165 research outputs found
Involvement of B cells in non-infectious uveitis
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Non-infectious uveitis—or intraocular inflammatory disease—causes substantial visual morbidity and reduced quality of life
amongst affected individuals. To date, research of pathogenic mechanisms has largely been focused on processes involving
T lymphocyte and/or myeloid leukocyte populations. Involvement of B lymphocytes has received relatively little attention. In
contrast, B-cell pathobiology is a major field within general immunological research, and large clinical trials have showed that
treatments targeting B cells are highly effective for multiple systemic inflammatory diseases. B cells, including the terminally
differentiated plasma cell that produces antibody, are found in the human eye in different forms of non-infectious uveitis; in
some cases, these cells outnumber other leukocyte subsets. Recent case reports and small case series suggest that B-cell
blockade may be therapeutic for patients with non-infectious uveitis. As well as secretion of antibody, B cells may promote
intraocular inflammation by presentation of antigen to T cells, production of multiple inflammatory cytokines and support of
T-cell survival. B cells may also perform various immunomodulatory activities within the eye. This translational review
summarizes the evidence for B-cell involvement in non-infectious uveitis, and considers the potential contributions of B cells to
the development and control of the disease. Manipulations of B cells and/or their products are promising new approaches to the
treatment of non-infectious uveitis
Ancillary living marine resources of Lakshadweep
The paper detailed about the ancillary living marine resources of Lakshadweep. Sea weeds, crustaceans, molluscs, sponges, echinoderms, reptiles such as turtles, birds etc, are treated here as ancillary resources
Calcibiocavitological investigations
Calcibiocavitation is a major poroblem in the marine environment and a detailed study on these aspects has been undertaken and the salient findings are presented here. Gregarious molluscs such as the sacred chank Xancus pvrum, mussels (both green and brown), rock oysters (Crassostrea spp.), pearl oysters, Thais rudolphi (Lam.) and corals which inhabit the southwest coast of Kerala and the Gulf of Mannar have been investigated. The wide fluctuations noted in the abundance and population structure of the various pests in the molluscan beds during the short period of two years clearly indicated that they were in severe competetion for suitable substrata and the shells of gregarious mollusks which inhabit this area provide ample opportunities for the pests to flourish. The incidence of boring sponges is found to be rather high among raft-cultured pearl oysters both at Tuticorin and Vizhinjam. It is difficult to control the infection of boring animals in the natural beds, but the low rate of incidence recorded year after year under suggests that the nature controls this to lower level.Another important observation was the wide distribution of the boring sponge C.vastifica in the Ashtamudi Lake, Quilonwhich may form a major threat to our future rock oyster farms along the estuaries
A pattern based approach to defining the dynamic infrastructure of UML 2.0.
The 2U Consortium has recently submitted a proposal for the definition of the UML 2.0 infrastructure. This uses an innovative technique of rapidly “stamping out” the definition using a small number of patterns commonly found in software architecture. The patterns, their instantiation, and any further language details are described using precise class diagrams and OCL, this enables the definition to be easily understood. The main focus of the 2U approach is on the static part of the definition. A further concern when modelling software, using languages such as the UML, is describing the dynamic
behaviour of the system over time. The contribution of this paper is to provide a template that can be
used to “stamp out” the dynamic part of the UML 2.0 infrastructure. We argue for the suitability of the
dynamic template because it makes little commitment to concrete abstractions and can, therefore, be used
to support a broad spectrum of behavioural languages
Unambiguous UML submission to UML 2 infrastructure RFP (ad/00-09-01).
This is a response to the UML 2.0 Request for Proposals on Infrastructure (ad/00-09-01). We propose an architecture
for the definition of UML 2.0 which supports the layered and extensible definition of UML as a family of languages, and depends on the use of package extension (composition) and package template mechanisms in the metamodelling language. This submission defines that architecture and populates it with the definition of a core foundation for the definition of structural and behavioural modelling constructs for UML. Chapter 3 (“Language Architecture”) identifies all those parts of the architecture defined in any given version of this document
Linguistic Adaptation and Psychometric Properties of Tamil Version of General Oral Health Assessment Index‑Tml
Background: Oral health has an impact on quality of life hence for research purpose validation of a Tamil version of General Oral Health Assessment Index would enable it to be used as a valuable tool among Tamil speaking population.Aim: In this study, we aimed to assess the psychometric properties of translated Tamil version of General Oral Health Assessment Index (GOHAI‑Tml).Subjects and Methods: Linguistic adaptation involved forward and backward blind translation process. Reliability was analyzed using test‑retest, Cronbach alpha, and split half reliability. Inter‑item and item‑total correlation were evaluated using Spearman rank correlation. Convenience sampling was done, and 265 consecutive patients aged 20–70 years attending the outpatient department were recruited. Subjects were requested to fill a self‑reporting questionnaire along with Tamil GOHAI version. Clinical examination was done on the same visit. Concurrent validity was measured by assessing the relationship between GOHAI scores and self‑perceived oral health and general health status, satisfaction with oral health, need for dental treatment and esthetic satisfaction. Discriminant validity was evaluated by comparing the GOHAI scores with the objectively assessed clinical parameters. Exploratory factor analysis was done to examine the factor structure.Results: Mean GOHAI‑Tml was 52.7 (6.8, range 22–60, median 54). The mean number of negative impacts was 2 (2.4, range 0–11, median 1). The Spearman rank correlation for test‑retest ranged from 0.8 to 0.9 (P < 0.001) for all the 12 items between visits. The Cronbach alpha for 265 samples was 0.8 suggesting good internal consistency and homogeneity between items. Item scale correlation ranged from 0.4 to 0.8 (P < 0.001). Concurrent and discriminant validity was established. Principal component analysis resulted in extraction of four factors which together accounted for 66.4% (7.9/12) variance.Conclusion: GOHAI‑Tml has shown acceptable psychometric properties, so that it can be used as an efficient tool in identifying the impact of oral health on quality of life among the Tamil speaking population.Keywords: General oral health assessment index, Linguistic adaptation, Oral health‑related quality of life, Psychometric properties, Reliability, Validit
Bivalve Culture in Asia and the Pacific- India
India has a 6100-km coastline, numerous estuaries and backwaters, and abundant marine bivalve resources that are exploited on a subsistence level at several centres. The major bivalves, in order of importance, are clams, mussels, windowpane oysters, and edible oysters. Pearl oysters are intermittently exploited – sometimes not for several years
Farming experiments and transfer of technology of bivalve culture along the southwest coast of India
The Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute (CMFRI) in India developed bivalve farming technologies in the 1970s. but these
were not widely adopted at the time. In 1993, CMFRI undertook an action research program to encourage farming of edible
oysters, mussels, clams and pearls along the southwest coast of India. Successful demonstration of the viability of bivalve farming
led to the initiation of commercial farming of mussels and generated interest among farmers and entrepreneurs in developing
production of pearls and farming of edible oysters. Given the high potential for mollusc aquacultu re, both for the local and export
markets, issues such as demarcation and issuance of lease rights on aquaculture zones in public waterbodies by the government,
organization of marketing systems and provisions for technical and fin ancial support to farmers need to be addressed
Revised submission for MOF 2.0 query / views / transformations RFP.
This submission presents the QVT-Partners proposal for the MOF 2.0 QVT standard. The proposal consists of a number of key ingredients which we briefly discuss in this section.
-Specification and implementation:
A common scenario in the development of any artifact is to first create a specification of the form and behaviour of the the artifact, and then realise an implementation which satisfies the specification. The specification is characterised by a lack of implementation details, but having a close correspondence to the requirements; conversely an implementation may lack close correspondence to the requirements.
This submission maintains this important distinction. Relations provide a specification oriented view of the
relationship between models and are specified in a language that can be easily understood. They say what it
means to translate between several models but without saying precisely how the translation is achieved. Those
details are realised by mappings which characterise the means by which models are translated. It should be
noted though, that while the mappings language is rich enough to provide an implementation of relations it also manages to maintain a requirements oriented focus. This may give rise to a scenario where developers prefer to omit relations and directly define mappings.
-Scalability and reuse:
Decomposition is a key approach to managing complexity. This submission provides a number of composition
mechanisms whereby relations and mappings can be composed to form more complex specifications. These
mechanisms also aid reuse since mappings and relations can be treated as reusable components which are
composed for specific contexts.
-Usability:
Diagrammatic notations have been important to the success of many OMG standards. This proposal presents a
diagrammatic notation which is an extension of collaboration object diagrams and is therefore familiar to many end users. A criticism often levelled at diagrammatic notations is their scalability. This submission also presents a textual syntax, constructs of the diagrammatic notations are closely aligned with its textual counterpart. Considering the domains of relations and mappings at the generic type level is often too limiting. Instead it often is specific-types of things that are of interest. This submission uses patterns to describe the domains of both relations and mappings. Patterns are a means of succinctly describing specific-types of model elements and enable domains of interest to be rapidly stated with ease.
-Semantic soundness:
By definition a standard should give rise to consistency across differing implementations. It is important that
an end user can get the same results on two different implementations. For this reason, this submission goes
to some effort to ensure that all the constructs have a well-defined semantic basis. This is achieved by treating
the submission in two parts. The infrastructure part has a small number of constructs which can be easily and
consistently understood from informal descriptions (although a mathematical semantics is given in Appendix
B for the sake of completeness and rigour). The superstructure part uses the infrastructure as its semantic
basis and defines the syntax that the end user deals with. The relationship between the superstructure and the
infrastructure is expressed as a translation
Clam resource in the Astamudi Lake, a tropical estuary in sourthern India: Managment and conservation concerns
Clam resources form the livelihood of more
than five hundred families in and around Ashtamudi
Lake, situated between latitude 8°45' - 9°28'
N and 76°28 - 77" 17' E. The alarming increase in
the exploitation of Paphia malabarica in the recent
years forced the Government of Kerala to
impose ban on the fishing activities during its
breeding season based on the recommendations
of CMFRI in 1993
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