High prevalence of alpha thalassemia in the tribal community of the western part of India! Reality or myth? Can simple hematology parameters; MCV and MCH act as screening tools at birth?

Background: The majority of adult tribal subjects in the western part of India, show microcytic hypochromic red cells, and borderline anemia with a normal iron profile, suggesting a high prevalence of thalassemia in this population. Methods: The current study was designed to perform qualitative (to screen for Hb Bart’s) and quantitative (to estimate percentage of Hb Bart’s) hemoglobin electrophoresis with modification of the method, to evaluate the prevalence of α thalassemia and to determine gene frequency of α+ thal gene. Furthermore, the present study also aimed to evaluate common hematology parameters like MCV and MCH as screening tools to suspect α thalassemia at birth. Results: Based on hemoglobin electrophoresis, the prevalence of α thalassemia in all its forms was found to be 66.66%. The estimated gene frequency for α+ thal was found to be 0.7453 and based on that, the extrapolated prevalence of α thalassemia was 93.52% (55.55% homozygous and 37.97% heterozygous). MCV<100 fl and MCH<31 pg were found to be reliable screening tools to predict α thalassemia at birth in full-term uncomplicated pregnancy. Conclusions: Tribal community in the western part of India bears a very high prevalence of α thalassemia, it’s a reality and not a myth. Simple hematological parameters like MCV (<100 fl) and MCH (<31 pg) measured at birth can prove to be cost-effective surrogate markers for α thalassemia. Large scale study using confirmatory genetic analysis is required to validate the findings.

Reactions of nitriles. Part I. Condensation of methyleneaminoacetonitrile with aldehydes

The preparation of a number of 2-cyanostyrene derivatives by the condensation of methyleneaminoacetonitrile with aromatic aldehydes is described. In alkali or acids the styrenes yield phenylacetic acids or imidazole derivatives

Nonmonotonic Reasoning In LDL++

Deductive database systems have made major advances on efficient support for nonmonotonic reasoning. A first generation of deductive database systems supported the notion of stratification for programs with negation and set aggregates. Stratification is simple to understand and efficient to implement but it is too restrictive; therefore, a second generation of systems seeks efficient support for more powerful semantics based on notions such as well-founded models and stable models. In this respect, a particularly powerful set of constructs is provided by the recently enhanced LDL++ system that supports (i) monotonic user-defined aggregates, (ii) XY-stratified programs, and (iii) the nondeterministic choice constructs under stable model semantics. This integrated set of primitives supports a terse formulation and efficient implementation for complex computations, such as greedy algorithms and data mining functions, yielding levels of expressive power unmatched by other deductive..

A Framework for Goal-Directed Bottom-Up Evaluation of Functional Logic Programs

Abstract. In this paper we start the design of a functional-logic deductive database language. Given that most logic deductive languages consider bottom-up evaluation as operational mechanism, here we will focus on the development of an operational semantics based on bottomup evaluation for functional logic languages. As in the logic paradigm, the bottom-up evaluation will consist in a magic transformation for a given program-query into a magic program-query for which the bottomup evaluation will simulate the top-down one of the original program.