Impact of puberty, sex determinants and chronic inflammation on cardiovascular risk in young people

Worrying trends of increased cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk in children, adolescents and young people in the Modern Era have channelled research and public health strategies to tackle this growing epidemic. However, there are still controversies related to the dynamic of the impact of sex, age and puberty on this risk and on cardiovascular health outcomes later in life. In this comprehensive review of current literature, we examine the relationship between puberty, sex determinants and various traditional CVD-risk factors, as well as subclinical atherosclerosis in young people in general population. In addition, we evaluate the role of chronic inflammation, sex hormone therapy and health-risk behaviours on augmenting traditional CVD-risk factors and health outcomes, ultimately aiming to determine whether tailored management strategies for this age group are justified

Evaluation Of The Radiological Situation In Algeria After The Algeciras Incident

The present study has been carried out in the framework of our environmental monitoring programme and immediately after being informed by the IAEA of possible accidental releases of 137 Cs into the air, which might have been released between May 25 th and the first of June 1998 from the Acerinox factory in Algeciras (Spain). Algericas is the region where a steel-processing factory has been set up. During the work procedure, a radioactive source of 137 Cs passed through the furnace resulting in accidental releases into the atmosphere. This radioactive contamination was detected in France, Switzerland, Italy and Germany, and some radioactivity measurements were carried out by the Commissariat A l'Energie Atomique to evaluate the gamma radiation status in areas selected in Algeria. The approach adopted in our case was to start in situ gamma-radiation measurements and to collect air and soil samples as well from a selected area in Algiers. Afterwards, and in order to have more reliable results, a sampling program was carried out in July 1998, in the frame of which some sampling stations were established in the west of Algeria, based upon Algerian meteorological data during the period of incident. A total number of 16 environmental samples from 9 stations, namely, soil, sediment, vegetation and seawater were collected, followed by in situ gamma radiation measurements in each sampling location. Soil, sediment and vegetation samples were analysed by direct gamma spectrometry, whereas, sea water samples were analysed radiochemically using microcrystalline AMP for coprecipitation and gamma counted. Taking into consideration the background levels of radioactivity in the studied areas, obtained by our previous monitoring programs, the results obtained do not show any increase of 137 Cs resulting from the incinerated Caesium source in the Acerinox steel factory in Algeciras, Spain. The conclusion drawn by this work is that the investigated area was not affected by the release of 137 Cs

Impact of puberty, sex determinants and chronic inflammation on cardiovascular risk in young people

Worrying trends of increased cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk in children, adolescents and young people in the recent decades have channelled research and public health strategies to tackle this growing epidemic. However, there are still controversies related to the dynamic of the impact of sex, age and puberty on this risk and on cardiovascular health outcomes later in life. In this comprehensive review of current literature, we examine the relationship between puberty, sex determinants and various traditional CVD-risk factors, as well as subclinical atherosclerosis in young people in general population. In addition, we evaluate the role of chronic inflammation, sex hormone therapy and health-risk behaviours on augmenting traditional CVD-risk factors and health outcomes, ultimately aiming to determine whether tailored management strategies for this age group are justified

Multi-scale Gaussian representation and outline-learning based cell image segmentation

BACKGROUND: High-throughput genome-wide screening to study gene-specific functions, e.g. for drug discovery, demands fast automated image analysis methods to assist in unraveling the full potential of such studies. Image segmentation is typically at the forefront of such analysis as the performance of the subsequent steps, for example, cell classification, cell tracking etc., often relies on the results of segmentation. METHODS: We present a cell cytoplasm segmentation framework which first separates cell cytoplasm from image background using novel approach of image enhancement and coefficient of variation of multi-scale Gaussian scale-space representation. A novel outline-learning based classification method is developed using regularized logistic regression with embedded feature selection which classifies image pixels as outline/non-outline to give cytoplasm outlines. Refinement of the detected outlines to separate cells from each other is performed in a post-processing step where the nuclei segmentation is used as contextual information. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: We evaluate the proposed segmentation methodology using two challenging test cases, presenting images with completely different characteristics, with cells of varying size, shape, texture and degrees of overlap. The feature selection and classification framework for outline detection produces very simple sparse models which use only a small subset of the large, generic feature set, that is, only 7 and 5 features for the two cases. Quantitative comparison of the results for the two test cases against state-of-the-art methods show that our methodology outperforms them with an increase of 4-9% in segmentation accuracy with maximum accuracy of 93%. Finally, the results obtained for diverse datasets demonstrate that our framework not only produces accurate segmentation but also generalizes well to different segmentation tasks

Antioxidant activity, carotenoids, chlorophylls and mineral composition from leaves of Pallenis spinosa: An Algerian medicinal plant

Plant and medicinal herbs are important sources of bioactive compounds and minerals that can play a role in preventing various diseases and they are considered a factor indispensable for the proper functioning of the human body. We investigated the content of carotenoids and chlorophylls of leaves from Pallenis spinosa (P. spinosa), as well as their antioxidant activity and mineral composition then, we optimized the solvent extraction for the recovery of total carotenoids and chlorophylls using spectrophotometric method. Finally, we tested the antioxidant activity of the optimized extract by three assays (DPPH, ABTS and FRAP) and we determined the mineral composition by Emission Spectrometer Induced Couple Plasma (ICP). Carotenoid (CART), chlorophylls (CHLa + b), chlorophyll a (CHLA), chlorophyll b (CHLB) contents were about 36.337 ± 0.312; 347.769 ± 6.326; 224.286 ± 5.601; 123.483 ± 1.339 mg/100 g dw, respectively. We revealed an interesting antioxidant capacity by the tested extract (DPPH: 127.522 ± 1.406 mmol ET/Kgdw, ABTS: 104.827 ± 1.222 mmol ET/Kgdw and FRAP 71.89 ± 0.495 ± 0.994 mmol ET/Kgdw). Carotenoids and chlorophylls content correlate positively with the antioxidant activity of P. spinosa leaves extract (r=0.646-0.986). Eight minerals have been detected (Mg, Ca, P, Fe, Mn, Zn, Cu and Cr), Mg and Ca being the predominant ones (6479.32 ± 48.33 and 3851.88 ± 130.63 mg/Kg, respectively). These results have shown that P. spinosa leaves are a good source of carotenoids and chlorophylls with a potent antioxidant potential with high amount of minerals