[Cross-talk between heart and kidney--mechanisms and management of the cardiorenal syndrome from a nephrologists view]

Renal dysfunction represents a frequent comorbidity in patients with in chronic heart failure and is not only a strong predictor of mortality, but also causally linked to the development and progression of CHF. Mechanisms involved in the cross-talk between the kidney and the heart include the up-regulated sympathetic nerve system, activation of the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system, vasopressin release and decreased activity of arterial baroreceptors and natriuretic peptides resulting in abnormal salt and water retention. The main therapeutic goals for patients with the so-called cardiorenal syndrome is the normalization of volume status while avoiding overdiuresis and renal dysfunction as well as the implementation of an evidence-based pharmacologic treatment to improve patient outcome. If these two goals are not achieved with conventional therapy, renal replacement therapy should be discussed in an interdisciplinary approach. All current renal replacement techniques have proved to be useful in controlling hypervolemia and ameliorating functional cardiac parameters and quality of life in patients with heart failure. Nevertheless, the influence of renal replacement therapy on long-term survival of affected patients has not been addressed in large controlled studies.

Association of increased tracheal mucus accumulation with poor willingness to perform in show-jumpers and dressage horses

The objective of this study was to examine the association of pharyngeal lymphoid hyperplasia (PLH), recurrent laryngeal neuropathy (RLN), mucus accumulation (MA) score and tracheobronchial secretion neutrophil percentage (TBS-N) with rider-assessed performance in sport horses. Airway endoscopy scores, tracheobronchial secretion cytology, rider-assessed general impression and willingness to perform were investigated in 171 top-level sport horses. Increased MA appears to be associated with poor willingness to perform in sport horses. Older horses had decreased PLH scores and increased TBS-N. Mucus accumulation scores > or =3 were associated with increased odds (mean 9.92; upper and lower 95% confidence intervals: 1.5-64.6) of poor rather than excellent willingness to perform. A TBS-N of 20-50% compared with <20% was associated with decreased odds (median 0.11; upper and lower 95% CI: 0.02-0.66) of poor rather than excellent willingness to perform. In addition, horses with an RLN grade > or =2 had significantly higher odds for giving a poorer general impression and willingness to perform. This finding, however, must be interpreted with caution, since only two horses had significant RLN (grade > or =3).

Microstates in language-related brain potential maps show noun-verb differences

Brain processing of grammatical word class was studied analyzing event-related potential (ERP) brain fields. Normal subjects observed a randomized sequence of single German nouns and verbs on a computer screen, while 20-channel ERP field map series were recorded separately for both word classes. Spatial microstate analysis was applied, based on the observation that series of ERP maps consist of epochs of quasi-stable map landscapes and based on the rationale that different map landscapes must have been generated by different neural generators and thus suggest different brain functions. Space-oriented segmentation of the mean map series identified nine successive, different functional microstates, i.e., steps of brain information processing characterized by quasi-stable map landscapes. In the microstate from 116 to 172 msec, noun-related maps differed significantly from verb-related maps along the left–right axis. The results indicate that different neural populations represent different grammatical word classes in language processing, in agreement with clinical observations. This word class differentiation as revealed by the spatial–temporal organization of neural activity occurred at a time after word input compatible with speed of reading.

Enterprise Integration of Smart Objects using Semantic Service Descriptions

Integrating physical objects (smart objects) and enterprise IT systems is still a labor intensive, mainly manual task done by domain experts. On one hand, enterprise IT backend systems are based on service oriented architectures (SOA) and driven by business rule engines or business process execution engines. Smart objects on the other hand are often programmed at very low levels. In this paper we describe an approach that makes the integration of smart objects with such backends systems easier. We introduce semantic endpoint descriptions based on Linked USDL. Furthermore, we show how different communication patterns can be integrated into these endpoint descriptions. The strength of our endpoint descriptions is that they can be used to automatically create REST or SOAP endpoints for enterprise systems, even if which they are not able to talk to the smart objects directly. We evaluate our proposed solution with CoAP, UDP and 6LoWPAN, as we anticipate the industry converge towards these standards. Nonetheless, our approach also allows easy integration with backend systems, even if no standardized protocol is used.