Physical Activity and Mental Well-being in a Cohort Aged 60–64 Years

Introduction: Although evidence suggests physical activity (PA) may be associated with mental well-being at older ages, it is unclear whether some types of PA are more important than others. The purpose of this study is to investigate associations of monitored total PA under free-living conditions, self-reported leisure-time PA (LTPA), and walking for pleasure with mental well-being at age 60–64 years. Methods: Data on 930 (47%) men and 1,046 (53%) women from the United Kingdom MRC National Survey of Health and Development collected in 2006–2011 at age 60–64 were used in 2013–2014 to test the associations of PA (PA energy expenditure and time spent in different intensities of activity assessed using combined heart rate and acceleration monitors worn for 5 days, self-reported LTPA, and walking for pleasure) with the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (WEMWBS; range, 14–70). Results: In linear regression models adjusted for gender, long-term limiting illness, smoking, employment, socioeconomic position, personality, and prior PA, those who walked for >1 hour/week had mean WEMWBS scores 1.47 (95% CI=0.60, 2.34) points higher than those who reported no walking. Those who participated in LTPA at least five times/month had WEMWBS scores 1.25 (95% CI=0.34, 2.16) points higher than those who did not engage in LTPA. There were no statistically significant associations between free-living PA and WEMWBS scores. Conclusions: In adults aged 60–64 years, participation in self-selected activities such as LTPA and walking are positively related to mental well-being, whereas total levels of free-living PA are not

Introduction to disability policy through a human rights lens

This handbook on disability policy considers the impact on policy of understanding disability through a human rights framework. The introduction chapter describes the diverse conceptual approaches to disability policy, which sometimes operate in conflict or to exclude other approaches. The chapter explains the critical understanding of policy as the social relations between people engaged in the enactment of policy as a process. The chapter considers how a human rights understanding of disability interacts with and influences welfare, health and economic approaches to disability policy, especially in the context of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The argument for critiquing disability policy through the lens of human rights is presented to introduce the following chapters and narratives. The collective contributions offer a global perspective of disability policy at particular points in time and place, informed by the expertise of people with disability about their human rights

Report of Acoustic Test on PSLV IS.1/2L Structure

The results of acoustic conducted on PSLV IS.1/2L at Acoustic Test Facility are briefly given. It contains test set up, Instrumentation details and tables of spectral response

Structural and Electrical properties of ZnO Nanorod based dye sensitized solar cell

ThePreparation of nanorod involves simple and novel design of sol-gel process. Further, by using the prepared nanorods,working electrode will be prepared and it will be sensitized with ruthenium dye. A platinum coated FTO electrode will beused as a counter electrode. Dye sensitized solar cell will be assembled by using the working electrode and counterelectrode. FE-SEM and UV characteristics have been carried out at 250ᵒC, 350ᵒC&450ᵒC. The size and band gap ofnanorod at these temperatures has been found out to be 1μm and 2.95eV, 200nm and 2.86eV, 100nm and 2.79eVrespectively. The power conversion efficiency and the fill factor have been obtained as 2.72% and 0.722 respectively

Prevention of cataract in diabetic mice by topical pyruvate

KR Hegde1,3, S Kovtun1, SD Varma1,21Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, 2Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Maryland School of Medicine, 3Coppin State University, Department of Natural Sciences, Baltimore, MD, USABackground: It has been previously reported that oral administration of sodium pyruvate inhibits oxidative stress and cataract formation in diabetic animals. With a view to exploring the clinical usefulness of these findings, this study examined its preventive effect when administered topically as an eye drop.Methods: Diabetes was induced by intraperitoneal injections of streptozotocin. At the onset of diabetes, an eye drop preparation containing 2.5% sodium pyruvate was administered six times a day at 90-minute intervals. Treatment was continued for 6 weeks. Cataract formation was monitored ophthalmoscopically after mydriasis with 1% tropicamide eye drops. Subsequently, the treated and untreated diabetic animals and the age-matched normal controls were euthanized, their eyes enucleated, and the lenses isolated for biochemical assessment of protein glycation and glutathione levels.Results: Treatment with pyruvate eye drops was found to be significantly effective in inhibiting protein glycation. Glutathione levels were also better maintained. In addition, ophthalmoscopic examination revealed that the incidence of cataract in the pyruvate-treated group was only 12% as compared with the untreated diabetics in whom the incidence was 73%. Cataracts at this stage were largely equatorial.Conclusion: The results demonstrate that topical application of pyruvate can potentially be useful in attenuating or preventing cataract formation induced by diabetes and other conditions of oxidative stress.Keywords: pyruvate eye drops, diabetic cataract, protein glycation, oxidative stres

The structural and functional integrity of peripheral nerves depends on the glial-derived signal desert hedgehog

We show that desert hedgehog ( dhh), a signaling molecule expressed by Schwann cells, is essential for the structural and functional integrity of the peripheral nerve. Dhh-null nerves display multiple abnormalities that affect myelinating and nonmyelinating Schwann cells, axons, and vasculature and immune cells. Myelinated fibers of these mice have a significantly increased ( more than two times) number of Schmidt-Lanterman incisures ( SLIs), and connexin 29, a molecular component of SLIs, is strongly upregulated. Crossing dhh-null mice with myelin basic protein ( MBP)-deficient shiverer mice, which also have increased SLI numbers, results in further increased SLIs, suggesting that Dhh and MBP control SLIs by different mechanisms. Unmyelinated fibers are also affected, containing many fewer axons per Schwann cell in transverse profiles, whereas the total number of unmyelinated axons is reduced by approximately one-third. In dhh-null mice, the blood-nerve barrier is permeable and neutrophils and macrophage numbers are elevated, even in uninjured nerves. Dhh-null nerves also lack the largest-diameter myelinated fibers, have elevated numbers of degenerating myelinated axons, and contain regenerating fibers. Transected dhh nerves degenerate faster than wild-type controls. This demonstrates that a single identified glial signal, Dhh, plays a critical role in controlling the integrity of peripheral nervous tissue, in line with its critical role in nerve sheath development ( Parmantier et al., 1999). The complexity of the defects raises a number of important questions about the Dhh-dependent cell-cell signaling network in peripheral nerves

Multiple Content Adaptive Intelligent Watermarking Schemes for the Protection of Blocks of a Document Image

Most of the documents contain different types of information such as white space, static information and dynamic information or mix of static and dynamic information. In this paper, multiple watermarking schemes are proposed for protection of the information content. The proposed approach comprises of three phases. In Phase-1, the edges of the source document image are extracted and the edge image is decomposed into blocks of uniform size. In Phase-2, GLCM features like energy, homogeneity, contrast and correlation are extracted from each block and the blocks are classified as no-information, static, dynamic and mix of static and dynamic information content blocks. The adjacent blocks of same type are merged together into a single block. Each block is watermarked in Phase-3. The type and amount of watermarking applied is decided intelligently and adaptively based on the classification of the blocks which results in improving embedding capacity and reducing time complexity incurred during watermarking. Experiments are conducted exhaustively on all the images in the corpus. The experimental evaluations exhibit better classification of segments based on information content in the block. The proposed technique also outperforms the existing watermarking schemes on document images in terms of robustness, accuracy of tamper detection and recovery