BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Transient neurological symptoms of brain stem or occipital lobe origin may be caused by transient ischemic attack in the vertebrobasilar territory (VB-TIA) or late-onset (or late-life) migraine accompaniment (LOMA). It is often clinically difficult to distinguish between VB-TIA and LOMA. METHODS Cerebral blood flow of 23 patients with VB-TIA, 24 with LOMA, and 28 age-ma...

Variational Bayesian (VB) methods are typically only applied to models in the conjugate-exponential family using the variational Bayesian expectation maximisation (VB EM) algorithm or one of its variants. In this paper we present an efficient algorithm for applying VB to more general models. The method is based on specifying the functional form of the approximation, such as multivariate Gaussia...

Profiles of the strong lines Ca II 8542 Å and Mg I 8806 Å in the spectra of the Hyades stars vB 37 (F4 V), vB 52 (G1 V), vB 64 (G6 V), vB 73 (G1 V), γ Tau (K0 III) and Tau (K0 III) have been recorded at high resolution and with signal/noise ≥ 100. The usefulness of these lines as indicators of global metallicity and, in the cases of the late-type giant stars, surface gravity is illustrated. Our...

In body ownership illusions participants feel that a mannequin or virtual body (VB) is their own. Earlier results suggest that body ownership over a body seen from behind in extra personal space is possible when the surrogate body is visually stroked and tapped on its back, while spatially and temporal synchronous tactile stimulation is applied to the participant's back. This result has been di...

Among hypnotic agents that enhance GABAA receptor function, etomidate is unusual because it is selective for beta2/beta3 compared with beta1 subunit-containing GABAA receptors. Mice incorporating an etomidate-insensitive beta2 subunit (beta(2N265S)) revealed that beta2 subunit-containing receptors mediate the enhancement of slow-wave activity (SWA) by etomidate, are required for the sedative, a...

BACKGROUND Prior studies of multilevel ProDisc-L (PD-L) implants (Synthes Spine, Inc., West Chester, Pennsylvania) using the standard US technique have used conventional radiography postoperatively. We found vertebral body-splitting fractures (VB-SFs) in interposed vertebral bodies after 5 sequential multilevel PD-L device implantations using the standard US technique. These were identified wit...

The Bayesian framework for machine learning allows for the incorporation of prior knowledge in a coherent way, avoids overfitting problems, and provides a principled basis for selecting between alternative models. Unfortunately the computations required are usually intractable. This thesis presents a unified variational Bayesian (VB) framework which approximates these computations in models wit...

Vitexins, isolated from the seeds of the Chinese herb Vitex negundo, is known to exert antitumor activity in cancer xenograft models and cell lines. The aim of the current study was to examine whether the Akt/forkhead box protein O3a (FOXO3a) pathway mediates the biological effects of purified vitexin compound 1 (VB-1) in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) cells. The effect of VB-1 on the viability...

Recent research [e.g., Carrozzo, M., Stratta, F., McIntyre, J., & Lacquaniti, F. (2002). Cognitive allocentric representations of visual space shape pointing errors. Experimental Brain Research 147, 426-436; Lemay, M., Bertrand, C. P., & Stelmach, G. E. (2004). Pointing to an allocentric and egocentric remembered target. Motor Control, 8, 16-32] reported that egocentric and allocentric visual f...

Deliberate hypotension with nitroprusside produced a 40% reduction in mean arterial pressure, but it did not cause any change in the pulmonary deadspace to tidal volume ratio ( Vb/ Vr). This was achieved by adequate hydration both before and during hypotension, as indicated by constant filling pressures. Thus we have shown that deliberate hypotension per se does not increase Vb/ VT, and that va...