Slow cortical potentials neurofeedback in children with ADHD: comorbidity, self-regulation and clinical outcomes 6 months after treatment in a multicenter randomized controlled trial.

Despite sizeable short-term effects of neurofeedback (NF) therapy on attention-deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), longer-term clinical, comorbidity and self-regulation outcomes are less systematically studied. The aim of this largest NF follow-up to date was to evaluate these outcomes 6 months after NF compared to a semi-active control to disentangle specific from unspecific sustained effects. We performed a multicenter, randomized, parallel, controlled, clinical, superiority trial in five German university outpatient departments. Participants were eligible if they fulfilled DSM-IV-TR criteria for ADHD and were aged from 7 to 9 years. Participants were randomly assigned (1:1-ratio) to 25 sessions of slow cortical potential (SCP)-NF or electromyogram biofeedback (EMG-BF). Participants were not blinded, since they received instructions according to each treatment setting. Primary outcomes were parent ratings of ADHD. The trial was registered, number ISRCTN761871859. Both groups showed improvement of ADHD symptoms compared to baseline at 6-months follow-up with large effect sizes for SCP-NF (d = 1.04) and EMG-BF (d = 0.85), but without group differences. When analyzing all assessments (pre-test, post-test-1, post-test-2 and follow-up), a group-by-time interaction emerged (p = 0.0062), with SCP-NF showing stable improvement following treatment but EMG-BF showing a relapse from post-test-1 to post-test-2, and subsequent remission at follow-up. Six months after the end of treatment, improvement after SCP-NF remained large and stable. However, the lack of group differences at follow-up suggests shared specific and unspecific effects contributing to this clinical outcome. Our correlational results indicate specificity of SCP-NF for selected subscales after training, but not at follow-up.

Geometric alignment of 2D gel electrophoresis images.

OBJECTIVES: 2D gel electrophoresis (2-DE) is the method of choice for analyzing protein expression in the field of proteomics, for example, comparing a reference with a test population. However, due to complex physical and chemical processes the locations of proteins generally vary in different 2-DE images. To cope with these variations, accurate geometric alignment of 2-DE images is important. METHODS: We introduce a new elastic registration approach for 2-DE images, which is based on an analytic solution of the Navier equation using Gaussian elastic body splines (GEBS). With this approach cross-effects in elastic deformations can be handled, which is important for the registration of 2-DE images. In addition, landmark correspondences can be included to aid the registration in regions which are difficult to register using intensity information alone. RESULTS: We have successfully applied our approach to register 2-DE gel images of different levels of complexity. In each case, gel images from a reference group are compared with a test group. To analyze the performance of our approach, we have carried out a quantitative evaluation of the registration results. Moreover, we have performed an experimental comparison with a previous elastic registration scheme. CONCLUSIONS: From the results we found that our approach is well-suited for the registration of 2-DE gel images of different levels of complexity and it turned out that the approach is superior to a previous hybrid scheme. Moreover, our approach is well-suited in a fully automatic setting and the performance can further be improved when landmark correspondences are available.

Deterministic and probabilistic approaches for tracking virus particles in time-lapse fluorescence microscopy image sequences.

Modern developments in time-lapse fluorescence microscopy enable the observation of a variety of processes exhibited by viruses. The dynamic nature of these processes requires the tracking of viruses over time to explore spatial-temporal relationships. In this work, we developed deterministic and probabilistic approaches for multiple virus tracking in multi-channel fluorescence microscopy images. The deterministic approaches follow a traditional two-step paradigm comprising particle localization based on either the spot-enhancing filter or 2D Gaussian fitting, as well as motion correspondence based on a global nearest neighbor scheme. Our probabilistic approaches are based on particle filters. We describe approaches based on a mixture of particle filters and based on independent particle filters. For the latter, we have developed a penalization strategy that prevents the problem of filter coalescence (merging) in cases where objects lie in close proximity. A quantitative comparison based on synthetic image sequences is carried out to evaluate the performance of our approaches. In total, eight different tracking approaches have been evaluated. We have also applied these approaches to real microscopy images of HIV-1 particles and have compared the tracking results with ground truth obtained from manual tracking. It turns out that the probabilistic approaches based on independent particle filters are superior to the deterministic schemes as well as to the approaches based on a mixture of particle filters.

Failure of charcoal-horse-blood broth with cephalexin to significantly increase rate of Bordetella isolation from clinical specimens.

In a field trial conducted in cooperation with pediatricians in private practice, 198 nasopharyngeal swabs from children with suspected whooping cough were placed into charcoal-horse-blood transport medium with cephalexin (40 mg/liter). After preincubation at 36 degrees C for 1 to 2 days, the transport systems were mailed to the laboratory. There, the swabs were plated onto charcoal-horse-blood agar with cephalexin and were subsequently incubated for 48 h in cephalexin-containing charcoal-horse-blood broth which was then subcultured onto the agar. Forty-six Bordetella pertussis strains and seven Bordetella parapertussis strains were isolated (Bordetella isolation rate, 26.8%). Only three (5.7%) of the 53 Bordetella strains were detected exclusively by use of the broth. This low rate of additional isolates is probably explained by the fact that the swabs had been submitted in charcoal-horse-blood transport medium which itself acts as an enrichment medium.