The microtubule associated tau protein becomes hyperphosphorylated in Alzheimer’s disease (AD). While hyperphosphorylation promotes neurodegeneration, the cause and consequences of this abnormal ...modification are poorly understood. As impaired energy metabolism is an important hallmark of AD progression, we tested whether it could trigger phosphorylation of human tau protein in a transgenic
Caenorhabditis elegans
model of AD. We found that inhibition of a mitochondrial enzyme of energy metabolism, dihydrolipoamide dehydrogenase (DLD) results in elevated whole-body glucose levels as well as increased phosphorylation of tau. Hyperglycemia and tau phosphorylation were induced by either RNAi suppression of the
dld-1
gene or by inhibition of the DLD enzyme by the inhibitor, 2-methoxyindole-2-carboxylic acid (MICA). Although the calcium ionophore A23187 could reduce tau phosphorylation induced by either chemical or genetic suppression of DLD, it was unable to reduce tau phosphorylation induced by hyperglycemia. While inhibition of the
dld-1
gene or treatment with MICA partially reversed the inhibition of acetylcholine neurotransmission by tau, neither treatment affected tau inhibited mobility. Conclusively, any abnormalities in energy metabolism were found to significantly affect the AD disease pathology.
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and diabetes are among the most common diseases associated with ageing. The pathology of AD is strongly associated with accumulated misfolding proteins that results in ...neuronal dysfunction within the brain. Diabetes, on the contrary, is characterised by altered insulin signaling that results in reduced glucose uptake, metabolic suppression of energy consuming cells and conversion of glucose to fat in the liver. Despite distinguishing features, these diseases share common elements and may in fact be viewed as fundamentally similar disorders that differ in magnitude of specific traits, primarily affected tissues and time of onset. In this review, we outline the fundamental basis of each of the two diseases and highlight similarities in their pathophysiology. Further ahead we will discuss these features in relation to the development of drugs to treat these two diseases, particularly AD, for which the development of therapeutic chemicals has proven to be particularly difficult. We conclude with comments on efforts to develop a simple organism,
Caenorhabditis elegans
, as a genetic model to be used to study the systems biology of diabetes and AD.
For medical image analysis, there is always an immense need for rich details in an image. Typically, the diagnosis will be served best if the fine details in the image are retained and the image is ...available in high resolution. In medical imaging, acquiring high-resolution images is challenging and costly as it requires sophisticated and expensive instruments, trained human resources, and often causes operation delays. Deep learning based super resolution techniques can help us to extract rich details from a low-resolution image acquired using the existing devices. In this paper, we propose a new Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) based architecture for medical images, which maps low-resolution medical images to high-resolution images. The proposed architecture is divided into three steps. In the first step, we use a multi-path architecture to extract shallow features on multiple scales instead of single scale. In the second step, we use a ResNet34 architecture to extract deep features and upscale the features map by a factor of two. In the third step, we extract features of the upscaled version of the image using a residual connection-based mini-CNN and again upscale the feature map by a factor of two. The progressive upscaling overcomes the limitation for previous methods in generating true colors. Finally, we use a reconstruction convolutional layer to map back the upscaled features to a high-resolution image. Our addition of an extra loss term helps in overcoming large errors, thus, generating more realistic and smooth images. We evaluate the proposed architecture on four different medical image modalities: (1) the DRIVE and STARE datasets of retinal fundoscopy images, (2) the BraTS dataset of brain MRI, (3) the ISIC skin cancer dataset of dermoscopy images, and (4) the CAMUS dataset of cardiac ultrasound images. The proposed architecture achieves superior accuracy compared to other state-of-the-art super-resolution architectures.
Reactive oxidative species (ROS) toxicity remains an undisputed cause and link between Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Type-2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM). Patients with both AD and T2DM have damaged, ...oxidized DNA, RNA, protein and lipid products that can be used as possible disease progression markers. Although the oxidative stress has been anticipated as a main cause in promoting both AD and T2DM, multiple pathways could be involved in ROS production. The focus of this review is to summarize the mechanisms involved in ROS production and their possible association with AD and T2DM pathogenesis and progression. We have also highlighted the role of current treatments that can be linked with reduced oxidative stress and damage in AD and T2DM.
Due to urbanization and industrialization, there has been an increase in solid waste generation and has become a global concern and leakage of leachate from landfills contaminate the soil and ...groundwater and hence can have a severe impact on human health. The present study aimed to determine the composition of toxic metals (Cr, Mn, Cu, As) and heavy metals (Cd, Ba, Hg, Pb) in soil and water by an inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometer (ICP-OES). To ensure accuracy during the analysis of Cr, Mn, Cu, As, Cd, Ba, Hg, and Pb in real samples, certified reference material (CRM, SRM 2709a) of San Joaquin soil and water (SRM 1640a) were analyzed and results were presented in terms of % recovery studies. The mean concentration of all the metals in soil and water did not exceed the limit set by the European Community (EU), WHO, and US EPA except Cu where the permissible limit defined by the EU is 50-140 mg/kg in soil. The soil is uncontaminated to moderately contaminated with respect to all metals except the Cu and Pb. Among the average daily dose (ADD) of soil, ADD
and ADD
for children had the maximum dose for all metals than adults while ADD
was higher in adults. Hazard quotient (HQ) trend in both adults and children was found in order HQ
> HQ
> HQ
of soil for all metals except Ba which followed HQ
> HQ
> HQ
. Hazard index (HI) values of soil for Cr and Pb in children were 7 and 7.5 times higher than adults respectively. Lifetime cancer risk (LCR) value for Cr by different exposure pathways of soil was 5.361 × 10
for children which are at the lower borderline of risk for cancer.
PurposeThe purpose of this study was to map the quantity (frequency), quality (impact) and structural indicators (correlations) of research produced on cloud computing in 48 countries and 3 ...territories in the Asia continent.Design/methodology/approachTo achieve the objectives of the study and scientifically map the indicators, data were extracted from the Scopus database. The extracted bibliographic data was first cleaned properly using Endnote and then analyzed using Biblioshiny and VosViewer application software. In the software, calculations include citations count; h, g and m indexes; Bradford's and Lotka's laws; and other scientific mappings.FindingsResults of the study indicate that China remained the most productive, impactful and collaborative country in Asia. All the top 20 impactful authors were also from China. The other most researched areas associated with cloud computing were revealed to be mobile cloud computing and data security in clouds. The most prominent journal currently publishing research studies on cloud computing was “Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing.”Originality/valueThe study is the first of its kind which identified the quantity (frequencies), quality (impact) and structural indicators (correlations) of Asian (48 countries and 3 territories) research productivity on cloud computing. The results are of great importance for researchers and countries interested in further exploring, publishing and increasing cross country collaborations related to the phenomenon of cloud computing.
Biodiesel is an alternative to petroleum-based fuels derived from a variety of feedstocks, including vegetable oils, animal fats, and waste cooking oil. At present, biodiesel is mainly produced from ...conventionally grown edible oils such as soybean, rapeseed, sunflower, and palm. The cost of biodiesel is the main obstacle to commercialization of the product. Biodiesel produced from edible oils is currently not economically feasible. On the other hand, extensive use of edible oils for biodiesel production may lead to food crisis. These problems can be solved by using low-cost feedstocks such as non-edible oils and waste cooking oils for biodiesel production. This paper reviews numerous options of non-edible oils as the substantial feedstocks, biodiesel processing, and effect of different parameters on production of biodiesel.
The purpose of this study is to explore the factors that affect rural household food security in northern area of Pakistan. The random sampling technique was applied to collected data from 294 rural ...households through a face to face interview. A binary logistic regression technique was used to determine the factors that influence household food insecurity. The results of our study revealed that age, gender, education, remittances, unemployment, inflation, assets, and disease are important factors determining household food insecurity. Moreover, gender played a dominant role in food insecurity as female headed household were food insecure while male headed household were food secure. The policies should be set to promote education, more focus on female headed household and encourage the inflow of remittances.
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•An overview of photocatalysts with wide light response is presented.•Key mechanisms of wide light response in photocatalysis are reviewed.•The application of full spectrum ...photocatalysis in various fields of photocatalysis is introduced.•Future opportunities and challenges of wide light responsive photocatalysts are included.
How to efficiently convert solar energy into storable chemical energy has always been an urgent problem in the field of semiconductor-based photocatalysis. Broaden the light-absorption range of photocatalysts is an important strategy to improve the efficiency of solar energy conversion. This paper focused on the recent reported photocatalytic systems that can make use of full spectrum solar energy, and comparatively expounded their design, fabrication methods, mechanism and applications (H2 generation, CO2 reduction, chemical synthesis and sterilization). Emphases were given to the specific mechanisms for full-spectrum absorption in various photocatalysts, including semiconductors with narrow bandgaps, defective semiconductors, plasmonic nano-materials. The outlook was put forward that the future of photocatalytic research is infinite, and ongoing efforts should be devoted on the utilization of infrared-light part in solar spectrum.
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