OBJECTIVE A systematic review to evaluate the role of surgery for treating degenerative scoliosis (DS) in terms of improved function (Oswestry Disability Index [ODI]) and correction of deformity (Cobb angle); safety outcomes included complication and repeat surgery rates. METHODS A search of the MEDLINE, ISI Web of Knowledge and Cochrane Library databases was performed. The methodological quality of each study was assessed according to standardized criteria and data were extracted. RESULTS A total of 16 studies including 553 patients with DS met the eligibility criteria for inclusion. The mean ODI score at final follow-up was 36.0 ± 7.8 (304 patients) and the mean decrease in ODI was 23.3 ± 11.3 (302 patients). Mean reduction in curve angle (as a percentage of the original curve) was 48.5 ± 21.0%(527 patients). The overall incidence of complications was 49.0%(171 in 349 patients) and the rate of repeat surgery was 15.3%(61 in 398 patients). CONCLUSIONS Despite a high incidence of complications and reoperations, surgery was an effective and reasonable treatment for DS, providing significant functional improvement and deformity correction.

Recently, we demonstrated that two members of neurotrophins, nerve growth factor and brain-derived neurotrophic factor, and two types of receptor, tyrosine kinase A (TrkA) and tyrosine kinase (TrkB), exist in ejaculated bull spermatozoa, and play a crucial role in the normal function of spermatozoa. Neurotrophin-4 (NT-4) is another neurotrophic factor that signals predominantly through the TrkB receptor tyrosine kinase, and no reports of detection of NT-4 in spermatozoa have been published. In the present study, the presence of NT-4 in mature bull spermatozoa was investigated using RT-PCR, immunofluorescence and Western blotting. The result shows that there was no RT-PCR evidence for NT-4 transcripts in bovine spermatozoa. However, the NT-4 protein was present in bovine spermatozoa, and the NT-4 immunoreactivity was localized to the equatorial segment and midpiece of bovine spermatozoa. In addition, effects of NT-4 on function of spermatozoa were studied. Significant increased mitochondria activity of mature bovine spermatozoa was observed in response to 300 or 500 ng/ml exogenous NT-4 (p < 0.05), in comparison with the control, while addition of inhibitors (40 ng/ml k252α) specific for tyrosine protein kinase significantly blocked the increase of mitochondria activity. However, NT-4 had no effects on the viability or acrosome reaction of spermatozoa (p > 0.05). Consequently, this study provided evidence that NT-4 protein was presented in the mature bull spermatozoa and can influence the mitochondrial activity of bovine spermatozoa through TrkB tyrosine kinase-dependent pathways.

In the title trinuclear Ni(II) compound,[Ni(3)(C(18)H(19)N(2)O(3))(2)(C(5)H(5)N)(4)]·C(3)H(7)NO·H(2)O, three Ni(II) cations are bridged by two N'-(adamantan-1-ylcarbon-yl)-2-oxidobenzohydrazidate trianions. The central Ni(II) cation has a distorted octa-hedral N(4)O(2) coordination environment where a reverse torsion occurs between the two bridging ligands, whereas the two Ni(II) cations on the sides each adopt an N(2)O(2) square-planar coordination. Weak intra-molecular C-H⋯O and C-H⋯N inter-actions help to stabilize the mol-ecular structure. In the crystal, the lattice water mol-ecule links with the Ni(II) complex and dimethyl-formamide solvent mol-ecule via O-H⋯O hydrogen bonding.

Next-generation sequencing (NGS) is becoming a routine experimental technology. It has been a great success in recent years to profile small-RNA species using NGS. Indeed, a large quantity of small-RNA profiling data has been generated from NGS, and computational methods have been developed to process and analyze NGS data for the purpose of identification of novel and expressed small noncoding RNAs and analysis of their roles in nearly all biological processes and pathways in eukaryotes. We discuss here the computational procedures and major steps for identification of microRNAs and natural antisense transcript-originated small interfering RNAs from NGS small-RNA profiling data.

Introduction: To present a rare case of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS) following a spontaneous complete hydatidiform molar (CHM) pregnancy. Case: A 38-year-old woman underwent vacuum curettage for a CHM pregnancy. Seven days later, she was admitted to our hospital with the symptoms of OHSS. Transvaginal ultrasonography demonstrated enlarged multicystic ovaries, marked ascites and large pleural effusions that required abdominocentesis and thoracocentesis, respectively. She was treated with intravenous fluid, exogenous colloid supplementation, prophylaxis for deep vein thrombosis, and drainage of the ascites and bilateral pleural effusions. She recovered by day 14 of admission. Conclusion: OHSS may develop in older women who undergo treatment for CHM pregnancies. Serious complications may develop rapidly and therefore the prompt diagnosis of OHSS is very important.

The aim of the study was to explore the factors in inadequate-responders to treatment with adefovir (ADV) with or without genotypic resistance. The reverse-transcriptase (RT) gene of hepatitis B virus (HBV) was sequenced in 161 patients with inadequate-response to ADV and analyzed for HBV genotypes using a phylogenetic approach. Seventy-six patients (47.2%) were found to carry the rtA181V/T/S or rtN236T residue substitution, and most of them had viral rebound. In the patients with viral rebound and ADV genotypic resistance, 19 (25.7%) showed rtA181V/T/S + rtN236T substitutions. In the other patients, it was found that HBV genotypes and cirrhosis influenced the selection of ADV-resistant positions by univariate analysis and multiple logistic regression analysis. The rtN236T was more frequent in patients with genotype B, and the rtA181V/T/S was more common in patients with genotype C (χ(2)  = 11.543, P = 0.001). Multiple logistic regression analysis showed that the rtN236T and time resistant strains occurred during ADV-treatment were statistically significant for influencing rtA181 variation types (P = 0.007 and P = 0.024, respectively), and the occurrence of rtA181T was found to be significantly earlier than rtA181V. In conclusion, genotypic resistance was not detected in the majority of primary nonresponders to ADV when compared to the patients with viral rebound. The different HBV genotypes influence the selection of ADV-resistant mutation positions. The rtA181T occurs more frequently in patients with the rtN236T and it occurs earlier when compared to the rtA181V. These findings suggest that early judgment of adequate response and making a decision for interference in patients treated with ADV are of importance in clinical practice. J. Med. Virol. 84: 1030-1036, 2012. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Vitrification is widely used for cryopreservation of oocytes. The present study has built the theoretical models of four vitrification systems (micro-droplet, open pulled straws, quartz micro-capillary and cryotop), and performed numerical analysis to predict the cooling rates. The numerical analysis shows that the average cooling rate of the cryotop system was higher than those of other three systems between 298K and 100K. In addition, the effects of other process parameters on the cooling rate with the cryotop system were also investigated, including the thickness of the carrier, the volume of cryoprotectant agent, the temperature of cold source as well as the heat transfer coefficient, when plunging into liquid nitrogen.

The insulin receptor substrate-1 (IRS1) plays an important role in insulin signaling. A recent genome-wide association study identified rs2943641C>T as a susceptibility locus for type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) in Caucasian patients. Therefore, we determined whether this common variant near IRS1 is also associated with the risk of T2DM and T2DM-related phenotypes in a Chinese Han population. A total of 2,290 unrelated Chinese Han individuals residing in Beijing were recruited in this study, including 1177 T2DM patients and 1113 subjects with normal glucose tolerance (control group). The single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) was genotyped using a MassARRAY iPLEX system. The frequency of risk allele C was 0.929 in the control group and 0.939 in patients with T2DM. We found no association between the C allele of rs2943641 and T2DM in a recessive model [OR 1.14, 95 % confidence interval (CI) 0.89-1.45, P = 0.298], or after adjusting for sex, age, and body mass index (BMI)(OR 1.10, 95 % CI 0.85-1.43, P = 0.301). Analysis of the clinical features of the control subjects with normal glucose tolerance revealed that the 30-min plasma glucose level during a 75-g oral glucose tolerance test was significantly different between the CC and CT+TT genotypes (P = 0.017). Linear regression analysis showed that the 30-min plasma glucose levels was significantly and positively associated with the CC genotype after adjusting for sex, age, and BMI (β = 0.065, 95 % CI 0.009-0.654, P = 0.044). In addition, a potential association between this SNP and increased waist circumference (β = 1.337, 95 % CI -0.179 to 2.853, P = 0.084) was observed with adjustment for the sex and age. Our study was not able to demonstrate the association between rs2943641 near IRS1 and T2DM in a Chinese Han population. However, this SNP may be associated with postprandial hyperglycemia.

This paper details the authors' efforts to push the baseline of emotion recognition performance on the Geneva Multimodal Emotion Portrayals (GEMEP) Facial Expression Recognition and Analysis database. Both subject-dependent and subject-independent emotion recognition scenarios are addressed in this paper. The approach toward solving this problem involves face detection, followed by key-point identification, then feature generation, and then, finally, classification. An ensemble of features consisting of hierarchical Gaussianization, scale-invariant feature transform, and some coarse motion features have been used. In the classification stage, we used support vector machines. The classification task has been divided into person-specific and person-independent emotion recognitions using face recognition with either manual labels or automatic algorithms. We achieve 100% performance for the person-specific one, 66% performance for the person-independent one, and 80% performance for overall results, in terms of classification rate, for emotion recognition with manual identification of subjects.

An efficient microwave-enhanced hydrothermal synthesis strategy was developed for the rapid synthesis of β-NaGdF(4):Ln(3+)(Ln = Yb, Er/Tm/Ho) nanocrystals (NCs) with multicolour upconversion luminescence and paramagnetic properties. It has been found that the uniform β-NaGdF(4):Ln(3+) NCs could be rapidly formed within a few minutes at 160 °C and the shape of the NCs can be manipulated from uniform rod-like to spherical just by tuning the initial reactants' concentration. In comparison to conventional hydrothermal routes, a burst homogeneous nucleation and higher growth rate as well as enhanced dimensional homogeneity of the NaGdF(4):Ln(3+) was achieved in microwave synthesis. A microwave-heating-based classical crystallization mode and surfactant-assisted anisotropic growth mechanism were proposed for the formation of β-NaGdF(4):Ln(3+) NCs.