Enhancing our understanding of small bowel function using modern imaging techniques

Small intestinal function is critical to digestive health and patients believe an abnormal reaction to food is responsible for many of their symptoms. Despite this, our ability to assess disturbed function in clinical practice has been limited, particularly after ingestion of the complex nutrients which make up normal food. Recent advances in both wireless capsules and magnetic resonance imaging have provided new insights. This review will briefly describe the limitations of past techniques and focus on how these newer techniques are changing our understanding, particularly of how patients’ gastrointestinal tracts respond to food

Phylogenetic relationships of Indian caecilians (Amphibia: Gymnophiona) inferred from mitochondrial rRNA gene sequences

India has a diverse caecilian fauna, including representatives of three of the six currently recognized families, the Caeciliidae, Ichthyophiidae, the endemic Uraeotyphlidae, but previous molecular phylogenetic studies of caecilians have not included sequences for any Indian caecilians. Partial 12S and 16S mitochondrial gene sequences were obtained for a single representative of each of the caecilian families found in India and aligned against previously reported sequences for 13 caecilian species. The resulting alignment (16 taxa, 1200 sites, of which 288 cannot be aligned unambiguously) was analyzed using parsimony, maximum-likelihood, and distance methods. As judged by bootstrap proportions, decay indices, and leaf stabilities, well-supported relationships of the Indian caecilians are recovered from the alignment. The data (1) corroborate the hypothesis, based on morphology, that the Uraeotyphlidae and Ichthyophiidae are sister taxa, (2) recover a monophyletic Ichthyophiidae, including Indian and South East Asian representatives, and (3) place the Indian caeciliid Gegeneophis ramaswamii as the sister group of the caeciliid caecilians of the Seychelles. Rough estimates of divergence times suggest an origin of the Uraeotyphlidae and Ichthyophiidae while India was isolated from Laurasia and Africa and are most consistent with an Indian origin of these families and subsequent dispersal of ichthyophiids into South East Asia

Results of the British Society of Gastroenterology supporting women in gastroenterology mentoring scheme pilot.

Introduction: Mentorship has long been recognised as beneficial in the business world and has more recently been endorsed by medical and academic professional bodies. Recruitment of women into gastroenterology and leadership roles has traditionally been difficult. The Supporting Women in Gastroenterology network developed this pilot scheme for female gastroenterologists 5 years either side of the Completion Certificate of Specialist Training (CCST) to examine the role that mentorship could play in improving this discrepancy. Method: Female gastroenterology trainees and consultant gastroenterologists within 5 years either side of CCST were invited to participate as mentees. Consultant gastroenterologists of both genders were invited to become mentors. 35 pairs of mentor:mentees were matched and completed the scheme over 1 year. Training was provided. Results: The majority of the mentees found the sessions useful (82%) and enjoyable (77%), with the benefit of having time and space to discuss professional or personal challenges with a gastroenterologist who is not a colleague. In the longitudinal study of job satisfaction, work engagement, burnout, resilience, self-efficacy, self-compassion and work-life balance, burnout scale showed a small but non significant improvement over the year (probably an effect of small sample size). Personal accomplishment improved significantly. The main challenges were geography, available time to meet and pair matching. The majority of mentors surveyed found the scheme effective, satisfying, mutually beneficial (70%) and enjoyable (78%). Conclusion: Mentorship is shown to be beneficial despite the challenges and is likely to improve the recruitment and retention of women into gastroenterology and leadership roles, but is likely to benefit gastroenterologists of both genders

Characterization of Landau-Zener Transitions in Systems with Complex Spectra

This paper is concerned with the study of one-body dissipation effects in idealized models resembling a nucleus. In particular, we study the quantum mechanics of a free particle that collides elastically with the slowly moving walls of a Bunimovich stadium billiard. Our results are twofold. First, we develop a method to solve in a simple way the quantum mechanical evolution of planar billiards with moving walls. The formalism is based on the {\it scaling method} \cite{ver} which enables the resolution of the problem in terms of quantities defined over the boundary of the billiard. The second result is related to the quantum aspects of dissipation in systems with complex spectra. We conclude that in a slowly varying evolution the energy is transferred from the boundary to the particle through Landau$-$Zener transitions.Comment: 24 pages (including 7 postcript figures), Revtex. Submitted to PR

Observation of interference fringes in Autler-Townes line shapes

Journals published by the American Physical Society can be found at http://publish.aps.org/We observe Ramsey fringes in the absorption line shape for a weak optical field probing the transition between an unperturbed quantum state and one that is dynamically Stark shifted by a strong pump field

A multi-ingredient containing, proteins, carbohydrate and creatine does not attenuate humoral immune response or performance decrease compared to carbohydrate during resistance training

Background: Nowadays, only carbohydrate has shown to be an effective countermeasure to exercise-induced immune dysfunction while the effect of protein remains controversial. The purpose of this study was to investigate the acute effects of a commercially available multi-nutrient supplement on performance and salivary markers of humoral immunity, following a bout of circuit resistance training in young athletes. Methods: Twelve recreationally resistance-trained males (age: 22 ± 1.4 years; body mass 79 ±9.78 kg; 1.81 ± 0.07 m height) volunteered to participate in the study completing 2 randomised controlled circuit resistance training sessions (CT). Participants ingested 2 doses of 500ml of water mixed 60g of a multi-ingredient (MTN) containing whey proteins, carbohydrate, creatine, HMB and sodium bicarbonate or maltodextrin (PL). Beverages were consumed (3 doses of ~166ml) during and after the workout (1 × 500ml). Both MTN and PL looks the same colour and flavour and provide a similar amount of calories (~230 per serving). CT involved three rounds of 7 resistance exercises (CMJs, Bench Press, Parallel-Squat, Upright row, Alternate Lunges, Dead Lift, Push-press, Abdominals) followed by 1 min rest. Participants performed 12 repetitions at 70% 1RM in each of the exercises with no rest in between (only the time to change from one exercise to the next). Measurements included pre and post (30 min and 60 min) salivary markers of humoral immune response: Antimicrobial Peptide, Alpha Defensins (HNP 1-3). The total kg lifted per exercise and in the overall workout was considered as indicator of performance. ANOVA design and Cohen d effect sizes (ES) were used to analyse potential differences between times and treatment conditions. Results: No significant differences were observed between the total weight (kg) lifted per exercise or for the entire session (p > 0.05). HNP 1-3 showed a strong trend (p = 0.06) with a moderate effect size (d = 0.53) at 30 min for the CHO condition [2.001 (1.95) vs 3.037 (2.49) ng/mL], nevertheless, no significant differences were observed at 60 min with respect to the values measured at both pre [3.825 (3.21) vs 2.001 (1.95) ng/mL] and 30 min [3.825 (3.21) vs 3.037 (2.49) ng/mL]. On the other side, HNP 1-3 did not increase at either 30 min [2.464 (3.31) vs 3.656 (3.22) ng/mL] or 60 min [2.464(3.31) vs 2.387 (2.46) ng/mL] post workout for the MTN treatment condition. No differences were observed between the two tested treatment conditions for the three analysed times points (pre, post 30 min and post 60 min). Conclusion: Ingesting both MTN and CHO supplements during and after a circuit resistance-training workout, resulted in no impact on performance. However, even when both nutritional interventions were effective to attenuate the increase of antimicrobial peptide alpha-defensins, MTN showed a stronger effect to blunt exercise-induced immune-dysfunction. These results did not support the notion that only carbohydrate with no added proteins is the only effective nutritional countermeasure against the transient post exercise immunosuppression

Signatures of unstable semiclassical trajectories in tunneling

It was found recently that processes of multidimensional tunneling are generally described at high energies by unstable semiclassical trajectories. We study two observational signatures related to the instability of trajectories. First, we find an additional power-law dependence of the tunneling probability on the semiclassical parameter as compared to the standard case of potential tunneling. The second signature is substantial widening of the probability distribution over final-state quantum numbers. These effects are studied using modified semiclassical technique which incorporates stabilization of the tunneling trajectories. The technique is derived from first principles. We obtain expressions for the inclusive and exclusive tunneling probabilities in the case of unstable semiclassical trajectories. We also investigate the "phase transition" between the cases of stable and unstable trajectories across certain "critical" value of energy. Finally, we derive the relation between the semiclassical probabilities of tunneling from the low-lying and highly excited initial states. This puts on firm ground a conjecture made previously in the semiclassical description of collision-induced tunneling in field theory.Comment: Journal version; 48 pages, 16 figure

Structure-Based Design of Potent and Selective Leishmania N-Myristoyltransferase Inhibitors

Inhibitors of Leishmania N-myristoyltransferase (NMT), a potential target for the treatment of leishmaniasis, obtained from a high-throughput screen, were resynthesized to validate activity. Crystal structures bound to Leishmania major NMT were obtained, and the active diastereoisomer of one of the inhibitors was identified. On the basis of structural insights, enzyme inhibition was increased 40-fold through hybridization of two distinct binding modes, resulting in novel, highly potent Leishmania donovani NMT inhibitors with good selectivity over the human enzyme