Bariatric Surgery as a Treatment to Obesity

This paper focuses on the efficiency and effectiveness that bariatric surgery provides as a treatment for the obesity epidemic that is ever-growing in our country. By taking into account scientific, ethnographical, scholarly, statistic-based, and various other forms of research, this paper argues for the widespread use of bariatric surgery for weight loss, decrease in obesity, and resolution of obesity comorbidities. This paper also focuses on the various factors that affect patient success in bariatric surgery, such as gaps in access, economic problems, psychological issues associated with the procedure, and more. Nevertheless, bariatric surgery, if these factors are taken into consideration, is a favorable option in treating morbid obesity and should be readily and enthusiastically utilized to treat this epidemic

Fish and freshwater crayfish communities of the Brunswick and Preston Rivers

The Leschenault Inlet, located on the Swan Coastal Plain near Bunbury, is the estuary of the Brunswick, Collie, Preston and Ferguson Rivers. There is a considerable amount of information detailing the fish fauna of the Leschenault Inlet with Potter et al. (1997, 2000) recording 42 species of fish from 26 families. The estuary is dominated by gobies, atherinids and clupeids which comprised almost 90% of the fishes. Potter et al. (2000) also reported 13 species from gill net captures in the lower (tidal) Collie River. Neither of these studies reported on the fishes found within the freshwaters of the Leschenault Inlet catchment and although Pen & Potter (1990, 1991a, b, c, d, 1992) conducted biological studies on a number of native and introduced freshwater fishes in the upper Collie River by, there is no published information regarding the prevailing fishes (or freshwater crayfishes) of the Brunswick or Preston Rivers. Hale et al. (2000) reported on the fish fauna of one site in the upper Brunswick River, near the confluence with the Augustus River, one site in the Augustus River and two sites in the Ernest River. While they recorded only two species of freshwater fish from the Ernest River (i.e. Western Pygmy Perch (Edelia vittata) and Nightfish (Bostockia porosa)), they captured a further two endemic freshwater fishes from the Augustus and upper Brunswick Rivers (i.e. Western Minnow (Galaxias occidentalis) and Freshwater Cobbler (Tandanus bostocki)) as well as larval (ammocoetes) Pouched Lampreys (Geotria australis) and three introduced fishes (i.e. Rainbow Trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss), Brown Trout (Salmo trutta) and Eastern Mosquitofish (Gambusia holbrooki)). The presence of the larger introduced fishes, the lamprey and the Freshwater Cobbler in the Augustus River compared to the Ernest River was attributed to the provision of environmental water releases from Freshwater Lake. These species are more often associated with permanent waters over ephemeral systems. The distributions of fishes inhabiting the inland waters of the south-western corner of Western Australia were documented in Morgan et al. (1998) and include the systems from Capel to Two People’s Bay east of Albany and thus does not encompass the more northerly Leschenault catchments, but does include some sites on the Collie River South Branch. The aims of the present study were to ameliorate the paucity of knowledge of the fishes and freshwater crayfishes inhabiting two of the major systems flowing into the Leschenault Inlet and thereby provide the Leschenault Catchment Council with an overview of the fishes of the Brunswick and Preston Rivers

Re-establishment of native freshwater fishes in Bull Creek

Bull Creek is a perennial, urban stream located in the City of Melville and is a tributary to the Canning River. The catchment has been largely altered for urban development (i.e. housing) and receives a considerable amount of storm-water runoff. Substantial effort has been made recently to re-habilitate the riparian zone of Bull Creek through weed eradication (particularly blackberry control) and native re-vegetation programs. The Melville City Council recognised the need to extend this rehabilitation effort to include the instream aquatic fauna and thus a fish re-establishment program was implemented; the details of which are described in this report

Polyamine regulation of nitric oxide production in LPS-activated macrophages

© European Communities, 1999 Reproduction is authorised provided the source is acknowledgedPolyamines are physiological cellular constituents essential for cell growth and differentiation, and regulate a multitude of cellular functions (1-4). Nitric oxide (NO) is an effector molecule in both the cardiovascular and nervous systems (5,6). Intracellularly, NO and polyamines are derived from arginine, the latter via the rate-limiting enzyme ornithine decarboxylase (ODC; 7). This enzyme, like the inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS), is induced by proinflammatory cytokines and bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS), resulting in enhanced enzyme activity and increased polyamine biosynthesis (8,9). While the increase in polyamine synthesis would have important implications for cell growth and proliferation, it is not clear how this might affect iNOS pathway. Inhibition of polyamine biosynthesis impairs the phagocytic capacity of macrophages (10) and can block macrophage activation by tumour necrosis factor (11). Recently, exogenous polyamines have been shown to inhibit NO production in LPS-activated J774 cells (12) and by isolated neuronal NO synthase (13). However, these effects required relatively high concentrations of polyamines compared to those found in plasma and in intact cells (14), and appear to be due to aldehyde metabolites resulting from polyamine oxidation by the amine oxidase present in calf serum (15-17). In this study we have explored the effects of both endogenous and exogenous polyamines on the inducible L-arginine-NO pathway by examining whether inhibition of ornithine decarboxylase (ODC) and thus of polyamine biosynthesis (7), regulates NO production in lipopolysaccharide-activated J774 cells, a murine macrophage cell lineFinal Published versio

Stability of Periodic, Traveling-Wave Solutions to the Capillary-Whitham Equation

Recently, the Whitham and capillary-Whitham equations were shown to accurately model the evolution of surface waves on shallow water. In order to gain a deeper understanding of these equations, we compute periodic, traveling-wave solutions to both and study their stability. We present plots of a representative sampling of solutions for a range of wavelengths, wave speeds, wave heights, and surface tension values. Finally, we discuss the role these parameters play in the stability of the solutions

Concepts for the design of an antimatter annihilation rocket

Matter-antimatter annihilation is considered for spacecraft propulsion. Annihilation produces considerably more energy per unit mass of propellant than any other known means of energy production. An antimatter annihilation rocket requires several systems and components that are unique to its nature. Among these are an antimatter storage system, a means to extract the antimatter from storage, a system to transport the antimatter to the rocket engine, and the engine wherein annihilation occurs and thrust is produced. Design concepts of these systems and components are presented and discussed