Foreword

This Foreword provides an overview of Fifty Years of Loving v. Virginia and the Continued Pursuit of Racial Equality, a symposium hosted by the Fordham Law Review and cosponsored by the Fordham Law School Center on Race, Law & Justice. Even fifty years later, Loving provides ample foundation for an inquiry into the operation of race and racial inequality in the United States, which touches on the queries outlined above, as well as many others. In our view, a symposium focused on Loving makes a significant contribution by deepening scholarly analysis of that decision and by explicating the kinds of issues and concerns that should be at the heart of research concerning racial equality today

Point and interval estimation in two-stage adaptive designs with time to event data and biomarker-driven subpopulation selection

In personalized medicine, it is often desired to determine if all patients or only a subset of them benefit from a treatment. We consider estimation in two‐stage adaptive designs that in stage 1 recruit patients from the full population. In stage 2, patient recruitment is restricted to the part of the population, which, based on stage 1 data, benefits from the experimental treatment. Existing estimators, which adjust for using stage 1 data for selecting the part of the population from which stage 2 patients are recruited, as well as for the confirmatory analysis after stage 2, do not consider time to event patient outcomes. In this work, for time to event data, we have derived a new asymptotically unbiased estimator for the log hazard ratio and a new interval estimator with good coverage probabilities and probabilities that the upper bounds are below the true values. The estimators are appropriate for several selection rules that are based on a single or multiple biomarkers, which can be categorical or continuous

Determinants of the outcome on traumatic brain injury patients at Kenyatta National Hospital

Introduction: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is among the leading causes of admissions in hospitals globally. TBI has been attributed with significant morbidity, mortality and disability. Most injuries have mainly been attributed to motor accidents and falls from heights.Traumatic brain injuries represent a significant and growing disease burden in the developing world, and one of the leading causes of death in economically active adults in many low- and middle-income countries.In Kenya, motor vehicle accidents, assaults and motorcycle are significant causes. Per vehicle mile travelled, motorcycle riders have a 34-fold higher risk of death in a crash than people driving vehicles and 8 times more likely to be injured. neurological injury progresses over hours and days, resulting in a secondary injury. Inflammatory and neurotoxic processes result in vasogenic fluid accumulation within the brain, contributing to raised intracranial pressure, hypoperfusion, and cerebral ischaemia a secondary injury may be amenable to intervention. Almost one-third of patients who die after a TBI will talk or obey commands before their death.Physiological insults, Hypoxia, hypotension, hyper - or hypocapnia, hyper - or hypoglycaemia have all been shown to increase the risk of secondary brain injuryObjectives: To determine the patients’ factor, clinical care and systems factor affecting outcome of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) patients at Kenyatta National Hospital. Which led to a poor outcome of above 40 years, casual laborers, Polytrauma and time lapse from trauma to hospitalization experienced. The clinical care factors indicating good outcome which included; diagnosis and medication, Nursing care and clinical setting A&E, CCU. Length of hospitalization >10 days. Protocols factors; Patients in surgical wards recording poor outcome.Design: The rationale for using purposive sampling was to be able to distinguish between traumatic brain injury patients, who did not have any neurological problems before the injury, and those who had suffered neurological problems prior to trauma. A descriptive cross-sectional design, Purposive sampling and Quantitative approach to data collection, analysis and presentation was adopted.Setting: The study was carried out at the Accident and Emergency department (A&E), Critical care unit (CCU) and surgical wards of Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH).Subjects: Patients with TBI within 72 hours of injury, aged between 18- 65 years and should have had no previous neurological problem.Results: Patient factors; that led to poor outcome; above 40 years (p=0.042), casual laborers (p=0.043), Polytrauma (p=0.042) and time lapse from trauma to hospitalization (p=0.051). The clinical care factors indicated good outcome which included; diagnosis and medication (p=0.001), Nursing care (p=0.055) and clinical setting A&E (p=0.051), CCU (p=0.032). Length of hospitalization >10 days (p=0.050). Protocols factors; Patients in surgical wards had poor outcome (p=0.051).Conclusion: Patient factor's influenced outcome of TBI, Intensive care and longer time of hospitalization is paramount for better outcome.Recommendation: Setup of a Trauma Neuro Ward and training of Neuro Teams to facilitate professional and quality care to improve outcome of Traumatic Brain Injury patient

Valuing Caribbean Biodiversity Knowledge

Valuing Caribbean biodiversity for health and wealth requires knowledge of the bioresource so as to better appreciate the myriad of uses and services it provides. Increasing the knowledge base provides increasingly accurate valuation, which hopefully will lead to better management and sustainable use of this biodiversity. The Caribbean region comprises 229,540 km2 of land (only 10% of which is still in original forest cover) and 2,754,000 km2 of ocean. In the region there are about 13,000 identified plant species of which 205 genera and 6500 species are endemic. The marine area, with a maximum depth of 7686 m, includes the world’s second largest barrier reef. It is estimated that the region has 25.6% marine endemic species. Multiple uses have been found for both terrestrial and marine organisms of the Caribbean. Mass extinctions have occurred for Peoples, associated traditional knowledge, terrestrial and marine biodiversity. Sea level rise and increasing temperature are global problems that threaten this area. All this information cannot be covered in one chapter so this review, based on a wide range of publications including our own research, is to raise awareness of these issues and the need to know more while suggesting solutions for discussion

Marker assisted introgression of opaque2 gene into herbicide resistant elite maize inbred lines

Marker assisted selection in combination with conventional breeding can greatly accelerate the introgression of modified opaque2 genotype into herbicide resistant maize. By combining these two approaches, time and costs are greatly minimized. The application of opaque2 allele specific SSR markers was done on materials already undergoing selection in a breeding program for converting herbicide resistant maize lines into quality protein maize (QPM) which is the equivalent of modified opaque2 phenotype. The breeder had selected QPM lines using the light table in the previous cycle and we used leaf samples to extract DNA for analysis of the presence of the opaque2 gene using SSR markers. Two co-dominant SSR markers phi057 and umc1066 and a dominant marker phi112 were used. Umc1216, a modifier marker was also tested in combination with the opaque2 markers with theobjective of using the marker to select for modifiers for the opaque2 phenotype. The modified FTA paper technology protocol was applied in field sampling. The results showed 97% of the lines wereopaque2 while 3% were non-opaque2. Both methods of conventional breeding using light table and marker assisted selection (MAS) were comparable. However, the application of SSR markers and theFTA technology offers the breeder a fast, time saving, reliable and less labour intensive method of screening QPM maize during the early growing stages instead of having to wait to screen the kernels onthe light table after harvesting. Moreover, the routine biochemical analysis for high lysine and tryptophan levels need not be carried out at each backcross since the presence of the opaque2 gene is confirmed with markers

Optimization of FTA technology for large scale plant DNA isolation for use in marker assisted selection

Conventional methods for DNA acquisition and storage require expensive reagents and equipments. Experimental fields located in remote areas and large sample size presents greater challenge to developing country institutions constrained financially. FTATM technology uses a single format utilizing basic tools found in laboratory. In this study, FTATM cards were used to collect over 3000 samples from a field located 130 km and used to screen progeny plants using PCR-marker-assisted selection. PCR product yields and quality are sufficient for reliable scoring, distinguishing heterozygous fromhomozygous plants using ABI 3730 sequencer. Results indicate that this method is faster, easier and in-expensive

Ellipsometric measurements by use of photon pairs generated by spontaneous parametric down-conversion

We present a novel interferometric technique for performing ellipsometric measurements. This technique relies on the use of a non-classical optical source, namely, polarization-entangled twin photons generated by spontaneous parametric down-conversion from a nonlinear crystal, in conjunction with a coincidence-detection scheme. Ellipsometric measurements acquired with this scheme are absolute; i.e., they do not require source and detector calibration.Comment: 10 pages, accepted for publication in Optics Letter