Biofluid Biomarkers in Huntington's Disease

Huntington's disease (HD) is a chronic progressive neurodegenerative condition where new markers of disease progression are needed. So far no disease-modifying interventions have been found, and few interventions have been proven to alleviate symptoms. This may be partially explained by the lack of reliable indicators of disease severity, progression, and phenotype.Biofluid biomarkers may bring advantages in addition to clinical measures, such as reliability, reproducibility, price, accuracy, and direct quantification of pathobiological processes at the molecular level; and in addition to empowering clinical trials, they have the potential to generate useful hypotheses for new drug development.In this chapter we review biofluid biomarker reports in HD, emphasizing those we feel are likely to be closest to clinical applicability

Reshaping Neighborhood Parks for Biodiversity and People: A Case of Unsung Socio-Ecological Systems in Bangalore, India

Urban green spaces have recently gained a lot of attention, as they are known to provide various vital ecosystem services to the community. Bangalore, a south-Indian city, which was called the “Garden City” of India, has several large green spaces. It is only in recent years that small pocket green spaces such as neighborhood parks have been created. Although the importance of neighborhood parks is known, they are ignored and readily sacrificed for developmental projects, while the large heritage green spaces receive more attention and are conserved. The concept of the large spaces providing more services seems to have filtered into the minds of citizens, thus resulting in complete negligence towards the neighborhood parks. Cities are required to implement newer concepts which focus on small green spaces too, which could enhance the services they currently provide to the community. Thus integrating multiple concepts that not only focus on the ecological functioning but also the social needs of the community could help increase the stewardship which is currently lacking around neighborhood parks and much needed attention towards small green spaces. In this chapter, through an interdisciplinary approach, we suggest concepts that could help conserve smaller green spaces through better green space management in developing citie