IntroductionA growing amount of evidence indicates that South Asians in the UK are experiencing high rates of mental health disorders. Despite this, data from the National Health Service reveals that ...these communities utilise mental health services less than any other ethnic group residing in the UK. For these communities, mental illness stigma has been cited as a major barrier to accessing mental healthcare.ObjectivesBy situating stigma within a specific socio-cultural context, this study aimed to explore how stigma may affect the utilisation of mental healthcare by South Asian communities within the UK. Acknowledging that the experiences of stigma can be influenced by an intersection of multiple social categorisations, it aimed to disaggregate the data further. This study examined how the experiences of stigma and the subsequent utilisation of mental healthcare may differ across generational statuses.MethodsThis qualitative study utilised document analysis as its approach to data collection and interpretation. Both, academic and grey literature were used. A literature search was performed using Google Scholar and PubMed. Google search engine was also used to identify grey literature such as blogs and reports. The search terms “mental health services”, “stigma”, “utilisation”, “South Asian”, “culture” and “generation” were used. Articles were organised into matrices relating to cultural stigma and intersections relating to culture and generational status.ResultsThis study revealed that the values and beliefs instilled within South Asian cultures may perpetuate the effects of stigma, thus contributing to the under-utilisation of mental health services within the UK. This study also observed that second-generation South Asians may be more likely to utilise mental health services in comparison to the first-generation. This is ascribed to the fact that second-generation individuals, as a result of processes related to acculturation, are more likely to disengage with their heritage culture, which may, in turn, mitigate the levels of stigma experienced and reduce barriers to care.ConclusionsThis research argues that stigma is socially constructed within cultural groups, and heterogeneously across generations. Such findings can have wider relevance for healthcare professionals, who wish to become more culturally competent and policymakers, who wish to tailor anti-stigma interventions. Primary qualitative research, using questionnaires and interviews, should be employed to further understand mental illness stigma within cultural groups, such as South Asians, and could prove useful in acknowledging discrete beliefs between first- and second-generation cultural groups.Disclosure of InterestNone Declared
The space–time structure of the active and break periods of the Indian monsoon has been studied using 70-yr-long high-resolution gridded daily rainfall data over India. The analysis of lagged ...composites of rainfall anomalies based on an objective categorization of active and break phases shows that the active (break) cycle, with an average life of 16 days, starts with positive (negative) rainfall anomalies over the Western Ghats and eastern part of central India and intensifies and expands to a region covering central India and parts of north India during the peak phase, while negative (positive) anomalies cover the sub-Himalayan region and southeast India. During the final stage of the active (break) period, the positive (negative) rainfall anomalies move toward the foothills of the Himalayas while peninsular India is covered with opposite sign anomalies. The number of days on which lows and depressions are present in the region during active and break periods is consistent with the rainfall analysis. The number of depressions during the active phase is about 7 times that during the break phase.
Using multichannel singular spectrum analysis of the daily rainfall anomalies, the seasonal monsoon rainfall is found to consist of two dominant intraseasonal oscillations with periods of 45 and 20 days and three seasonally persisting components. The 45- and 20-day oscillations are manifestations of the active and break periods but contribute very little to the seasonal mean rainfall. The seasonally persisting components with anomalies of the same sign, and covering all of India, have a very high interannual correlation with the total seasonal mean rainfall. These results support a conceptual model of the interannual variability of the monsoon rainfall consisting of seasonal mean components and a statistical average of the intraseasonal variations. The success in the prediction of seasonal mean rainfall depends on the relative strengths of the seasonally persisting components and intraseasonal oscillations.
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BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
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•Curcumin ameliorates Cr6+ induced hepatoxicity in Channa punctatus.•Curcumin reduces Cr6+ induced oxidative stress by decreasing the activities of SOD, CAT, and GR.•Curcumin ...counteracts against Cr6+ induced genotoxicity.•Curcumin significantly (p < 0.05) recovered the changes in transcripts of genes.
Ameliorative potential of curcumin against Cr6+-induced eco-toxicological manifestations was assessed in liver of exposed Channa punctatus (Actinopterygii) in six groups for 45 d; Group I as control. Group II with 3 mg/L of curcumin; group III with 7.89 mg/L of Cr6+. Groups IV, V and VI were simultaneously co-exposed with 7.89 mg/L of Cr6+ and three different curcumin concentrations, 1, 2, and 3 mg/L, respectively. In group III, SOD-CAT, GR significantly (p < 0.05) increased; decreased GSH level; elevated MN and AC frequencies; and a significant (p < 0.05) up-regulation of cat (2.72-fold), p53 (1.73-fold), bax (1.33-fold) and apaf-1 (2.13-fold) together with a significant (p < 0.05) down-regulation of bcl-2 (0.51-fold). Co-exposure significantly (p < 0.05) brought down activities of SOD-CAT, GR, raised GSH, decreased micronuclei and apoptotic frequencies along with recovery of histopathological anomalies in liver. This study establishes the protective role of curcumin against Cr6+-induced hepatotoxicity in fish.
A synopsis of the Tox21 initiative and a focus on the NIH Chemical Genomics Center's efforts within this program using
in vitro methods and quantitative high-throughput screening.
The US Tox21 ...collaborative program represents a paradigm shift in toxicity testing of chemical compounds from traditional
in vivo tests to less expensive and higher throughput
in vitro methods to prioritize compounds for further study, identify mechanisms of action and ultimately develop predictive models for adverse health effects in humans. The NIH Chemical Genomics Center (NCGC) is an integral component of the Tox21 collaboration owing to its quantitative high-throughput screening (qHTS) paradigm, in which titration-based screening is used to profile hundreds of thousands of compounds per week. Here, we describe the Tox21 collaboration, qHTS-based compound testing and the various Tox21 screening assays that have been validated and tested at the NCGC to date.
In this paper, a non-linear mathematical model for the effects of awareness programs on the spread of infectious diseases such as flu has been proposed and analyzed. In the modeling process it is ...assumed that disease spreads due to the contact between susceptibles and infectives only. The growth rate of awareness programs impacting the population is assumed to be proportional to the number of infective individuals. It is further assumed that due to the effect of media, susceptible individuals form a separate class and avoid contact with the infectives. The model is analyzed by using stability theory of differential equations. The model analysis shows that the spread of an infectious disease can be controlled by using awareness programs but the disease remains endemic due to immigration. The simulation analysis of the model confirms the analytical results.
It is commonly perceived that surgery in obese patients is associated with worse outcomes than in nonobese patients. Because of the increasing prevalence of obesity and colonic diseases in the world ...population, the impact of obesity on outcomes of laparoscopic colectomy remains an important subject. The aim of this review was to evaluate the feasibility and safety of laparoscopic colectomy for colorectal diseases in obese patients compared with nonobese patients.
We conducted a comprehensive review for the years 1983-2010 to retrieve all relevant articles.
A total of 33 studies were found to be eligible and included 3 matched case control studies and 1 review article. Obesity, often accompanied by preexisting comorbidities, was associated with longer operative times and higher rates of conversion to open procedures mainly because of the problem of exposure and difficulties in dissection. Although some studies showed obesity was associated with increased postoperative morbidity including cardiopulmonary and systemic complications, or ileus leading to longer hospital stay, there was no evidence about the negative impact of obesity on intraoperative blood loss, perioperative mortality, and reoperation rate. Whether obesity is a risk factor for wound infection after laparoscopic colectomy remains unclear. Though sometimes in obese patients, additional number of ports were necessary to successfully complete the procedure laparoscopically, obesity did not influence the number of dissected lymph nodes in cancer surgery. Lastly, the postoperative recovery of gastrointestinal function was similar between obese and nonobese patients.
Laparoscopic colorectal surgery appears to be a safe and reasonable option in obese patients offering the benefits of a minimally invasive approach, with no evidence for compromise in treatment of disease.
The Earth's atmosphere is generally considered to be an example of a chaotic system that is sensitively dependent on initial conditions. It is shown here that certain regions of the atmosphere are an ...exception. Wind patterns and rainfall in certain regions of the tropics are so strongly determined by the temperature of the underlying sea surface that they do not show sensitive dependence on the initial conditions of the atmosphere. Therefore, it should be possible to predict the large-scale tropical circulation and rainfall for as long as the ocean temperature can be predicted. If changes in tropical Pacific sea-surface temperature are quite large, even the extratropical circulation over some regions, especially over the Pacific-North American sector, is predictable.
The overall skill of ENSO prediction in retrospective forecasts made with ten different coupled GCMs is investigated. The coupled GCM datasets of the APCC/CliPAS and DEMETER projects are used for ...four seasons in the common 22 years from 1980 to 2001. As a baseline, a dynamic-statistical SST forecast and persistence are compared. Our study focuses on the tropical Pacific SST, especially by analyzing the NINO34 index. In coupled models, the accuracy of the simulated variability is related to the accuracy of the simulated mean state. Almost all models have problems in simulating the mean and mean annual cycle of SST, in spite of the positive influence of realistic initial conditions. As a result, the simulation of the interannual SST variability is also far from perfect in most coupled models. With increasing lead time, this discrepancy gets worse. As one measure of forecast skill, the tier-1 multi-model ensemble (MME) forecasts of NINO3.4 SST have an anomaly correlation coefficient of 0.86 at the month 6. This is higher than that of any individual model as well as both forecasts based on persistence and those made with the dynamic-statistical model. The forecast skill of individual models and the MME depends strongly on season, ENSO phase, and ENSO intensity. A stronger El Niño is better predicted. The growth phases of both the warm and cold events are better predicted than the corresponding decaying phases. ENSO-neutral periods are far worse predicted than warm or cold events. The skill of forecasts that start in February or May drops faster than that of forecasts that start in August or November. This behavior, often termed the spring predictability barrier, is in part because predictions starting from February or May contain more events in the decaying phase of ENSO.
More than half the human and mouse genomes are comprised of repetitive sequences, such as transposable elements (TEs), which have been implicated in many biological processes. In contrast, much less ...is known about other repeats, such as local repeats that occur in multiple instances within a given locus in the genome but not elsewhere. Here, we systematically characterize local repeats in the genomic locus of the Firre long noncoding RNA (lncRNA). We find a conserved function for the RRD repeat as a ribonucleic nuclear retention signal that is sufficient to retain an otherwise cytoplasmic mRNA in the nucleus. We also identified a repeat, termed R0, that can function as a DNA enhancer element within the intronic sequences of Firre. Collectively, our data suggest that local repeats can have diverse functionalities and molecular modalities in the Firre locus and perhaps more globally in other lncRNAs.
We assessed current status of multi-model ensemble (MME) deterministic and probabilistic seasonal prediction based on 25-year (1980-2004) retrospective forecasts performed by 14 climate model systems ...(7 one-tier and 7 two-tier systems) that participate in the Climate Prediction and its Application to Society (CliPAS) project sponsored by the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation Climate Center (APCC). We also evaluated seven DEMETER models' MME for the period of 1981-2001 for comparison. Based on the assessment, future direction for improvement of seasonal prediction is discussed. We found that two measures of probabilistic forecast skill, the Brier Skill Score (BSS) and Area under the Relative Operating Characteristic curve (AROC), display similar spatial patterns as those represented by temporal correlation coefficient (TCC) score of deterministic MME forecast. A TCC score of 0.6 corresponds approximately to a BSS of 0.1 and an AROC of 0.7 and beyond these critical threshold values, they are almost linearly correlated. The MME method is demonstrated to be a valuable approach for reducing errors and quantifying forecast uncertainty due to model formulation. The MME prediction skill is substantially better than the averaged skill of all individual models. For instance, the TCC score of CliPAS one-tier MME forecast of Niño 3.4 index at a 6-month lead initiated from 1 May is 0.77, which is significantly higher than the corresponding averaged skill of seven individual coupled models (0.63). The MME made by using 14 coupled models from both DEMETER and CliPAS shows an even higher TCC score of 0.87. Effectiveness of MME depends on the averaged skill of individual models and their mutual independency. For probabilistic forecast the CliPAS MME gains considerable skill from increased forecast reliability as the number of model being used increases; the forecast resolution also increases for 2 m temperature but slightly decreases for precipitation. Equatorial Sea Surface Temperature (SST) anomalies are primary sources of atmospheric climate variability worldwide. The MME 1-month lead hindcast can predict, with high fidelity, the spatial-temporal structures of the first two leading empirical orthogonal modes of the equatorial SST anomalies for both boreal summer (JJA) and winter (DJF), which account for about 80-90% of the total variance. The major bias is a westward shift of SST anomaly between the dateline and 120°E, which may potentially degrade global teleconnection associated with it. The TCC score for SST predictions over the equatorial eastern Indian Ocean reaches about 0.68 with a 6-month lead forecast. However, the TCC score for Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) index drops below 0.40 at a 3-month lead for both the May and November initial conditions due to the prediction barriers across July, and January, respectively. The MME prediction skills are well correlated with the amplitude of Niño 3.4 SST variation. The forecasts for 2 m air temperature are better in El Niño years than in La Niña years. The precipitation and circulation are predicted better in ENSO-decaying JJA than in ENSO-developing JJA. There is virtually no skill in ENSO-neutral years. Continuing improvement of the one-tier climate model's slow coupled dynamics in reproducing realistic amplitude, spatial patterns, and temporal evolution of ENSO cycle is a key for long-lead seasonal forecast. Forecast of monsoon precipitation remains a major challenge. The seasonal rainfall predictions over land and during local summer have little skill, especially over tropical Africa. The differences in forecast skills over land areas between the CliPAS and DEMETER MMEs indicate potentials for further improvement of prediction over land. There is an urgent need to assess impacts of land surface initialization on the skill of seasonal and monthly forecast using a multi-model framework.
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