Circulating micrornas associated with glycemic impairment and progression in Asian Indians.

Aims/hypothesisAsian Indians have a high incidence of type 2 diabetes, but factors associated with glycemic progression in this population are not understood. MicroRNAs are emerging as important mediators of glucose homeostasis and have not been previously studied in Asian Indians. We examined microRNA (miR) expression associated with glycemic impairment and progression in Asian Indians from the San Francisco Bay Area. We studied 128 Asian Indians age 45-84 years without known cardiovascular disease and not taking diabetes medications. Oral glucose tolerance tests were performed at baseline and after 2.5 years. We quantified circulating miRs from plasma collected during the enrollment visit using a flow cytometry-based assay.ResultsGlycemic impairment was present in 57 % (n = 73) at baseline. MiR-191 was positively associated with glycemic impairment (odds ratio (OR) 1.7 (95 % CI 1.2, 2.4), p < 0.01). The prevalence of glycemic progression after 2.5 years was 24 % (n = 23). Six miRs were negatively associated with glycemic progression: miR-122 (OR 0.5 (0.2, 0.8), p < 0.01), miR-15a (OR 0.6 (0.4, 0.9), p < 0.01), miR-197 (OR 0.6 (0.4, 0.9), p < 0.01), miR-320a (OR 0.6 (0.4, 0.9), p < 0.01), miR-423 (OR 0.6 (0.4, 0.9), p < 0.01), and miR-486 (OR 0.5 (0.3, 0.8), p < 0.01). Further multivariate adjustment did not attenuate these results.Conclusions/interpretationThis is the first study to investigate circulating miRs associated with glycemic status among this high-risk ethnic group. Individual miRs were significantly associated with both glycemic impairment and glycemic progression. Further studies are needed to determine whether miR (s) might be useful clinical biomarkers for incident T2D in the Asian Indian population

Critical review on arsenic: Its occurrence, contamination and remediation from water and soil

With the increasing pollution in today’s world, importance is being given to solve a problem and do it in a sustainable, eco-friendly manner. Arsenic is a class-1 carcinogen and also causes many other side effects to humans, plants and animals. The utilization of arsenic as wood preservatives, pesticides, or its historical overuse by some military units for rice killing operations has led to the increase in the toxic effects of arsenic like its carcinogenicity, decreased immune response etc. Although conventional methods like coagulation, lime softening, adsorption, membrane technology are effective, they have their disadvantages like additional waste generation, causing increased pollution and are expensive. The better alternative is phytoremediation. Appropriate plants like Brassica juncea, Hydrilla verticilata, Pteris vittata L., Vallisneria natans,  can be chosen based on the method of the remediation like phytoextraction, phytostabilization and phytofiltration or phytovoltalization. This review provides the list of a few plants which can be likely chosen for the purpose of both water and soil remediation. Advancements are occurring in bioremediation studies with the development of transgenic plants like transgenic tobacco, transgenic Arabidopsis thaliana for better phytoremediation.  Understanding the mechanism employed by the plant for its uptake/detoxification can aid in the enhancement of the process of remediation with the external supply of phosphorus. Along with this, the proper and safe disposal of plants is crucial for the remediation process. In addition, awareness of this solution to the general public is to be made for its effectiveness

The Number of Edges in Maximal 2-Planar Graphs

A graph is 2-planar if it has local crossing number two, that is, it can be drawn in the plane such that every edge has at most two crossings. A graph is maximal 2-planar if no edge can be added such that the resulting graph remains 2-planar. A 2-planar graph on n vertices has at most 5n-10 edges, and some (maximal) 2-planar graphs - referred to as optimal 2-planar - achieve this bound. However, in strong contrast to maximal planar graphs, a maximal 2-planar graph may have fewer than the maximum possible number of edges. In this paper, we determine the minimum edge density of maximal 2-planar graphs by proving that every maximal 2-planar graph on n ? 5 vertices has at least 2n edges. We also show that this bound is tight, up to an additive constant. The lower bound is based on an analysis of the degree distribution in specific classes of drawings of the graph. The upper bound construction is verified by carefully exploring the space of admissible drawings using computer support

An Improved Web Explorer using Explicit Semantic Similarity with ontology and TF-IDF Approach

The Improved Web Explorer aims at extraction and selection of the best possible hyperlinks and retrieving more accurate search results for the entered search query. The hyperlinks that are more preferable to the entered search query are evaluated by taking into account weighted values of frequencies of words in search string that are present in anchor texts and plain texts available in title and body tags of various hyperlink pages respectively to retrieve relevant hyperlinks from all available links. Then the concept of ontology is used to gain insights of words in search string by finding their hypernyms, hyponyms and synsets to reach to the source and context of the words in search string. The Explicit Semantic Similarity analysis along with Naïve Bayes method is used to find the semantic similarity between lexically different terms using Wikipedia and Google as explicit semantic analysis tools and calculating the probabilities of occurrence of words in anchor and body texts .Vector Space Model is being used to calculate Term frequency and Inverse document frequency values, and then calculate cosine similarities between the entered Search query and extracted relevant hyperlinks to get the most appropriate relevance wise ranked search results to the entered search string

Local Complexity of Polygons

Many problems in Discrete and Computational Geometry deal with simple polygons or polygonal regions. Many algorithms and data-structures perform considerably faster, if the underlying polygonal region has low local complexity. One obstacle to make this intuition rigorous, is the lack of a formal definition of local complexity. Here, we give two possible definitions and show how they are related in a combinatorial sense. We say that a polygon $P$ has point visibility width $w=pvw$, if there is no point $q\in P$ that sees more than $w$ reflex vertices. We say that a polygon $P$ has chord visibility width $w=cvw$, if there is no chord $c=\textrm{seg}(a,b)\subset P$ that sees more than w reflex vertices. We show that $$cvw \leq pvw ^{O( pvw )},$$ for any simple polygon. Furthermore, we show that there exists a simple polygon with $$cvw \geq 2^{\Omega( pvw )}.$$Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure

Effect of Apamarga (Achyranthes aspera) Ksharajala over Recurrent Ganglion Cyst of Great Toe - Case Report

Ganglion cysts are cystic swelling occurring in relation to tendon sheath or synovial sheath or joint capsule containing clear gel like fluid. They usually occur at the dorsum of wrist (Near scaphoid-lunate articulation), flexor aspect of wrist and occasionally around ankle joint. Its occurrence in the great toe is rare. The condition is managed by injecting sclerosing agent like hyaluronidase or by excision. In Ayurveda, swellings are usually compared to Granthi but it is difficult to corelate ganglion cyst to a particular type of Granthi. In this case study, a 52-year-old male patient reported to the outpatient Department of Shalya Tantra SDMCAH, Hassan, with repeated complaints of swelling in plantar aspect of great toe with occasional tingling and numbness every month. The swelling was diagnosed as ganglion cyst. Excision of swelling followed by Apamarga Ksharajala was done. No reoccurrence of cyst along with relief in clinical manifestations was the outcome. Therefore, this case report proposes an innovative treatment modality for management of ganglion cyst and the observation made here would be useful for organizing future clinical trials

Familial Progressive Hyperpigmentation: A Case Report

Familial progressive hyperpigmentation (FPH) is a rare genodermatosis characterized by hyperpigmented patches in the skin and mucous membranes, present in early infancy, and increase in size and number with age. The genetic basis for FPH remains unknown. We report an unusual case of familial progressive hypermelanosis in a 17-year-old male patient with family history, who presented with a peculiar progressive oral pigmentation disorder. Diagnosis was confirmed by a series of hematological, biochemical, and histopathological investigations. Our paper stresses the need for the dentist to be aware of the systemic conditions that can also manifest in the oral cavity