99mTc-IgG-Lung Scintigraphy in the Assessment of Pulmonary Involvement in Interstitial Lung Disease and Its Comparison With Pulmonary Function Tests and High-Resolution Computed Tomography: A Preliminary Study

Background: The discrimination of inactive inflammatory processes from the active form of the disease is of great importance in the management of interstitial lung disease (ILD). Objectives: The aim of this study was to determine the efficacy of 99mTc-IgG scan for the detection of severity of disease compared to high-resolution computed tomography (HRCT) and pulmonary function test (PFT). Patients and Methods: Eight known cases of ILD including four cases of Mustard gas (MG) intoxication and four patients with ILD of unknown cause were included in this study. A population of six patients without lung disease was considered as the control group. The patients underwent PFT and high-resolution computed tomography scan, followed by 99mTc-IgG scan. They were followed up for one year. 99mTc-IgG scan assessment of IgG uptake was accomplished both qualitatively (subjectively) and semiquantitatively. Results: All eight ILD patients demonstrated a strong increase in 99mTc-IgG uptake in the lungs, compared to the control patients. The 99mTc-IgG scan scores were higher in the patient group (0.64[95% confidence interval (CI)=0.61-0.69])) than the control group (0.35 (0.35[95% CI=0.28-0.40]), (P 0.05). There were no significant correlations between 99mTc-IgG score and HRCT patterns including ground glass opacity, reticular fibrosis and honeycombing (P value > 0.05). Conclusion: The present results confirmed that 99mTc-IgG scan could be applied to detect the severity of pulmonary involvement, which was well correlated with HRCT findings. This data also showed that the 99mTc-IgG scan might be used as a complement to HRCT in the functional evaluation of the clinical status in ILD; however, further studies are recommended

Comparative Analgesic and Anti-inflammatory Activities of Two Polyherbal Tablet Formulations (Aujaie and Surangeen) in Rats

Purpose: To investigate the analgesic and anti-inflammatory activities of two herbal polymedicines - Aujaie and Surangeen to ascertain their therapeutic claims.Methods: A total of 96 rats were divided into two equal groups; one for determination of antiinflammatory activity and the other for analgesic activity. Anti-inflammatory and analgesic activities were evaluated by carrageenan-induced paw edema and formalin-induced paw licking test, respectively. For both studies, group I (untreated control) received 1 ml/kg, (po) of gum suspension 1 h before carrageenan injection. Aspirin (100 mg/kg, po) was given to group II (treated control) before injection. Groups III, IV and V were administered orally aujaie (3, 4 and 5 mg/kg, po, respectively), while surangeen tablets (10, 20 and 40 mg/kg, po) were given to groups VI, VII and VIII, respectively. Pain was experimentally induced by injecting 0.1 ml of 2.5 % formalin (40 % formaldehyde in distilled water) via the subplantar region of the left hind paw.Results: Significant (p < 0.05) anti-inflammatory activity for aspirin (group II as well as for groups III - VIII with paw edema inhibition (PDI) ranging from 24.6 - 90.2 %, There was significant ((p < 0.05) analgesic activity in group II, VI and VII while in groups III - V and VIII the activity was insignificant (p < 0.05).Conclusion: Aujaie and surangeen tablets exhibited pronounced analgesic and anti-inflammatory activities in rats depending on the dose employed.Keywords: Aujaie, Surangeen, Anti-inflammatory, Analgesic

Factors Influencing Career Routes of Female Librarianship: A Literature Review

This research paper aims to understand elements that act as counter-productive to the achievements of females working as professional librarians. The paper uses current literature to explore inhibitive factors for the career development of female librarians. The methodology employed in the paper is epistemological realism and deductive reasoning. This methodology adds to existing knowledge while being linked with realism. The research investigates main factors like cultural stereotyping, discrimination against women, marriage, children, career breaks, mentoring, family support, and organizational structure and policies to ascertain their role in enhancing or diminishing female librarians’ career progression. The nature of research is deductive as the conclusions are drawn from available literature as applied to professional females in the field of librarianship. The findings of the research are expected to validate these important factors as integral stimulants for female librarians’ career development

The regulatory subunit of PKA-I remains partially structured and undergoes β-aggregation upon thermal denaturation

Background: The regulatory subunit (R) of cAMP-dependent protein kinase (PKA) is a modular flexible protein that responds with large conformational changes to the binding of the effector cAMP. Considering its highly dynamic nature, the protein is rather stable. We studied the thermal denaturation of full-length RIα and a truncated RIα(92-381) that contains the tandem cyclic nucleotide binding (CNB) domains A and B. Methodology/Principal Findings: As revealed by circular dichroism (CD) and differential scanning calorimetry, both RIα proteins contain significant residual structure in the heat-denatured state. As evidenced by CD, the predominantly α-helical spectrum at 25°C with double negative peaks at 209 and 222 nm changes to a spectrum with a single negative peak at 212-216 nm, characteristic of β-structure. A similar α→β transition occurs at higher temperature in the presence of cAMP. Thioflavin T fluorescence and atomic force microscopy studies support the notion that the structural transition is associated with cross-β-intermolecular aggregation and formation of non-fibrillar oligomers. Conclusions/Significance: Thermal denaturation of RIα leads to partial loss of native packing with exposure of aggregation-prone motifs, such as the B' helices in the phosphate-binding cassettes of both CNB domains. The topology of the β-sandwiches in these domains favors inter-molecular β-aggregation, which is suppressed in the ligand-bound states of RIα under physiological conditions. Moreover, our results reveal that the CNB domains persist as structural cores through heat-denaturation. © 2011 Dao et al

Proximate composition and mineral profile of eight different unstudied date (Phoenix dactylifera L.) varieties from Pakistan

With the aim of extending the knowledge on chemical composition of dates (Phoenix dactylifera L.), eight different sun dried date varieties; (1) Daki, (2) Aseel, (3) Coconut, (4) Khuzravi, (5) Halavi, (6) Zahidi, (7) Deglet Noor and (8) Barkavi were examined to determine their proximate composition and mineral profile. All the date varieties were found to be rich in proteins, fiber, carbohydrates and net gross energy (352.329 Kcal/100 g in Aseel to 425.147 Kcal/100 g in Khuzravi) having suitable levels of lipids and low values of ash, moisture and oxalates. Na, K and Li were found as macrominerals whereas Cr, Cu, Ca, Mg, Ni, Zn and Mn were found as microminerals. The results suggest that all the studied dates serve as good source of vital nutrients and can be considered as premium quality having significantly higher energy values than the earlier reported values for dates

Pharmacological basis for the medicinal use of polyherbal formulation and its ingredients in cardiovascular disorders using rodents

A compound herbal formulation (POL4) has been used in the indigenous system of medicine to treat cardiometabolic disorders like diabetes and associated hypertension. POL4 and most of its constituents have not been studied widely for its therapeutic use in hypertension. This study is aimed to determine the efficacy and possible insight into mechanism(s) for the medicinal use of POL4 and its ingredients in hypertension

Designing a Cloud Analytics Service Framework for Mobile Advertisement and Marketing: A Review

If we talk about data earlier, it was not much larger and complicated because earlier the use of internet and technologies were not in use as it is in current days. Nowadays large amount of data is generated in every second, that’s why Cloud environment became very challenging because of its popularity with the communication, networking and storage theorizes [5]. Today our modern era is significantly dependent on Internet and Mobile applications. Today’s generation prefer to communicate with each other virtually rather than meeting with each other face to face so they use many mobile application or online application for communication using internet and technologies. Survey statics shows that mobile advertisement is rapidly growing that majorly focuses on marketing. In this paper we have surveyed different scenarios of mobile advertisement and marketing that how different methods, algorithm and approaches is being used for mobile advertisement and marketing

A mammalian functional-genetic approach to characterizing cancer therapeutics

Supplementary information is available online at http://www.nature.com/naturechemicalbiology/. Reprints and permissions information is available online at http://npg.nature.com/reprintsandpermissions/.Identifying mechanisms of drug action remains a fundamental impediment to the development and effective use of chemotherapeutics. Here we describe an RNA interference (RNAi)–based strategy to characterize small-molecule function in mammalian cells. By examining the response of cells expressing short hairpin RNAs (shRNAs) to a diverse selection of chemotherapeutics, we could generate a functional shRNA signature that was able to accurately group drugs into established biochemical modes of action. This, in turn, provided a diversely sampled reference set for high-resolution prediction of mechanisms of action for poorly characterized small molecules. We could further reduce the predictive shRNA target set to as few as eight genes and, by using a newly derived probability-based nearest-neighbors approach, could extend the predictive power of this shRNA set to characterize additional drug categories. Thus, a focused shRNA phenotypic signature can provide a highly sensitive and tractable approach for characterizing new anticancer drugs.National Institute of Mental Health (U.S.) (grant RO1 CA128803-03)American Association for Cancer ResearchMassachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of BiologyNational Cancer Institute (U.S.). Integrative Cancer Biology Program (grant 1-U54-CA112967

Calibration of Traffic Simulation Models using SPSA

Εθνικό Μετσόβιο Πολυτεχνείο--Μεταπτυχιακή Εργασία. Διεπιστημονικό-Διατμηματικό Πρόγραμμα Μεταπτυχιακών Σπουδών (Δ.Π.Μ.Σ.) “Γεωπληροφορική

Parametric Models For Helicopter Identification Using ANN

An artificial neural network (ANN) based helicopter identification system is proposed. The feature vectors are based on both the tonal and the broadband spectrum of the helicopter signal. ANN pattern classifiers are trained using various parametric spectral representation techniques. Specifically, linear prediction, reflection coefficients, cepstrum, and line spectral frequencies (LSF) are compared in terms of recognition accuracy and robustness against additive noise. Finally, an 8-helicopter ANN classifier is evaluated, It is also shown that the classifier performance is dramatically improved if it is trained using both clean data and data corrupted with additive noise