Advantages of video trigger in problem-based learning

Background: Traditionally, paper cases are used as 'triggers' to stimulate learning in problem-based learning (PBL). However, video may be a better medium because it preserves the original language, encourages the active extraction of information, avoids depersonalization of patients and allows direct observation of clinical consultations. In short, it exposes the students to the complexity of actual clinical problems. Aim: The study aims to find out whether students and facilitators who are accustomed to paper cases would prefer video triggers or paper cases and the reasons for their preference. Method: After students and facilitators had completed a video PBL tutorial, their responses were measured by a structured questionnaire using a modified Likert scale. Results: A total of 257 students (92) and 26 facilitators (100) responded. The majority of students and facilitators considered that using video triggers could enhance the students' observational powers and clinical reasoning, help them to integrate different information and better understand the cases and motivate them to learn. They found PBL using video triggers more interesting and preferred it to PBL using paper cases. Conclusion: Video triggers are preferred by both students and facilitators over paper cases in PBL. © 2010 Informa UK Ltd All rights reserved.postprin

Rpgrip1 is required for rod outer segment development and ciliary protein trafficking in zebrafish

The authors would like to thank the Royal Society of London, the National Eye Research Centre, the Visual Research Trust, Fight for Sight, the W.H. Ross Foundation, the Rosetrees Trust, and the Glasgow Children’s Hospital Charity for supporting this work. This work was also supported by the Deanship of Scientific Research at King Saud University for funding this research (Research Project) grant number ‘RGP – VPP – 219’.Mutations in the RPGR-interacting protein 1 (RPGRIP1) gene cause recessive Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA), juvenile retinitis pigmentosa (RP) and cone-rod dystrophy. RPGRIP1 interacts with other retinal disease-causing proteins and has been proposed to have a role in ciliary protein transport; however, its function remains elusive. Here, we describe a new zebrafish model carrying a nonsense mutation in the rpgrip1 gene. Rpgrip1homozygous mutants do not form rod outer segments and display mislocalization of rhodopsin, suggesting a role for RPGRIP1 in rhodopsin-bearing vesicle trafficking. Furthermore, Rab8, the key regulator of rhodopsin ciliary trafficking, was mislocalized in photoreceptor cells of rpgrip1 mutants. The degeneration of rod cells is early onset, followed by the death of cone cells. These phenotypes are similar to that observed in LCA and juvenile RP patients. Our data indicate RPGRIP1 is necessary for rod outer segment development through regulating ciliary protein trafficking. The rpgrip1 mutant zebrafish may provide a platform for developing therapeutic treatments for RP patients.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

COMPARATIVE STUDY OF EFFECT OF SWERTIA CHIRATA LEAF EXTRACT ON INDINAVIR TREATED RATS

Background: Indinavir is widely used for the treatment of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. It is known to cause hyperglycemia or insulin resistance and hyperlipidemia.Aim and Objectives: To study the effect of Swertia chirata leaf extract with metformin and pioglitazone on indinavir treated rats.Methods: Swiss albino rats were divided into five Groups of six animals each. All the groups (except control) were treated with indinavir 216 mg/kg (oral) for 15 days. Group I (control) received normal saline (oral) from day 8 to day 15, Group II received indinavir 216 mg/kg (oral), Group III received S. chirata plant extract 500 mg/kg (oral) from day 8 to day 15, Group IV received pioglitazone 4 mg/kg (oral) from day 8 to day 15, and Group V received metformin 36 mg/kg (oral) from day 8 to day 15. The biochemical parameters such as serum glucose, insulin, and lipid levels were measured on day 15. Results were analyzed using one-way analysis of variance followed by Bonferroni's multiple comparison test.Results: Indinavir (216 mg/kg) treated rats showed a significant (p<0.05) increase in glucose and insulin levels and also altered lipid levels. This indicates indinavir produces diabetic-like state in rats. S. chirata extract (500 mg/kg) decreases glucose and insulin levels and also improves lipid levels the effect is almost similar to metformin and pioglitazone.Conclusion: Indinavir causes elevated glucose, insulin and lipid levels, so care must be taken while prescribing indinavir for HIV patients. Treatment with S. chirata extract improved the altered glucose, insulin, and lipid profile in indinavir treated rats.Key words: Indinavir, Insulin resistance, Diabetes dyslipidemia, Glucose intolerance

Adaptive routing in agricultural supply chains: Harnessing Q-learning for optimal decision-making in dynamic environments

In this study, the authors try to emphasize how Q-learning, a model-free reinforcement learning (RL) technique can be used for optimizing routing in a grid-based environment. This study aims to assess the efficacy of Q-learning in enhancing routing for agricultural supply chains, investigate its flexibility in dynamic environments, and compare its performance across several real-world scenarios. In this specific case of the banana chain, an agent is moving through various entities in the system - from local growers to small traders and warehouses. It models the routing problem as a Markov Decision Process (MDP) and the goal is to optimize cumulative reward. Several possible cases are simulated, e.g. the finding of an optimal route for a given visit sequence that optimizes charging time and non-drivable paths left over when unexpected blockages occur to avoid energy wear penalties as well as how to best save costs; These results demonstrate the adaptability and durability of Q-learning in dynamic environments to obtain near-optimal solutions across diverse settings. Indeed, the present study adds to a growing body of research on the application of RL in logistics and supply chain management, highlighting its potential to enhance decision-making in complex and variable environments. The findings suggest that Q-learning can effectively balance multiple objectives, such as minimizing distance, reducing costs, and avoiding high-wear areas, making it a valuable tool for optimizing routing in real-world supply chains. Future work will explore broader applications and other RL algorithms in similar contexts

Sonification and Music as Support to the Communication of Alcohol-Related Health Risks to Young People : Study design and results

Excessive consumption of alcohol has been recognised as a significant risk factor impacting the health of young people. Effective communication of such risk is considered to be one key step to improve behaviour. We evaluated an innovative multimedia intervention that utilised audio (sonification—using sound to display data—and music) and interactivity to support the visual communication of alcohol health risk data. A 3-arm pilot experiment was undertaken. The trial measures included health knowledge, alcohol risk perception and user experience of the intervention. Ninety-six subjects participated in the experiment. At 1 month follow-up, alcohol knowledge and alcohol risk perception improved significantly in the whole sample. However, there was no difference between the intervention groups that experienced (1) visual presentation with interactivity (VI-Exp group) and, (2) visual presentation with audio (sonification and music) and interactivity (VAI-Exp group), when compared to the control group which experienced a (3) visual only presentation (V-Cont group). Participants reported enjoying the presentations and found them educational. The majority of participants indicated that the audio, music and sonification helped to convey the information well, and, although a larger sample size is needed to fully establish the effectiveness of the different interventions, this study provides a useful model for future similar studies

Health Status of Anganwadi Workers in an Urban Area-A Cross Sectional Study

Background: Anganwadi workers have been the frontline workers providing a package of services to the children below 6 years of age, females in the reproductive age group, pregnant and lactating mothers under the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) programme. Promoting the health and socio-demographic status of this frontline force is critical to improve the delivery of services. Material and methods: The present descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted in June, 2024 among 48 Anganwadi workers working in the catchment area of urban health training center of Rajiv Gandhi Medical College, Thane. The purposive sampling technique was used to conduct the study. Socio-demographic profile and health status of the Anganwadi workers was recorded in pre-designed and pre-tested proforma by interviewing them. The data was entered in Microsoft Excel and analyzed. The results were interpreted using SE (p1-P2) test of significance. The statistical level of significance was fixed at p < 0.05. Results: 48 Anganwadi workers were included in the study. 08 (16.67%) subjects were in the age group of 18-40 years while 40 (83.33%) were in the age group of > 40-58 years. Of the 48 subjects, 38 (79.17%) were having one or more health problems at the time of study (p<0.05). Of the 38(79.17%) subjects with one or more health problems, 31(81.58%) were suffering from non communicable diseases and 07 (18.42%) were suffering from communicable diseases (p<0.05). Conclusion: Previous studies done on Anganwadi workers have focused primarily on the efficiency of service delivery. This study focuses on their socio-demographic and health issues. We observed, majority of the Anganwadi workers were suffering from non-communicable diseases

On group strategy-proof mechanisms for a many-to-one matching model

For the many-to-one matching model in which firms have substitutable and quota q-separable preferences over subsets of workers we show that the workers-optimal stable mechanism is group strategy-proof for the workers. In order to prove this result, we also show that under this domain of preferences (which contains the domain of responsive preferences of the college admissions problem) the workers-optimal stable matching is weakly Pareto optimal for the workers and the Blocking Lemma holds as well. We exhibit an example showing that none of these three results remain true if the preferences of firms are substitutable but not quota q-separable.The work of R. Martínez, A. Neme, and J. Oviedo is partially supported by Research Grant 319502 from the Universidad Nacional de San Luis (Argentina). The work of J. Massó is partially supported by Research Grants BEC2002-2130 from the Dirección General de Investigación Científica y Técnica (Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology) and 2001SGR-00162 from the Departament d’Universitats, Recerca i Societat de la Informació (Generalitat de Catalunya)

Review on catalytic cleavage of C-C inter-unit linkages in lignin model compounds: Towards lignin depolymerisation

Lignin depolymerisation has received considerable attention recently due to the pressing need to find sustainable alternatives to fossil fuel feedstock to produce chemicals and fuels. Two types of interunit linkages (C–C and C–O linkages) link several aromatic units in the structure of lignin. Between these two inter-unit linkages, the bond energies of C–C linkages are higher than that of C–O linkages, making them harder to break. However, for an efficient lignin depolymerisation, both types of inter-unit linkages have to be broken. This is more relevant because of the fact that many delignification processes tend to result in the formation of additional C–C inter-unit bonds. Here we review the strategies reported for the cleavage of C–C inter-unit linkages in lignin model compounds and lignin. Although a number of articles are available on the cleavage of C–O inter-unit linkages, reports on the selective cleavage of C–C inter-unit linkages are relatively less. Oxidative cleavage, hydrogenolysis, two-step redox-neutral process, microwave assisted cleavage, biocatalytic and photocatalytic methods have been reported for the breaking of C–C inter-unit linkages in lignin. Here we review all these methods in detail, focused only on the breaking of C–C linkages. The objective of this review is to motivate researchers to design new strategies to break this strong C–C inter-unit bonds to valorise lignins, technical lignins in particular

Stoichiometric representation of geneproteinreaction associations leverages constraint-based analysis from reaction to gene-level phenotype prediction

Genome-scale metabolic reconstructions are currently available for hundreds of organisms. Constraint-based modeling enables the analysis of the phenotypic landscape of these organisms, predicting the response to genetic and environmental perturbations. However, since constraint-based models can only describe the metabolic phenotype at the reaction level, understanding the mechanistic link between genotype and phenotype is still hampered by the complexity of gene-protein-reaction associations. We implement a model transformation that enables constraint-based methods to be applied at the gene level by explicitly accounting for the individual fluxes of enzymes (and subunits) encoded by each gene. We show how this can be applied to different kinds of constraint-based analysis: flux distribution prediction, gene essentiality analysis, random flux sampling, elementary mode analysis, transcriptomics data integration, and rational strain design. In each case we demonstrate how this approach can lead to improved phenotype predictions and a deeper understanding of the genotype-to-phenotype link. In particular, we show that a large fraction of reaction-based designs obtained by current strain design methods are not actually feasible, and show how our approach allows using the same methods to obtain feasible gene-based designs. We also show, by extensive comparison with experimental 13C-flux data, how simple reformulations of different simulation methods with gene-wise objective functions result in improved prediction accuracy. The model transformation proposed in this work enables existing constraint-based methods to be used at the gene level without modification. This automatically leverages phenotype analysis from reaction to gene level, improving the biological insight that can be obtained from genome-scale models.DM was supported by the Portuguese Foundationfor Science and Technologythrough a post-doc fellowship (ref: SFRH/BPD/111519/ 2015). This study was supported by the PortugueseFoundationfor Science and Technology (FCT) under the scope of the strategic fundingof UID/BIO/04469/2013 unitand COMPETE2020 (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006684) and BioTecNorte operation (NORTE-01-0145FEDER-000004) fundedby EuropeanRegional Development Fund under the scope of Norte2020Programa Operacional Regional do Norte. This project has received fundingfrom the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreementNo 686070. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript