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To assess the effectiveness and safety/tolerability of eslicarbazepine acetate (ESL) in patients included in the Euro-Esli study who had focal seizures associated with post-stroke epilepsy (PSE).

© 2016 IOP Publishing Ltd. Recurrent drought and associated heatwave episodes are important features of the US climate. Many studies have examined the connection between ocean surface temperature changes and conterminous US droughts. However, remote effects of large-scale land surface temperature variability, over shorter but still considerable distances, on US regional droughts have been largely ignored. The present study combines two types of evidence to address these effects: climate observations and model simulations. Our analysis of observational data shows that springtime land temperature in northwest US is significantly correlated with summer rainfall and surface temperature changes in the US Southern Plains and its adjacent areas. Our model simulations of the 2011 Southern Plains drought using a general circulation model and a regional climate model confirm the observed relationship between land temperature anomaly and drought, and suggest that the long-distance effect of land temperature changes in the northwest US on Southern Plains droughts is probably as large as the more familiar effects of ocean surface temperatures and atmospheric internal variability. We conclude that the cool 2011 springtime climate conditions in the northwest US increased the probability of summer drought and abnormal heat in the Southern Plains. The present study suggests a strong potential for more skillful intra-seasonal predictions of US Southern Plains droughts when such facts as ones presented here are considered.

© 2015 Macmillan Publishers Limited. Ruminant livestock are important sources of human food and global greenhouse gas emissions. Feed degradation and methane formation by ruminants rely on metabolic interactions between rumen microbes and affect ruminant productivity. Rumen and camelid foregut microbial community composition was determined in 742 samples from 32 animal species and 35 countries, to estimate if this was influenced by diet, host species, or geography. Similar bacteria and archaea dominated in nearly all samples, while protozoal communities were more variable. The dominant bacteria are poorly characterised, but the methanogenic archaea are better known and highly conserved across the world. This universality and limited diversity could make it possible to mitigate methane emissions by developing strategies that target the few dominant methanogens. Differences in microbial community compositions were predominantly attributable to diet, with the host being less influential. There were few strong co-occurrence patterns between microbes, suggesting that major metabolic interactions are non-selective rather than specific., We thank Ron Ronimus, Paul Newton, and Christina Moon for reading and commenting on the manuscript. We thank all who provided assistance that allowed Global Rumen Census collaborators to supply samples and metadata (Supplemental Text 1). AgResearch was funded by the New Zealand Government as part of its support for the Global Research Alliance on Agricultural Greenhouse Gases. The following funding sources allowed Global Rumen Census collaborators to supply samples and metadata, listed with the primary contact(s) for each funding source: Agencia Nacional de Investigación e Innovación, Martín Fraga; Alberta Livestock and Meat Agency, Canada, Tim A. McAllister; Area de Ciencia y Técnica, Universidad Juan A Maza (Resolución Proy. N° 508/2012), Diego Javier Grilli; Canada British Columbia Ranching Task Force Funding Initiative, John Church; CNPq, Hilário Cuquetto Mantovani, Luiz Gustavo Ribeiro Pereira; FAPEMIG, Hilário Cuquetto Mantovani; FAPEMIG, PECUS RumenGases, Luiz Gustavo Ribeiro Pereira; Cooperative Research Program for Agriculture Science & Technology Development (project number PJ010906), Rural Development Administration, Republic of Korea, Sang-Suk Lee; Dutch Dairy Board & Product Board Animal Feed, André Bannink, Kasper Dieho, Jan Dijkstra; Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Vahideh Heidarian Miri; Finnish Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Ilma Tapio; Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria, Argentina (Project PNBIO1431044), Silvio Cravero, María Cerón Cucchi; Irish Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Alexandre B. De Menezes; Meat & Livestock Australia; and Department of Agriculture, Fisheries & Forestry (Australian Government), Chris McSweeney; Ministerio de Agricultura y desarrollo sostenible (Colombia), Olga Lucía Mayorga; Montana Agricultural Experiment Station project (MONB00113), Carl Yeoman; Multistate project W-3177 Enhancing the competitiveness of US beef (MONB00195), Carl Yeoman; NSW Stud Merino Breeders’ Association, Alexandre Vieira Chaves; Queensland Enteric Methane Hub, Diane Ouwerkerk; RuminOmics, Jan Kopecny, Ilma Tapio; Rural and Environment Science and Analytical Services Division (RESAS) of the Scottish Government and the Technology Strategy Board, UK, R. John Wallace; Science Foundation Ireland (09/RFP/GEN2447), Sinead Waters; Secretaría de Agricultura, Ganadería, Desarrollo Rural, Pesca y Alimentación, Mario A. Cobos-Peralta; Slovenian Research Agency (project number J1-6732 and P4-0097), Blaz Stres; Strategic Priority Research Program, Climate Change: Carbon Budget and Relevant Issues (Grant No.XDA05020700), ZhiLiang Tan; The European Research Commission Starting Grant Fellowship (336355—MicroDE), Phil B. Pope; The Independent Danish Research Council (project number 4002-00036), Torsten Nygaard Kristensen; and The Independent Danish Research Council (Technology and Production, project number 11-105913), Jan Lassen. These funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Objectives: The objective of the article is to explore the surgical practices and views in the treatment of melanoma within members and non-members of the EORTC Melanoma Group (MG) during the years 2003-2005. Methods: An e-mail questionnaire (see appendix) developed within the EORTC MG was sent to all melanoma units (MUs) of the EORTC (180) and to selected international centres between 2003 and 2005. The questionnaire investigated the different practices regarding surgical management of melanoma patients at all stages. Results: A total of 75 questionnaires were returned from centres in Europe (70), Israel (3), Australia (1) and the United States (1). Resection margins on primary melanoma vary according to AJCC 2002 staging. Sixty three of 75 MUs perform Sentinel node biopsy. Modified radical neck dissection is performed in 82% of MUs for macrometastases and in 80% of MUs for micrometastases. Most MUs surveyed perform all three levels of Berg axillary dissection whether for macrometastases (79%) or micrometastases (62%). An ilio inguinal-obturator dissection is proposed with macrometastases (41% of MUs), whereas 33% of MUs perform a pelvic dissection only if the Cloquet node is positive. Twenty five of 75 MUs perform an isolated limb perfusion with a therapeutic indication; three also as an adjuvant. The majority of MUs perform surgery for distant metastases including superficial (53 of 75 [71%]) or solitary visceral metastases (52 of 75[69%]) or for palliation (58 of 75[77%]). Conclusion: The adequacy of surgery appears to be the most important milestone in the therapeutic approach of melanoma. Even if surgery is fundamental in the different stages of the disease, there is quite a variability concerning the extension of the surgical treatment related to primary and lymphnodal disease. Phase III randomised trials have shown that wide margins, elective lymph node dissections, and prophylactic isolated limb perfusions have not improved survival and cannot be considered the standard of care in the routine management of primary melanoma. The surgical subgroup of the EORTC Melanoma Group is developing a new version of the surgical survey questionnaire including new treatment modalities like isolated limb infusion and electrochemotherapy, which were not frequently in use some years ago, to obtain new data to be compared to the nearly ten-year-old data. © the authors licensee ecancermedicalscience., SCOPUS: re.j, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

A Knowledge Management System developed for supporting creation, capture, storage and dissemination of information about Epilepsy and Epileptic Seizures is presented. We present an Ontology on Epilepsy and a Web-based prototype that together create the KMS., Comment: in Adrian Paschke, Albert Burger, Andrea Splendiani, M. Scott Marshall, Paolo Romano: Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Semantic Web Applications and Tools for the Life Sciences, Berlin,Germany, December 8-10, 2010

This article reviews Malformations of Cortical Development (MCD) diagnosed by Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) in a series of patients with epilepsy. This study spans a five year period. The frequency of these malformations was 7.1%. Most of these were focal or multifocal and the most common ones were polymicrogyria (35.3% of the patients), heterotopia (29.4%), and focal cortical dysplasia (29.4%). The frontal lobes were the most frequently affected regions. The various MCD encountered reflect the wide spectrum of MCD leading to epilepsy.