A Case Study of the Ritual Space Construction of the Chinese Festival Series Program

TV festival gala is one important form of ritual communication of traditional Chinese festivals. The Chinese Festival Series Program innovate the ritual construction path of the program while maintaining the sense of ritual of the traditional festival galas, making the Chinese Festival Series Program a representative work of Chinese festival galas in recent years. This study aims to explore the ritual space construction of the Chinese Festival Series Program. It adopted the case study approach by taking Chinese Festival Series Program as the research object, and analyzed the text of the programs mainly from the physical space, media space, narrative space and the associated space of history and reality. The analysis results demonstrated that breaking the single physical space and building diverse scenes can make the narrative more hierarchical, and allow the audiences to experience a more realistic program space. The addition of new technology also brings richness to the narrative space. The convenient interactivity of the new media platform creates an exclusive media interaction space for the audiences. Through the ritual space construction, the Chinese Festival Series Program associate the past space with the present space, allowing the audiences to develop memory-related activities in the ritual space

Hybrid off-river augmentation system as an alternative raw water resource: the hydrogeochemistry of abandoned mining ponds

The use of water from abandoned mining ponds under a hybrid off-river augmentation system (HORAS) has been initiated as an alternative water resource for raw water. However, it raises the questions over the safety of the use of such waters. In this study, the hydrogeochemical analysis of the waters is presented to assess the degree to which the water has been contaminated. Comparisons were made between sampling sites, i.e. abandoned mining ponds, active sand mining ponds and the receiving streams within Bestari Jaya, Selangor River basin. The aqueous geochemistry analysis showed different hydrochemical signatures of major elements between sites, indicating different sources of minerals in the water. Discharges from the sand mining ponds were found to contain elevated availability of dissolved concentrations of iron, manganese, lead, copper and zinc, among others. However, the quality of the water (from the main river) that is supplied for potable water consumption is at a satisfactory level despite being partly sourced from the abandoned mining ponds. In fact, all the metal concentrations detected were well below the Malaysia Ministry of Health guideline limits for untreated raw water. In addition, the results of the geochemical index analysis (i.e. geoaccumulation index, enrichment factor and modified contamination factor) showed that the rivers and abandoned mining ponds were generally unpolluted with respect to the metals found in sediments

New challenges for BRCA testing:a view from the diagnostic laboratory

Increased demand for BRCA testing is placing pressures on diagnostic laboratories to raise their mutation screening capacity and handle the challenges associated with classifying BRCA sequence variants for clinical significance, for example interpretation of pathogenic mutations or variants of unknown significance, accurate determination of large genomic rearrangements and detection of somatic mutations in DNA extracted from formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tumour samples. Many diagnostic laboratories are adopting next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology to increase their screening capacity and reduce processing time and unit costs. However, migration to NGS introduces complexities arising from choice of components of the BRCA testing workflow, such as NGS platform, enrichment method and bioinformatics analysis process. An efficient, cost-effective accurate mutation detection strategy and a standardised, systematic approach to the reporting of BRCA test results is imperative for diagnostic laboratories. This review covers the challenges of BRCA testing from the perspective of a diagnostics laboratory

Evidence for perinatal and child health care guidelines in crisis settings: can Cochrane help?

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>It is important that healthcare provided in crisis settings is based on the best available research evidence. We reviewed guidelines for child and perinatal health care in crisis situations to determine whether they were based on research evidence, whether Cochrane systematic reviews were available in the clinical areas addressed by these guidelines and whether summaries of these reviews were provided in Evidence Aid.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Broad internet searches were undertaken to identify relevant guidelines. Guidelines were appraised using AGREE and the clinical areas that were relevant to perinatal or child health were extracted. We searched The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews to identify potentially relevant reviews. For each review we determined how many trials were included, and how many were conducted in resource-limited settings.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Six guidelines met selection criteria. None of the included guidelines were clearly based on research evidence. 198 Cochrane reviews were potentially relevant to the guidelines. These reviews predominantly addressed nutrient supplementation, breastfeeding, malaria, maternal hypertension, premature labour and prevention of HIV transmission. Most reviews included studies from developing settings. However for large portions of the guidelines, particularly health services delivery, there were no relevant reviews. Only 18 (9.1%) reviews have summaries in Evidence Aid.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>We did not identify any evidence-based guidelines for perinatal and child health care in disaster settings. We found many Cochrane reviews that could contribute to the evidence-base supporting future guidelines. However there are important issues to be addressed in terms of the relevance of the available reviews and increasing the number of reviews addressing health care delivery.</p

Inverse correlation between P53 and Bcl-2 expression in breast carcinoma of Malaysian patients

Gen penindas p53 dan proto-onkogen Bcl-2 mengkodkan fosfoprotin nuklear dan protin membran mitokondria yang terlibat dalam pelbagai fungsi sel. Kedua-dua protin mempunyai hubung kait dengan tapak jalan kematian sel berprogram disamping memberi informasi prognostik karsinoma payudara. Objektif kajian ini adalah untuk menentukan kaitan onko-protin p53 dan Bcl-2 pada karsinoma payudara dan hubungannya dengan umur pesakit, saiz tumor, peringkat kanser dan gred histologi. Lima puluh sembilan kes kanser payudara dari Pusat Perubatan Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (PPUKM) telah dikaji menggunakan teknik imunohistokimia. Keputusan menunjukkan 45.8% (27/59) kanser payudara adalah imunopositif untuk p53 dan 40.7% (24/59) adalah imunopositif untuk Bcl-2. Terdapat korelasi signifikan di antara ekspresi Bcl-2 dengan peringkat awal kanser (p=0.01). Variabel lain tidak menunjukkan kaitan signifikan. Kaitan songsang didapati di antara p53 dan Bcl-2 (p=0.001). Hasil keputusan mencadangkan regulasi menurun Bcl-2 oleh p53 dalam karsinogenesis kanser payudara

Primary Thyroid Lymphoma: two different presentations of a rare disease

Primary thyroid lymphoma is a rare disorder accounting for about 2% of all malignant lymphomas and less than 5% of thyroid malignancies. It is an aggressive disease with poor outcome. The majority of thyroid lymphomas are non-Hodgkin lymphomas of Bcell origin. Majority of cases occur in women in the sixth decade. We report two cases of primary thyroid lymphoma and highlight the clinical issues and challenges posed by this rare disease. Both cases presented with respiratory obstructive symptoms that required surgical intervention. The optimal management for a primary thyroid lymphoma be it chemotherapy, radiotherapy, surgery or monoclonal antibodies is still debatable. The role for surgery has evolved through the years but its importance in emergency situations should not be overlooked. Both our patients had to undergo surgery but only one patient received additional chemotherapy and radiotherapy. These two case reports illustrated the difficulties in managing this rare disorder

Prevalence of human papillomavirus genotypes in preinvasive and invasive cervical cancer-A UKM study

A cross sectional study was done to determine the prevalence and distribution of human papillomavirus (HPV) genotypes in pre-invasive (cervical intraepithelial neoplasia, grade 3 or CIN 3) and invasive cervical cancer (ICC), in Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Medical Centre (UKMMC). A total of 80 paraffin-embedded tumour tissue blocks (20 CIN 3, 60 invasive cancers) between 1999 to 2007 were retrieved from the archives of the Department of Pathology. Patient’s medical records were obtained from the Medical Records Office. Among invasive cancers (n=60), squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) account for 75% and adenocarcinoma 25%. The mean age of cases studied was 52.0 ± 12.2 years and Chinese was the predominant ethnicity (66.3%). Twelve HPV genotypes were identified, namely, HPV 16, 33, 18, 39, 52, 45, 58, 59, 31, 35, 6 and 11. The prevalence of HPV was 92.5% with types 16 being the most common (73.8%), followed by types 33 (30%) and 18 (22.5%). A total of 31 cases (38.8%) showed single HPV genotype, while 43 (53.8%) had multiple HPV (two genotypes or more) genotypes. In ICC, HPV 16, followed by types 33, 18, 52 and 39 were the top five common HPV genotypes detected. High prevalence of HPV and multiple HPV infections were major findings among patients with pre-invasive and invasive cervical cance

Immunohistochemical study of p53 expression in premalignant and malignant cervical neoplasms

One of the most important cervical cancer risk factors is human papillomavirus (HPV) infection. The p53 gene is one of the most important targets of the HPV E6 gene. E6 protein has the ability to stimulate p53 degradation, inhibits several functions of wild-type p53 and it competes with its function including suppression of malignant growth. The aim of this study is to determine the differences in p53 expressions in pre-malignant and malignant cervical neoplasms. This is a retrospective study on 100 cases of cervical neoplasms. There were 21 cases of CIN 1, 8 cases of CIN 2, 25 cases of CIN 3, 36 cases of squamous cell carcinoma, 7 cases of adenocarcinoma and 3 cases of adenosquamous carcinoma. All cases were evaluated by immunohistochemistry using p53 monoclonal antibody. Thirty six of the 54 pre-malignant cases (66.7%) were positive for p53 protein, in contrast to the malignant cases in which, 40 of the 46 cases (87.0%) were positive. The majority of CIN showed absent to focal staining (29/54, 53.7%). In contrast, 84.8% (39/46) of the invasive carcinoma showed regional to diffuse staining. The expression of p53 is greater in the malignant cervical neoplasms than the pre-malignant cervical lesions, suggesting that p53 overexpression is not an early phenomenon in the pathogenesis of cervical cancer. It is also shown to be slightly higher in percentage in CIN 2 and 3 when compared with CIN 1. However, a number of cases were p53 negative, suggesting that other factors may be involved and further HPV studies are indicate

Fine Needle Aspiration (FNA) cytology of the thyroid: A Cyto-Histopathological study of 361 cases in Hospital Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia

Thyroid nodules are common but thyroid malignancies are not. Fine needle aspiration (FNA) cytology is a diagnostic tool used to screen patients with thyroid nodules who require surgery. We study the diagnostic accuracy of FNA as the initial diagnostic modality in the clinical assessment of thyroid nodules. Between January 1995 until December 2000, 2131 FNA of thyroid nodules were performed. Four hundred and forty-one (20.7%) of these were unsatisfactory and 1690 (79.3%) cases were satisfactory for cytological evaluation. Histopathological diagnosis were available for 361 cases. Cyto-histopathological correlation was carried out for these cases. Our results showed a diagnostic accuracy of 96.2% with sensitivity and specificity rates of 87.7% and 98.4% respectively. Our positive predictive value is 93.4% and our negative predictive value is 96.8%. From this study, we conclude that fine needle aspiration is an important initial screening diagnostic tool for the investigation of thyroid nodule