Effect of diabetic serum factor on polymorphonuclear leucocyte membrane hydrophobicity and particle internalisation

Membrane hydrophobicity and slalidase activity of normal Poly morphonuclear Leucocyte were significantly enhanced when incubated with DSF. As a consequence, internalisation ofE. coli andS. aureus (opsonised or unopsonised) were greatly dimnished, internalisation ofE. coli being higher in either category. Although, increase in hydrophobicity of the membrane correlated well with the time of decrease of particle internalisation (both at 30 min.), enhancement of sialidase activity did not coincide with the said alterations.     

Induction of diabetes by Streptozotocin in rats

The objective of this study is to induce experimental diabetes mellitus by Streptozotocin in normal adult Wistar rats via comparison of changes in body weight, consumption of food and water, volume of urine and levels of glucose, insulin and C-peptide in serum, between normal and diabetic rats. Intra-venous injection of 60mg/kg dose of Streptozotocin in adult wistar rats, makes pancreas swell and at last causes degeneration in Langerhans islet beta cells and induces experimental diabetes mellitus in the 2–4 days. Induction of experimental diabetes mellitus is indeed the first step in the plan of purification of pancreatic Langerhans islet cells of normal rats for transplanting under the testis subcutaneous of experimentally induced diabetic rats. Streptozotocin induces one type of diabetes which is similar to diabetes mellitus with non-ketosis hyperglycemia in some animal species. For induction of experimental diabetes in male adult rats weighted 250–300 grams (75–90 days), 60mg/kg of Streptozotocin was injected intravenously. Three days after degeneration of beta cells, diabetes was induced in all animals. The diabetic and normal animals were kept in the metabolic cages separately and their body weight, consumption of food and water, urine volume, the levels of serum glucose, insulin and C-peptide quantities in all animals were measured and then these quantities were compared. For a microscopic study of degeneration of Langerhans islet beta cells of diabetic rats, sampling from pancreas tissue of diabetic and normal rats, staining and comparison between them, were done. Induction of diabetes with Streptozotocin decreases Nicotinamide-adenine dinucleotide (NAD) in pancreas islet beta cells and causes histopathological effects in beta cells which probably intermediates induction of diabetes. In this study, we used Streptozotocin for our experiments in induction of experimental diabetes mellitus. After Induction of diabetes, consumption of food and water, volume of urine and glucose increased in the diabetic animals in comparison with normal animals, but the weight of body and the volume of insulin and C-peptide decreased in the diabetic animals. Sampling and staining of pancreas tissue of diabetic and normal rats showed that the Langerhans islet beta cells of diabetic rats have been clearly degenerated. In three days, Streptozotocin makes pancreas swell and at last causes degeneration in Langerhans islet beta cells and induces experimental diabetes. It also changes normal metabolism in diabetic rats in comparison with normal rats. Consumption of water and food, volume of urine, serum glucose increases in diabetic animals in comparison with normal rats but the levels of serum insulin, C-peptide and body weight decreases.     

Raised serum homocysteine levels in patients of coronary artery disease and the effect of vitamin B12 and folate on its concentration

Homocysteine(Hcy) has been implicated as a novel risk factor of Coronary Artery Disease (CAD) among Asian Indians, but many studies done in India failed to reveal any direct correlation. It has also been reported that Folic acid and Vitamin B12 levels inversely affect serum levels of homocysteine. In this study, we looked at the levels of homocysteine among patients with CAD. The effect of Vitamin B12, Folate and other risk factors on homocysteine levels were also evaluated. Mean homocysteine levels in cases (22.81±13.9, n=70) were significantly higher (p=<0.001) than the controls (7.77±7.3, n=70). However no statistically significant correlation could be deduced between homocysteine Vitamin B12, and Folate. Cumulative analysis have indicated an increase in homocysteine levels among patients with CAD with every additional risk factor.     

Troponin T and Heart Type Fatty Acid Binding Protein (h-Fabp) as Biomarkers in Patients Presenting with Chest Pain

Acute coronary syndrome (ACS) is a term for a range of clinical signs and symptoms suggestive of myocardial ischemia. It results in functional and structural changes and ultimately releasing protein from injured cardiomyocytes. These cardiac markers play a major role in diagnosis and prognosis of ACS. This study aims to assess the efficacy of heart type fatty acid binding protein (h-FABP) as a marker for ACS along with the routinely used hs-TropT. In our observational study, plasma h-FABP (cut-off 6.32 ng/ml) and routinely done hs-Trop T (cutoff 0.1 and 0.014 ng/ml) were estimated by immunometric laboratory assays in 88 patients with acute chest pain. Based on the clinical and laboratory test findings the patients were grouped into ACS (n = 41) and non-ACS (n = 47). The diagnostic sensitivity, specificity, NPV, PPV and ROC curve at 95 % CI were determined. Sensitivity of hs-TropT (0.1 ng/ml), hs-TropT (0.014 ng/ml) and h-FABP were 53, 86 and 78 % respectively and specificity for the same were 98, 73 and 70 % respectively. Sensitivity, specificity and NPV calculated for a cut-off combination of hs-TropT 0.014 ng/ml and h-FABP was 100, 51 and 100 % respectively. These results were substantiated by ROC analysis. Measurement of plasma h-FABP and hs-TropT together on admission appears to be more precise predictor of ACS rather than either hs-Trop T or h-FABP.     

Holographic perspective

Although the principle of holography was conceived as long ago as 1947, interest was limited until the advent of the laser in 1960 made possible the off-axis holography widely used today. Since then holography has found many applications and become so well known outside the laboratory as to be a recognized art form. Within the last few years considerable progress has also been made in acoustic holography.     

The use and abuse of metatags

The web creates manyopportunities for encroachment on intellectualproperty including trademarks. Our principaltask in this paper is an investigation into anunusual form of such encroachment: theimproper use of metatags. A metatag is a pieceof HTML code that provides summary informationabout a web page. If used in an appropriatemanner, these metatags can play a legitimaterole in helping consumers locate information. But the ``keyword'' metatag is particularlysusceptible to manipulation. These tags can beeasily abused by web site creators anxious tobait search engines and bring scores ofvisitors to their sites. The law aboutmetatags is far from settled and many legalscholars are uncomfortable with the conclusionthat the unauthorized use of a trademark in ametatag represents infringement. How should weassess this practice known as ``spamdexing'' froma normative perspective? Is it commercial fairplay or something more sinister? We make thecase here that there are salient moral problemswith spamdexing since it exploits thereputational goodwill of trademark owners andconfuses consumers. It violates basic moralduties and it flouts the golden rule principle. Hence unauthorized use of a competitor'strademark in a metatag is not morallyacceptable.     

A review of ontology based query expansion

This paper examines the meaning of context in relation to ontology based query expansion and contains a review of query expansion approaches. The various query expansion approaches include relevance feedback, corpus dependent knowledge models and corpus independent knowledge models. Case studies detailing query expansion using domain-specific and domain-independent ontologies are also included. The penultimate section attempts to synthesise the information obtained from the review and provide success factors in using an ontology for query expansion. Finally the area of further research in applying context from an ontology to query expansion within a newswire domain is described.     

Effects of a magnetic field on the free convective flow through a porous medium bounded by an infinite vertical porous plate with constant heat flux

This paper investigates the effects of a magnetic field on the free convective flow of a viscous, incompressible, dissipative fluid through a porous medium, occupying a semi-infinite region of the space bounded by an infinite vertical and porous plate. The plate is subjected to a normal suction velocity and the heat flux at the plate is constant. The magnetic field is of uniform strength and is applied perpendicular to the plate. An analytical solution to the problem is obtained. The influence of the magnetic parameter (M) and permeability parameter (K) is discussed for the case of air (P = 0.71) when the plate is subjected to a constant suction velocity and is being cooled by free convection currents.     

Analyzing imbalance among homogeneous index servers in a web search system

The performance of parallel query processing in a cluster of index servers is crucial for modern web search systems. In such a scenario, the response time basically depends on the execution time of the slowest server to generate a partial ranked answer. Previous approaches investigate performance issues in this context using simulation, analytical modeling, experimentation, or a combination of them. Nevertheless, these approaches simply assume balanced execution times among homogeneous servers (by uniformly distributing the document collection among them, for instance)—a scenario that we did not observe in our experimentation. On the contrary, we found that even with a balanced distribution of the document collection among index servers, correlations between the frequency of a term in the query log and the size of its corresponding inverted list lead to imbalances in query execution times at these same servers, because these correlations affect disk caching behavior. Further, the relative sizes of the main memory at each server (with regard to disk space usage) and the number of servers participating in the parallel query processing also affect imbalance of local query execution times. These are relevant findings that have not been reported before and that, we understand, are of interest to the research community.