WA Play Charter

The WA Play Charter, drafted by the Play Matters Collective, is a declaration of the importance of play in children’s lives. By endorsing the WA Play Charter you are signalling your shared belief in the fundamental value of play to children’s health, happiness and development, and putting up your hand to support a more playful world for the children in your care and in your community

Insights into nanoparticles-induced neurotoxicity and cope up strategies

Nanoparticle applications are becoming increasingly popular in fields such as photonics, catalysis, magnetics, biotechnology, manufacturing of cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and medicines. There is still a huge pile of undermining information about the potential toxicity of these products to humans, which can be encountered by neuroprotective antioxidants and anti-inflammatory compounds. Nanoparticles can be administered using a variety of methods, including oronasal, topical applications, and enteral and parenteral routes of administration. There are different properties of these nanomaterials that characterize different pathways. Crossing of the blood-brain barrier, a direct sensory nerve-to-brain pathway whose barriers are bypassed, these checks otherwise prevent the nanoparticles from entering the brain. This inflicts damage to sensory neurons and receptors by nanoparticles that lead to neurotoxicity of the central nervous system. A number of routes make nanoparticles able to penetrate through the skin. Exposure by various routes to these nanoparticles can result in oxidative stress, and immune suppression triggers inflammatory cascades and genome-level mutations after they are introduced into the body. To out-power, these complications, plant-based antioxidants, essential oils, and dietary supplements can be put into use. Direct nanoparticle transport pathways from sensory nerves to the brain via blood have been studied grossly. Recent findings regarding the direct pathways through which nanoparticles cross the blood-brain barriers, how nanoparticles elicit different responses on sensory receptors and nerves, how they cause central neurotoxicity and neurodegeneration through sensory nerve routes, and the possible mechanisms that outcast these effects are discussed

The histochemistry of the gastrointestinal tract of cod (Gadus morhua L.).

This study was undertaken to correlate the histological features of the gastrointestinal tract of the cod with the occurrence of some of the hydrolytic enzymes and periodic acid-Schiff (PAS) reactive compounds. Representative tissue of nine regions of the tract (cardiac, fundic and pyloric stomach, pylorus, caeca, anterior loop of small intestine, posterior loop of small intestine, rectum and liver) were fixed in cold acetone, Lisen's fluid and Baker's formol calcium for the histology and the localization of alkaline phosphatase, acid phosphatase, esterase and PAS-positive substances. -- The distribution of alkaline phosphatase was mainly extracellular within the lamina propria and muscularis mucosae in the stomach region and in the striated border of the small intestine, caeca and rectum. The muscular layers, especially the outer longitudinal, indicated a very high activity of alkaline phosphatase. The acid phosphatase and esterase were intracellular and concentrated at the distal portion of the surface epithelium in the stomach and intestine. A high concentration of PAS-positive substances was observed in the gastric surface epithelial and intestinal goblet cells. It was not investigated whether or not a correlation exists between enzyme activity and age, sex of the animals or the season

Patterns of linkage disequilibrium in the human genome

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Biology, 2002.Includes bibliographical references.Although enormous progress has occurred in the field of human genetics, the cloning of complex trait mutations remains a challenging and unresolved process. This continuing difficulty is responsible for an ever-increasing awareness of the phenomenon of linkage disequilibrium (LD). The principle behind LD is relatively simple. Over the lifetime of a population, the genetic markers that are adjacent to an ancestral mutation will recombine less often than more distant markers. Therefore, the ancestral alleles of the markers closest to the mutation should be most frequent in a collection of disease chromosomes. The allelic association should decrease as the distance from the ancestral disease mutation increases. This thesis is a collection of ideas and experiments aimed at dissecting the behavior of LD in the human genome. Specific studies examine LD in a variety of populations including isolated founder populations, as well as globally diverse population samples. A large number of regions throughout the genome are investigated using both pairwise comparisons of markers, as well as multimarker haplotypes. The X chromosome is more closely scrutinized because of its unique population history, as well as the advantages afforded to haplotyping due to hemizygosity of the X chromosome in males. Major conclusions include the observation that LD between pairs of markers is highly variable even at extremely close distances and multimarker haplotypes better serve to resolve the underlying haplotype structure of the genome.(cont.) The genome appears to be structured as blocks of limited haplotype diversity that do not exhibit much internal recombination but which are separated by segments that show little or no LD. The lack of LD between haplotype blocks appears to be due to clustering of recombination events into specific hotspots. The size of the blocks and haplotype diversity varies slightly by population. In addition, the identity of the haplotypes varies between populations. The existence of 3-4 major haplotypes for specific regions in a diverse human population sample is a surprising finding that was originally believed to have only existed in very special isolated and young populations.by Shau Neen Liu-Cordero.Ph.D

La rotation des opioïdes chez les personnes âgées (observation de la pratique au sein de deux services gériatriques )

Le thème de la pratique de la rotation des opioïdes chez les personnes âgées est peu traité dans la littérature médicale. Nous rapportons donc la pratique au sein de deux services gériatriques afin d évaluer si elle présente un intérêt et des spécificités. L étude a concerné 29 patients dont 3 ont bénéficiés de 2 changements thérapeutiques. Les rotations concernent les opioïdes suivants: morphine LP vers fentanyl transcutané et inversement, morphine LP vers hydromorphone, Morphine sous-cutanée vers fentanyl transdermique et inversement, et morphine sous-cutanée vers hydromorphone. La rotation peut être nécessaire et légitime pour de bas niveaux posologiques et précocement, en raison d effets secondaires intolérables mais aussi en raison d une prise en charge de la douleur insuffisante ou d un mode d administration non adapté. Le bénéfice pour les patient est important, tant sur le plan de la résolution des effets secondaires que sur celui de la prise en charge de la douleur. Les modalités de mise en oeuvre de la rotation sont les mêmes que ceux rapportés pour l adulte jeune. Nous avons cependant dégagé quelques indications semblant plus spécifiques au patient âgé.NANTES-BU Médecine pharmacie (441092101) / SudocPARIS-BIUM (751062103) / SudocSudocFranceF

The Discovery of Single-Nucleotide Polymorphisms—and Inferences about Human Demographic History

A method of historical inference that accounts for ascertainment bias is developed and applied to single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) data in humans. The data consist of 84 short fragments of the genome that were selected, from three recent SNP surveys, to contain at least two polymorphisms in their respective ascertainment samples and that were then fully resequenced in 47 globally distributed individuals. Ascertainment bias is the deviation, from what would be observed in a random sample, caused either by discovery of polymorphisms in small samples or by locus selection based on levels or patterns of polymorphism. The three SNP surveys from which the present data were derived differ both in their protocols for ascertainment and in the size of the samples used for discovery. We implemented a Monte Carlo maximum-likelihood method to fit a subdivided-population model that includes a possible change in effective size at some time in the past. Incorrectly assuming that ascertainment bias does not exist causes errors in inference, affecting both estimates of migration rates and historical changes in size. Migration rates are overestimated when ascertainment bias is ignored. However, the direction of error in inferences about changes in effective population size (whether the population is inferred to be shrinking or growing) depends on whether either the numbers of SNPs per fragment or the SNP-allele frequencies are analyzed. We use the abbreviation “SDL,” for “SNP-discovered locus,” in recognition of the genomic-discovery context of SNPs. When ascertainment bias is modeled fully, both the number of SNPs per SDL and their allele frequencies support a scenario of growth in effective size in the context of a subdivided population. If subdivision is ignored, however, the hypothesis of constant effective population size cannot be rejected. An important conclusion of this work is that, in demographic or other studies, SNP data are useful only to the extent that their ascertainment can be modeled