Emergency medicine in Dubai, UAE

Dubai has rapidly risen to prominence in the Persian Gulf region as a center of global commerce and tourism and as a cultural crossroad between East and West. The health-care infrastructure has undergone rapid development. Collaborations with academic medical centers now exist to advance clinical care, teaching and research. Emergency medicine has also advanced and is undergoing dynamic change. Dubai may soon emerge as a regional leader in emergency medicine training and practice

Early Life Disease Programming during the Preconception and Prenatal Period: Making the Link between Stressful Life Events and Type-1 Diabetes

Background: To assess the risk of developing Type-1 diabetes among children who were exposed to maternal bereavement during the prenatal or 1-year preconception period. Methods: We identified N = 1,548,746 singleton births born in Denmark between January 1 st 1979 through December 31 st 2004, and their next of kin. Altogether, 39,857 children were exposed to bereavement during their prenatal life. The main outcome of interest was hospitalization for type-1 diabetes (ICD 8: 249; ICD 10: E10). Results: We found the strongest association for type-1 diabetes among children exposed to traumatic father or sibling deaths (aIRR: 2.03, 1.22–3.38); the association was mainly seen for girls (aIRR: 2.91, 1.61–5.26). Conclusions: We found evidence to suggest that female fetuses exposed to severe prenatal stress are at increased risk fo

Agonist-Specific Regulation of -Opioid Receptor Desensitization and Recovery from Desensitization □ S

ABSTRACT Agonist-selective actions of opioids on the desensitization of -opioid receptors (MORs) have been well characterized, but few if any studies have examined agonist-dependent recovery from desensitization. The outward potassium current induced by several opioids was studied using whole-cell voltage-clamp recordings in locus ceruleus neurons. A brief application of the irreversible opioid antagonist ␤-chlornaltrexamine (␤-CNA) was applied immediately after treatment of slices with saturating concentrations of opioid agonists. This approach permitted the measurement of desensitization and recovery from desensitization using multiple opioid agonists, including [Met] 5 enkephalin (ME), [D-Ala 2 ,N-Me-Phe 4 ,Gly 5 -ol]-enkephalin (DAMGO), etorphine, fentanyl, methadone, morphine, morphine-6-glucuronide, oxycodone, and oxymorphone. The results indicate that desensitization protects receptors from irreversible antagonism with ␤-CNA. The amount of desensitization was measured as the decrease in current during a 10-min application of a saturating agonist concentration and was a good predictor of the extent of receptor protection from irreversible inactivation with ␤-CNA. After desensitization with ME or DAMGO and treatment with ␤-CNA, there was an initial profound inhibition of MOR-induced current that recovered significantly after 45 min. There was, however, no recovery of MOR-mediated current with time after treatment with agonists that did not cause desensitization, such as oxycodone. These results demonstrate that desensitization prevents irreversible inactivation of receptors by ␤-CNA

Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection: A Case Series of 9 Patients With Literature Review.

Spontaneous coronary artery dissection is an increasingly recognized nonatherosclerotic cause of acute coronary syndrome. Reports regarding the prognosis and natural history of this disease are limited. In addition to the diagnostic difficulty, this condition poses a significant therapeutic challenge due to the lack of specific management guidelines. We present here a case series of 9 patients with spontaneous coronary artery dissection. Additionally, this article reviews the incidence, clinical characteristics, risk factors, diagnostic modalities, therapeutic approaches, and patterns of recurrence in patients with spontaneous coronary artery dissection

A note on variation in grain and straw fodder quality traits in 437 cultivars of rice from the varietal groups of aromatic, hybrids, Indica, new planting types and released varieties in the Philippines

Four hundred and thirty-seven different cultivars (59 Aromatics, 53 Hybrids, 172 Indica, 92 New Planting Types and 61 Varieties) were analyzed for grain yield (GY), straw nitrogen (N) content, neutral (NDF) and acid (ADF) detergent fiber, acid detergent lignin (ADL), silica, in vitro organic matter digestibility (IVOMD) and metabolizable energy (ME) and for relationships between GY and these straw fodder quality traits. Highly significant (P < 0.0001) differences between the groups were observed for all traits with hybrid having the highest GY and also the highest mean straw N, IVOMD and ME. With the exception of NDF and ADL in Aromatics highly significant (P = 0.002 to 0.0001) differences were found for all traits among the cultivars in the different groups. Variations in GY and straw fodder quality traits were greater within cultivar groups than among cultivar types. The variations in straw quality traits between cultivars were of livestock nutritional significance. For example, key straw quality traits such as IVOMD varied between cultivars by at least 6.9% units in New Planting Types and up to 12.0% units in Varieties. Cultivar differences in straw quality can be exploited without detriment to GY since inverse relationships were largely absent. Weak overall inverse associations between GY and straw fodder quality traits, that is inverse relationships between straw N, IVOMD and ME and positive relationship between NDF, AD, ADL and silica and GY, were due to two obvious outliers with very low GY

Toward a structural understanding of turbulent drag reduction: nonlinear coherent states in viscoelastic shear flows

Nontrivial steady flows have recently been found that capture the main structures of the turbulent buffer layer. We study the effects of polymer addition on these "exact coherent states" (ECS) in plane Couette flow. Despite the simplicity of the ECS flows, these effects closely mirror those observed experimentally: Structures shift to larger length scales, wall-normal fluctuations are suppressed while streamwise ones are enhanced, and drag is reduced. The mechanism underlying these effects is elucidated. These results suggest that the ECS are closely related to buffer layer turbulence.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, published version, Phys. Rev. Lett. 89, 208301 (2002

Physiological and anthocyanin biosynthesis genes response induced by vanadium stress in mustard genotypes with distinct photosynthetic activity

The present study aimed to elucidate the photosynthetic performance, antioxidant enzyme activities, anthocyanin contents, anthocyanin biosynthetic gene expression, and vanadium uptake in mustard genotypes (purple and green) that differ in photosynthetic capacity under vanadium stress. The results indicated that vanadium significantly reduced photosynthetic activity in both genotypes. The activities of the antioxidant enzymes were increased significantly in response to vanadium in both genotypes, although the purple exhibited higher. The anthocyanin contents were also reduced under vanadium stress. The anthocyanin biosynthetic genes were highly expressed in the purple genotype, notably the genes TT8, F3H, and MYBL2 under vanadium stress. The results indicate that induction of TT8, F3H, and MYBL2 genes was associated with upregulation of the biosynthetic genes required for higher anthocyanin biosynthesis in purple compared with the green mustard. The roots accumulated higher vanadium than shoots in both mustard genotypes. The results indicate that the purple mustard had higher vanadium tolerance