IN VIVO RADIOPROTECTIVE EFFECTS OF WHEATGRASS (TRITICUM AESTIVUM) EXTRACT AGAINST X-IRRADAITION-INDUCED OXIDATIVE STRESS AND APOPTOSIS IN PERIPHERAL BLOOD LYMPHOCYTES IN RATS

 Objectives: The present study was undertaken to investigate the possible protective potential of wheatgrass extract against radiation-induced toxicity in peripheral lymphocytes of rats exposed to a fractionated dose of X-rays.Methods: Effects of the X-irradiation with and without wheatgrass were studied on various parameters in peripheral lymphocytes including antioxidant defense system and apoptosis. Male Sprague-Dawley rats were divided into four different groups: Normal control group, X-ray-irradiated group (21 Gy over a span of 7 days), wheatgrass-treated group (80 mg/100 g bodyweight for 2 weeks), and X-rays-irradiated + wheatgrass-treated group. All the biochemical indices which included lipid peroxidation (LPO), reduced glutathione, reactive oxygen species (ROS), and activities of antioxidant enzymes were investigated in lymphocytes. Terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase dUTP nick-end labeling assay was carried out to assess the apoptosis in lymphocytes following whole-body X-irradiation.Results: Whole-body X-irradiation to rats resulted in significant increase in LPO with concomitant depression of antioxidant enzymes activities, namely, superoxide dismutase, catalase, and glutathione peroxidise (GPx) in lymphocytes. Further, the present study witnessed a significant increase in the number of apoptotic lymphocytes in the X-irradiated animals. However, wheatgrass supplementation lowered the LPO levels, restored cellular antioxidant status, and provided significant protection against radiation-induced apoptosis.Conclusions: Based on these observations, the present study suggests that wheatgrass extract has the potential to be used as an effective radioprotectant against radiation-induced oxidative stress and apoptosis in peripheral lymphocytes of whole-body X-ray-exposed rats

Annual radial growth cycle of grapevine trunk in the tropics

The annual radial trunk growth cycle in V. vinifera var. Anab-e-Shahi was studied in the tropics where the vines are pruned twice a year. Although vines grow continuously without any period of dormancy, a consistant pattern of maximum girth increment from April to September altemating with negligible increment from October to March was observed. The rate of annual girth increment was high during juvenile period and steadily decreased later. There is further need to study the physiology of growth and fruiting of tropical grapevines under conditions of nondormancy as modified by two prunings in a year.Der jährliche Wachstumszyklus der Stammdicke von Reben in den TropenDie Rebensorte Anab-e-Shahi (Vitis vinifera) wird in den Tropen jährlich zweimal geschnitten. Der jährliche Wachstumszyklus der Stammdicke unter diesen Bedingungen wurde untersucht. Obgleich die Reben kontinuierlich - ohne jede Ruheperiode - wachsen, wurde durchweg von April bis September ein maximaler Zuwachs des Stammumfanges und von Oktober bis März nur ein unbedeutendes Dickenwachstum festgestellt. Die jährliche Zuwachsrate des Stammumfanges war beim jungen Weinstock hoch; später nahm sie ständig ab. Weitere Untersuchungen zur Physiologie des Wachstums und der Fruchtentwicklung von Reben unter tropischen Bedingungen, d. h. ohne Zwischenschaltung einer Ruheperiode und modifiziert durch zweimaligen Rebschnitt, sind erforderlich

A case of conceptualisation: using a grounded theory approach to further explore how professionals define engineering judgement for use in engineering education

Students are expected to have developed their engineering judgement throughout the course of their studies as part of their accreditation requirements (as stipulated by the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology for example), and yet conceptually it is often ill-defined and therefore difficult to teach. This work was carried out in an attempt to better conceptualise engineering judgement for use in higher education. As such, semi-structured interviews were conducted with established members of academic staff who additionally had extensive industrial experience – who were asked to define engineering judgement and which aspects students ought to develop in their studies. A pragmatic grounded theory approach was used, based on the assumption that a theoretical idea/framework could be developed, enabling us to refer to previous literature and the emerging categories from our data set to help clarify engineering judgement. Several terms help define engineering judgement, including accumulated experience, fundamental theoretical knowledge, and imagination/intuition. Essential criteria for developing judgement includes students’ ability to identify and reduce complex problems, and embrace failure. A theoretical framework has been proposed accommodating a more enhanced definition and conceptualisation of engineering judgement which can be applied and adapted for use within engineering education for students’ ultimate benefit

Deep bore well water level fluctuations in the Koyna region, India: the presence of a low order dynamical system in a seismically active environment

Water level fluctuations in deep bore wells in the vicinity of seismically active Koyna region in western India provides an opportunity to understand the causative mechanism underlying reservoir-triggered earthquakes. As the crustal porous rocks behave nonlinearly, their characteristics can be obtained by analysing water level fluctuations, which reflect an integrated response of the medium. A Fractal dimension is one such measure of nonlinear characteristics of porous rock as observed in water level data from the Koyna region. It is inferred in our study that a low nonlinear dynamical system with three variables can predict the water level fluctuations in bore wells

Asthma in the elderly: underperceived, underdiagnosed and undertreated; a community survey

AbstractBronchial asthma is now increasingly recognized in the elderly and is associated with significant morbidity and mortality. The aims of this study were two-fold: first, to assess the prevalence and, second, to evaluate diagnostic awareness, therapeutic management and patient perception of bronchial asthma among elderly patients in the community.From the age-sex register of an urban general practice in NE England, 2004 patients aged >65 years were eligible for inclusion. Response to an initial screening questionnaire on respiratory symptomatology was 68% (n = 1362). Of these, 869 patients had respiratory symptoms: 390 voluntarily agreed to be evaluated further including assessment of airway physiology. In this group 369390 had obstructive spirometry and, of these, 95 patients fulfilled clinical and physiological criteria of bronchial asthma. Prevalence of asthma within this age cohort was minimally and rather crudely assigned at 4.5% (952004).Among the 95 patients so-defined patients with asthma [age 70 ± 8 years (mean ± sd), FEV1 = 0·96 ± 0.41, 33 male, 75 life-long non-smokers], subjective awareness, perception and attribution of pulmonary symptoms were poor. Further, despite tangible evidence of reversible and significant airflow limitation, only 21 were receiving inhaled glucocorticoid therapy (median daily dose 400 μg).Asthma in the elderly remains poorly perceived, poorly recognized and suboptimally treated. These findings are particularly apposite in the light of current epidemiological trends in asthma mortality and morbidity in elderly age cohorts

Degradation kinetics of metronidazole and its mutual prodrug with ciprofloxacin: a calorimetric analysis

Calorimetric technique has aroused considerable interest as a versatile tool in pharmaceutical industry and academia to provide useful information about thermodynamic and kinetic aspects of drug molecules. The present paper utilizes this technique to monitor the hydrolytic degradation of metronidazole and its prodrug with ciprofloxacin, i.e. 2-(2-methyl-5-nitroimidazol-1-yl)ethyl-1-cyclopropyl-6-fluoro-1,4-dihydro-4-oxo-7-(1-piperazinyl)-quinoline-3-carboxylate. The synthesis of the present mutual prodrug was envisaged to combine the antiprotozoal and anaerobic antibacterial effects of metronidazole with antibacterial effects of ciprofloxacin. Heat flux microcalorimeter was used to determine the rate of heat evolved during the degradation of the drug and prodrug as a function of concentration, pH and temperature. In terms of enthalpy of hydrolysis the response is exothermic both for drug and prodrug. However, the absolute value of the enthalpy of reaction (ΔrH0) is low for the prodrug. The degradation followed pseudo first order kinetics, showed marked stability at pH 3-7 followed by accelerated hydrolysis at higher pH, characteristic of general acid-base catalysis. The catalytic rate constant for hydrogen ion (kH) and hydroxyl ion (kOH) were found to be 0.413 and 526.1 M-1h-1, respectively, at 318.15 K. The hydrolysis of the prodrug was found to be approximately 50-60 times faster than that of the drug. This may be attributed to the fact that hydrolysis of ester group in prodrug is assisted by keto group on the ciprofloxacin. However, there is no effect of protonation of nitrogen in piperazine ring in ciprofloxacin on the hydrolysis due to the distance from the ester moiety. Keywords: Calorimetry, stability studies, degradation kinetics, ciprofloxacin, metronidazole. International Journal of Biological and Chemical Sciences Vol. 1 (3) 2007: pp.197-21

Containment and equivalence of weighted automata: Probabilistic and max-plus cases

This paper surveys some results regarding decision problems for probabilistic and max-plus automata, such as containment and equivalence. Probabilistic and max-plus automata are part of the general family of weighted automata, whose semantics are maps from words to real values. Given two weighted automata, the equivalence problem asks whether their semantics are the same, and the containment problem whether one is point-wise smaller than the other one. These problems have been studied intensively and this paper will review some techniques used to show (un)decidability and state a list of open questions that still remain

Safety verification of asynchronous pushdown systems with shaped stacks

In this paper, we study the program-point reachability problem of concurrent pushdown systems that communicate via unbounded and unordered message buffers. Our goal is to relax the common restriction that messages can only be retrieved by a pushdown process when its stack is empty. We use the notion of partially commutative context-free grammars to describe a new class of asynchronously communicating pushdown systems with a mild shape constraint on the stacks for which the program-point coverability problem remains decidable. Stacks that fit the shape constraint may reach arbitrary heights; further a process may execute any communication action (be it process creation, message send or retrieval) whether or not its stack is empty. This class extends previous computational models studied in the context of asynchronous programs, and enables the safety verification of a large class of message passing programs

A condensed matter interpretation of SM fermions and gauge fields

We present the bundle Aff(3) x C x /(R^3), with a geometric Dirac equation on it, as a three-dimensional geometric interpretation of the SM fermions. Each C x /(R^3) describes an electroweak doublet. The Dirac equation has a doubler-free staggered spatial discretization on the lattice space Aff(3) x C (Z^3). This space allows a simple physical interpretation as a phase space of a lattice of cells in R^3. We find the SM SU(3)_c x SU(2)_L x U(1)_Y action on Aff(3) x C x /(R^3) to be a maximal anomaly-free special gauge action preserving E(3) symmetry and symplectic structure, which can be constructed using two simple types of gauge-like lattice fields: Wilson gauge fields and correction terms for lattice deformations. The lattice fermion fields we propose to quantize as low energy states of a canonical quantum theory with Z_2-degenerated vacuum state. We construct anticommuting fermion operators for the resulting Z_2-valued (spin) field theory. A metric theory of gravity compatible with this model is presented too.Comment: Minimal modifications in comparison with the published versio

Pandemic influenza A(H1N1) 2009 outbreak in a residential school at Panchgani, Maharashtra, India

Background & objectives: An outbreak of influenza was investigated between June 24 and July 30, 2009 in a residential school at Panchgani, Maharashtra, India. The objectives were to determine the aetiology, study the clinical features in the affected individuals and, important epidemiological and environmental factors. The nature of public health response and effectiveness of the control measures were also evaluated. Methods: Real time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction was performed on throat swabs collected from 82 suspected cases to determine the influenza types (A or B) and sub-types [pandemic (H1N1) 2009, as well as seasonal influenza H1N1, H3N2]. Haemagglutination inhibition assay was performed on serum samples collected from entire school population (N = 415) to detect antibodies for pandemic (H1N1) 2009, seasonal H1N1, H3N2 and influenza B/Yamagata and B/Victoria lineages. Antibody titres ≥ 10 for pandemic (H1N1) 2009 and ≥ 20 for seasonal influenza A and B were considered as positive for these viruses. Results: Clinical attack rate for influenza-like illness was 71.1 per cent (295/415). The attack rate for pandemic (H1N1) 2009 cases was 42.4 per cent (176/415). Throat swabs were collected from 82 cases, of which pandemic (H1N1) 2009 virus was detected in 15 (18.3%), influenza type A in (6) 7.4 per cent and influenza type B only in one case. A serosurvey carried out showed haemagglutination inhibition antibodies to pandemic (H1N1) 2009 in 52 per cent (216) subjects in the school and 9 per cent (22) in the community. Interpretation & conclusion: Our findings confirmed an outbreak of pandemic (H1N1) 2009 due to local transmission among students in a residential school at Panchgani, Maharashtra, India