A group of 343 workers (252 males and 91 females) employed in four poultry farms in Croatia was studied for the prevalence of acute and chronic respiratory symp forms and lung function changes. There ...were significantly higher prevalences of chronic cough, chronic phlegm, chronic bronchitis, and chest tightness in poultry workers than in control workers. Male poultry workers who were smokers had significantly higher prevalences of chronic cough, chronic phlegm, and chronic bronchitis than poultry workers who were nonsmokers (P < 0.01). Poultry workers exposed for more than 10 years had significantly higher symptoms prevalences than those workers with shorter exposures (except among female smokers). There was also a high prevalence in poultry workers of acute symptoms which developed during the work shift. The measured FVC, FEV1, and FEF25 in poultry workers were significantly lower than predicted normal values. Workers exposed for more than 10 years had lower ventilatory capacity tests (expressed as percentage of predicted) than those workers with shorter exposures. Changes in FEV1, FEF50, and FEF25 were less pronounced than in FVC. Additionally we showed that a water-soluble poultry dust extract obtained from this workplace caused a dose-related contraction of nonsensitized guinea pig tracheal smooth muscle when studied in vitro. Pharmacologic studies of this response indicate that it may result from the release of multiple endogenous mediators. Our data suggest that work in poultry farms may, for some workers, cause the development of acute and chronic respiratory symptoms and lung function changes.
Gauss-Markov random fields (GMrfs) play an important role in the modeling of physical phenomena. The paper addresses the second-order characterization and the sample path description of GMrf's when ...the indexing parameters take values in bounded subsets of /spl Rfr//sup d/, d/spl ges/1. Using results of Pitt (1994), we give conditions for the covariance of a GMrf to be the Green's function of a partial differential operator and, conversely, for the Green's function of an operator to be the covariance of a GMrf. We then develop a minimum mean square error representation for the field in terms of a partial differential equation driven by correlated noise. The paper establishes for GMrf's on /spl Rfr//sup d/ second-order characterizations that parallel the corresponding results for GMrf's on finite lattices.
Using more than one approach to characterizing functions of unknown proteins, we now present in GenProtEC (http://genprotec.mbl.edu/) some level of function information for 87% of Escherichia coli ...K‐12 proteins. A new approach that has yielded new information entails assigning content of structural domains and their functions to E.coli proteins. In addition, some earlier methods have been further refined to provide more meaningful data. The process of identifying and separating multimodular or fused proteins into component modules has been improved. As a result, groups of sequence‐similar (paralogous) proteins have been refined. Experimental information from recent literature on previously unknown genes has been incorporated. We now use a rich system of characterizing cell roles which accents the fact that many proteins play more than one cellular role and therefore carry more than one designation from our detailed catalog of roles, MultiFun.
The study was carried out with the aim to develop a test of syntax comprehension in Hindi language for persons with aphasia. The present study was done in two phases. First phase included development ...of test material and in the second phase, the test battery was administered on neuro-typical adults and persons with aphasia. The developed material consisted of five sections, namely, prepositions, PNG markers, tenses, conjunctions and comparatives, and conditional clauses. The material was administered on 56 neuro-typical adults and 11 persons with aphasia aged 18 to 65 years. It was observed that there was a significant difference between the mean scores across the neuro-typical adults and persons with aphasia on the entire task in both the modalities. Based on this finding it is recommended that the developed test can be used for assessment of syntax comprehension for persons with aphasia. Key words: Modality, Hindi, Task, Neuro-typical
Noise pollution is a significant environmental problem in many rapidly urbanizing areas of Orissa, India. Transportation sector is one of the major contributors to noise in these areas. The present ...study is an attempt to estimate traffic noise pollution at five places on the way from Vyasa Vihar Campus to Gyan Vigyan Vihar Campus of Fakir Mohan University, Balasore, Orissa. The sources of noise at the studied sites are predominantly attributable to motor vehicular traffic. The noise levels of all the five locations were found to be beyond permissible limit during the day time. The contributions of different types of vehicles to environmental noise were found to ranging from 70.4-94.2, 79.0-96.1, 77.8-110.2, 70.8-90.3, 71.0-87.5, 71.1-84.4, 72.5-86.9 and 74.0-85.4 dB (A) by cargo carrying Trucks, Tractors, Dumpers, Town Buses, Motor cycles, Bolero/Trucker, Pick up and Tempo respectively. The contributions of individual vehicles towards noise pollution were found to be more than the road traffic noise-limit i.e., 70 dB (A). On certain local inhabitants interviewed, the impact of noise was observed in the forms of alterations in their physical, psychological and personal aspects. This study warrants attention from all sections of people to deal with the problem of noise pollution.
Naked eye visual inspection with acetic acid (VIA), magnified VIA (VIAM), visual inspection with Lugol's iodine (VILI), cytology and human papillomavirus (HPV) testing were evaluated as screening ...methods for the detection of high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesions (HSIL) of the uterine cervix in a cross-sectional study in Mumbai, India.
Cytology, HPV testing, VIA, VIAM and VILI were carried out concurrently for 4039 women aged 30-65 years. All women were investigated with colposcopy and biopsies were taken from 939 women who had colposcopic abnormalities. The reference standard for final disease status was histology or negative colposcopy. The presence of HSIL was confirmed in 57 women (1.4%). The test characteristics for each method were calculated using standard formulae.
The sensitivities of cytology, HPV testing, VIA, VIAM and VILI were 57.4%, 62.0%, 59.7%, 64.9%, and 75.4%, respectively (differences were not statistically significant). The specificities were 98.6%, 93.5%, 88.4%, 86.3%, and 84.3%, respectively. Adding a visual test to cytology or HPV testing in parallel combination resulted in a substantial increase in sensitivity, with a moderate decrease in specificity. The parallel combination of VILI and HPV testing resulted in a sensitivity of 92.0% and a specificity of 79.9%.
As a single test, cytology had the best balance of sensitivity and specificity. Visual tests are promising in low-resource settings, such as India. The use of both VIA and VILI may be considered where good quality cytology or HPV testing are not feasible. The sensitivity of cytology and HPV testing increased significantly when combined with VIA or VILI.
We perform model independent and model dependent analyses of solar neutrino data including the neutral current event rate from SNO. The inclusion of the first SNO NC data in the model independent ...analysis determines the allowed ranges of
8B flux normalisation and the ν
e
survival probability more precisely than what was possible from the SK and SNO CC combination. We perform global ν
e
–ν
active oscillation analyses of solar neutrino data using the NC rate instead of the SSM prediction for the
8B flux, in view of the large uncertainty in the latter. The LMA gives the best solution, while the LOW solution is allowed only at the 3σ level.
Groundwaters contaminated with excess fluoride (above 1.5 mg/L) posed some risks to the public health in India. Methods available for fluoride contaminated water treatment are cogaulation-filtration ...using alum + lime + bleaching powder (Nalgonda technique) and adsorption using activated alumina. Use of aluminium compounds for water treatment purpose needs replacement on neurological health problem. Objective to this, the synthesis and fluoride adsorption behavior of hydrous ferric oxide (HFO) are reported here. It is seen that fluoride adsorption density varies as a function of pH, contact time, aging time, drying temperature and particle size of HFO. Highest adsorption density for fluoride is found to be at pH 4.0. Effects of competing anions in removing fluoride from solution were tested. Arsenite, arsenate, phosphate and sulfate show strong interfering effect at high anions to fluoride molar ratio in solution. Adsorption of fluoride on HFO follows the Freundlich isotherm and the Lagergren first-order kinetic model. It was also determined that HFO is a better adsorbent in removing fluoride from high fluoride groundwater than some other adsorbents. Regeneration of fluoride-rich HFO results showed that 1.0 M NaOH solution could be used up to a maximum of 75% regeneration.PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
Regulation of the hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) niche includes elements of the nervous system, immune system as well as the vasculature and associated stroma. Evidence in murine models demonstrate ...microenvironmental influence on HSC and hematopoiesis however correlative clinical and translational data remain scarce. The sympathetic nervous system may contribute to the pathogenesis of myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs) mechanistically through effects on nestin+ mesenchymal stromal/stem cells. Temporally, bone marrow neuropathy may even precede overt MPN by promoting aberrant premalignant HSC expansion, at least in genetically engineered MPN mouse models. We hypothesize that clinical characterization of the bone marrow niche via conventional immunohistochemistry (IHC) on routine diagnostic trephine biopsies is feasible and may yield novel stromal architectural data supplementing classification and/or prognostic stratification of BCR-ABL1 negative MPN. Herein, we describe our initial results on normal bone marrows and patients with primary myelofibrosis (PMF) with a focus on the pan-neuronal marker (PGP9.5) and the stromal marker smooth muscle actin (SMA). Results: Bone marrow neuropathy, as assessed by loss of punctate or linear perivascular PGP9.5 reactivity around arterioles is highly variable at initial PMF diagnosis. This suggests that in PMF, bone marrow neuropathy may not be universal and if present may only occur in a subset of patients or affect only focal regions of the marrow. SMA staining reproducibly yielded 3 patterns of reactivity in PMF: paratrabecular, perivascular and interstitial. While perivascular SMA staining was observed in all cases of PMF, the interstitial SMA pattern exhibited both inter-patient and intra-patient variability. Intriguingly, SMA was capable of highlighting “hot” and “cold” spots in PMF marrows otherwise appearing homogeneous by conventional reticulin staining. These SMA patterns are presently being investigated in the context of clinical information and molecular profiling to further assess their prognostic relevance. From longitudinal biopsies, we show resolution of the PMF interstitial SMA pattern as early as 2 months post allo-hematopoietic stem cell transplant, far earlier than any reduction in reticulin fibrosis which suggests that SMA signal may have important biological implications - including as a biomarker of early response to JAK inhibition, superior to standard reticulin/collagen assessment. In summary, visualization of the bone marrow niche by routine clinical grade IHC is feasible and reveals stromal heterogeneity within WHO-defined PMF of potential interest for classification refinement, prognostication and therapeutic monitoring.
Tsui:Novartis: Honoraria. Gupta:Novartis: Consultancy, Honoraria, Research Funding; Incyte: Consultancy, Research Funding.
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