India's Democratic Identity and Its Policy towards Myanmar from 1988 to 2010

Since the 1990s, India has reengaged with Myanmar government. The Indian government's engagement with Myanmar's military junta provoked a controversial issue in international community, claiming that "the oldest democratic country in Asia" is not doing enough to promote democracy in her neighborhood. The question raised was what has motivated India to develop cordial relations with Myanmar's military junta. The paper emphasizes the role of India's democratic identity in Indo-Myanmar policy during 1988-2010. Previous literatures revealed India's policy towards Myanmar in economic and security assumptions. They tended to sketch India Policy as "in-active" in promotion of democracy practiced from west democratic institutions norms, such as "isolation" and "totally disengagement". The paper briefly explains Indo-Myanmar relations from 1988 to 2010. Security and economic interests play a larger role than the intention to promote democratic identity in Myanmar. The paper argues that in the background of Indo-Myanmar development cooperation, India has made efforts to promote democratic value in Myanmar differently from other western democratic countries. Engagement policy has shaped Indo-Myanmar relations in the 1990s. India "engagement policy", "non-isolation" and "development cooperation" with Myanmar government has brought up contractions. (author's abstract

Statistical Function Tagging and Grammatical Relations of Myanmar Sentences

This paper describes a context free grammar (CFG) based grammatical relations for Myanmar sentences which combine corpus-based function tagging system. Part of the challenge of statistical function tagging for Myanmar sentences comes from the fact that Myanmar has free-phrase-order and a complex morphological system. Function tagging is a pre-processing step to show grammatical relations of Myanmar sentences. In the task of function tagging, which tags the function of Myanmar sentences with correct segmentation, POS (part-of-speech) tagging and chunking information, we use Naive Bayesian theory to disambiguate the possible function tags of a word. We apply context free grammar (CFG) to find out the grammatical relations of the function tags. We also create a functional annotated tagged corpus for Myanmar and propose the grammar rules for Myanmar sentences. Experiments show that our analysis achieves a good result with simple sentences and complex sentences.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figures, 8 tables, AIAA-2011 (India). arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:0912.1820 by other author

Long-Term Management of Hepatitis C-Seropositive Subjects with AntiOxidant Biofactor (AOB®), a Fermented Food Supplement

The efficacy of AntiOxidant Biofactor (AOB(R)) for the management of apparently healthy subjects with chronic hepatitis C infection was investigated. A total of 60 subjects (35 males, 25 females) participated in the trial. AOB was given orally in 2 packs (3g per pack) 3 times per day. 17 subjects had taken AOB for 3 years, 31 subjects up to 2 years, and 41 subjects up to one year. The initial mean (SD) serum alamine aminotransferase (ALT) level was 46.3+/-35.4IU/L, and significant (p0.05, paired t-test) reductions in the mean serum ALT levels were observed at 6 months (38.6+/-21.5IU/L), 18 months (31.9+/-18.1IU/L), 2 years (31.2+/-14.6IU/L), and 3 years (28.0+/-15.9IU/L). Those presenting with high serum ALT levels (30 subjects) demonstrated significant levels (p0.05, paired t-test) of reduction in the mean serum ALT levels at 6, 12, 18, 24, and 36 months of treatment. No side effects were observed and the AOB treatment was well tolerated by all subjects

Stra13 regulates satellite cell activation by antagonizing Notch signaling

Satellite cells play a critical role in skeletal muscle regeneration in response to injury. Notch signaling is vital for satellite cell activation and myogenic precursor cell expansion but inhibits myogenic differentiation. Thus, precise spatial and temporal regulation of Notch activity is necessary for efficient muscle regeneration. We report that the basic helix-loop-helix transcription factor Stra13 modulates Notch signaling in regenerating muscle. Upon injury, Stra13−/− mice exhibit increased cellular proliferation, elevated Notch signaling, a striking regeneration defect characterized by degenerated myotubes, increased mononuclear cells, and fibrosis. Stra13−/− primary myoblasts also exhibit enhanced Notch activity, increased proliferation, and defective differentiation. Inhibition of Notch signaling ex vivo and in vivo ameliorates the phenotype of Stra13−/− mutants. We demonstrate in vitro that Stra13 antagonizes Notch activity and reverses the Notch-imposed inhibition of myogenesis. Thus, Stra13 plays an important role in postnatal myogenesis by attenuating Notch signaling to reduce myoblast proliferation and promote myogenic differentiation

A Study of Burkholderia pseudomallei in the Environment of Farms in Thanlyin and Hmawbi Townships, Myanmar.

Melioidosis is a tropical infection, first described in Myanmar but now rarely diagnosed there, which is widespread in Southeast Asia. The infection is predominantly acquired by people and animals through contact with soil or water. This study aimed to detect the causative organism, Burkholderia pseudomallei, in environmental samples from farms in Thanlyin and Hmawbi townships near Yangon, Myanmar. One hundred and twenty soil samples and 12 water samples were collected and processed using standard microbiological methods. Burkholderia species were isolated from 50 of the 120 (42%) soil samples but none of the water samples. Arabinose assimilation was tested to differentiate between B. pseudomallei and the nonpathogenic Burkholderia thailandensis, and seven of 50 isolates (14%) were negative. These were all confirmed as B. pseudomallei by a species-specific multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR). This is the first study to detect environmental B. pseudomallei in Myanmar and confirms that melioidosis is still endemic in the Yangon area

Enhanced melioidosis surveillance in patients attending four tertiary hospitals in Yangon, Myanmar.

Abstract To investigate the current epidemiology of melioidosis in Yangon, Myanmar, between June 2017 and May 2019 we conducted enhanced surveillance for melioidosis in four tertiary hospitals in Yangon, where the disease was first discovered in 1911. Oxidase-positive Gram-negative rods were obtained from the microbiology laboratories and further analysed at the Department of Medical Research. Analysis included culture on Ashdown agar, the three disc sensitivity test (gentamicin, colistin and co-amoxiclav), latex agglutination, API 20 NE, antibiotic susceptibility testing, and a subset underwent molecular confirmation with a Burkholderia pseudomallei specific assay. Twenty one of 364 isolates (5.7%) were confirmed as B. pseudomallei and were mostly susceptible to the antibiotics used in standard therapy for melioidosis. Ten patients were from Yangon Region, nine were from Ayeyarwaddy region, and one each was from Kayin and Rakhine States. A history of soil contact was given by seven patients, five had diabetes mellitus and one had renal insufficiency. The patients presented with septicaemia (12 cases), pneumonia (three cases), urinary tract infection (two cases) and wound infection (four cases). Eighteen patients survived to hospital discharge. This study highlights the likelihood that melioidosis may be far more common, but underdiagnosed, in more rural parts of Myanmar as in other countries in SE Asia.</jats:p

Molecular Epidemiology of Dengue Viruses Co-circulating in Upper Myanmar in 2006

To understand the molecular epidemiology of circulating dengue viruses (DENV) in Upper Myanmar, DENV isolation was attempted by inoculating the sera of a panel of 110 serum samples onto a C6/36 mosquito cell line. The samples were collected from dengue (DEN) patients admitted at Mandalay Children’s Hospital in 2006. Infected culture fluids were subjected to a RT-PCR to detect the DENV genome. Three DENV strains were isolated. This was the first DENV isolation performed either in Mandalay or in Upper Myanmar. One strain belonged to DENV serotype-3 (DENV-3), and two other strains belonged to DENV serotype-4 (DEN-4). The sequence data for the envelope gene of these strains were used in a phylogenetic comparison of DENV-3 and DENV-4 from various countries. Phylogenetic analyses revealed that this DENV-3 strain was clustered within genotype II, and the two DENV-4 strains were clustered within genotype I in each serotype. The Myanmar strains were closely related to strains from the neighboring countries of Thailand and Bangladesh. These results are important for elucidating the trends of recent and future DEN outbreaks in Myanmar

Compound haploinsufficiency of Dok2 and Dusp4 promotes lung tumorigenesis

Recurrent broad-scale heterozygous deletions are frequently observed in human cancer. Here we tested the hypothesis that compound haploinsufficiency of neighboring genes at chromosome 8p promotes tumorigenesis. By targeting the mouse orthologs of human DOK2 and DUSP4 genes, which were co-deleted in approximately half of human lung adenocarcinomas, we found that compound-heterozygous deletion of Dok2 and Dusp4 in mice resulted in lung tumorigenesis with short latency and high incidence, and that their co-deletion synergistically activated MAPK signaling and promoted cell proliferation. Conversely, restoration of DOK2 and DUSP4 in lung cancer cells suppressed MAPK activation and cell proliferation. Importantly, in contrast to downregulation of DOK2 or DUSP4 alone, concomitant downregulation of DOK2 and DUSP4 was associated with poor survival in human lung adenocarcinoma. Therefore, our findings lend in vivo experimental support to the notion that compound haploinsufficiency, due to broad-scale chromosome deletions, constitutes a driving force in tumorigenesis