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Key Clinical Message In asymptomatic patients with lesions in SAM measuring

Background: Gadolinium deposition in biological tissues was first reported in patients with renal failure. We aimed to investigate gadolinium deposition in the rat kidney after exposure to single and multiple doses of gadolinium and evaluate deposition for 1- and 3-month periods. We also aimed to determine any correlation between the amount of deposition and T1-weighted image intensity. Methods: Seventy rats (5 animals per group) were included in the sample, and 9 groups received a single dose (0.3, 0.6, and 1.2 mmol/kg) of gadolinium, and 1 group for each dose was sacrificed at the end of the first day, week, and month. Four groups received weekly doses (0.3 and 0.6 mmol/kg) and were sacrificed at the end of 6 and 12 weeks. Measurement of T1 intensities was carried out with postinjection images before sacrifice, and deposition was determined using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. Results: The number of injections was associated with increased gadolinium deposition (P < .001) in the kidney. After the weekly injections, the deposited gadolinium levels did not significantly difer between the low and medium doses at the end of the sixth week (P=.067). There was no agreement between the observers regarding the measurement of T1 signal intensity in both single-dose and multidose experiments (P=.263 and P=.307, respectively). Conclusion: Deposition was dose dependent in the postinjection stage in contrast to the late stage in which deposition was not associated with dose or number of injections until the 12th week. T1 signal intensity measurement is unreliable for assessing deposition in the rat kidney.

Greater plantain (Plantago major), a medicinal plant species, is used in folk medicine for the treatment of various diseases in many countries of the world. Different studies have shown that the bioactive components contained in the plant have a dual effect. It was also reported that in vivo and in vitro studies showed different results. The aim of the study was to determine the effects of P. major extract on the hemocyte-mediated and humoral immune responses of the invertebrate model organism Galleria mellonella, which is widely used in immune studies. In the evaluation of these effects, total hemocyte count, encapsulation, melanization, phenoloxidase, superoxide dismutase, catalase, malondialdehyde and total protein parameters were evaluated. The results of the study showed that the total hemocyte count did not change, that the encapsulation responses decreased, that the melanization responses and phenoloxidase activity increased and that the superoxide dismutase activity decreased. As a result, it was determined that high doses of P. major had negative effects on cell-mediated immunity and antioxidant defence and positive effects on melanization. High doses and continuous use of P. major may have negative effects on living things.

This study presents a new design method for determining the best proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller parameters (Kp, Ki and Kd) of an automatic voltage regulator (AVR) system using kidney-inspired algorithm (KA) for the first time. KA technique has high quality solution ability, good computational efficiency and fast convergence characteristics. The design problem of the proposed PID controller is defined as an optimization problem and KA technique is utilized to find the controller gains of Kp, Ki and Kd. The superiority of the optimized PID controller with KA technique over Ziegler-Nichols (ZN) classical tuning method and some modern heuristic optimization algorithms based controllers is inspected via transient response analysis to achieve an efficient AVR system. To evaluate the stability of the related power system tuned by KA technique, pole/zero map analysis and Bode plot are performed. Afterwards, robustness analysis is also carried out to check the performance of the proposed controller in the AVR system. The numerical simulation results verify that KA technique has an excellent tuning capability and is more efficient in improving the step response of the AVR system than the other existing methods.

It has been reported that acoustic waves are generated when a high-energy pulsed proton beam is deposited in a small volume within tissue. One possible application of proton-induced acoustics is to get real-time feedback for intra-treatment adjustments by monitoring such acoustic waves. A high spatial resolution in ultrasound imaging may reduce proton range uncertainty. Thus, it is crucial to understand the dependence of the acoustic waves on the proton beam characteristics. In this manuscript, firstly, an analytic solution for the proton-induced acoustic wave is presented to reveal the dependence of the signal on the beam parameters; then it is combined with an analytic approximation of the Bragg curve. The influence of the beam energy, pulse duration and beam diameter variation on the acoustic waveform are investigated. Further analysis is performed regarding the Fourier decomposition of the proton-acoustic signals. Our results show that the smaller spill time of the proton beam upsurges the amplitude of the acoustic wave for a constant number of protons, which is hence beneficial for dose monitoring. The increase in the energy of each individual proton in the beam leads to the spatial broadening of the Bragg curve, which also yields acoustic waves of greater amplitude. The pulse duration and the beam width of the proton beam do not affect the central frequency of the acoustic wave, but they change the amplitude of the spectral components. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]