Clinical Studies on Reversibility of Pulmonary Airway Dysfunctions in Asymptomatic Smokers: Role of Nervous Mechanism in Small Airway Disease

Pulmonary function tests were performed on twenty eight males, among whom eight were healthy nonsmokers and twenty were asymptomatic smokers. Pulmonary function tests such as spirometry, respiratory impedance (Z3Hz), single breath nitrogen washout (SBN2) and volume of isoflow (VisoV) were done before and after inhalation of orciprenaline sulphate and atropine sulphate in all nonsmokers and smokers. Subdivisions of lung volume, diffusing capacity (DLco) and arterial blood gas analysis were conducted only before inhalation of drugs. Acute effects were studied after smoking a cigarette and effects of orciprenaline inhalation after smoking were also observed. Furthermore, effects of smoking on prior inhalation of orciprenaline, atropine or lidocaine were evaluated. The results obtained were as follows: 1) There were no differences in the results of routine pulmonary function tests, between nonsmokers and smokers except Z3Hz, which was significantly higher in smokers (p<0.01) and there was a tendency to decrease in flow especially at low lung volumes in smokers. Smokers could be well differentiated from nonsmokers by VisoV/FVC (p<0.001) and the difference in distribution of ventilation was greater (p<0.05). 2) In nonsmokers, Z3Hz decreased and V50 increased significantly after inhalation of orciprenaline and atropine. FEV1.o increased significantly with atropine inhalation only. There were no changes in VisoV/FVC with inhalation of orciprenaline or atropine. In smokers, Z3Hz and VisoV/FVC decreased significantly after inhalation of orciprenaline or atropine (p<0.001). FEV1.o and flow rates improved significantly with both drugs. 3) After smoking a cigarette, Z3Hz and VisoV/FVC significantly increased (p < 0.01), but inhalation of orciprenaline or atropine prior to smoking significantly inhibited the acute effects of smoking and lidocaine completely inhibited the acute effects of smoking. These results indicate that several parameters such as Z3Hz, flow at low lung volume, VisoV/FVC could detect the airway dysfunctions in asymptomatic cigarette smokers. These airway dysfunctions might be due to increased vagal tone, leading to narrowing of the airways and these airway dysfunctions were reversible by bronchodilator drugs.This study was performed in the Second Department of Internal Medicine, Hiroshima University School of Medicine, under a scholarship granted by The Ministry of Education, Science and Culture (Monbusho), The Government of Japan

Bootstrap State Representation using Style Transfer for Better Generalization in Deep Reinforcement Learning

Deep Reinforcement Learning (RL) agents often overfit the training environment, leading to poor generalization performance. In this paper, we propose Thinker, a bootstrapping method to remove adversarial effects of confounding features from the observation in an unsupervised way, and thus, it improves RL agents' generalization. Thinker first clusters experience trajectories into several clusters. These trajectories are then bootstrapped by applying a style transfer generator, which translates the trajectories from one cluster's style to another while maintaining the content of the observations. The bootstrapped trajectories are then used for policy learning. Thinker has wide applicability among many RL settings. Experimental results reveal that Thinker leads to better generalization capability in the Procgen benchmark environments compared to base algorithms and several data augmentation techniques.Comment: Accepted at ECML-PKDD 202

Coastal fisheries management issues and opportunities

Management of the industrial trawl fishery largely depends on the management of the artisanal fishing gears which restrict greatly the recruitment of the penaeid shrimps in the trawl fishery as adults. Trawlers harvest the spawners in peak spawning season, which greatly reduces in turn the chances of an enhanced stock in off-shore water. Since the exploitation of the penaeid shrimp stock is a multigear function, the cumulative affect were considered and in various ways it has been discussed that the same stock can provide a few times higher production if managed scientifically. Marine artisanal fisheries have so far been allowed to develop irrationally and as a result many of the fish and shrimp stocks have declined. One single stock of fish or shrimp is harvested by a number of fisheries at different stages of life cycle. Hence overfishing in one fishery has affected the others. Here the Push net fishery for tiger shrimp PL and the ESBN and Beach seine fisheries for juveniles have been identified as the destructive fishing methods. These fisheries restrict recruitment in the industrial fishery and hence results in over all lower catch rate and production. These fisheries need to be stopped. But since 55,000 full time fishermen are engaged in ESBN fishery, rehabilitation of them would be necessary before withdrawal. So main research and management thrust need to put on the artisanal fisheries sector. Since coastal shrimp culture industry is solely dependent on the push net fishery, rapid hatchery development is suggested. Meanwhile diversified technique for selective PL. Collection and reduction of induced mortality is proposed for research and extension. Further expansion of the coastal shrimp culture is not recommendable on the basis of natural seed supply. Trammel fishery has been proved to be bio-socio-economically most suitable fishing gear and if expansion & extension takes place vertically and horizontally it can be used as a major source of rehabilitation and also to enhance additional but sustainable production. Amendment of the rules under the Marine Fisheries Ordinance 1983 is required on the basis of present knowledge about the dynamics of the fisheries. DOF Marine Fisheries Survey & Management Unit need to be strengthened as to the manpower and facilities, to be able to independently handle the task of achieving information for management and advise the govt. of measures for rational management on a continued basis. Functions of different ministries, agencies and institutions in fisheries management and development have been reviewed and the need for strengthening of the marine sector have been identified including creation of a separate directorate for marine fisheries. To integrate and control all activities in the coastal areas, creation of Coastal Zone Management Authority has been proposed

Comparative Study of Areca Fiber Reinforced Polyester Composites and Plywood

In this study, the mechanical properties of the composites made of areca fibers as reinforcing agent with polyester matrix were evaluated. Both untreated and treated (mercerized) fibers were used to fabricate composites and the mechanical properties such as tensile strength (TS), tensile modulus (TM), flexural strength (FS), flexural modulus (FM) and impact strength (IS) of the composites were examined. Composites were manufactured by means of hand lay-up technique with varying fiber content (5 and 10%). Mechanical properties of plywood were also tested and compared with the composites. It was found that areca fiber composites showed significant improved mechanical properties than plywood. Among the composite materials 10% fiber loading presented higher mechanical properties than 5% fiber content and the treated fiber composites exhibited enhanced mechanical properties than the untreated fiber composites due to strong interfacial bonding between fiber and matrix. In addition, water uptake test was performed and specifies that areca composites absorbed very much lower amount of water than that of plywood. The morphology was investigated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM)

Japanese encephalitis virus infection in South-East Asia: An immuno-epidemiological twist

Background:Japanese encephalitis (JE) is one of the most important zoonotic diseases in a cosmopolitan manner. &nbsp;Japanese encephalitis virus&nbsp;(JEV) infection represents at least 70 % of emerging diseases caused by the&nbsp;mosquito-borne&nbsp; JEV. Nearly 20-30% of case fatality corroborated in JEV infections with 30-50% neurologic and psychiatric disorders. A strong epidemic distribution is observed mainly in South-East Asia, demonstrating typical seasonal characteristics and occasional outbreaks. Depending on the genetic diversity, geographical distribution, and emerging natures of JEV, the disease surveillance, and immunization strategies are also varied. Uncontrolled population growth, haphazard agro-animal farming, and ecological imbalance steer the emergence and reemergence of JEV occurrences. Some murine models elucidate the immunological phenomena of JEV infections, the more detailed pathogenesis depending on the genetic variation is yet to be well defined. And the immune-epidemiological traits also address significant concerns regarding the effective vaccines and immunotherapeutics against JEV infections. Therefore, we summarized some critical notions on molecular epidemiology, immunogenicity, and genetic variance of JEV in South-East Asia

Seedling Diversity Considerably Changes Near Localities in Three Salinity Zones of Sundarbans Mangrove Forest, Bangladesh

The status of natural seedlings near localities in the Sundarbans Mangrove Forest was assessed through a stratified random sampling method  to observe seedling composition and diversity, importance value index, family importance value, and species evenness. A total of 63 sample plots of 3,990 m2 area were surveyed in three natural and anthropogenic influenced salinity zones of Sundarbans. A total of 16,166 seedlings of 15 species under 12 families were found. Family Euphorbiaceae showed the highest (59.59%) family relative density and Rhizophoraceae presented the highest (20%) family relative diversity Index (FRDI). The maximum family importance value (FIV) showed by Euphorbiaceae (66.26) and the maximum importance value index (IVI) of species has been observed in Excoecaria agallocha (114.74). Excoecaria agallocha showed the highest relative density (59.6%) and relative abundance (39.87%) where the highest relative frequency (15.27%) was observed by Heritiera fomes. The mean stem density and species diversity index in the whole survey area was 2701 stem ha-1 and 0.0009 correspondingly. The Shannon-Wienner's diversity index was 1.52 where the maximum Shannon-Wienner's diversity index was 2.708. The Simpson's diversity index and Dominance of Simpson index were 0.38 and 0.62 with Simpson's reciprocal index 2.632. The Species evenness index, Menhinick’s, and Margalef's indices were 0.561, 0.118, and 1.445 respectively. The Species diversity index of the three salinity zones were 0.0017, 0.0029, and 0.0035 respectively. The Shannon-Wienner's diversity index of Low Salinity Zone (LSZ), Moderate Salinity Zone (MSZ), and Strong Salinity Zone (SSZ) were 0.887, 1.369, and 1.845 correspondingly where LSZ (0.632) showed the highest Simpson's diversity index follow ed by MSZ (0.394) and SSZ (0.21). The Species evenness index for LSZ, MSZ, and SSZ were 0.346, 0.505, and 0.742 where Menhinick’s Index were 0.148, 0.210, and 0.207 respectively. The analysis showed poor diversity indices and the area was dominated by few species with few families. The status is also reduced with increasing salinity