ANTI-INFLAMMATORY ACTIVITY OF NEURACANTHUS SPHAEROSTACHYUS DALZ. LEAVES

Objective: Neuracanthus sphaerostachyus has been traditionally used to treat skin diseases, cough, and asthma. Lack of sufficient scientific evidence indicating the utility of this plant in the treatment of inflammation prompted us to investigate the anti-inflammatory activity of the plant in different experimental screening methods. Methods: In vitro and in vivo anti-inflammatory activity of the methanolic and aqueous extracts of N. sphaerostachyus (MENS and AENS) leaves at doses of 125, 250, and 500 mg/kg was evaluated with albumin denaturation and carrageenan-induced paw edema in rats and acetic acid-induced increased vascular permeability in mice. Results: Methanolic and aqueous extract significantly inhibited protein denaturation as well as edema induced by carrageenan and vascular permeability in mice dose dependently. Aspirin (0.1 mg/ml), indomethacin (10 mg/kg), and dexamethasone (5 mg/kg) were used as a standard control. Conclusion: It is concluded that MENS and AENS leaves exhibited significant anti-inflammatory activity

The Experience of Money and Debt Problems in Rural Areas

This current paper is written on the behalf of the Commission for Rural Communities (CRC) to partly address the shortfall in evidence concerning the advice needs of rural communities. Specifically the CRC was interested to gain insight in the following areas: (1) The type of debt problems experienced in rural areas; (2) The prevalence and response to such problems; (3) Issues concerning access to debt advice services in rural areas; and (4) Awareness of advice provision in rural areas

Civil Justice in England and Wales, 2009: Report of the 2006-2009 English and Welsh Civil and Social Justice Survey

People’s ability to use the law to protect their rights and hold others to their responsibilities is crucial to ensuring fairness before the law, bringing about social justice and addressing social exclusion. The ‘Continuous’ English and Welsh Civil and Social Justice Survey (CSJS), conducted between 2006 and 2009, examines this in detail. This report describes the main findings from the Continuous English and Welsh Civil and Social Justice Survey

Unmanageable Debt and Financial Difficulty in the English and Welsh Civil and Social Justice Survey: Report for the Money Advice Trust

The following report uses three years of data from the English and Welsh Civil and Social Justice Survey (CSJS), a face-to-face household survey of people’s experience of and response to rights problems, to examine respondents who reported problems associated with unmanageable debt and financial difficulty. The research was commissioned by the Money Advice Trust with the aim of enriching and supporting existing research regarding people in debt, with reference to adviceseeking strategies, impact of debt problems, and the interrelationship between debt and other problems

Acridine Orange Fluroscence Study of Lung - Histopathology in Autopsy Cases of Burns

Background: The major cause of death in the burn patients includes multiple organ failure and septicemia but, sometimes the exact cause of death in many fatally burn patients is difficult to detect. Aim: The aim was to study various histopathological changes in lung in the post-mortem cases of burns, by using routine Haematoxylin and Eosin stain (H&E stain). Periodic and Schiff ’s Stain (PAS) stain to study the role of acridine orange fluorescence study, to explore the forensic utility of this study and to find out the relationship between duration of survival and histopathological changes observed. Material & Methods: Total 32 cases of death due to burns were autopsied at mortuary from october 2010 to september 2012, department of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology in our hospital. These were forwarded to Department of Pathology for histopathological examination. Result: In the present study, maximum number of burns cases in 21-30 years of age group & female predominance. Grossly, 19 cases (59.38%) showed congestion while microscopy showed diffuse alveolar damage (34.38%). The sections stained by acridine orange and observed under fluorescent microscope were negative in 28 cases (87.50%) and lightly positive in 04 cases (12.50%). Conclusion: Routine microscopy does help us in getting specific lesions in lung due to burns. But PAS and Acridine orange fluorescence do not add anything further in our knowledge of pathology due to burns. However, none of these add any new tool to resolve any forensic issues of burns. Therefore, microscopy (including PAS and fluorescent), if done would be redundant

Peripheral Cornea Crosslinking Before Deep Anterior Lamellar Keratoplasty

Since Cornea crosslinking (CXL) has been proven to halt progression and biomechanically stabilize keratoconus, we hypothesized that CXL of the corneal periphery 3 months prior to corneal transplantation can reduce the incidence of recurrent ectasia by strengthening the peripheral corneal tissue and causing apoptosis of diseased peripheral host keratocytes. Thus, the aim of this case-repot was to propose a novel peripheral CXL technique prior to keratoplasty and evaluate its safety. A 22-year-old woman was admitted with advanced right keratoconus and corrected distance visual acuities of 20/30 in the right eye and 20/200 in the left eye with a manifest refraction of -3.00 -8.00 × 36 and -17.00 -11.50 × 90, respectively. The proposed treatment involved crosslinking of peripheral corneal tissue (6.5-9.5mm), sparing the central cornea and limbus, three months prior to corneal transplantation as a means of biomechanically strengthening the peripheral cornea tissue. We performed peripheral CXL technique in a patient with keratoconus undergoing deep anterior lamellar keratoplasty (DALK). This procedure was feasible and safe with repopulation of the peripheral cornea with keratocytes and no significant endothelial cell loss. This method might reduce or eliminate the need for repeat corneal transplantation in patients with recurrent ectasia. Further studies are needed to confirm the results

English and Welsh Civil and Social Justice Panel Survey: Wave 1. Findings and Technical Report

The ability of people to protect their legal rights and hold others to their legal responsibilities is a prerequisite of the rule of law and underpins social justice. The English and Welsh Civil and Social Justice Panel Survey (CSJPS), which replaced the English and Welsh Civil and Social Justice Survey (CSJS) in 2010, provides the only large-scale representative overview of the public’s experience of civil justice issues and successes in seeking justice when addressing them. This overview report describes the main findings from the first wave of the English and Welsh Civil and Social Justice Panel Survey, as well as setting out the full technical details of the survey

Movement analysis to indicate discomfort in vehicle seats

Long distance travel is associated with discomfort and fatigue. It is a significant challenge to design a seat that remains comfortable for the occupant over the several hours required for many long-distance journeys. When designing seats, an indication of the perception of comfort/discomfort can be useful either for research and development purposes or potentially for automated systems to take actions that might mitigate discomfort. This paper considered a system that uses measurements of body movement in a seat to provide an objective measure of perceptions of discomfort. The system uses cameras and image processing to recognize when a seat occupant makes a movement in the seat which could be associated with relief of discomfort. The system was validated using a laboratory driving simulator. 10 participants volunteered to complete a study in which they drove for 90 minutes and gave subjective ratings of discomfort every 10 minutes, whilst also being observed using the camera system. It was shown that using a simple algorithm an association could be made between the movements of the driver and subjective ratings of discomfort. However, there remain challenges to improve reliability, optimize movement detection thresholds, and to make it more robust to naturalistic driving scenarios

Civil Justice in England and Wales: Report of the 2007 English and Welsh Civil and Social Justice Survey

People’s ability to use the law to protect their rights and hold others to their responsibilities is crucial to bringing about social justice and addressing social exclusion. The English and Welsh Civil and Social Justice Survey (CSJS) examines this in detail. This annual report describes the main findings from the 2007 interviews for the CSJS. A further annual report will be produced in 2009 before the CSJS becomes a longitudinal panel survey

Proteomic blood profiling in mild, severe and critical COVID-19 patients

The recent SARS-CoV-2 pandemic manifests itself as a mild respiratory tract infection in most individuals, leading to COVID-19 disease. However, in some infected individuals, this can progress to severe pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), leading to multi-organ failure and death. This study explores the proteomic differences between mild, severe, and critical COVID-19 positive patients to further understand the disease progression, identify proteins associated with disease severity, and identify potential therapeutic targets. Blood protein profiling was performed on 59 COVID-19 mild (n = 26), severe (n = 9) or critical (n = 24) cases and 28 controls using the OLINK inflammation, autoimmune, cardiovascular and neurology panels. Differential expression analysis was performed within and between disease groups to generate nine different analyses. From the 368 proteins measured per individual, more than 75% were observed to be significantly perturbed in COVID-19 cases. Six proteins (IL6, CKAP4, Gal-9, IL-1ra, LILRB4 and PD-L1) were identified to be associated with disease severity. The results have been made readily available through an interactive web-based application for instant data exploration and visualization, and can be accessed at https://phidatalab-shiny.rosalind.kcl.ac.uk/COVID19/. Our results demonstrate that dynamic changes in blood proteins associated with disease severity can potentially be used as early biomarkers to monitor disease severity in COVID-19 and serve as potential therapeutic targets