Synthesis of (±)-2-methoxy-9a-carbamorphinan and (±)-2-methoxy-9a-carba-14α-morphinan: acid catalyzed cyclizations of 1-m̲-methoxybenzyl-4, 4a,5,6,7,8-hexahydronaphthalen-2(3H)-one and 1-m̲-methoxy benzyloctalins

The bridged-ethers, (±)-2-methoxy-9a-carbamorphinan (1b) and (±)-2-methoxy-9a-carba-14α -morphinan(2b) have been synthesized. The acid-catalyzed cyclizations of 1-m̲-methoxy benzyloctalone 3b and 1-m̲-methoxybenzyloctalins 4b proceed with high regio-and stereoselectivities leading mostly to the bridged-ketone 14 and ether 1b respectively, along with o̲-methoxy-tetracyclic ketone 15 and the ether 17, in addition to other minor products

Castleman's disease in the head of the pancreas: report of a rare clinical entity and current perspective on diagnosis, treatment, and outcome

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Castleman's disease of the pancreas is a very rare condition that may resemble more common disease entities as well as pancreatic cancer.</p> <p>Case presentation</p> <p>Here we report the case of a 58-year-old African American male with an incidentally discovered lesion in the head of the pancreas. The specimen from his pancreaticoduodectomy contained a protuberant, encapsulated mass, exhibiting microscopic features most consistent with localized/unicentric Castleman's disease. These included florid follicular hyperplasia with mantle/marginal zone hyperplasia along with focal progressive transformation of germinal centers admixed with involuted germinal centers.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>To date, eight cases of Castleman's disease associated with the pancreas have been described in the world literature. We report the first case of unicentric disease situated within the head of the pancreas. In addition, we discuss the diagnostic dilemma Castleman's disease may present to the pancreatic surgeon and review current data on pathogenesis, treatment, and outcome.</p

Enhancing livelihoods in farming communities through super-resolution agromet advisories using advanced digital agriculture technologies

Agricultural production in India is highly vulnerable to climate change. Transformational change to farming systems is required to cope with this changing climate to maintain food security, and ensure farming to remain economically viable. The south Asian rice-fallow systems occupying 22.3 million ha with about 88% in India, mostly (82%) concentrated in the eastern states, are under threat. These systems currently provide economic and food security for about 11 million people, but only achieve 50% of their yield potential. Improvement in productivity is possible through efficient utilization of these fallow lands. The relatively low production occurs because of sub-optimal water and nutrient management strategies. Historically, the Agro-met advisory service has assisted farmers and disseminated information at a district-level for all the states. In some instances, Agro-met delivers advice at the block level also, but in general, farmers use to follow the district level advice and develop an appropriate management plan like land preparation, sowing, irrigation timing, harvesting etc. The advisories are generated through the District Agrometeorology Unit (DAMU) and Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK) network, that consider medium-range weather forecast. Unfortunately, these forecasts advisories are general and broad in nature for a given district and do not scale down to the individual field or farm. Farmers must make complex crop management decisions with limited or generalised information. The lack of fine scale information creates uncertainty for farmers, who then develop risk-averse management strategies that reduce productivity. It is unrealistic to expect the Agro-met advisory service to deliver bespoke information to every farmer and to every field simply with the help of Kilometre-scale weather forecast. New technologies must be embraced to address the emerging crises in food security and economic prosperity. Despite these problems, Agro-met has been successful. New digital technologies have emerged though, and these digital technologies should become part of the Agro-met arsenal to deliver valuable information directly to the farmers at the field scale. The Agro-met service is poised to embrace and deliver new interventions through technology cross-sections such as satellite remote sensing, drone-based survey, mobile based data collection systems, IoT based sensors, using insights derived from a hybridisation of crop and AIML (Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning) models. These technological advancements will generate fine-scale static and dynamic Agro-met information on cultivated lands, that can be delivered through Application Programming Interface (APIs) and farmers facing applications. We believe investment in this technology, that delivers information directly to the farmers, can reverse the yield gap, and address the negative impacts of a changing climate

Isolation and characterization of pandemic and nonpandemic strains of Vibrio parahaemolyticus from an outbreak of diarrhea in North 24 Parganas, West Bengal, India

Strains of the enteric pathogen Vibrio parahaemolyticus harboring the thermostable hemolysin (TDH) encoding gene tdh is known to cause epidemic and pandemic diarrhea. In industrialized countries, this pathogen causes sporadic or outbreaks of diarrheal illness associated with consumption of raw or improperly cooked seafood. This report describes a foodborne outbreak of gastroenteritis caused by V. parahaemolyticus in June 2011 following consumption of food served at a funeral reception held at Habra, North 24 Parganas, West Bengal, India. About 650 people attended the function, of whom 44 had acute watery diarrhea with other clinical symptoms; 35 of them were admitted to the District Hospital for the rehydration treatment. Stool specimens collected from three hospitalized cases were positive for V. parahaemolyticus, of which two strains were identified as an O4:K8 serovar and one was identified as O3:K6 serovar. The O3:K6 strain also possessed the pandemic group-specific toxRS gene target (GS), whereas the O4:K8 strains were negative. All strains were polymerase chain reaction-positive for tdh but were polymerase chain reaction-negative for trh. All of the strains were resistant to ampicillin but were pansensitive to other antimicrobials tested. Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) analysis using NotI showed that the O3:K6 strain was similar to that of a recent clinical strain from Kolkata, but had diverged from other strains during previous years. In contrast, PFGE analysis showed that the O4:K8 strains were closely related but differed from the Kolkata strain

Prenatal phenotyping: A community effort to enhance the Human Phenotype Ontology.

Technological advances in both genome sequencing and prenatal imaging are increasing our ability to accurately recognize and diagnose Mendelian conditions prenatally. Phenotype-driven early genetic diagnosis of fetal genetic disease can help to strategize treatment options and clinical preventive measures during the perinatal period, to plan in utero therapies, and to inform parental decision-making. Fetal phenotypes of genetic diseases are often unique and at present are not well understood; more comprehensive knowledge about prenatal phenotypes and computational resources have an enormous potential to improve diagnostics and translational research. The Human Phenotype Ontology (HPO) has been widely used to support diagnostics and translational research in human genetics. To better support prenatal usage, the HPO consortium conducted a series of workshops with a group of domain experts in a variety of medical specialties, diagnostic techniques, as well as diseases and phenotypes related to prenatal medicine, including perinatal pathology, musculoskeletal anomalies, neurology, medical genetics, hydrops fetalis, craniofacial malformations, cardiology, neonatal-perinatal medicine, fetal medicine, placental pathology, prenatal imaging, and bioinformatics. We expanded the representation of prenatal phenotypes in HPO by adding 95 new phenotype terms under the Abnormality of prenatal development or birth (HP:0001197) grouping term, and revised definitions, synonyms, and disease annotations for most of the 152 terms that existed before the beginning of this effort. The expansion of prenatal phenotypes in HPO will support phenotype-driven prenatal exome and genome sequencing for precision genetic diagnostics of rare diseases to support prenatal care

Model International Mobility Convention

While people are as mobile as they ever were in our globalized world, the movement of people across borders lacks global regulation. This leaves many refugees in protracted displacement and many migrants unprotected in irregular and dire situations. Meanwhile, some states have become concerned that their borders have become irrelevant. International mobility—the movement of individuals across borders for any length of time as visitors, students, tourists, labor migrants, entrepreneurs, long-term residents, asylum seekers, or refugees—has no common definition or legal framework. To address this key gap in international law, and the growing gaps in protection and responsibility that are leaving people vulnerable, the "Model International Mobility Convention" proposes a framework for mobility with the goals of reaffirming the existing rights afforded to mobile people (and the corresponding rights and responsibilities of states) as well as expanding those basic rights where warranted. In 213 articles divided over eight chapters, the Convention establishes both the minimum rights afforded to all people who cross state borders as visitors, and the special rights afforded to tourists, students, migrant workers, investors and residents, forced migrants, refugees, migrant victims of trafficking and migrants caught in countries in crisis. Some of these categories are covered by existing international legal regimes. However, in this Convention these groups are for the first time brought together under a single framework. An essential feature of the Convention is that it is cumulative. This means, for the most part, that the chapters build on and add rights to the set of rights afforded to categories of migrants covered by earlier chapters. The Convention contains not only provisions that afford rights to migrants and, to a lesser extent, States (such as the right to decide who can enter and remain in their territory). It also articulates the responsibilities of migrants vis-à-vis States and the rights and responsibilities of different institutions that do not directly respond to a right held by migrants

Derechos humanos y migración: El eslabón perdido

La protección de los derechos humanos de los migrantes y la administración efectiva de la migración (en el sentido de asegurar que los traslados se hagan de manera ordenada y predecible y, por tanto, más manejables) están estrechamente interrelacionadas. No obstante, la literatura sobre la migración y los derechos humanos, a pesar de ser voluminosa, difícilmente ha logrado que este nexo se vea con mayor claridad. El diseño de políticas en cualquiera de las dos áreas también ha permanecido en buena parte fuera de los límites de la otra. Y aun a pesar de signos maduros de un cambio, la coalición entre las organizaciones de derechos humanos y las asociaciones de migrantes sigue siendo débil.El artículo afirma que el nexo crucial entre los derechos humanos y la migración es el meollo de una comunidad de intereses, entre quienes están ansiosos por defender los derechos humanos y quienes se preocupan por un mejor manejo del movimiento de personas. Los estados nación tienen un constante interés y un inherente compromiso con la protección de los derechos básicos de sus propios ciudadanos aun cuando se encuentren en el extranjero. Esto remite a una reciprocidad y a una cooperación estrecha entre estados. El proteger estos derechos ayuda también a los estados nación a cumplir con sus obligaciones en otras áreas vitales de su responsabilidad. El presente trabajo finaliza con la sugerencia de que una mejor comprensión de estos entrelazamientos podría establecer las bases para una rica y dinámica agenda a la que puedan contribuir creativamente tanto el estado como las organizaciones de derechos humanos y las organizaciones de migrantes, al mismo tiempo que avancen en sus propias vocaciones y continúen fieles a ellas. Además de llevar los derechos básicos de los migrantes hacia la corriente principal del movimiento de los derechos humanos, dotaría de vitalidad y dinamismo renovados a ese mismo movimient

Managing migration in the 21st Century

The article argues that the present international migration system has been failing to respond to the new challenges and opportunities that the movement of people now presents in an increasingly globalizing world. In recent years policy making in many countries, especially in Western Europe, has taken place in a climate of crisis management, with lopsided emphasis on reactive and inward-looking immigration control, leading mostly to perverse results. To avoid the deepening migration malaise the study advocates a comprehensive, more predictable and internationally harmonized migration regime, based on the concept of regulated openness. Shared objectives, harmonized normative principles and co-coordinated institutional arrangements are described in some detail as the three main pillars of the proposed regime. The discussion shows how the sending, receiving and transit states —and the migrants themselves— can benefit from such a system, providing the main rationale for the joint endeavor. It concludes with arguments as to why the current concerns for security, however legitimate and justified, should not be allowed to dampen or sidetrack the nascent efforts to establish the proposed new regime

The Human Rights of Migrants: Strategies for moving forward

Taken from a paper prepared for the International Council on Human Rights Policy, and a book to be published shortly, Bimal Ghosh makes a critical analysis of the inadequate recognition of migrants' human rights in international treaties and national laws. He then discusses some of the other major obstacles that often impede migrants' access to human rights, highlighting the sharply enhanced vulnerability of migrants in certain special situations. The conclusion contains snapshots of his reflections on possible strategies for human rights groups in the wake of the attacks of 11 September 2001. Development (2003) 46, 21–29. doi:10.1177/10116370030463004

On the robustness of least squares procedures in regression models

The criterion robustness of the standard likelihood ratio test (LRT) under the multivariate normal regression model and also the inference robustness of the same test under the univariate set up are established for certain nonnormal distributions of errors. Restricting attention to the normal distribution of errors in the context of univariate regression models, conditions on the design matrix are established under which the usual LRT of a linear hypothesis (under homoscedasticity of errors) remains valid if the errors have an intraclass covariance structure. The conditions hold in the case of some standard designs. The relevance of C. R. Rao's (1967 In Proceedings Fifth Berkeley Symposium on Math. Stat. and Prob., Vol. 1, pp. 355-372) and G. Zyskind's (1967, Ann. Math. Statist.38 1092-1110) conditions in this context is discussed.Univariate and multivariate regression models least squares procedures maximum likelihood estimates likelihood ratio tests intraclass correlation matrix balanced block designs