Pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCP) are compounds with special physical and chemical properties that address the care of animal and human health. PPCP have been detected in surface ...water and wastewater in the ng/L to µg/L concentration range worldwide. PPCP ecotoxicity has been studied in a variety of organisms, and multiple methods have been used to assess the risk of PPCP in the environment to ecological health. Here we review the occurrence, effects, and risk assessment of PPCP in aquatic systems, as well as the sustainability of current methods for managing PPCP contamination in aquatic systems. The major points are the following: (1) a number of PPCP present potential concerns at environmentally relevant concentrations. PPCP mixtures may produce synergistic toxicity. (2) Various methods have been used for the ecological risk assessment of PPCP in aquatic systems. There are similarities in these methods, but no consensus has emerged regarding best practices for the ecological risk assessment of these compounds. (3) Human health risk assessments of PPCP contamination in aquatic systems have generally indicated little cause for concern. However, there is a lack of information regarding whether antibiotic contamination in wastewater and aquatic systems could lead to an increase in clinically relevant antibiotic-resistant bacteria and antibiotic-resistant genes. (4) Over the next century, the combination of increasing global population size and potential droughts may result in reduced water availability, increased need for water reuse, and increasing concentrations of PPCP in wastewaters. The current wastewater treatment methods do not remove all PPCP effectively. This, coupled with the possibility that antibiotics may promote the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and antibiotic-resistant genes, leads to concerns about the sustainability of global water supplies.
According to contemporary accounts of visual working memory (vWM), the ability to efficiently filter relevant from irrelevant information contributes to an individual’s overall vWM capacity. Although ...there is mounting evidence for this hypothesis, very little is known about the precise filtering mechanism responsible for controlling access to vWM and for differentiating low- and high-capacity individuals. Theoretically, the inefficient filtering observed in low-capacity individuals might be specifically linked to problems enhancing relevant items, suppressing irrelevant items, or both. To find out, we recorded neurophysiological activity associated with attentional selection and active suppression during a competitive visual search task. We show that high-capacity individuals actively suppress salient distractors, whereas low-capacity individuals are unable to suppress salient distractors in time to prevent those items from capturing attention. These results demonstrate that individual differences in vWM capacity are associated with the timing of a specific attentional control operation that suppresses processing of salient but irrelevant visual objects and restricts their access to higher stages of visual processing.
The potential health effects of inhaling carbon nanotubes are important because of possible exposures in occupational settings. Previously, we have shown mice that have inhaled multiwalled carbon ...nanotubes have suppressed systemic immune function. Here, we show the mechanisms for this immune suppression. Mice were exposed to 0, 0.3 or 1 mg m(-3) multiwalled carbon nanotubes for 6 h per day for 14 consecutive days in whole-body inhalation chambers. Only those exposed to a dose of 1 mg m(-3) presented suppressed immune function; this involved activation of cyclooxygenase enzymes in the spleen in response to a signal from the lungs. Spleen cells from exposed animals partially recovered their immune function when treated with ibuprofen, a drug that blocks the formation of cyclooxygenase enzymes. Knockout mice without cyclooxygenase enzymes were not affected when exposed to multiwalled carbon nanotubes, further confirming the importance of this enzyme in suppression. Proteins from the lungs of exposed mice suppressed the immune function of spleen cells from normal mice, but not those from knockout mice. Our findings suggest that signals from the lung can activate signals in the spleen to suppress the immune function of exposed mice.
Policies for timing of cord clamping vary, with early cord clamping generally carried out in the first 60 seconds after birth, whereas later cord clamping usually involves clamping the umbilical cord ...greater than one minute after the birth or when cord pulsation has ceased.
To determine the effects of different policies of timing of cord clamping at delivery of the placenta on maternal and neonatal outcomes.
We searched the Cochrane Pregnancy and Childbirth Group's Trials Register (December 2007).
Randomised controlled trials comparing early and late cord clamping.
Two review authors independently assessed trial eligibility and quality and extracted data.
We included 11 trials of 2989 mothers and their babies. No significant differences between early and late cord clamping were seen for postpartum haemorrhage or severe postpartum haemorrhage in any of the five trials (2236 women) which measured this outcome (relative risk (RR) for postpartum haemorrhage 500 mls or more 1.22, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.96 to 1.55). For neonatal outcomes, our review showed both benefits and harms for late cord clamping. Following birth, there was a significant increase in infants needing phototherapy for jaundice (RR 0.59, 95% CI 0.38 to 0.92; five trials of 1762 infants) in the late compared with early clamping group. This was accompanied by significant increases in newborn haemoglobin levels in the late cord clamping group compared with early cord clamping (weighted mean difference 2.17 g/dL; 95% CI 0.28 to 4.06; three trials of 671 infants), although this effect did not persist past six months. Infant ferritin levels remained higher in the late clamping group than the early clamping group at six months.
One definition of active management includes directions to administer an uterotonic with birth of the anterior shoulder of the baby and to clamp the umbilical cord within 30-60 seconds of birth of the baby (which is not always feasible in practice). In this review delaying clamping of the cord for at least two to three minutes seems not to increase the risk of postpartum haemorrhage. In addition, late cord clamping can be advantageous for the infant by improving iron status which may be of clinical value particularly in infants where access to good nutrition is poor, although delaying clamping increases the risk of jaundice requiring phototherapy.
1H nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) relaxation analysis of water in progressively dried white cement paste is used to estimate the width and relative specific area of intra-C–S–H sheet pores and ...inter-C–S–H particle gel pores. The measurement is based on the ratio of solid echo to free induction decay signal amplitudes and the observation that as water is removed, so the surface fraction contributing to the solid echo increases. The intra- and inter-C–S–H pores are found to be 1.5
nm and 4.1
nm thick respectively. The total specific area and volume ratio is 2.4 and 0.88 respectively. The volume ratio of readily evaporable water within the pore types is 0.63. Hence, the sheet porosity is 47% of the total or 38% if based solely on evaporable water. The method is distinct from NMR analyses based on the relaxation time. There is good agreement between the measured widths by the two methods.
With rising obesity, it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between type 1 diabetes (T1D) and type 2 diabetes (T2D) in young adults. There has been substantial recent progress in ...identifying the contribution of common genetic variants to T1D and T2D. We aimed to determine whether a score generated from common genetic variants could be used to discriminate between T1D and T2D and also to predict severe insulin deficiency in young adults with diabetes.
We developed genetic risk scores (GRSs) from published T1D- and T2D-associated variants. We first tested whether the scores could distinguish clinically defined T1D and T2D from the Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium (WTCCC) (n = 3,887). We then assessed whether the T1D GRS correctly classified young adults (diagnosed at 20-40 years of age, the age-group with the most diagnostic difficulty in clinical practice; n = 223) who progressed to severe insulin deficiency <3 years from diagnosis.
In the WTCCC, the T1D GRS, based on 30 T1D-associated risk variants, was highly discriminative of T1D and T2D (area under the curve AUC 0.88 95% CI 0.87-0.89; P < 0.0001), and the T2D GRS added little discrimination (AUC 0.89). A T1D GRS >0.280 (>50th centile in those with T1D) is indicative of T1D (50% sensitivity, 95% specificity). A low T1D GRS (<0.234, <5th centile T1D) is indicative of T2D (53% sensitivity, 95% specificity). Most discriminative ability was obtained from just nine single nucleotide polymorphisms (AUC 0.87). In young adults with diabetes, T1D GRS alone predicted progression to insulin deficiency (AUC 0.87 95% CI 0.82-0.92; P < 0.0001). T1D GRS, autoantibody status, and clinical features were independent and additive predictors of severe insulin deficiency (combined AUC 0.96 95% CI 0.94-0.99; P < 0.0001).
A T1D GRS can accurately identify young adults with diabetes who will require insulin treatment. This will be an important addition to correctly classifying individuals with diabetes when clinical features and autoimmune markers are equivocal.
PDF
