Anti-inflammatory management for tendon injuries - friends or foes?

Acute and chronic tendon injuries are very common among athletes and in sedentary population. Most physicians prescribe anti-inflammatory managements to relieve the worst symptoms of swelling and pain, including non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, corticosteroids and physical therapies. However, experimental research shows that pro-inflammatory mediators such as prostaglandins may play important regulatory roles in tendon healing. Noticeably nearly all cases of chronic tendon injuries we treat as specialists have received non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs by their physician, suggesting that there might be a potential interaction in some of these cases turning a mild inflammatory tendon injury into chronic tendinopathy in predisposed individuals. We are aware of the fact that non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and corticosteroids may well have a positive effect on the pain control in the clinical situation whilst negatively affect the structural healing. It follows that a comprehensive evaluation of anti-inflammatory management for tendon injuries is needed and any such data would have profound clinical and health economic importance

Estimation of time-varying autocorrelation and its application to time-frequency analysis of nonstationary signals

This paper introduces a new method for adaptively estimating the time-varying autocorrelation (TV-AC) of nonstationary signals and studies its application to time-frequency analysis. The proposed method employs local estimation with a sliding window having a certain bandwidth to estimate the TV-AC locally. The window bandwidths are selected adaptively by a local plug-in rule to address the bias and variance tradeoff problem. Further, based on the proposed adaptive TV-AC estimation, a new time-frequency analysis method called adaptive windowed minimum variance spectral estimation (AWMVSE) is developed. Simulation results show that the proposed adaptive TV-AC estimation method and AWMVSE method have improved performances over conventional estimators with a fixed window. © 2013 IEEE.published_or_final_versio

Phytochemical screening and antimicrobial studies on the methanolic bulb extract of Allium sativum L.

Methanolic extract of the bulb of Allium sativum was screened for phytochemical and antimicrobial properties. The crude extract of A. sativum bulb showed positive results for carbohydrates, glycosides and proteins in high concentrations; alkaloids, saponins, reducing sugars, oils and steroids in medium concentrations, while flavonoids and acidic compounds were present in low amounts. Tannins, resins and terpenoids were however absent in the extract. All the six tested microorganisms exhibited varied susceptibility to the plant extract. The minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of the organisms were, 50 mg/ml for Salmonella paratyphi, 25 mg/ml for Bacillus subtilis, 100 mg/ml for Klebsiella pneumoniae, 12.5 mg/ml for Candida albicans, 3.12 mg/ml for Candida paralopsis and 6.25 mg/ml for Candida tropicalis. A. sativum showed both antifungal and antibacterial properties.Keywords: Phytochemical screening, antimicrobial activity, Allium sativum, bulb extractAfrican Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 12(14), pp. 1665-166

Broadband optical chaos for stimulated Brillouin scattering suppression in power over fiber

Broadband chaos generated in an optically injected semiconductor laser is applied for power-over-fiber transmission. By varying the injection power, period-one oscillation, period-two oscillation, and chaotic oscillation are observed in the injected slave laser, indicating a period-doubling route to chaos. Compared to the free-running output of the laser, its chaotic output has a drastically increased signal bandwidth, which leads to a 19 dB increase of the stimulated Brillouin scattering threshold. Using a chaos of 5:2GHz bandwidth, a maximum optical power of 27dBm is obtained after 20km transmission over fiber, which is applicable to optically powering some advanced communication networks. The approach uses the inherent nonlinear laser dynamics, which requires no modulation electronics or microwave signal sources. © 2011 Optical Society of America.published_or_final_versio

SHIPping out diabetes-Metformin, an old friend among new SHIP2 inhibitors

SHIP2 (Src homology 2 domain-containing inositol 5 '-phosphatase 2) belongs to the family of 5 '-phosphatases. It regulates the phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K)-mediated insulin signalling cascade by dephosphorylating the 5 '-position of PtdIns(3,4,5)P3 to generate PtdIns(3,4)P2, suppressing the activity of the pathway. SHIP2 mouse models and genetic studies in human propose that increased expression or activity of SHIP2 contributes to the pathogenesis of the metabolic syndrome, hypertension and type 2 diabetes. This has raised great interest to identify SHIP2 inhibitors that could be used to design new treatments for metabolic diseases. This review summarizes the central mechanisms associated with the development of diabetic kidney disease, including the role of insulin resistance, and then moves on to describe the function of SHIP2 as a regulator of metabolism in mouse models. Finally, the identification of SHIP2 inhibitors and their effects on metabolic processes in vitro and in vivo are outlined. One of the newly identified SHIP2 inhibitors is metformin, the first-line medication prescribed to patients with type 2 diabetes, further boosting the attraction of SHIP2 as a treatment target to ameliorate metabolic disorders.Peer reviewe

Time-varying correlation coefficients estimation and its application to dynamic connectivity analysis of fMRI

Exploration of the dynamics of functional brain connectivity based on the correlation coefficients of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data is important for understanding the brain mechanisms. Because fMRI data are time-varying in nature, the functional connectivity shows substantial fluctuations and dynamic characteristics. However, an effective method for estimating time-varying functional connectivity is lacking, which is mainly due to the difficulty in choosing an appropriate window to localize the time-varying correlation coefficients (TVCC). This paper introduces a novel method for adaptively estimating the TVCC of non-stationary signals and studies its application to infer dynamic functional connectivity of fMRI data in a visual task. The proposed method employs a sliding window having a certain bandwidth to estimate the TVCC locally and the window bandwidths are selected adaptively by a local plug-in rule to minimize the mean squared error. The results show that the functional connectivity changes in the visual task are transient, which suggests that simply assuming sustained connectivity changes during task period might not be sufficient to capture dynamic connectivity changes induced by tasks.published_or_final_versio

The evaluation of the bone graft survival status in titanium cervical cages by radionuclide bone CT scan

To find a better way to evaluate the bone graft survival status in cervical cages, forty-one patients suffering from one-level cervical spondylosis were enrolled in this study. All underwent anterior cervical decompression and fusion with titanium cage and plate. When followed up, another 21 patients were confirmed as one-level cervical spondylosis without operation and were enrolled as control group. "Bolus" injection of radioactive 99mTc methylene diphosphonate (99mTc-MDP) with a dose of 25 ~ 30 mCi was performed through cubital vein, and radionuclide distribution images of cervical spine were obtained by single photon emission computed tomography/computed tomography (SPECT/CT). In sagittal view, bone graft was positioned accurately. By “region of interest” (ROI) technique, the same regions in bone graft and thoracic vertebra with the same level of suprasternal fossa were selected. Radioactive count ratio was then obtained. In the control group, “bone graft” was chosen on the inferior vertebra of the lesion segment, and the ratio was similarly gotten. Statistical difference was shown between bone graft group and control group by t test (t = 2.713, P < 0.05). The bone graft survival rate was 100% by SPECT/CT and bony fusion rate was 92.7% by CT scan. It indicated that in all bony fusion cases, bone graft survived; however, the bone survival was not surely together with bony fusion.Key words: Bone graft, titanium cervical cage, radionuclide bone CT

Fast and robust chromatic dispersion estimation based on temporal auto-correlation after digital spectrum superposition

We investigate and experimentally demonstrate a fast and robust chromatic dispersion (CD) estimation method based on temporal auto-correlation after digital spectrum superposition. The estimation process is fast, because neither tentative CD scanning based on CD compensation nor specific cost function calculations are used. Meanwhile, the proposed CD estimation method is robust against polarization mode dispersion (PMD), amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) noise and fiber nonlinearity. Furthermore, the proposed CD estimation method can be used for various modulation formats and digital pulse shaping technique. Only 4096 samples are necessary for CD estimation of single carrier either 112 Gbps DP-QPSK or 224 Gbps DP-16QAM signal with various pulse shapes. 8192 samples are sufficient for the root-raised-cosine pulse with roll-off factor of 0.1. As low as 50 ps/nm standard deviation together with a worst estimation error of about 160 ps/nm is experimentally obtained for 7 x 112 Gbps DP-QPSK WDM signal after the transmission through 480 km to 9120 km single mode fiber (SMF) loop using different launch powers

Genetic enrichment of cardiomyocytes derived from mouse embryonic stem cells

Pluripotent embryonic stem cells (ESC) have the ability to differentiate into a variety of cell lineages in vitro, including cardiomyocytes. Successful applications of ESC-derived cardiomyocytes in cell therapy and tissue engineering were limited by difficulties in selecting the desired cells from the heterogeneous cell population. We describe a simple method to generate relatively pure cardiomyocytes from mouse ESCs. A construct comprising mouse cardiac α-myosin heavy chain (MHC) promoter driving the neomycin resistance gene and SV40 promoter driving the hygromycin resistant gene designated pMHCneo/ SV40-hygro, was stably transfected into mouse ESCs. The transgenic ESC line, designated MN6 retained the undifferentiated state and the potential of cardiogenic differentiation. After G418 selection, more than 99% of cells expressed α-sarcomeric actin. Immunocytological and ultrastructural analysis demonstrated that, the selected cardiomyocytes were highly differentiated. Our results represent a simple genetic manipulation used to product essentially pure cardiomyocytes from differentiating ESCs. It may facilitate the development of cell therapy in heart diseases.Key words: Embryonic stem cells, α-myosin heavy chain promoter, cardiomyocytes, differentiation, genetic enrichment

Paleomagnetic evidence for a long-lived, potentially reversing martian dynamo at ~3.9 Ga

The 4.1-billion-year-old meteorite Allan Hills 84001 (ALH 84001) may preserve a magnetic record of the extinct martian dynamo. However, previous paleomagnetic studies have reported heterogeneous, nonunidirectional magnetization in the meteorite at submillimeter scales, calling into question whether it records a dynamo field. We use the quantum diamond microscope to analyze igneous Fe-sulfides in ALH 84001 that may carry remanence as old as 4.1 billion years (Ga). We find that individual, 100-μm-scale ferromagnetic mineral assemblages are strongly magnetized in two nearly antipodal directions. This suggests that the meteorite recorded strong fields following impact heating at 4.1 to 3.95 Ga, after which at least one further impact heterogeneously remagnetized the meteorite in a nearly antipodal local field. These observations are most simply explained by a reversing martian dynamo that was active until 3.9 Ga, thereby implying a late cessation for the martian dynamo and potentially documenting reversing behavior in a nonterrestrial planetary dynamo