assignment, but not conceptual-template complexity. Methodologically, we also show that dynamic scenes are more ecologically valid than static scenes to probe verb knowledge in AD.

Objective: This study aimed to assess the safety and immunogenicity of the quadrivalent human papillomavirus (qHPV) vaccination in childhood-onset systemic lupus erythematosus (cSLE) patients., Methods: Volunteer cSLE patients aged 9-20 years and healthy controls (HC) were enrolled to receive a two- or three-dose qHPV vaccination schedule from March 2014 to March 2016. Study visits were performed before the first dose, one month after the second and third doses and one year after the first dose. In each study visit, disease activity and adverse events following vaccination were analyzed, and a serum sample was collected for testing antibody concentrations. Participant recruitment was conducted in 15 Brazilian paediatric rheumatology units. Of the 256 cSLE patients included, 210 completed the two- or three-dose schedules; 15 had previously received one dose, and 18 had received two doses of the vaccine. The analysis was based on intention-to-treat so that participants who did not complete the entire study protocol were also included., Results: No severe adverse events were related to the vaccination. Disease activity was generally low and remained stable or even improved. The HC presented 100% seropositivity to HPV16 and HPV18, whereas the two- and three-dose cSLE groups presented 93% and 83% versus 97% and 91%, respectively. One year after the first dose, seropositivity of the three-dose cSLE group was 91% to HPV16 and 84% to HPV18., Conclusions: HPV vaccination in cSLE patients is safe and immunogenic. Since the seropositivity to HPV16 and HPV18 was higher for the three-dose schedule group, this regimen should be recommended for cSLE patients.

As Macnamara (1978) once asked, how can we talk about what we see? We report on a study manipulating realistic dynamic scenes and sentences aiming to understand the interaction between linguistic and visual representations in real-world situations. Specifically, we monitored participants' eye movements as they watched video clips of everyday scenes while listening to sentences describing these scenes. We manipulated two main variables. The first was the semantic class of the verb in the sentence and the second was the action/motion of the agent in the unfolding event. The sentences employed two verb classes-causatives (e.g., break ) and perception/psychological (e.g., notice )-which impose different constraints on the nouns that serve as their grammatical complements. The scenes depicted events in which agents either moved toward a target object (always the referent of the verb-complement noun), away from it, or remained neutral performing a given activity (such as cooking). Scenes and sentences were synchronized such that the verb onset corresponded to the first video frame of the agent motion toward or away from the object. Results show effects of agent motion but weak verb-semantic restrictions: causatives draw more attention to potential referents of their grammatical complements than perception verbs only when the agent moves toward the target object. Crucially, we found no anticipatory verb-driven eye movements toward the target object, contrary to studies using non-naturalistic and static scenes. We propose a model in which linguistic and visual computations in real-world situations occur largely independent of each other during the early moments of perceptual input, but rapidly interact at a central, conceptual system using a common, propositional code. Implications for language use in real world contexts are discussed., (Copyright © 2019 de Almeida, Di Nardo, Antal and von Grünau.)

The Juvenile Arthritis Multidimensional Assessment Report (JAMAR) is a new parent/patient reported outcome measure that enables a thorough assessment of the disease status in children with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA). We report the results of the cross-cultural adaptation and validation of the parent and patient versions of the JAMAR in the Brazilian Portuguese language. The reading comprehension of the questionnaire was tested in 10 JIA parents and patients. Each participating centre was asked to collect demographic, clinical data and the JAMAR in 100 consecutive JIA patients or all consecutive patients seen in a 6-month period and to administer the JAMAR to 100 healthy children and their parents. The statistical validation phase explored descriptive statistics and the psychometric issues of the JAMAR: the three Likert assumptions, floor/ceiling effects, internal consistency, Cronbach's alpha, interscale correlations, test-retest reliability, and construct validity (convergent and discriminant validity). A total of 231 JIA patients (14.7% systemic, 43.3% oligoarticular, 22.5% RF negative polyarthritis, 19.5% other categories) and 72 healthy children, were enrolled in three centres. The JAMAR components discriminated well healthy subjects from JIA patients. All JAMAR components revealed good psychometric performances. In conclusion, the Brazilian Portuguese version of the JAMAR is a valid tool for the assessment of children with JIA and is suitable for use both in routine clinical practice and clinical research.

This eye movement study examined how people read nominal metaphors and similes in order to investigate how the surface form, or wording, of these expressions affected early processing. Participants silently read metaphors (knowledge is a river) and similes (knowledge is like a river). The identical words were used in the topic-vehicle pair (knowledge-river) in both conditions. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated longer reading times and a higher proportion of regressions in metaphors than in similes. Familiarity modulated later metaphor effects in Experiment 1, but not in Experiment 2. Reading ability did not modulate the metaphor effects in Experiment 2. Results indicate that readers revised their initial interpretation of metaphors before moving on to read new text. This suggests that readers did not initially hold figurative interpretations of apt nominal metaphors that are somewhat familiar. Metaphor interpretation may be fast, but it is not easy.

Sentences such as The author started the book are indeterminate because they do not make explicit what the subject ( the author ) started doing with the object ( the book ). In principle, indeterminate sentences allow for an infinite number of interpretations. One theory, however, assumes that these sentences are resolved by semantic coercion , a linguistic process that forces the noun book to be interpreted as an activity (e.g., writing the book ) or by a process that interpolates this activity information in the resulting enriched semantic composition. An alternative theory, pragmatic , assumes classical semantic composition, whereby meaning arises from the denotation of words and how they are combined syntactically, with enrichment obtained via pragmatic inferences beyond linguistic-semantic processes. Cognitive neuroscience studies investigating the neuroanatomical and functional correlates of indeterminate sentences have shown activations either at the ventromedial pre-frontal cortex (vmPFC) or at the left inferior frontal gyrus (L-IFG). These studies have supported the semantic coercion theory assuming that one of these regions is where enriched semantic composition takes place. Employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we found that indeterminate sentences activate bilaterally the superior temporal gyrus (STG), the right inferior frontal gyrus (R-IFG), and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), more so than control sentences ( The author wrote the book ). Activation of indeterminate sentences exceeded that of anomalous sentences (… drank the book ) and engaged more left- and right-hemisphere areas than other sentence types. We suggest that the widespread activations for indeterminate sentences represent the deployment of pragmatic-inferential processes, which seek to enrich sentence content without necessarily resorting to semantic coercion.

The objective of this paper was to perform a microclimate evaluation and determine the indexes of thermal comfort indexes, in sun and shade, in integrated crop-livestock-forest systems with different arrangements of eucalyptus and native trees, in the Brazilian Midwest. The experiment was conducted at Embrapa Beef Cattle in Campo Grande, state of Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil, from July to September 2013. The evaluations were conducted on four consecutive days, from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., local time (GMT -4:00), with 1 hour intervals, recording the microclimate parameters: air temperature (°C), black globe temperature (°C), wet bulb temperature (°C), relative humidity (%), and wind speed (m.s -1 ), for the subsequent calculation of the Temperature and Humidity Index, the Black Globe Temperature and Humidity Index, and the Radiant Thermal Load. The largest changes in microclimate parameters were found in the full sun, between 12:00 p.m. and 1:00 p.m., in less dense eucalyptus system, followed by the scattered native trees system, resulting in a maximum Temperature and Humidity Index of 81, Black Globe Temperature and Humidity Index of 88 and Radiant Thermal Load of 794 W m -2 . Therefore, it is observed that with the presence of trees in pastures were possible reductions of up to 3.7 % in Temperature and Humidity Index, 10.2 % in the Black Globe Temperature and Humidity Index, and 28.3 % of the Radiant Thermal Load in the shade. Thus, one can conclude that the presence of trees and their arrangement in the systems provide better microclimate conditions and animal thermal comfort in pastures.

Cyclotides are multifunctional plant cyclic peptides containing 28-37 amino acid residues and a pattern of three disulfide bridges, forming a motif known as the cyclic cystine knot. Due to their high biotechnological potential, the sequencing and characterization of cyclotide genes are crucial not only for cloning and establishing heterologous expression strategies, but also to understand local plant evolution in the context of host-pathogen relationships. Here, two species from the Brazilian Cerrado, Palicourea rigida (Rubiaceae) and Pombalia lanata (A.St.-Hil.) Paula-Souza (Violaceae), were used for cloning and characterizing novel cyclotide genes. Using 3' and 5' RACE PCR and sequencing, two full cDNAs, named parigidin-br2 (P. rigida) and hyla-br1 (P. lanata), were isolated and shown to have similar genetic structures to other cyclotides. Both contained the conserved ER-signal domain, N-terminal prodomain, mature cyclotide domain and a C-terminal region. Genomic sequencing of parigidin-br2 revealed two different gene copies: one intronless allele and one presenting a rare 131-bp intron. In contrast, genomic sequencing of hyla-br1 revealed an intronless gene-a common characteristic of members of the Violaceae family. Parigidin-br2 5' and 3' UTRs showed the presence of 12 putative candidate sites for binding of regulatory proteins, suggesting that the flanking and intronic regions of the parigidin-br2 gene must play important roles in transcriptional rates and in the regulation of temporal and spatial gene expression. The high degree of genetic similarity and structural organization among the cyclotide genes isolated in the present study from the Brazilian Cerrado and other well-characterized plant cyclotides may contribute to a better understanding of cyclotide evolution., (© 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

For 84 unique topic-vehicle pairs (e.g., knowledge-power), participants produced associated properties for the topics (e.g., knowledge), vehicles (e.g., power), metaphors (knowledge is power), and similes (knowledge is like power). For these properties, we also obtained frequency, saliency, and connotativeness scores (i.e., how much the properties deviated from the denotative or literal meaning). In addition, we examined whether expression type (metaphor vs. simile) impacted the interpretations produced. We found that metaphors activated more salient properties than did similes, but the connotativeness levels for metaphor and simile salient properties were similar. Also, the two types of expressions did not differ across a wide range of measures collected: aptness, conventionality, familiarity, and interpretive diversity scores. Combined with the property lists, these interpretation norms constitute a thorough collection of data about metaphors and similes, employing the same topic-vehicle words, which can be used in psycholinguistic and cognitive neuroscience studies to investigate how the two types of expressions are represented and processed. These norms should be especially useful for studies that examine the online processing and interpretation of metaphors and similes, as well as for studies examining how properties related to metaphors and similes affect the interpretations produced.

We investigated the effect of aptness in the comprehension of copular metaphors (e.g., Lawyers are sharks) by Alzheimer's Disease (AD) patients. Aptness is the extent to which the vehicle (e.g., shark) captures salient properties of the topic (e.g., lawyers). A group of AD patients provided interpretations for metaphors that varied both in aptness and familiarity. Compared to healthy controls, AD patients produced worse interpretations, but interpretation ability was related to a metaphor's aptness rather than to its familiarity level, and patients with superior abstraction ability produced better interpretations. Therefore, the ability to construct figurative interpretations for metaphors is not always diminished in AD patients nor is it dependent only on the novelty level of the expression. We show that Alzheimer's patients' capacity to build figurative interpretations for metaphors is related to both item variables, such as aptness, and participant variables, such as abstraction ability.

Background: Rheumatic diseases in children are associated with significant morbidity and poor health-related quality of life (HRQOL). There is no health-related quality of life (HRQOL) scale available specifically for children with less common rheumatic diseases. These diseases share several features with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) such as their chronic episodic nature, multi-systemic involvement, and the need for immunosuppressive medications. HRQOL scale developed for pediatric SLE will likely be applicable to children with systemic inflammatory diseases., Findings: We adapted Simple Measure of Impact of Lupus Erythematosus in Youngsters (SMILEY©) to Simple Measure of Impact of Illness in Youngsters (SMILY©-Illness) and had it reviewed by pediatric rheumatologists for its appropriateness and cultural suitability. We tested SMILY©-Illness in patients with inflammatory rheumatic diseases and then translated it into 28 languages. Nineteen children (79% female, n=15) and 17 parents participated. The mean age was 12±4 years, with median disease duration of 21 months (1-172 months). We translated SMILY©-Illness into the following 28 languages: Danish, Dutch, French (France), English (UK), German (Germany), German (Austria), German (Switzerland), Hebrew, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Slovene, Spanish (USA and Puerto Rico), Spanish (Spain), Spanish (Argentina), Spanish (Mexico), Spanish (Venezuela), Turkish, Afrikaans, Arabic (Saudi Arabia), Arabic (Egypt), Czech, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Japanese, Romanian, Serbian and Xhosa., Conclusion: SMILY©-Illness is a brief, easy to administer and score HRQOL scale for children with systemic rheumatic diseases. It is suitable for use across different age groups and literacy levels. SMILY©-Illness with its available translations may be used as useful adjuncts to clinical practice and research.

Unlabelled: Hepatic encephalopathy (HE) is a cognitive disturbance characterized by neuropsychiatric alterations. It occurs in acute and chronic hepatic disease and also in patients with portosystemic shunts. The presence of these portosystemic shunts allows the passage of nitrogenous substances from the intestines through systemic veins without liver depuration. Therefore, the embolization of these shunts has been performed to control HE manifestations, but the presence of portal vein thrombosis is considered a contraindication. In this presentation we show a cirrhotic patient with severe HE and portal vein thrombosis who was submitted to embolization of a large portosystemic shunt., Case Report: a 57 years-old cirrhotic patient who had been hospitalized many times for persistent HE and hepatic coma, even without precipitant factors. She had a wide portosystemic shunt and also portal vein thrombosis. The abdominal angiography confirmed the splenorenal shunt and showed other shunts. The larger shunt was embolized through placement of microcoils, and the patient had no recurrence of overt HE. There was a little increase of esophageal and gastric varices, but no endoscopic treatment was needed. Since portosystemic shunts are frequent causes of recurrent HE in cirrhotic patients, portal vein thrombosis should be considered a relative contraindication to perform a shunt embolization. However, in particular cases with many shunts and severe HE, we found that one of these shunts can be safely embolized and this procedure can be sufficient to obtain a good HE recovery. In conclusion, we reported a case of persistent HE due to a wide portosystemic shunt associated with portal vein thrombosis. As the patient had other shunts, she was successfully treated by embolization of the larger shunt.

Our objective was to evaluate production, nutritive value and carrying capacity of piatã grass (Brachiaria brizantha cv. BRS Piatã), and performance of Nellore heifers in agrosilvopastoral systems (ASPS) with three eucalyptus (Eucalyptus urograndis) tree densities, during winter, spring, summer, and fall. Three integrated systems were evaluated: ASPS-1 (357 trees ha(-1)), ASPS-2 (227 trees ha(-1)), and CON (5 trees ha(-1)). In each system, two sward heights were evaluated: short and tall. A total of 80 11-month-old Nellore heifers were randomly allocated in a randomized split-plot block, 3 × 2 factorial. Greater dry matter availability was observed on CON pastures during the fall season. Greater percentage of leaf lamina was detected on ASPS-1 with short sward height and greater during summer, compared with other seasons. A greater forage production was observed between tree rows and for tall sward height. Spring was the season with less forage nutritive value. Average daily gain was greater during summer and fall. Gain per hectare and stocking rate were greater on CON system and on ASPS-2. Pastures with short sward height had greater gain per hectare and stocking rate. Agrosilvopastoral systems with intermediate tree density seem to be a good choice for producers willing to diversify their revenue sources without decreasing animal production.

Several quinonoid and phenazine compounds were synthesized in moderate to high yields and showed activity against H(37)Rv, rifampicin and isoniazid-resistance strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The cytotoxity of the compounds were evaluated against human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) and these substances emerge as promising antitubercular prototypes., (Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.)

Aim: The purpose of this research was to assess the effects of the flower essences She Oak and Bush Fuchsia on behavioral anxiety in ovariectomized (OVX) rats., Methods: For four weeks, OVX rats received the flower essences She Oak, Bush Fuchsia or a combination of the two. After flower therapy, the animals were subjected to an elevated plus maze (EPM) behavioral anxiety-test. Cortisol blood level was also evaluated., Results: OVX rats treated with the flower essence She Oak became less anxious and had more entries in the EPM open arms. On the other hand, OVX rats treated with the Bush Fuchsia essence spent more time in the EPM closed arms. This finding is similar to those obtained with controls. In addition, OVX rats that received She Oak and Bush Fuchsia in combination presented the same results as those receiving the Bush Fuchsia alone., Conclusions: Our results suggest that the flower essence She Oak could have an anxiolytic effect in OVX rats, but that the combination therapy of the She Oak and Bush Fuchsia could avoid the effects of the She Oak.

Many trimorphemic words are structurally and semantically ambiguous. For example, unlockable can either be un-lockable (cannot be locked) or unlock-able (can be unlocked). Which interpretation is preferred and whether the preceding sentence context affects the initial interpretation is not clear from prior research. The present experiment embedded ambiguous trimorphemic words in sentence contexts, manipulated whether or not preceding context disambiguated the meaning, and examined the pattern of fixation durations on the ambiguous word and the remainder of the text. The results indicated that the unlock-able interpretation was preferred; moreover, preceding context did not exert a significant effect until the eyes had initially exited from the target word.

The aim of the study was to evaluate and compare the effects of caudal epidural administration of meperidine (MP), lidocaine (LD), and a combination of the two (MPLD) in six mature saddle horses. Horses were randomly assigned to receive three treatments (MP 0.3 mg/kg; LD 0.2 mg/kg; and MPLD: MP 0.3 mg/kg and LD 0.2 mg/kg), with at least 1 week between treatments. Drugs were injected into the epidural space between the first and second coccygeal areas in conscious standing horses. Analgesia, ataxia, sedation, cardiovascular and respiratory effects, and rectal temperature were recorded at different intervals before (baseline) and after administration. Epidural administration of MPLD resulted in a longer duration of analgesia of the tail, perineum, and upper hind limb regions than did administration of MP or LD alone.

Objective: To report the efficacy and adverse events with the use of anti-TNFalpha agents in pediatric patients with rheumatic diseases., Patients and Methods: Retrospective, observational clinical case series of patients with rheumatic diseases refractory to the conventional treatment. Infliximab and etanercept were the the drugs used., Results: Thirty patients received anti-TNFalpha therapy: Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis (18), chronic idiopathic anterior uveitis (2), juvenile dermatomyositis (4), Blau syndrome (1), relapsing polychondritis (2), CINCA syndrome (1), and microscopic polyangiitis (1). Twenty (66,6%) patients used infliximab exclusively, 2 (6,6%) etanercept and 8 (26,6%) both drugs. The response with infliximab was good in 9 patients, partial in 12 and poor in 5. Two patients were not evaluated for the short period of treatment. The response with etanercept was good in 7, partial in 2 and poor in 1. The best benefits were observed in JIA patients with polyarticular arthritis, psoriatic arthritis and enthesitis-related arthritis. Adverse effects occurred in 15 patients (50%). Suspension of the treatment due to adverse events occurred in 7. The most frequent infusion reactions with the infliximab were cough and nausea. Infectious complications occurred in 2 patients receiving etanercept and in 7 receiving infliximab (one death due to sepsis). No patients developed tuberculosis., Conclusion: Infliximab and etanercept are effective in some subtypes of juvenile idiopathic arthritis and other rheumatic diseases refractory to conventional therapy. Although frequent, adverse events could be controlled most of the time.

The goal of this study was to evaluate the possibility that dyslexic individuals require more working memory resources than normal readers to shift attention from stimulus to stimulus. To test this hypothesis, normal and dyslexic adolescents participated in a Rapid Serial Visual Presentation experiment (Raymond, Shapiro, & Arnell, 1992). Surprisingly, the result showed that the participants with dyslexia produced a shallower attentional blink than normal controls. This result may be interpreted as showing differences in the way the two groups encode information in episodic memory. They also fit in a cascade-effect perspective of developmental dyslexia.

One hundred and forty normal undergraduate students participated in a Proactive Interference (PI) experiment with sentences containing verbs from four different semantic and morphological classes (lexical causatives, morphological causatives, and morphologically complex and simplex perception verbs). Past research has shown significant PI build-up effects for semantically and morphologically complex verbs in isolation (de Almeida & Mobayyen, 2004). The results of the present study show that, when embedded into sentence contexts, semantically and morphologically complex verbs do not produce significant PI build-up effects. Different verb classes, however, yield different recall patterns: sentences with semantically complex verbs (e.g., causatives) were recalled significantly better than sentences with semantically simplex verbs (e.g., perception verbs). The implications for the nature of both verb-conceptual representations and category-specific semantic deficits are discussed.

Recent research in lexical semantics has suggested that verbs such as begin and enjoy semantically select for a complement that denotes an activity or an event. When no such activity or event is specified in the form of a progressive or infinitival complement, as in John began (to read/reading) the book, the verb is said to "coerce" the NP direct object to shift its role to encompass the activity that begin requires as complement (e.g., writing, reading). Empirical support for this view has been provided by McElree, Traxler, Pickering, Seely, & Jackendoff (2001). In the present study, however, in two self-paced reading experiments, type-shifting effects (taken to be longer reading times engendered by the computation of the coercion process) were not obtained with sentences in isolation (Experiment 1) or with sentences embedded in contexts that specified the nature of the activity performed over the complement NP (Experiment 2). It is argued that type-shifting verbs are similar to non-preferred verbs for given contexts and that type-shifting operations are pragmatic inferences computed over underspecified semantic representations.

It is well known that bilinguals perform better in their first language (L1) than in their second lanaguage (L2) in a wide range of linguistic tasks. In recent studies, however, the authors have found that bilingual participants can demonstrate faster response times to L1 stimuli than to L2 stimuli in one classification task and the reverse in a different classification task. In the current study, they investigated the reasons for this "L2-better-than-L1" effect. English-French bilinguals performed one word relatedness and two categorization tasks with verbs of motion (e.g., run) and psychological verbs (e.g., admire) in both languages. In the word relatedness task, participants judged how closely related pairs of verbs from both categories were. In a speeded semantic categorization task, participants classified the verbs according to their semantic category (psychological or motion). In an arbitrary classification task, participants had to learn how verbs had been assigned to two arbitrary categories. Participants performed better in L1 in the semantic classification task but paradoxically better in L2 in the arbitrary classification task. To account for these effects, the authors used the ratings from the word relatedness task to plot three-dimensional "semantic fields" for the verbs. Cross-language field differences were found to be significantly related to the paradoxical performance and to fluency levels. The results have implications for understanding of how bilinguals represent verbs in the mental lexicon., (Copyright 2002 Elsevier Science (USA).)

A reassessment of category-specific semantic deficits in light of their contribution to a theory of the representation of lexical concepts is proposed. Two theories are examined: one, held by the majority of researchers in the field, claims that concepts are represented by sets of features; another, in contrast, claims that concepts are atomic representations. An analysis of category-specific semantic deficits in terms of inferential relations (of the meaning-postulates type) between atomic concepts is elaborated. It is argued that this theory can better account for the pattern of performance exhibited by patients with semantic deficits., (Copyright 1999 Academic Press.)

This paper reports on two experiments that investigated the activation of morphemes in English novel compounds. All experiments employed stimuli that we have called "ambiguous novel compounds." These words (e.g., clamprod) have two interpretable parses (e.g., clam + prod or clamp + rod) and thus offer an opportunity to investigate which parses are preferred, whether both possible parses are computed, and whether parsing procedures "divide" words into their morphological constituents or "extract" constituent representations. The results suggest that morphological parsing does not simply divide a word into its constituents, but rather generates multiple representations that are subsequently evaluated., (Copyright 1999 Academic Press.)

The fuchsin salts currently available in Latin American market have shown some instability when in solution, according to the classic Ziehl-Neelsen method, resulting in a total precipitation of the salt. The authors indicate a new technique for the preparation of this solution, in order to minimize the action of interfering factors responsible for the precipitation, obtaining thus a greater solubility of the salt, as well as the solution stability. The method effectiveness is reinforced by the utilization of a smaller amount of the salt and the attainment of a larger storage period for the solution.

Authors analyse the counterstain with methylene blue solution in the usual Ziehl-Neelsen method. Considerations are made on the characteristics of the dye substance. A technique alteration is proposed: a "concomitant alkalization" of the classic aqueous methylene blue solution, by adding some drops of sodium hydroxide solution, 1:500, on the slide at the moment of the staining. By this technique it was observed: a) a larger validity period of the solution; b) an absence of precipitate in the slides; c) an easier visualization of the substrate; d) a larger contrast among the substrate and the bacilli.

The evaluation of the physical disabilities at the moment of the hanseniasis diagnosis was carried out through the clinical and epidemiological forms of the 8,915 cases recorded in the State of São Paulo, Brazil, from 1981 to 1983. The records of the physical disabilities were studied by three different methods: the disabilities at their highest grade, the disabilities' grade index achieved from the arithmetic mean of the added values of the different disability grades, and the absolute disabilities frequency. The study suggested that the maximum grade was the best evaluation method of the physical disabilities at the moment of the diagnosis, being an important indicator for the evaluation of prevention efforts and of the hanseniasis control.