The role of fisheries sector in the coastal fishing communities of Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka is an island country with a land area of 65 610 km2. With the declaration of the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in 1976, the country gained sovereign rights over an ocean area of 536 000 km2 and EEZ extending from 24 to 200 nm. The continental shelf is about 26 000 km2 with an average width of around 22 km, and the coastline is 1 100 km long. The total annual fish production of Sri Lanka was 25 000 t in 1952 and 269 850 t in 1998. Major fish species caught in Sri Lankan waters are skipjack, blood fish, yellow fin tuna, mullet, shark, trevally, Spanish mackerel, prawns, lobsters. Gross domestic product (GDP) is composed of services, agriculture including forestry and fishery, manufacturing, construction and mining and quarrying. Of these, the agriculture sector contributed 21% with 2.5% coming from the fisheries subsector in 1998. In 1975, fisheries contributed Rs420 million to GDP and substantially improved to Rs24 823 million (US$382 million at 1 US$ = 64.90 Sri Lanka Rupee; source: oanda.com) in 1998. Export volume from fisheries was 3 240 t in 1985, and 11 433 t in 1998; equivalent to an export value of Rs453 mil (US$7 million) to Rs6 732 mil. (US$104 million). The fisheries sector has provided direct employment opportunities to over 115 000 people and indirect benefits to 100 000 people in related occupations such as fish processing, boat building and other equipment manufacture and trade and public sector organizations. A socioeconomic survey conducted in 1996 noted a fisher population of 83 776 with 81.7% having fishing as their sole source of income, 12.5% as their main source and 4.3% as their second source. Fish is the main and preferred source of animal protein in Sri Lanka. Fish consumption accounts for 5% of the total food consumption and per capita fish consumption was 12.77 kg in 1998. However fish constitutes a substantial share of expenditure on food because of its high domestic price. The policy of almost all fisheries projects in Sri Lanka has been to maximize the fisheries resource utilization for direct extractive purposes rather than for sustainable resource management. This short-range orientation has increased the efficiency of fishing operations through the application of advanced technologies in fish capture, leading to a shift from the traditional fishing methods to the adoption of modern fishing gear. This has led to the depletion of fishery resources, particularly in the coastal waters. Thus there is a need to adopt programmes that emphasize the development of offshore fishing and thereby reduce fishing pressure in the coastal areas. Implementation of alternative livelihood opportunities would also improve the quality of life of coastal fishers.Fishery resources, Fishery surveys, Catch/effort, Trawling, Population characteristics, Biomass, Coastal fisheries, Mathematical models, Marine fisheries, Ecosystems, Socioeconomic aspects, Artisanal fishing, Economic benefits, Fishery industry, Capture fishery economics, Fish consumption, ISW, Sri Lanka,

An audit of specimens received for superficial fungal studies to the Department of Microbiology, University of Ruhuna

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Response of Estrogen Receptor-Positive Breast Cancer Tumorspheres to Antiestrogen Treatments

Estrogen signaling plays a critical role in the pathogenesis of breast cancer. Because the majority of breast carcinomas express the estrogen receptor ERα, endocrine therapy that impedes estrogen-ER signaling reduces breast cancer mortality and has become a mainstay of breast cancer treatment. However, patients remain at continued risk of relapse for many years after endocrine treatment. It has been proposed that cancer recurrence may be attributed to cancer stem cells (CSCs)/tumor-initiating cells (TICs). Previous studies in breast cancer have shown that such cells can be enriched and propagated in vitro by culturing the cells in suspension as mammospheres/tumorspheres. Here we established tumorspheres from ERα-positive human breast cancer cell line MCF7 and investigated their response to antiestrogens Tamoxifen and Fulvestrant. The tumorsphere cells express lower levels of ERα and are more tumorigenic in xenograft assays than the parental cells. Both 4-hydroxytamoxifen (4-OHT) and Fulvestrant attenuate tumorsphere cell proliferation, but only 4-OHT at high concentrations interferes with sphere formation. However, treated tumorsphere cells retain the self-renewal capacity. Upon withdrawal of antiestrogens, the treated cells resume tumorsphere formation and their tumorigenic potential remains undamaged. Depletion of ERα shows that ERα is dispensable for tumorsphere formation and xenograft tumor growth in mice. Surprisingly, ERα-depleted tumorspheres display heightened sensitivity to 4-OHT and their sphere-forming capacity is diminished after the drug is removed. These results imply that 4-OHT may inhibit cellular targets besides ERα that are essential for tumorsphere growth, and provide a potential strategy to sensitize tumorspheres to endocrine treatment

A quantitative mass spectrometry-based approach to monitor the dynamics of endogenous chromatin-associated protein complexes.

Understanding the dynamics of endogenous protein-protein interactions in complex networks is pivotal in deciphering disease mechanisms. To enable the in-depth analysis of protein interactions in chromatin-associated protein complexes, we have previously developed a method termed RIME (Rapid Immunoprecipitation Mass spectrometry of Endogenous proteins). Here, we present a quantitative multiplexed method (qPLEX-RIME), which integrates RIME with isobaric labelling and tribrid mass spectrometry for the study of protein interactome dynamics in a quantitative fashion with increased sensitivity. Using the qPLEX-RIME method, we delineate the temporal changes of the Estrogen Receptor alpha (ERα) interactome in breast cancer cells treated with 4-hydroxytamoxifen. Furthermore, we identify endogenous ERα-associated proteins in human Patient-Derived Xenograft tumours and in primary human breast cancer clinical tissue. Our results demonstrate that the combination of RIME with isobaric labelling offers a powerful tool for the in-depth and quantitative characterisation of protein interactome dynamics, which is applicable to clinical samples

Impact of opioid-free analgesia on pain severity and patient satisfaction after discharge from surgery: multispecialty, prospective cohort study in 25 countries

Background: Balancing opioid stewardship and the need for adequate analgesia following discharge after surgery is challenging. This study aimed to compare the outcomes for patients discharged with opioid versus opioid-free analgesia after common surgical procedures.Methods: This international, multicentre, prospective cohort study collected data from patients undergoing common acute and elective general surgical, urological, gynaecological, and orthopaedic procedures. The primary outcomes were patient-reported time in severe pain measured on a numerical analogue scale from 0 to 100% and patient-reported satisfaction with pain relief during the first week following discharge. Data were collected by in-hospital chart review and patient telephone interview 1 week after discharge.Results: The study recruited 4273 patients from 144 centres in 25 countries; 1311 patients (30.7%) were prescribed opioid analgesia at discharge. Patients reported being in severe pain for 10 (i.q.r. 1-30)% of the first week after discharge and rated satisfaction with analgesia as 90 (i.q.r. 80-100) of 100. After adjustment for confounders, opioid analgesia on discharge was independently associated with increased pain severity (risk ratio 1.52, 95% c.i. 1.31 to 1.76; P < 0.001) and re-presentation to healthcare providers owing to side-effects of medication (OR 2.38, 95% c.i. 1.36 to 4.17; P = 0.004), but not with satisfaction with analgesia (beta coefficient 0.92, 95% c.i. -1.52 to 3.36; P = 0.468) compared with opioid-free analgesia. Although opioid prescribing varied greatly between high-income and low- and middle-income countries, patient-reported outcomes did not.Conclusion: Opioid analgesia prescription on surgical discharge is associated with a higher risk of re-presentation owing to side-effects of medication and increased patient-reported pain, but not with changes in patient-reported satisfaction. Opioid-free discharge analgesia should be adopted routinely

Decreased expression of Yes-associated protein is associated with outcome in the luminal A breast cancer subgroup and with an impaired tamoxifen response

Background: Yes-associated protein (YAP1) is frequently reported to function as an oncogene in many types of cancer, but in breast cancer results remain controversial. We set out to clarify the role of YAP1 in breast cancer by examining gene and protein expression in subgroups of patient material and by downregulating YAP1 in vitro and studying its role in response to the widely used anti-estrogen tamoxifen. Methods: YAP1 protein intensity was scored as absent, weak, intermediate or strong in two primary breast cancer cohorts (n = 144 and n = 564) and mRNA expression of YAP1 was evaluated in a gene expression dataset (n = 1107). Recurrence-free survival was analysed using the log-rank test and Cox multivariate analysis was used to test for independence. WST-1 assay was employed to measure cell viability and a luciferase ERE (estrogen responsive element) construct was used to study the effect of tamoxifen, following downregulation of YAP1 using siRNAs. Results: In the ER+ (Estrogen Receptor a positive) subgroup of the randomised cohort, YAP1 expression was inversely correlated to histological grade and proliferation (p = 0.001 and p = 0.016, respectively) whereas in the ER-(Estrogen Receptor a negative) subgroup YAP1 expression correlated positively to proliferation (p = 0.005). Notably, low YAP1 mRNA was independently associated with decreased recurrence-free survival in the gene expression dataset, specifically for the luminal A subgroup (p less than 0.001) which includes low proliferating tumours of lower grade, usually associated with a good prognosis. This subgroup specificity led us to hypothesize that YAP1 may be important for response to endocrine therapies, such as tamoxifen, extensively used for luminal A breast cancers. In a tamoxifen randomised patient material, absent YAP1 protein expression was associated with impaired tamoxifen response which was significant upon interaction analysis (p = 0.042). YAP1 downregulation resulted in increased progesterone receptor (PgR) expression and a delayed and weaker tamoxifen in support of the clinical data. Conclusions: Decreased YAP1 expression is an independent prognostic factor for recurrence in the less aggressive luminal A breast cancer subgroup, likely due to the decreased tamoxifen sensitivity conferred by YAP1 downregulation

Providing deterministic I/O service for VBR streams

In this paper, we investigate mechanisms for providing deterministic service for Variable Bit Rate (VBR) streams at the disk. We propose a scheme for providing deterministic service within the I/O system. We evaluate data layout strategies and present an analysis of the results. We show that smoothing techniques can improve performance. We propose and evaluate several stream scheduling strategies. We show that the stream scheduling policies can have a significant impact on performance. We also quantify the improvements in stream throughput possible by using statistical guarantees instead of deterministic guarantees. We show that stream startup latency can be traded off for improving stream throughput (while retaining deterministic guarantees). 1 Introduction System level support of continuous media has been receiving wide attention. Continuous media impose timing requirements on the retrieval and delivery of data unlike traditional data such as text and images. Timely retrieval and de..