Neuroprotective role of statins in treating Alzheimer's disease: a comparative study of biomedical and clinical trials

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston UniversityAlzheimer’s disease is a neurodegenerative disorder that occurs most commonly in the elderly. The formation of amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles affects the brain tissue, causing mental deficits ranging in severity from memory loss to incontinence and feeding problems. Currently, the only approved treatments are designed to treat the symptoms of the disease, rather than prevention or slowing the progression. Yet, over the course of the last few decades, researchers have sought new ways of treating the condition. One such drug with promising effects is the cholesterol lowering statin medication. Yet the efficacy shown in the laboratory has not translated to clinical trials to treat AD patients. Therefore, this study analyzed various important biomedical and clinical studies in the literature to elucidate why this disparity exists. On examination of biomedical studies, there was a wide range of support for statins due to its many pleiotropic effects. This drug was shown to be permeable through the blood brain barrier, helping to reverse the damage caused by amyloid plaque formation in brain vessel walls. Other studies showed the link between high cholesterol and AD by analyzing the effects of memory deficits in mice while they attempted various tasks. They used analogs to simulate the disease and found that statins helped delay or reverse some of these changes. On examination of clinical studies, the majority of studies could not find a statistically significant correlation between statin use and neuroprotection against AD. Those that did find a positive correlation needed further study to account for any confounding variables. After examination of these papers it became clear that the disparity between the two realms of study was due to the design of the experiments themselves. The biomedical studies focused on various effects of statins rather than on how the mechanisms of action directly affected AD progression. As of yet not all of the pleiotropic effects have been examined and definitely not within the context of how they effect and complement one another. Thus clinical trials trying to integrate this information have been very discouraging and the designs of these studies, both prospective trials and epidemiological studies further complicate the answers sought. They all varied in the age groups they examined, how early treatment was initiated, which statin was used, and how other confounding variables (such as sociodemographics and smoking) were accounted for. After analyzing the literature, it is in our opinion that statins play a protective role if initiated much earlier than the first clinical signs. However the only way to know how it biochemically may help AD patients is through further study. So, it is our recommendation for more in depth study on the pleiotropic effects of statins on AD, before further clinical intervention occurs

Boundary Shear Stress Distribution in Smooth and Rough Open Channel Flow

Boundary shear distribution in open channel flow is a crucial issue for river engineer and researchers working in this area.An experimental investigation has been carried out to measure the boundary shear stress distribution along the wetted perimeter of the smooth and rough channel using piston tube technique the accuracy of the method has been compared and checked with another convention method,NDM, VDM,MPM,Velocity Profile Method and energy gradient approach.The boundary shear along the bed and wall of the channel are different for different flow depth and for different roughness conditions.The percentage of boundary shear carried by the wall and bed has been analysed and found to depends on upon non-dimensional geometry and hydraulic parameters such as Aspect ratio,Reynolds number and Froude’s number.A multi linear regression model has been applied to predict the boundary shear distribution for bed.The equation is useful to calculate the roughness coefficient (friction factor) of the wall and bed of the channel separately,which further determines the composite roughness of the open channel flow accuracy.The methodology has been applied successfully to calculate the stage discharge relationship of the open channel flow.The methodology has been validated against other experimental data, other researcher’s models and Natural Rive

SCENE AND OBJECT CLASSIFICATION USING BRAIN WAVES SIGNAL

This study aims to classify the scene and object using brain waves signal. The dataset captured by the electroencephalograph (EEG) device by placing the electrodes on scalp to measure brain signals are used. Using captured EEG dataset, classifying the scene and object by decoding the changes in the EEG signals. In this study, independent component analysis, event-related potentials, and grand mean are used to analyze the signal. Machine learning algorithms such as decision tree, random forest, and support vector machine are used to classify the data. This technique is useful in forensic as well as in artificial intelligence for developing future technology.Â

Experimental Study of Manjistha root (Rubia cordifolia Linn.) w.s.r. to Anti-Diabetic Activity

Manjistha is well known for its various activities, one of which is Pramehagna (Anti-Diabetic) activity. The Manjistha was collected from market and its authenticity was approved by its organoleptic characters and is used for present study. The sample was processed and it’s alcoholic and aqueous extracts were prepared. Then the drug was subjected to experimental study on albino rats. Study was carried out to assess the anti-diabetic activity. Results showed that there is significant reduction in sugar level which indicates that both aqueous and alcoholic extracts do possess significant antihyperglycemic activity as compared to Metformin (Standard drug), which could be due to antioxidants and flavonoids present in it. The variations in above said analysis make it very interesting and important to analyse the expected Anti-microbial and immune modulatory activity of Manjistha root

KALYANAKARAKAM – A GEM OF AYURVEDA

Background: The origin of Ayurveda is lost in mysteries of time; since the earliest human civilization, man has sought ways to heal himself. Human civilization progressed, bringing in sophisticated thought & research behind medicine. It is believed that a system of medicine was prevalent in India in pre Vedic times. The Vedas are the earliest written records of the wisdom & insights of Indian seekers & scholars. Medicine is an ever changing science. Literary research is must in today’s perspective to get the hidden & unexplored knowledge. On this regard many Acharya’s contributed to ancient science i.e. Ayurveda. Jain seers have written several texts in Sanskrit on Ayurveda they are similar in content & finding to Vedic text. One among them is Kalyanakarakam, was composed by Acarya Ugraditya, a Jain monk who is believed to have lived in the 9th century of the Common Era. This text comprises of 667 Sanskrit hemistich divided into 25 chapters and one special section on predicting death. The chapters cover all aspects of Ayurveda with great depth and thoroughness. Aims & Objective: 1) To compile the literature bearing Svastha Rakshana i.e. preventive aspects in the form of Dinacharya (daily regimen), Rutu-charya (seasonal regimen) etc. &some other concepts like knowledge about Prakruti (nature) Desha (region), Kala (time), important anatomical structures, and regimens for pregnant women etc. Materials & Methods: Study aims to review the preventive aspects which are mentioned in Kalyanakarakam. Conclusion: Inculcating all the concepts which elucidates the concept of prevention is much essential in today’s perspective

Magnetoelectricity at room temperature in Bi0.9-xTbxLa0.1FeO3 system

Magnetoelectric compounds with the general formula, Bi0.9-xRxLa0.1FeO3 (R =Gd, Tb, Dy, etc.), have been synthesized. These show the coexistence of ferroelectricity and magnetism, possess high dielectric constant and exhibit magnetoelectric coupling at room temperature. Such materials may be of great significance in basic as well as applied research.Comment: 11 pages of text and figure

Relevant Result Generation by Harvesting Web Information

Multimedia question answering approach has been popular to get information online. The answer of the question is provided in the form of the multimedia. Textual answer is not more informative that’s why it will provide the answer in images and video also. Already existing system work only on the narrow domains and it will complex to generalize to handle question. The proposed system does not answer the question directly. It will having the component such as selection of proper pattern of answer, query generation for multimedia search and multimedia data selection and presentation of result. System having the semantic search. Question is ask by the user in the natural language. In question anwer system will check the question by its keywords

Hand Gesture based Game using MATLAB & Computer Vision Library

Gone are the days when humans could interact with computers only via limited hardware devices like mouse & keyboards. With the recent developments in Virtual Reality, the interaction medium between humans & computers has changed drastically. This paper intends to put some light on the role played by hand gestures to provide inputs to the computer. Detection of gestures do not require any external device other than the webcam. The gameplay is about word formation using hand gestures specified by the user at the start of the game or by the predefined gestures. DOI: 10.17762/ijritcc2321-8169.15027

Large-scale outflows in luminous QSOs revisited: The impact of beam smearing on AGN feedback efficiencies

Context. Feedback from active galactic nuclei (AGN) is thought to play an important role in quenching star formation in galaxies. However, the efficiency with which AGN dissipate their radiative energy into the ambient medium remains strongly debated. Aims. Enormous observational efforts have been made to constrain the energetics of AGN feedback by mapping the kinematics of the ionized gas on kpc scale. We study how the observed kinematics and inferred energetics are affected by beam smearing of a bright unresolved narrow-line region (NLR) due to seeing. Methods. We re-analyse optical integral-field spectroscopy of a sample of twelve luminous unobscured quasi-stellar objects (QSOs) (0.4 \u3cz\u3c 0.7) previously presented in the literature. The point-spread function (PSF) for the observations is directly obtained from the light distribution of the broad Hβ line component. Therefore, we are able to compare the ionized gas kinematics and derived energetics of the total, truly spatially extended, and unresolved [O iii] emission. Results. We find that the spatially resolved [O iii] line width on kpc scales is significantly narrower than the one before PSF deblending. The extended NLRs (ENLRs) appear intrinsically offset from the QSO position or more elongated which can be interpreted in favour of a conical outflow on large scales while a spherical geometry cannot be ruled out for the unresolved NLR. We find that the kinetic power at 5 kpc distance based on a spherical model is reduced by two orders of magnitude for a conical outflow and one order of magnitude for the unresolved NLR after PSF deblending. This reduced kinetic power corresponds to only 0.01−0.1 per cent of the bolometric AGN luminosity. This is smaller than the 5−10% feedback efficiency required by some cosmological simulations to reproduce the massive galaxy population. The injected momentum fluxes are close or below the simple radiation-pressure limit Lbol/c for the conical outflow model for the NLR and ENLR when beam smearing is considered. Conclusions. Integral-field spectroscopy is a powerful tool to investigate the energetics of AGN outflows, but the impact of beam smearing has to be taken into account in the high contrast regime of QSOs. For the majority of observations in the literature, this has not been addressed carefully so that the incidence and energetics of presumed kpc-scale AGN-driven outflows still remain an unsolved issue, from an observational perspective

Requirements Analysis for Design Optimization of Aerobatic Aircraft

Aerobatic aircraft design and simulation is challenging as these aircraft need to fly at any angle of attack and sideslip angle (full-envelope aerodynamics). They fly at velocities close to stall speed, all the way up to the never exceed velocity. These aircraft are also routinely stressed to 6-12 g's in both upright and inverted flight. Presently, most aerobatic aircraft are designed using heuristic knowledge. There is a need for a systematic approach to design aerobatic aircraft in a multi-disciplinary design framework. Towards this goal, this paper presents an extensive study of requirements, metrics and design variables to define a good aerobatic aircraft. First a historical perspective is given to know the current state-of-the-art. Information obtained from regulations, aircraft performance, subject matter experts and analysis of existing aircraft is used to obtain metrics to evaluate. The possible design configurations is given as a morphological matrix. Finally, possible analysis approaches to evaluate the metrics are discussed