Još o toksičnosti kadmija - s posebnim osvrtom na nastanak oksidacijskoga stresa i na interakcije s cinkom i magnezijem

Discovered in late 1817, cadmium is currently one of the most important occupational and environmental pollutants. It is associated with renal, neurological, skeletal and other toxic effects, including reproductive toxicity, genotoxicity, and carcinogenicity. There is still much to find out about its mechanisms of action, biomarkers of critical effects, and ways to reduce health risks. At present, there is no clinically efficient agent to treat cadmium poisoning due to predominantly intracellular location of cadmium ions. This article gives a brief review of cadmium-induced oxidative stress and its interactions with essential elements zinc and magnesium as relevant mechanisms of cadmium toxicity. It draws on available literature data and our own results, which indicate that dietary supplementation of either essential element has beneficial effect under condition of cadmium exposure. We have also tackled the reasons why magnesium addition prevails over zinc and discussed the protective role of magnesium during cadmium exposure. These findings could help to solve the problem of prophylaxis and therapy of increased cadmium body burden.Iako je otkriven tek 1817. godine, kadmij je trenutačno jedan od najvažnijih onečišćivača životne i radne sredine. Štetno djeluje na bubrege, živčani sustav, kosti, reproduktivni sistem, a ima i genotoksične i karcinogene efekte. Nužna su dalja istraživanja vezana za mehanizme njegove toksičnosti, biomarkere efekata, kao i načine smanjenja rizika za zdravlje. Osim toga, do danas nije otkriven agens efikasan u terapiji trovanja kadmijem s obzirom na to da je kadmij intracelularni kation. U ovom radu dan je sažet pregled važnih mehanizama toksičnosti kadmija, kao što su nastanak oksidativnog stresa i interakcije s esencijalnim elementima, cinkom i magnezijem, na osnovi dostupnih literaturnih podataka, kao i naših ispitivanja koja upućuju na to da povećani unos navedenih esencijalnih elemenata pokazuje pozitivne efekte pri ekspoziciji kadmiju. Obrazložena je prednost suplementacije magnezijem pred suplementacijom cinkom i razmatrana preventivna uloga magnezija pri intoksikaciji kadmijem. Ovi su rezultati doprinos rješavanju problema profi lakse i terapije trovanja kadmijem

Neuro-Genetic Adaptive Attitude Control

It has previously been demonstrated that for smooth dynamic systems, using relatively few sample points from a single trajectory, a neural network can be trained to perform very accurate short-term prediction over a large part of the phase space. In this paper, we exploit the capability of a Locally Predictive Network (LPN) to derive an adaptive control architecture for a satellite equipped with controllable, bidirectional thrusters on each of the three principal axes. It is assumed that a hardware implementation of the neural network is available. The inputs for the network are a small history of system states up to the present time and a set of current control inputs, the outputs are the next system state. Once the LPN has been trained successfully, at each time step a genetic algorithm searches the space of hypothetical control inputs. Given a set of control signals, the LPN is used to predict the state of the system at the next sample point. This enables the ‘fitness’ of each set of hypothetical control torques to be evaluated very rapidly. In effect, the genetic algorithm determines a satisfactory solution to the inverse kinematic problem in time to apply the solution (set of control torques) at the next control point. With the exception of the neuromodelling (which is repeated only when the system dynamics change), the whole process is then repeated. The results presented indicate that such an architecture is easily able to master the attitude control problem for arbitrary slew angles, with arbitrary a priori unknowndynamics and noise in the sensor system