Estimation of Aquaporin-4 levels in cerebral cortex and its role in brain edema and neurological function in an automated cortical cryoinjuy model in mice

INTRODUCTION: In brain, water is continuously shunted between blood-brain and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF)-brain interface. Dysfunction in water homeostasis has deleterious effects on brain function. Cerebral oedema is an inevitable consequence of any significant brain injury and is a common cause for morbidity and mortality in neurosurgical practice. Cerebral oedema following traumatic brain injury causes raised intracranial pressure, secondary neuronal damage, brain herniation and death. Osmotic agents, diuretics and steroids are being used in patients to control cerebral oedema following brain surgery, tumors, trauma and stroke. Despite this wide variety of agents available, cerebral oedema cannot be treated successfully in a proportion of patients and several mechanisms of oedema formation have not been optimally addressed. AIM / OBJECTIVES: 1. To study the spatial and temporal profile of expression of aquaporin-4 (AQP-4) at the injury site and distant sites from the injury site at 24, 48, 72 hours post injury following cerebral cortical cryoinjury in mice. 2. To correlate the AQP-4 levels at site of injury with the neurological function at various different time intervals following injury. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Young male adult Swiss albino mice weighing 30 to 35 gms were used. Twelve animals each were sacrificed at time points of 24 hours, 48 hours and 72 hours post injury. Brains from six normal mice were used for determining the water content as well as AQP4 distribution in the normal brain. Cold injury (18) was created by a automated cryoinjury model. Sham injury (18) was created by doing a craniotomy and placement of non pre-cooled copper cylinder on dura. Percentage water content was calculated and functional outcome was measured using NSS and RR score. AQP-4 expression was determined using western blotting. Data were expressed as mean ± standard deviation. The percentage water content and Neurological Severity Score (NSS) and RR score was compared between the two study groups using Mann-Whitney U test. P-values of less than 0.05 were considered statistically significant. All statistical analysis was done using SPSS Version 16.0 (IBM, USA). RESULTS: There was increased percentage water content in the injury group as compared to sham group at the end of 24 hours which correlated with poor neurological outcome as measured by the NSS and RR score which were significant at the end of 24 hours. There was increased expression of AQP-4 and its isoforms at the end of 24 hours at the site of injury and distant sites of injury in the injury group. This correlated with increased water content and poor neurological outcome. CONCLUSIONS: There is a 1.4 fold increase in AQP-4 expression in the injured brain as compared to sham as well as controls at the first 24 hours following injury that could be correlated with deterioration in functional outcome as well as development of brain oedema. Over the next 48 hours, there was partial functional recovery with reduction in AQP-4 expression. Though there was increase in the percentage water content at the end of 48 and 72 hours there was no statistically significant increase in the water content as that seen at the end of 24 hours. Hence newer strategies to target AQP-4 during the early hours of traumatic brain injury could lead to better treatment of cerebral oedema following a traumatic brain injury. However we need more studies to substantiate our findings

Alien Registration- Roberts, Edmond G. (Limestone, Aroostook County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/35187/thumbnail.jp

Considering the Perspective of Emergency Management Professionals Regarding Radiological Response and School Resiliency

The purpose of the study is to consider the perspective of emergency management professionals regarding need for a radiological response plan and its implications to school resiliency. This study utilizes a three-round, Modified Delphi Method to provide structure for the group process, elicit experts’ opinions, and build consensus regarding radiological response and school resiliency. The experts’ opinions are analyzed at the conclusion of each round and synthesized to create considerations for school systems for a school-system-based radiological-specific response plan. The recommendations align existing school system’s capabilities, roles and responsibilities with required emergency response actions necessary to protect the health and safety of faculty, staff, and students during a disaster such as the release of radioactive substances. Emergent themes surfacing during this study include: (1) training, (2) all-hazard planning, (3) communication, (4) collaboration, (5) medical response, and (6) protective actions. The results and recommendations from this study have generalizability for future practice and implementation of emergency management in a school setting, business and industry and for other local, state federal and tribal organizations. The major finding from this study indicates that an all-hazards plan is sufficient for response to a radiological-specific emergency event

From a slave to a critical-thinker-artistic-writer: Emancipating a professional\u27s anthill using action research professional practice with information systems professionals as the crux: Gnothe se auton non, j regrette rien die lichtung and all the world\u27s a stage

The diagram shown in figure 1 gives an impression of this thesis around the key words slavery, enslavement, emancipation, freedom, power, critical thinker, and artistic writer. The text at the centre reads my rich model evolution during this thesis. On rereading the text, I wonder if it is referring to my own evolution during the research, which could be described as rich model, or the evolution of the rich model that encapsulates, and in one sense is, the chief contribution of the thesis. That I use this sentence and this impressionistic diagram to begin this abstract should signal to you, dear reader, that this thesis tells my truth, with a little\u27t\u27, in my own way, about my reflective practitioner investigation of my experience of being part of the information systems profession and then part of a Doctor of Business Administration (D.B.A) programme. As such, it is what some may term post-modem, although I hesitate to describe it as such. Through my lived experience as an enslaved information systems professional, I can relate to the current situation of asymmetric warfare (note the picture of a fighter plane dropping a bomb with the word hacker under), asymmetric industrial relations, and some other forms of the master-relationship relationship. In my career as an information systems\u27 professional I have experienced that here is a constant that permeates the world: that parties desire to achieve greater power over any other competitor while sacrificing as little as possible of their own resources. Whether this is an actual war or just a simple jousting for advantage, the process remains similar: Two structuralist sides in conflict. Perhaps this simple description is the apparent reason why most fights are simply a zero-sum game, that is, one side wins ( + 1) and the other loses (-1). There are however variations to this theme. Hegel\u27s Master-slave dialogue is one. In this case the vanquished who is now a slave, eventually gains power over their master, the original victor, not through force of arms, but by becoming indispensable to the Master. The major and subtle weapon the slave possesses is time with obsequiousness that leads to dependency of the master to the actions of the slave. Again through my lived experience of near imagined slavery, I can also relate to another form of conflict that is now upon us, that of a structuralist formal army supported by post-structuralist critical-thinkers and the artist-writers of a post-modernist society against a structuralist guerrilla grouping, with a post-modem idealism giving vital quasi or actual intellectual support. This leaves the structuralist formal army seeking effective and favourable counters to this asymmetric situation through the weakness of the guerrilla forces, that is, a lack of critical-thinkers; else, it will see a form of defeat that is reliance upon the guerrilla force not to attack. It is a modem and curious situation where an overwhelming force seems to be impotent against a quick, opportunistic, attack by a much smaller, under-resourced opponent. Yet, if the guerrilla forces do in fact win, what is the result within the territory the guerrillas now control? It seems that it is not an egalitarian-based modem democracy, or even a functioning theocracy. The key is the critical-thinker, without these people who ask questions, embarrassing ones most times, the necessary balance to support a string of freedoms is lacking. The major problem is where do the guerrilla forces find these people, and support them by not exterminating them as counter-revolutionaries, thereby creating the basic weaknesses to the system they wish to impose. However, the above guerrilla case need not prevail. In my experience of organisational relationships, which are by their very nature asymmetric, a structuralist organisation can defeat even its deadliest asymmetric foe - an enslaved, passed over, disgruntled, and sabotage-prone information systems employee. I was one such employee, one such enslaved person

Quantum dynamics of a binary mixture of BECs in a double well potential: an Holstein-Primakoff approach

We study the quantum dynamics of a binary mixture of Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) in a double-well potential starting from a two-mode Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian. Focussing on the regime where the number of atoms is very large, a mapping onto a SU(2) spin problem together with a Holstein-Primakoff transformation is performed. The quantum evolution of the number difference of bosons between the two wells is investigated for different initial conditions, which range from the case of a small imbalance between the two wells to a coherent spin state. The results show an instability towards a phase-separation above a critical positive value of the interspecies interaction while the system evolves towards a coherent tunneling regime for negative interspecies interactions. A comparison with a semiclassical approach is discussed together with some implications on the experimental realization of phase separation with cold atoms.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in J. Phys.

Spectroscopy of Na⁺·Rg and transport coefficients of Na⁺ in Rg (Rg=He-Rn)

High-level ab initio calculations are used to obtain accurate potential energy curves for Na+·Kr, Na+·Xe, and Na+·Rn. These data are used to calculate spectroscopic parameters for these three species, and the data for the whole Na+·Rg series (Rg=He-Rn) are compared. Potentials for the whole series are then used to calculate both mobilities and diffusion coefficients for Na+ moving through a bath of each of the six rare gases, under conditions that match previous experimental determinations. Different available potentials and experimental data are then statistically compared. It is concluded that the present potentials are very accurate. The potential and other data for Na+·Rn appear to be the first such reported

Measuring overlaps in mesoscopic spin glasses via conductance fluctuations

We consider the electonic transport in a mesoscopic metallic spin glasses. We show that the distribution of overlaps between spin configurations can be inferred from the reduction of the conductance fluctuations by the magnetic impurities. Using this property, we propose new experimental protocols to probe spin glasses directly through their overlaps

Law's Looking Glass: Expert Identification Evidence Derived from Photographic and Video Images

This article offers a critical overview of expert identification evidence based on images. It reviews the Australian case law and then, in an interdisciplinary manner, endeavours to explain methodological, technical and theoretical problems with facial mapping evidence. It suggests that extant admissibility jurisprudence and traditional safeguards associated with expert opinion evidence and the adversarial trial might not adequately protect those accused of committing criminal acts when they are confronted with incriminating expert identification evidence

Structured Singular Value Analysis for Spintronics Network Information Transfer Control

Control laws for selective transfer of information encoded in excitations of a quantum network, based on shaping the energy landscape using time-invariant, spatially-varying bias fields, can be successfully designed using numerical optimization. Such control laws, already departing from classicality by replacing closed-loop asymptotic stability with alternative notions of localization, have the intriguing property that for all practical purposes they achieve the upper bound on the fidelity, yet the (logarithmic) sensitivity of the fidelity to such structured perturbation as spin coupling errors and bias field leakages is nearly vanishing. Here, these differential sensitivity results are extended to large structured variations using $\mu$-design tools to reveal a crossover region in the space of controllers where objectives usually thought to be conflicting are actually concordant