Bone-anchored Hearing Aids: correlation between pure-tone thresholds and outcome in three user groups

OBJECTIVE: To investigate correlations between preoperative hearing thresholds and postoperative aided thresholds and speech understanding of users of Bone-anchored Hearing Aids (BAHA). Such correlations may be useful to estimate the postoperative outcome with BAHA from preoperative data. STUDY DESIGN: Retrospective case review. SETTING: Tertiary referral center. PATIENTS:: Ninety-two adult unilaterally implanted BAHA users in 3 groups: (A) 24 subjects with a unilateral conductive hearing loss, (B) 38 subjects with a bilateral conductive hearing loss, and (C) 30 subjects with single-sided deafness. INTERVENTIONS: Preoperative air-conduction and bone-conduction thresholds and 3-month postoperative aided and unaided sound-field thresholds as well as speech understanding using German 2-digit numbers and monosyllabic words were measured and analyzed. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Correlation between preoperative air-conduction and bone-conduction thresholds of the better and of the poorer ear and postoperative aided thresholds as well as correlations between gain in sound-field threshold and gain in speech understanding. RESULTS: Aided postoperative sound-field thresholds correlate best with BC threshold of the better ear (correlation coefficients, r2 = 0.237 to 0.419, p = 0.0006 to 0.0064, depending on the group of subjects). Improvements in sound-field threshold correspond to improvements in speech understanding. CONCLUSION: When estimating expected postoperative aided sound-field thresholds of BAHA users from preoperative hearing thresholds, the BC threshold of the better ear should be used. For the patient groups considered, speech understanding in quiet can be estimated from the improvement in sound-field thresholds.

About the role of visual field defects in pure alexia

Pure alexia is an acquired reading disorder characterized by a disproportionate prolongation of reading time as a function of word length. Although the vast majority of cases reported in the literature show a right-sided visual defect, little is known about the contribution of this low-level visual impairment to their reading difficulties. The present study was aimed at investigating this issue by comparing eye movement patterns during text reading in six patients with pure alexia with those of six patients with hemianopic dyslexia showing similar right-sided visual field defects. We found that the role of the field defect in the reading difficulties of pure alexics was highly deficit-specific. While the amplitude of rightward saccades during text reading seems largely determined by the restricted visual field, other visuo-motor impairments-particularly the pronounced increases in fixation frequency and viewing time as a function of word length-may have little to do with their visual field defect. In addition, subtracting the lesions of the hemianopic dyslexics from those found in pure alexics revealed the largest group differences in posterior parts of the left fusiform gyrus, occipito-temporal sulcus and inferior temporal gyrus. These regions included the coordinate assigned to the centre of the visual word form area in healthy adults, which provides further evidence for a relation between pure alexia and a damaged visual word form area. Finally, we propose a list of three criteria that may improve the differential diagnosis of pure alexia and allow appropriate therapy recommendations.

A pure population of lung alveolar epithelial type II cells derived from human embryonic stem cells.

Alveolar epithelial type II (ATII) cells are small, cuboidal cells that constitute approximately 60% of the pulmonary alveolar epithelium. These cells are crucial for repair of the injured alveolus by differentiating into alveolar epithelial type I cells. ATII cells derived from human ES (hES) cells are a promising source of cells that could be used therapeutically to treat distal lung diseases. We have developed a reliable transfection and culture procedure, which facilitates, via genetic selection, the differentiation of hES cells into an essentially pure (>99%) population of ATII cells (hES-ATII). Purity, as well as biological features and morphological characteristics of normal ATII cells, was demonstrated for the hES-ATII cells, including lamellar body formation, expression of surfactant proteins A, B, and C, alpha-1-antitrypsin, and the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance receptor, as well as the synthesis and secretion of complement proteins C3 and C5. Collectively, these data document the successful generation of a pure population of ATII cells derived from hES cells, providing a practical source of ATII cells to explore in disease models their potential in the regeneration and repair of the injured alveolus and in the therapeutic treatment of genetic diseases affecting the lung.

Colors in Mind: A Novel Paradigm to Investigate Pure Color Imagery

Mental color imagery abilities are commonly measured using paradigms that involve naming, judging, or comparing the colors of visual mental images of well-known objects (e.g., “Is a sunflower darker yellow than a lemon”?). Although this approach is widely used in patient studies, differences in the ability to perform such color comparisons might simply reflect participants’ general knowledge of object colors rather than their ability to generate accurate visual mental images of the colors of the objects. The aim of the present study was to design a new color imagery paradigm. Participants were asked to visualize a color for 3 s and then to determine a visually presented color by pressing 1 of 6 keys. The authors reasoned that participants would react faster when the imagined and perceived colors were congruent than when they were incongruent. In Experiment 1, participants were slower in incongruent than congruent trials but only when they were instructed to visualize the colors. The results in Experiment 2 demonstrate that the congruency effect reported in Experiment 1 cannot be attributed to verbalization of the color that had to be visualized. Finally, in Experiment 3, the congruency effect evoked by mental imagery correlated with performance in a perceptual version of the task. The authors discuss these findings with respect to the mechanisms that underlie mental imagery and patients suffering from color imagery deficits.

Dizionario del Linguaggio ebraico-rabbinico contente pure molte voci dell'ebraico posteriore

comp. sugli originali da Eude Lolli

Pressure from the vacuum of confined spinor matter

Charged spinor matter field is quantized in a spatial region bounded by two parallel neutral plates. The most general set of boundary conditions ensuring the confinement of matter within the plates is considered. We study a response of the vacuum of the confined matter to the background uniform magnetic field which is directed orthogonally to the plates. It is proven that, in the case of a sufficiently strong magnetic field, the vacuum pressure onto the plates is positive and independent of the boundary condition, as well as of the distance between the plates.

Casimir effect with quantized charged spinor matter in background magnetic field

We study the influence of a background uniform magnetic field and boundary conditions on the vacuum of a quantized charged spinor matter field confined between two parallel neutral plates; the magnetic field is directed orthogonally to the plates. The admissible set of boundary conditions at the plates is determined by the requirement that the Dirac Hamiltonian operator be self-adjoint. It is shown that, in the case of a sufficiently strong magnetic field and a sufficiently large separation of the plates, the generalized Casimir force is repulsive, being independent of the choice of a boundary condition, as well as of the distance between the plates. The detection of this effect seems to be feasible in the foreseeable future.