Molecular Aspects of Dopaminergic Neurodegeneration: Gene-Environment Interaction in Parkin Dysfunction

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a common neurodegenerative movement disorder that is characterized pathologically by a progressive loss of midbrain dopaminergic neurons and by protein inclusions, designated Lewy bodies and Lewy neurites. PD is one of the most common neurodegenerative diseases, affecting almost 1% of the population over 60 years old. Although the symptoms and neuropathology of PD have been well characterized, the underlying mechanisms and causes of the disease are still not clear. Genetic mutations can provide important clues to disease mechanism, but most PD cases are sporadic rather than familial; environmental factors have long been suspected to contribute to the disease. Although more than 90% of PD cases occur sporadically and are thought to be due, in part, to oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunction, the study of genetic mutations has provided great insight into the molecular mechanisms of PD. Furthermore, rotenone, a widely used pesticide, and paraquat and maneb cause a syndrome in rats and mice that mimics, both behaviorally and neurologically, the symptoms of PD. In the current review, we will discuss various aspects of gene-environment interaction that lead to progressive dopaminergic neurodegenration, mainly focusing on our current finding based on stress-mediated parkin dysfunction

Cost of acute stroke care at a tertiary care hospital in Karachi, Pakistan

Objective:To evaluate cost of acute stroke care and its determinants at a tertiary care hospital in Karachi and to find out predictors of high cost care. Acute stroke is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality. Cost of care is the single most important determinant in availability of acute stroke care at a tertiary care hospital in Pakistan.It is also an important factor in development of public health policies and medical insurance plans. Average nnual income in Pakistan is 4881 rupees (U$85). Methods: Medical and billing records of 443 patients with acute stroke were retrospectively reviewed from 1998-2001 at The Aga Khan University Hospital (AKUH), Karachi. Acute stroke care at AKUH usually includes routinelaboratory investigation including Lipid profile, Magnetic resonance imaging/angiography (MRI/MRA),Echocardiogram, Carotid Doppler\u27s ultrasound and medical management in the Stroke care unit. Results:443 patients were included in study. Age range was 25-98 years (Mean 58 years). 269 (61$1179) whichincluded average radiology cost; 12,507 rupees (U$208), average laboratory cost; 8365 rupees (U$139),average pharmacy cost; 13,320 rupees (U$222) and average bed/room charges; 27, 552 rupees (U$459).Length of hospital stay is the most important determinant of cost. Average total cost for patients who stayed for1 day was 19,597 rupees (U$326), 2-3 days; 25,568 rupees (U$426), 4-7 days; 49,705 rupees (U$828), 8-30 days; 153,586 rupees (U$2559), more than 30 days; 588,239 rupees (U$9804). Average cost for general wardwas 60,574 rupees (U$1010), private ward was 74,880 rupees (U$1248) and intensive care unit was 155,010rupees (U$2583). Conclusion: Cost of acute stroke care is extremely high as compared to average national income at ourhospital. Most important determinant of cost is length of hospital stay. Cost cutting measures and increasedfunding from state are necessary to increase the availability of acute stroke care (JPMA 53:552;2003)

Automatic Road Crack Segmentation Using Thresholding Methods

Maintenance of good condition of roads are very essential to the economy and everyday life of people in a every country. Road cracks are one of the important indicators that show degradations of road surfaces. Inspection of roads that have been done manually took a very long time and tedious. Hence, an automatic road crack segmentation using thresholding methods have been proposed in this study. In this study, ten road crack images have been pre-processed as an initial step. Then, normalization techniques, L1-Sqrt norm have been applied onto images to reduce the variation of intensities that skewed to the right. Then, thresholding methods, Otsu and Sauvola methods have been used to binarize the images.  From the experiment of ten road crack images that have been done, normalization technique, L1-Sqrt norm can help to increase performance of road crack segmentation for Otsu and Sauvola methods. The results also show that Sauvola method outperform Otsu method in detecting road cracks

Outputs and Growth of Primary Care Databases in the United Kingdom: Bibliometric Analysis.

BACKGROUND: Electronic health database (EHD) data is increasingly used by researchers. The major United Kingdom EHDs are the 'Clinical Practice Research Datalink' (CPRD), 'The Health Improvement Network' (THIN) and 'QResearch'. Over time, outputs from these databases have increased, but have not been evaluated. OBJECTIVE: This study compares research outputs from CPRD, THIN and QResearch assessing growth and publication outputs over a 10-year period (2004-2013). CPRD was also reviewed separately over 20 years as a case study. METHODS:  Publications from CPRD and QResearch were extracted using the Science Citation Index (SCI) of the Thomson Scientific Institute for Scientific Information (Web of Science). THIN data was obtained from University College London and validated in Web of Science. All databases were analysed for growth in publications, the speciality areas and the journals in which their data have been published. RESULTS: These databases collectively produced 1,296 publications over a ten-year period, with CPRD representing 63.6% (n=825 papers), THIN 30.4% (n=394) and QResearch 5.9% (n=77). Pharmacoepidemiology and General Medicine were the most common specialities featured. Over the 9-year period (2004-2013), publications for THIN and QResearch have slowly increased over time, whereas CPRD publications have increased substantially in last 4 years with almost 75% of CPRD publications published in the past 9 years. CONCLUSION: These databases are enhancing scientific research and are growing yearly, however display variability in their growth. They could become more powerful research tools if the National Health Service and general practitioners can provide accurate and comprehensive data for inclusion in these databases

Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) future development: a comprehensive review on customer retention programme in retaining customer loyalty

No AbstractKeywords: small and medium enterprises (SMEs); customer retention program; loyalty;  advantage card; monetary rewar

Behind the counter: pharmacies and dispensing patterns of pharmacy attendants in Karachi.

BACKGROUND: There is little literature available on dispensing patterns and unsupervised sale of medicines from pharmacies in developing countries. OBJECTIVE: This study obtained background information on pharmacies assessed the level of training, knowledge and dispensing patterns of pharmacy attendants in Karachi. METHODOLOGY: This is a descriptive cross sectional study with convenient sampling. A structured questionnaire was used to interview pharmacy attendants. RESULTS: Of the 219 pharmacies surveyed, 62% reported more than 50 customers daily and 20% also sold items of general provision. Mean operating hours were 13. Only 24 (11%) had a visible license. On an average 3 attendants were employed per pharmacy. We interviewed one in each. Amongst the 219 interviewed, 77 (35%) were intermediate qualified and only 26 (12%) pharmacologically trained. Correct frequency of ORS administration was not known by 167 (76%) and 21% incorrectly suggested an anti-diarrhoeal preparation for viral diarrhoea in children. The knowledge of those with pharmacological training was significantly better. For respiratory tract infection in children approximately 60% did not know the correct dose of Paracetamol and Amoxicillin. Only 13 (6%) knew that Propanalol was contraindicated in hypertensive asthamatics. For Cotrimoxazole, metronidazole and lomotil only 40%, 21% and 15% respectively, were aware that these could not be dispensed without prescription. CONCLUSION: In the absence of trained pharmacists existing pharmacy attendants should be trained to improve drug-dispensing patterns

The performance of robust multivariate Ewma control charts

Multivariate Exponential Weighted Moving Average (MEWMA) control chart is a popular statistical tool for monitoring multivariate process over time. However, this chart is sensitive to the presence of outliers arising from the use of classical mean vector and covariance matrix in estimating the MEWMA statistic. These classical estimators are known to be sensitive to the outliers. To address this problem, robust MEWMA control charts based on modified one-step M-estimator (MOM) and Winsorized modified one-step M-estimator (WM) are proposed. Their performance is then compared with the standard MEWMA control chart in various situations. The findings revealed that the proposed robust MEWMA control charts are more effective in controlling false alarm rates especially for large sample sizes and high percentage of outlier

Comparison on Cloud Image Classification for Thrash Collecting LEGO Mindstorms EV3 Robot

The world today faces the biggestwaste management crisis due to rapid economicgrowth, congestion, urban planning issues,devastating negative symptoms and politicalaffairs. In addressing this waste managementproblem, many methods of solving wastemanagement have proven not to be as planned.In this high technology era, the innovation ofhumanoid robots is found to be helpful to supportthe everyday human life. The industry is gearingtowards automation to increase productivity at thesame time will improved quality of life to localcommunities. Therefore, in this paper ThrashCollecting Robot (TCR) is proposed to helpprovide automatic control in thrash collection. TheTCR, built on the LEGO Mindstorm EV3 robot, candistinguish between static and dynamic barriers,and can move according to the programming thathas been created. TCRs are basically composedof sensors designed according to differentrequirements in order to detect dynamic barriers.TCR is one type of Cloud Robot that implementsimage processing techniques to identify the typeof waste that has been collected. The concept ofimage processing built in TCR by using CloudRepresentational State Transfer (REST API).This concept has been applied by Google CloudAPI and Sighthound. This cloud services usedmachine vision techniques to identify and classifythe type of thrash images; whether it is plastic,metal or paper. Experiment results show thatSightHound gives accurate result compared toGoogle Cloud in classifying thrash types

Generic Insect Repellent Detector from the Fruit Fly Drosophila melanogaster

Background: Insect repellents are prophylactic tools against a number of vector-borne diseases. There is growing demand for repellents outperforming DEET in cost and safety, but with the current technologies R&D of a new product takes almost 10 years, with a prohibitive cost of $30 million dollar in part due to the demand for large-scale synthesis of thousands of test compounds of which only 1 may reach the market. R&D could be expedited and cost dramatically reduced with a molecular/physiological target to streamline putative repellents for final efficacy and toxicological tests. Methodology: Using olfactory-based choice assay we show here that the fruit fly is repelled by not only DEET, but also IR3535 and picaridin thus suggesting they might have ‘‘generic repellent detector(s),’ ’ which may be of practical applications in new repellent screenings. We performed single unit recordings from all olfactory sensilla in the antennae and maxillary palps. Although the ab3A neuron in the wild type flies responded to picaridin, it was unresponsive to DEET and IR3535. By contrast, a neuron housed in the palp basiconic sensilla pb1 responded to DEET, IR3535, and picaridin, with apparent sensitivity higher than that of the DEET detectors in the mosquitoes Culex quinquefasciatus and Aedes aegypti. DmOr42a was transplanted from pb1 to the ‘‘empty neuron’ ’ and showed to be sensitive to the three insect repellents. Conclusions: For the first time we have demonstrated that the fruit fly avoids not only DEET but also IR3535 and picaridin, and identified an olfactory receptor neuron (ORN), which is sensitive to these three major insect repellents. We have als

Characterization of a diesel-degrading strain isolated from a hydrocarbon-contaminated site,

Abstract: A diesel-degrading bacterium has been isolated from a diesel-polluted site. The isolate was tentatively identified as Staphylococcus aureus strain DRY11 based on partial 16S rDNA molecular phylogeny and Biolog® GP microplate panels and Microlog® database. Isolate 11 showed an almost linear increase in cellular growth with respect to diesel concentrations with optimum growth occurring at 4% (v/v) diesel concentration. Optimization studies using different nitrogen sources showed that the best nitrogen source was potassium nitrite. Sodium nitrite was optimum at 1.2 g l -1 and higher concentrations were strongly inhibitory to cellular growth. The optimal pH that supported growth of the bacterium was between 7.5 to 8.0 and the isolate exhibited optimal broad temperature supporting growth on diesel from 27 to 37 o C. An almost complete removal of diesel components was seen from the reduction in hydrocarbon peaks observed using Solid Phase Microextraction Gas Chromatography analysis after 5 days of incubation. The characteristics of this bacterium suggest that it is suitable for bioremediation of diesel spills and pollutions in the tropics