Substance Use Among Punjabi-American High School Students in California

Substance use among adolescents has been a concern for many public health researchers and educators as it affects their health and well-being. Since little research has been previously conducted on Punjabi-Americans this paper examined patterns of substance use among a convenience sample of Punjabi-American high school students in California. Data from a study conducted by the Jakara Movement on a sample of 144 Punjabi-American high school students in California was analyzed for this paper. Acculturation was seen to be significantly associated with substance use and no evidence was seen for the association of substance use among students of different age, grade level, religiosity, educational achievements, education aspirations, and parental education levels. Due to the limitations of this study and the unexplored research among this population, there is a greater need to understand sub-racial populations and the population that community organizations serve

Effect of Asian BMI on risk of chronic disease progression: A Singapore perspective

Objectives: High body mass index (BMI) has been associated with increased mortality, healthcare utilization and costs. This study investigates the one-year chronic disease progression and risk of developing diabetes with varying cardiovascular disease (CVD) risks based on the Asian BMI categories. Methods: Patients with BMI information from 2008 to 2014 were included in the analysis ( N =23,508). Patients were stratified into low, moderate, high and very high CVD risk categories. To study disease progression for patients with varying CVD risks, patients were further segmented into seven mutually exclusive disease states based on prevalence of chronic diseases and their complications. The categories were no known chronic disease, at-risk of developing chronic disease, one chronic condition, more than two chronic conditions, chronic conditions with complications, patients with cancer and death. Logistic regression was used to determine the association of CVD risk categories and risk of having diabetes. Results: High CVD risk patients had more chronic diseases in the following year as compared with low CVD risk patients. With reference to low CVD risk patients, patients in the moderate, high and very high risk categories had an odds ratio of 1.78 (95% confidence interval (CI): 1.60 to 1.98), 2.84 (95% CI: 2.51 to 3.21) and 3.99 (95% CI: 3.30 to 4.82) for having diabetes after adjusting for age, gender and ethnicity. Conclusions: Higher BMI is associated with greater chronic disease progression in the following year. Diet control and lifestyle modifications should be encouraged to prevent people from shifting to higher BMI strata as this can be detrimental in the long run

M-Band Ridgelet Transform to Remove Speckle Noise from Medical Images

This paper proposes an improved image denoising algorithm based on M-Band Ridgelet Transform for speckle noise present in the medical images. NeighCoeff Thresholding algorithm is used to calculate the threshold values. The result of the improved method is tested on ultrasound and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) images affected with speckle noise. Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR), Mean Square Error (MSE) and Edge Preservation Index (EPI) has been used as parameters for evaluation of results. The performance of new method is compared with existing methods such as Wavelets, Ridgelet, and Curvelet

Genome-wide expression analysis id 1 entifies core components during iron starvation in hexaploid wheat

Iron is one of essential micronutrient for all organisms. Its deficiency 33 causes a severe loss in crops yield. Nevertheless, our current understanding on major crops response to Fe deficiency remains limited. Herein, we investigated the effect of Fe deprivation at both transcriptomic and metabolic levels in hexaploid wheat. A genome-wide gene expression reprogramming was observed with a total of 5854 genes showing differential expression in roots of wheat subjected to Fe-starved medium. Subsequent, analysis revealed a predominance of strategy-II mode of Fe uptake, with induced genome bias contribution from the A and B genomes. In general, the predominance of genes encoding for nicotianamine synthase, yellow stripe like transporters, metal transporters, ABC transporters and zinc42 induced facilitator-like protein was noticed. Our transcriptomic data were in agreement with the GC-MS analysis that showed an enhancement of accumulation of various metabolites such as fumarate, malonate, succinate and xylofuranose, which could be linked for enhancing Fe-mobilization. Interestingly, Fe starvation causes a significant temporal increase of glutathione-S-transferase both at transcriptional and enzymatic activity, which indicate the important role of glutathione in the response to Fe starvation in wheat roots. Taken together, our result provides new insight on wheat response to Fe starvation and lays foundation to design strategies to improve Fe nutrition in crops

Refractive index and concentration sensing of solutions using mechanically induced long period grating (LPG) pair

We demonstrate the use of a pair of mechanically induced long period gratings (LPGs) for sensing the refractive index and concentration of liquids for which NaCl solutions of different concentrations and standard refractive index liquids are studied. The effect of varying the refractive index and∕or concentration is reflected in changing output power loss values at resonance wavelengths. For a concentration change from 5 to 20 g per 100 ml, the maximum variation detected in optical output power is 20 pW, while for a refractive index variation from 1.446 to 1.458, it is 11 pW. These studies are quite useful for chemical, pharmaceutical, biological, and process control sensing applications

Integrative analysis of hexaploid wheat roots identifies signature components during iron starvation

Iron is one of essential micronutrient for all organisms. Its deficiency 33 causes a severe loss in crops yield. Nevertheless, our current understanding on major crops response to Fe deficiency remains limited. Herein, we investigated the effect of Fe deprivation at both transcriptomic and metabolic levels in hexaploid wheat. A genome-wide gene expression reprogramming was observed with a total of 5854 genes showing differential expression in roots of wheat subjected to Fe-starved medium. Subsequent, analysis revealed a predominance of strategy-II mode of Fe uptake, with induced genome bias contribution from the A and B genomes. In general, the predominance of genes encoding for nicotianamine synthase, yellow stripe like transporters, metal transporters, ABC transporters and zinc42induced facilitator-like protein was noticed. Our transcriptomic data were in agreement with the GC-MS analysis that showed an enhancement of accumulation of various metabolites such as fumarate, malonate, succinate and xylofuranose, which could be linked for enhancing Fe-mobilization. Interestingly, Fe starvation causes a significant temporal increase of glutathione-S-transferase both at transcriptional and enzymatic activity, which indicate the important role of glutathione in the response to Fe starvation in wheat roots. Taken together, our result provides new insight on wheat response to Fe starvation and lays foundation to design strategies to improve Fe nutrition in crops

Integrative analysis of hexaploid wheat roots identifies signature components during iron starvation

Iron is an essential micronutrient for all organisms. In crop plants, iron deficiency can decrease crop yield significantly, however our current understanding of how major crops respond to iron deficiency remains limited. Herein, the effect of Fe deprivation at both the transcriptomic and metabolic levels in hexaploid wheat was investigated. Genome-wide gene expression reprogramming was observed in wheat roots subjected to Fe starvation, with a total of 5854 genes differential expressed. Homoeolog and subgenome specific analysis unveiled induction bias contribution from the A and B genomes. In general, the predominance of genes encoding for nicotianamine synthase, yellow stripe like transporters, metal transporters, ABC transporters and zinc-induced facilitator-like protein was noticed. Expression of genes related to the strategy-II mode of Fe uptake was predominant as well. Our transcriptomic data were in agreement with the GC-MS analysis that showed the enhanced accumulation of various metabolites such as fumarate, malonate, succinate and xylofuranose, which could be contributing to Fe-mobilization. Interestingly, Fe starvation leads to significant temporal increase of glutathione-S-transferase both at transcriptional and in enzymatic activity levels, which indicates the involvement of glutathione in response to Fe stress in wheat roots. Taken together, our result provides new insight into the wheat response to Fe starvation at molecular level and lays foundation to design new strategies for the improvement of Fe nutrition in crops

Fibre Bragg grating-based sensing device for petrol leak detection

Fibre Bragg gratings (FBGs) have emerged in recent years as important sensor elements for various applications. In this communication application of an FBG sensor using a surgical rubber as transducer element for petrol leak detection in pipelines and tanks is presented. The rubber, which is in tubular form and is bonded with the fibre containing FBG, reversibly swells in the presence of petrol thus resulting in Bragg wavelength shift. The shift is measured using an interrogator with a swept fibre laser source (1520-570 nm). The design aspects and experimental procedure along with analysis of results obtained and the potential for distributed sensing have been discussed

Investigations on doping induced changes in structural, electronic structure and magnetic behavior of spintronic Cr-ZnS nanoparticles

Dilute magnetic semiconducting Zn1-xCrxS (x = 0.00, 0.01, 0.03, 0.05, 0.07) nanoparticles were synthesized by the co-precipitation technique using thioglycerol as the capping agent. Powder X-ray diffraction studies showed that Zn1-xCrxS nanoparticles exhibit zinc blende structure with no secondary phase, indicating that Cr ions are substituted at the Zn sites. Photoluminescence and Raman studies show the incorporation of Cr in ZnS nanoparticles. X-ray absorption studies depict that the valence of Zn remains unchanged and maintained in the divalent state, upon doping with Cr. The M-H curves at room temperature indicate the presence of weak ferromagnetism at room temperature due to structural defects. The increase in ferromagnetism with increasing Cr content up to 3%, demonstrates the possibility of tailoring the weak ferromagnetism in ZnS by appropriate Cr doping. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved