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•Wall painting fragments from Las Dunas, Spain show similarities to other Roman sites.•Both fresco and mezzo-fresco techniques were used.•Use of synthetic and natural pigments.•Magnesian lime mortars with feeble hydraulic features.•Aggregates in the mortars dominated by minerals from ultramafic rocks.

In this paper we discuss the theoretical and experimental constructs which together point the way towards the transduction of biomolecular recognition events into a palpable set of electrical signals. This combines the applied physics of surface perturbations on acoustic wave device surfaces and the biochemistry of the interactions between an immobilized biomolecule (e.g., an antibody) and a target molecule which is flowing past the sensor surface (e.g., an antigen). We will first provide the theoretical basis for our contention that we can extract information about both molecular recognition and conformational change from the electrical signal and will then confirm this assertion with experimental results relating to induced conformational changes in DNA on a quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) surface. Next we will discuss our digital radio technique whereby the real time measurements using antibody coated surface acoustic wave (SAW) devices in the vapor phase allow us to differentiate between close chemical analogs of nitro-based molecules (e.g., tri-nitro toluene vs musk oil) by virtue of the cross-reactivity of the antibody-antigen interaction. In immunochemistry this is referred to as antibody promiscuity. Finally, we present two- and three-dimensional plots illustrating our technique which derives much from in-phase and quadrature phase (IQ) mapping. The end result is a powerful technique which allows one to differentiate between target molecules and chemically similar interferrents.

In the inaugural edition of Prosthetics and Orthotics International, Fishman identified the psychological sciences as one of six indispensable areas of skill and knowledge in professional prosthetic-orthotic practice. Given the journal's significant role in reporting and developing pertinent research and practice, this review assesses the profile of psychology in prosthetic and orthotic research, as evidenced by the content of Prosthetics and Orthotics International since its inception. A MEDLINE search of the journal's abstracts over a twenty-five year period was conducted using the search terms: ‘psychology’, ‘psychosocial’, ‘quality of life’, ‘developmental’ and ‘coping’. Results of this search are summarised under the following headings: (a) body image; (b) coping and adjustment; (c) developmental issues; (d) psychosocial well-being; (e) quality of life; and (f) psychological factors leading to amputation. On the basis of this review, the authors conclude by highlighting a number of key areas where the psychological aspects of prosthetics and orthotics warrant further investigation and dissemination.

To investigate the frequency and clinical determinants of dementia after ischemic stroke.

To expand the reported phenotypic range of cerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy (CADASIL).

Stroke is considered the second most common cause of dementia, but the magnitude of the risk posed by stroke has not been fully clarified. The aim of this study was to determine the long-term risk of developing dementia after stroke onset in a hospitalized cohort. We prospectively examined 185 nondemented patients aged ≥60 years hospitalized with ischemic stroke and 241 age-matched nondemented controls without stroke from the same community using neurologic, neuropsychological, and functional assessments given annually. Using criteria modified from the DSM-III-R, we diagnosed incident dementia based on the annual examination findings. We used life-table methods to estimate incidence in the two groups, Kaplan-Meier analysis to determine the proportion surviving without dementia, and Cox proportional-hazards analysis to compute the relative risk (RR) of dementia after 1 to 4 years of follow-up. The incidence of dementia was 8.4 per 100 person-years in the stroke group and 1.3 per 100 person-years in the control group. After 52 months of follow-up, the cumulative proportion (±SE) surviving without dementia was 66.3 ± 5.5 for stroke and 90.3 ± 4.3 for control subjects. The RR of dementia associated with stroke compared with controls was 5.5 (95 CI, 2.5 to 11.1) after adjusting for demographic factors. Older age at stroke onset and fewer years of education were significant covariates, but sex and race were not. A low score on the Mini-Mental State Examination at baseline was a significant predictor when added to this model. We conclude that ischemic stroke in elderly persons increases the long-term risk of developing dementia by approximately five-fold compared with those without stroke. Age, education, and baseline intellectual function contribute independently to that risk.

There is increasing pressure on industry and regulatory bodies to monitor the discharge of trace metals into the aquatic environment. The determination of trace metals can be achieved to parts per billion (ppb) levels using anodic stripping voltammetry (ASV) at screen printed electrodes, controlled using an NMRC potentiostat coupled with software control. The disposable testheads consist of inexpensive materials and allow for low-cost production in batch processes. Voltammetric (the measurement of current as a function of potential) methods of analysis are attractive for the determination of copper, cadmium, lead and zinc. A three electrode set-up is used both in the preparation of the mercury film on a carbon electrode and in the subsequent anodic stripping voltammetric detection step. The performances of the reference electrodes, the screen-printed carbon and the FPGA based unit have been investigated in this paper.

Three patients with left splenial lesions made paralexic errors restricted to the leftend of words. Errors appeared more frequently when a correct response was highly dependent on the initial letter of the stimulus. One patient had full visual fields with hemialexia affecting the left visual field. The other two patients had complete right hemianopia. We attribute leftsided reading errors in the hemianopic patients to a retinotopically restricted disconnection pattern that selectively disrupts transfer of information originating from the peripheral left visual field. Functional resistance of the more numerous transcallosal projections representing visual field adjacent to the vertical meridian may account for such a pattern. The emergence of positional reading errors from retinotopically restricted left hemifield disconnection suggests that callosal information transfer during normal reading may primarily involve elemental sensory rather than lexicalsemantic information.

We examined six patients with an abrupt change in behavior after infarction involving the inferior genu of the internal capsule. The acute syndrome featured fluctuating alertness, inattention, memory loss, apathy, abulia, and psychomotor retardation, suggesting frontal lobe dysfunction. Contralateral hemiparesis and dysarthria were generally mild, except when the infarct extended into the posterior limb. Neuropsychological testing in five patients with left-sided infarcts revealed severe verbal memory loss. Additional cognitive deficits consistent with dementia occurred in four patients. A right-sided infarct caused transient impairment in visuospatial memory. Functional brain imaging in three patients showed a focal reduction in hemispheric perfusion most prominent in the ipsilateral inferior and medial frontal cortex. We infer that the capsular genu infarct interrupted the inferior and anterior thalamic peduncles, resulting in functional deactivation of the ipsilateral frontal cortex. These observations suggest that one mechanism for cognitive deterioration from a lacunar infarct is thalamocortical disconnection of white-matter tracts, in some instances leading to "strategic-infarct dementia."

Although risk factors for first stroke have been identified, the predictors of long-term stroke recurrence are less well understood. We performed the present study to determine whether dementia diagnosed three months after stroke onset is an independent risk factor for long-term stroke recurrence.

We determined the frequency of dementia in a cohort of 251 patients aged 60 years hospitalized with acute ischemie stroke, based on examinations performed 3 months after stroke onset. Using modified DSM-III-R criteria, we found dementia in 66 patients (26.3). Diagnostic agreement among raters was excellent (kappa 0.96). In a control sample of 249 stroke-free subjects recruited from the community and matched by age, we found dementia in eight subjects (3.2). Using a logistic regression model to estimate the risk of dementia associated with stroke in the combined samples, the odds ratio (OR) for stroke patients compared with control subjects was 9.4 (p<0.001). Advancing age and fewer years of education were significant, independent correlates of dementia, with a trend evident for race (non-white versus white). Confining the analysis to subjects residing in the Washington Heights-Inwood community of northern Manhattan, the OR was 10.3 (p<0.001) with significant age and race effects. We conclude that ischemie stroke significantly increases the risk of dementia, with independent contributions by age, education, and race.

Our objectives were to investigate the utility of the Hachinski Ischemic Score (HIS) in differentiating patients with pathologically verified Alzheimer's disease (AD), multi-infarct dementia (MID), and "mixed" (AD plus cerebrovascular disease) dementia, and to identify the specific items of the HIS that best discriminate those dementia subtypes. Investigators from six sites participated in a meta-analysis by contributing original clinical data, HIS, and pathologic diagnoses on 312 patients with dementia (AD, 191; MID, 80; and mixed, 41). Sensitivity and specificity of the HIS were calculated based on varied cutoffs using receiver-operator characteristic curves. Logistic regression analyses were performed to compare each pair of diagnostic groups to obtain the odds ratio (OR) for each HIS item. The mean HIS (± SD) was 5.4 ± 4.5 and differed significantly among the groups (AD, 3.1 ± 2.5; MID, 10.5 ± 4.1; mixed, 7.7 ± 4.3). Receiver-operator characteristic curves showed that the best cutoff was ≤4 for AD and ≥7 for MID, as originally proposed, with a sensitivity of 89.0% and a specificity of 89.3%. For the comparison of MID versus mixed the sensitivity was 93.1% and the specificity was 17.2%, whereas for AD versus mixed the sensitivity was 83.8% and the specificity was 29.4%. HIS items distinguishing MID from AD were stepwise deterioration (OR, 6.06), fluctuating course (OR, 7.60), hypertension (OR, 4.30), history of stroke(OR, 4.30), and focal neurologic symptoms (OR, 4.40). Only stepwise deterioration (OR, 3.97) and emotional incontinence (OR, 3.39) distinguished MID from mixed, and only fluctuating course (OR, 0.20) and history of stroke(OR, 0.08) distinguished AD from mixed. Our findings suggest that the HIS performed well in the differentiation between AD and MID, the purpose for which it was originally designed, but that the clinical diagnosis of mixed dementia remains difficult. Further prospective studies of the HIS should include additional clinical and neuroimaging variables to permit objective refinement of the scale and improve its ability to identify patients with mixed dementia.

The importance of an adrenocortical component in various human and experimental convulsive states has recently been reviewed (see these articles for complete bibliography). Convulsive seizures have responded to treatment with desoxycorticosterone (DCA) in certain instances. On the other hand, both cortisone and corticotropin (ACTH) have exacerbated experimental seizures or induced more abnormalities in the electroencephalograms of epileptics. These hormones also have induced electroencephalographic changes in varying degree and/or convulsions in previously seizure-free human subjects. It has been shown that endogenously or exogenously increased adrenocortical hormone levels may predispose to greater convulsive susceptibility or lowered electroshock threshold in experimental animals.Recently, Staple6 found that diphenylhydantoin (Dilantin) produced degenerative lesions in the adrenal cortex of rats. He has suggested that this drug might exert its anticonvulsant effect by decreasing adrenal cortex activity. However, Woodbury7 concluded from his own experiments that diphenylhydantoin stimulated the adrenal cortex, especially during acute administration.On

THE OBSERVATION was made by Sir Edward Mellanby1 that dogs maintained on a diet of which the whole wheat portion had been treated with nitrogen trichloride (agene®) exhibited symptoms of "canine hysteria" or "canine epilepsy." This observation initiated a number of studies on the convulsant action of such materials.2 The experimental production of convulsions by chemical, electrical or surgical means, in the study of epilepsy, has not been altogether satisfactory, in that the convulsive phenomenon usually occurs with such rapidity that investigation of precipitating factors is not really possible.3 However, nitrogen trichloride intoxication permits one to produce the syndrome of "canine hysteria" over a period of days, during which symptoms cumulate. At a fairly predictable time (dependent on the dose of agenized material) a convulsion occurs, usually followed by several similar seizures; however, the whole syndrome is reversible, provided that excessive doses have not been administered.The

Selective assembly is used whenever the tolerances which have to be allowed for the components are so large that the natural build up with random assembly will not satisfy functional requirement's. The traditional method divides the more variable components into a number of zones of equal width and then specifies what combinations of grades may be assembled so as to produce sufficient uniformity in the final productTheoretically there is no limit to the number of grades which can be used, but there is a serious organisational problem of having only the specified categories available at one time, and another control problem to ensure that components are correctly graded. Further, a large proportion of components may not be usable through.mismatching of quantities and this can increase costs considerably. These difficulties can be reduced by suitable quality control schemes which are additional to the grading operationThe method proposed in this paper is that components should be balanced by quantities rather than by size. It depends upon knowledge of all process capabilities and requires a quality control scheme to ensure that the mean size produced for every component coincides with the objective mean. The grading operation itself gives rise to a simple quality control scheme which is based on the balancing quantities. The same scheme is applicable to all components. Mismatching is impossible as long as control is maintained and all components are used in a reasonable period of timeIt is shown that many applications can be made with only three grades and that even extreme sized components can be used. Methods are given to compute the variation which will be obtained from product to product when selective assembly is only applied to some types of component and the remainder are assembled at random. Thus, it is possible to design a procedure which will give sufficient uniformity at minimum cost and avoid the complexity of excessive numbers of categories. Errors in following this simple procedure will be less than those incurred with more traditional methodsThe extension of the method to a larger number of grades is explained and the whole is illustrated by a case study of the assembly of a selector bank used in automatic telephone exchange equipment. This is also used to show the importance of relating performance of the product to the dimensions of the components.

There are no data in the literature on the excretion patterns of urinary steroids in patients with grand mal epilepsy. There are, however, limited reports on the effect of electric convulsive therapy on the excretion patterns in patients with mental disorders. Hemphill1 examined the effect of electric convulsive therapy on the rates of 17-ketosteroid excretion in 18 patients and reported that 9 showed a significant increase but that the remainder showed no change in their rate of excretion. Ashby2 noted no change in 17-ketosteroid excretion in similar studies; he did find that "the usual effect of convulsive therapy is to cause a brisk outpouring of adrenal corticosteroids during the first few days of treatment." He further stated that "after this outpouring the activity returns to its previous level even though treatment continues." There are some reports on eosinophil levels made before and after grand mal seizures.3From