BIOMEDICINE: All Over the Joint

Pacing Spikes All Over

Ventricular safety pacing (VSP) is used to avoid cross talk by delivering ventricular stimulus shortly after an atrial-paced event if ventricular-sensed event occurs. Although VSP is a protective feature that exists for decades in different pacing devices, there are some reports of unfavorable outcomes of this algorithm. More so, health care providers sometimes face difficulties in interpreting...

Bristling all over

They are runners-up in the Current Biology photomicrography competition. During normal development of the nervous system in Drosophila, a process called 'lateral inhibition' ensures that only a single neural precursor is selected from a group of initially equipotent cells. Where lateral inhibition fails, excess neural cells develop, as shown in the image above, where a 'tuft' of thorn-like bris...

Bargain over Joint Plans

This paper studies the problem of multi-agent planning in the environment where agents may need to cooperate in order to achieve their individual goals but they do so only if the cooperation is beneficial to each of them. We assume that each agent has a reward function and a cost function that determines the agent’s utility over all possible plans. The agents negotiate to form a joint plan thro...

Tropical Biomedicine

Biomedicine Select

Autoimmune diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis, are complex disorders characterized by an inflammatory response against the body's own tissues. Recent findings reveal new insights into how these diseases are initiated and progress and the factors that contribute to their clinical symptoms. Such work also pinpoints potential new therapeutic targets including the integra...