Venography in the evaluation of the results of surgical treatment of varicocele in children]

The paper is concerned with analysis of the results of intraoperative phlebotesticulography, performed in 50 patients with varicocele of degree I-II during Ivanissevich's operation. The effect of surgical intervention was shown to depend upon the quality of ligation of the testicular vein, some parts of which are anastomosed between themselves. The localization of this anastomosis is revealed by means of intraoperative phlebotesticulography, which permits increasing the results of surgical treatment and predicting a course of a postoperative period.     

Contractile properties of smooth muscles of bronchial tubes at formation of hyperreactance of airways

Contractile properties of smooth muscles of bronchial tubes of porpoises in formation of hyperreactance airways, were studied. Sensitization by ovalbumin results in formation of hyperresponsiveness of the airways as shown in increase in amplitude of contractile responses to histaminergic influences and oppression of adrenergic relaxations of segments. Respiratory epithelium oppresses contractile responses of airways in intact animals to histaminergic influences. Influence of epithelium on adrenergic responses depends on precontractile factor: they increase in prereduction by histamine. In formation of hyperresponse, the epithelium loses ability to modulate responses of smooth muscles of the airways. Incubation segments of smooth muscles of the airways in interleukin 5 increases contractile responses to histaminergic influences. Receptor of interleukin 5 (the soluble fraction) neutralizes the effect of exogenous interleukin 5, and incubation of receptor of sensitized animals oppresses histaminergic contractile responses.     

Automatic identification of the number of food items in a meal using clustering techniques based on the monitoring of swallowing and chewing

The number of distinct foods consumed in a meal is of significant clinical concern in the study of obesity and other eating disorders. This paper proposes the use of information contained in chewing and swallowing sequences for meal segmentation by food types. Data collected from experiments of 17 volunteers were analyzed using two different clustering techniques. First, an unsupervised clustering technique, Affinity Propagation (AP), was used to automatically identify the number of segments within a meal. Second, performance of the unsupervised AP method was compared to a supervised learning approach based on Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering (AHC). While the AP method was able to obtain 90% accuracy in predicting the number of food items, the AHC achieved an accuracy >95%. Experimental results suggest that the proposed models of automatic meal segmentation may be utilized as part of an integral application for objective Monitoring of Ingestive Behavior in free living conditions.     

Marital Structure,Genetic Fitness,and the <Emphasis Type="Italic">GJB2</Emphasis> Gene Mutations among Deaf People in Yakutia (Eastern Siberia,Russia)

Autosomal recessive deafness type 1A (DFNB1A) caused by mutations in the GJB2 gene (Cx26) is the main cause of nonsyndromic hearing impairment in many populations worldwide. It is considered that widespread prevalence of DFNB1A can be due to the long tradition of intermarriages between deaf people (assortative marriages) combined with their increased social adaptation and genetic fitness after widespread introduction of sign language. For the first time, the data on mating structure and reproduction of deaf people living in Yakutia (Eastern Siberia, Russia) are presented in comparison with contribution of the GJB2 gene mutations to the etiology of hearing impairment. The relative fertility of deaf people compared to their hearing siblings is 0.78 (mean number of children 1.76 ± 0.10 and 2.24 ± 0.09 to deaf and their hearing siblings, respectively, p = 0.0018). The rate of assortative marriages among deaf people is 77.1% (81 of 105 marriages). Biallelic mutations in the GJB2 gene were found in 42.2% (43 of 102) of examined deaf people, which corresponded to diagnosis DFNB1A for these patients. A comparison of deaf marital partners by GJB2 status revealed a proportion of noncomplementary marriages (24%) in which hearing loss in both partners was caused by the presence of biallelic GJB2 gene mutations resulting in the birth of only deaf children in such couples. Thus, the set of obtained data including a relatively high genetic fitness (expressed as relative fertility) of deaf people in Yakutia in combination with a high rate of assortative marriages among them and high incidence of DFNB1A indicates a possible weakening of selection against such trait as “deafness” and a possible increase in the frequency of GJB2 mutant alleles in subsequent generations.     

On the prediction of the supercompensation phase by determining the parameters of the living functional system of the body

On the basis of the overdamped Duffing model, a technique for determining the key parameters of functional systems of the living body has been developed which characterizes its properties during recovery from standard physical load. As an example, the dynamics of restoration of pulse frequency is considered. The knowledge of these parameters allows one to predict the response of the living body to intensive external loads. This information can also be helpful for the optimization of the training process.     

An investigation of the phase locking index for measuring of interdependency of cortical source signals recorded in the EEG

The phase locking index (PLI) was introduced to quantify in a statistical sense the phase synchronization of two signals. It has been commonly used to process biosignals. In this article, we investigate the PLI for measuring the interdependency of cortical source signals (CSSs) recorded in the Electroencephalogram (EEG). To this end, we consider simple analytical models for the mapping of simulated CSSs into the EEG. For these models, the PLI is investigated analytically and through numerical simulations. An evaluation is made of the sensitivity of the PLI to the amount of crosstalk between the sources through biological tissues of the head. It is found that the PLI is a useful interdependency measure for CSSs, especially when the amount of crosstalk is small. Another common interdependency measure is the coherence. A direct comparison of both measures has not been made in the literature so far. We assess the performance of the PLI and coherence for estimation and detection purposes based on, respectively, a normalized variance and a novel statistical measure termed contrast. Based on these performance measures, it is found that the PLI is similar or better than the CM in most cases. This result is also confirmed through analysis of EEGs recorded from epileptic patients.