A percutaneous needle biopsy technique for sampling the supraclavicular brown adipose tissue depot of humans.

Brown adipose tissue (BAT) has been proposed as a potential target tissue against obesity and its related metabolic complications. Although the molecular and functional characteristics of BAT have been intensively studied in rodents, only a few studies have used human BAT specimens due to the difficulty of sampling human BAT deposits. We established a novel positron emission tomography and computed tomography-guided Bergström needle biopsy technique to acquire human BAT specimens from the supraclavicular area in human subjects. Forty-three biopsies were performed on 23 participants. The procedure was tolerated well by the majority of participants. No major complications were noted. Numbness (9.6%) and hematoma (2.3%) were the two minor complications noted, which fully resolved. Thus, the proposed biopsy technique can be considered safe with only minimal risk of adverse events. Adoption of the proposed method is expected to increase the sampling of the supraclavicular BAT depot for research purposes so as to augment the scientific knowledge of the biology of human BAT

ENSO’s far reaching connection to Indian cold waves

During boreal winters, cold waves over India are primarily due to transport of cold air from higher latitudes. However, the processes associated with these cold waves are not yet clearly understood. Here by diagnosing a suite of datasets, we explore the mechanisms leading to the development and maintenance of these cold waves. Two types of cold waves are identified based on observed minimum surface temperature and statistical analysis. The first type (TYPE1), also the dominant one, depicts colder than normal temperatures covering most parts of the country while the second type (TYPE2) is more regional, with significant cold temperatures only noticeable over northwest India. Quite interestingly the first (second) type is associated with La Niña (El Niño) like conditions, suggesting that both phases of ENSO provide a favorable background for the occurrence of cold waves over India. During TYPE1 cold wave events, a low-level cyclonic anomaly generated over the Indian region as an atmospheric response to the equatorial convective anomalies is seen advecting cold temperatures into India and maintaining the cold waves. In TYPE2 cold waves, a cyclonic anomaly generated over west India anomalously brings cold winds to northwest India causing cold waves only in those parts

Force field for planar vibrations of urea: use of CNDO/Force MO calculations

Symmetry force field calculations have been performed for the planar vibrations of urea using CNDO/Force method. The CNDO/Force calculations predict well the signs and the magnitudes of bending and interaction force constants; the stretching force constants are found to be higher in magnitude. The bending and interaction constants obtained from these calculations and the stretching force constants obtained from the literature are considered for the initial force field. Using the observed frequencies for urea and its isotopic analogues, urea-D4, urea-15N2, urea-15N2D4 and urea-18O in the solid as well as in the solution phases, the force field is refined by carrying out iterations over the diagonal force constants. In the final stages of the refinement iterations are carried out over all the force constants keeping the signs of the interaction constants unchanged. It is found that the agreement between the calculated and the observed frequencies is excellent. The final force fields in terms of symmetry as well as redundancy free internal valence coordinates are reported. On the basis of the potential energy distribution the vibrational assignments are discusse

Anti-oxidant activity of compounds and fractions of Manilkara hexandra (Roxb) bark

547-555Isolation of a protein mixture having IC50 of 60µg/mL against Streptococcus mutans from the methanol extract of bark of Manilkara hexandra (Roxb) along with six plants phenols Catechin, Catecol, Gallic acid, Phloroglucinol, Quercetin and Rutin has been reported. Where in phenolic constituents of the bark has been reported for the first time and the isolated compounds having moderate activity against S.mutans.In this work, the anti-oxidant activity of these pure compounds and fractions has been studied and its relevance in oral care is established. Comparative anti-oxidant activity of all the six compounds along with the crude extract and fractions have been assessed using eight different assay protocols. The results indicate that twice daily tooth cleaning with the bark can provide basic oral disease protection and thereby assuring several health benefits. Synergistic activity of the phenolic constituents along with the protein and other constituentsmight be a reasonable scientific explanation for the folklore use of the plant as one of the prescription for oral diseases

Anti-oxidant activity of compounds and fractions of Manilkara hexandra (Roxb) bark

Isolation of a protein mixture having IC50 of 60µg/mL against Streptococcus mutans from the methanol extract of bark of Manilkara hexandra (Roxb) along with six plants phenols Catechin, Catecol, Gallic acid, Phloroglucinol, Quercetin and Rutin has been reported. Where in phenolic constituents of the bark has been reported for the first time and the isolated compounds having moderate activity against S.mutans.In this work, the anti-oxidant activity of these pure compounds and fractions has been studied and its relevance in oral care is established. Comparative anti-oxidant activity of all the six compounds along with the crude extract and fractions have been assessed using eight different assay protocols. The results indicate that twice daily tooth cleaning with the bark can provide basic oral disease protection and thereby assuring several health benefits. Synergistic activity of the phenolic constituents along with the protein and other constituentsmight be a reasonable scientific explanation for the folklore use of the plant as one of the prescription for oral diseases

Statistical Adaptive Sensing by Detectors with Spectrally Overlapping Bands

It has recently been reported that by using a spectral-tuning algorithm, the photocurrents of multiple detectors with spectrally overlapping responsivities can be optimally combined to synthesize, within certain limits, the response of a detector with an arbitrary responsivity. However, it is known that the presence of noise in the photocurrent can degrade the performance of this algorithm significantly, depending on the choice of the responsivity spectrum to be synthesized. We generalize this algorithm to accommodate noise. The results are applied to quantum-dot mid-infrared detectors with bias-dependent spectral responses. Simulation and experiment are used to show the ability of the algorithm to reduce the adverse effect of noise on its spectral-tuning capability

Detection of Cocaine Use with Wireless Electrocardiogram Sensors

In recent years, the ability to continuously monitor activities, health, and lifestyles of individuals using sensor technologies has reached unprecedented levels. Such ubiquitous physiological sensing has the potential to profoundly improve our understanding of human behavior, leading to more targeted treatments for a variety of disorders. The long terms goal of this work is development of novel computational tools to support the study of addiction in the context of cocaine use. The current paper takes the first step in this important direction by posing a simple, but crucial question: Can cocaine use be reliably detected using wearable on-body sensors and current machine learning algorithms? We select wireless ECG as the most promising sensing modality for cocaine use detection. The main contributions in this paper include the presentation of a novel clinical study of cocaine use in which a unique set of wireless ECG data were collected, the description of a computational pipeline for inferring morphological features from noisy wireless ECG waveforms, and the evaluation of cocaine use detection algorithms based on data-driven and knowledge-based feature representations. Our results show that cocaine use can be detected with AUC levels above 0.9 in both the within-subjects and between-subjects cases at the 32mg/70kg dosage level