Blood lipid peroxidation products and antioxidants in senile cataract

Lipid peroxidation products and antioxidants were estimated in either blood, serum or erythrocytes of 25 cases of early and 25 of advanced senile (50–60 years) cataract and 30 persons of age matched healthy controls. Serum lipid peroxidation products (as malondialdehyde) were significantly higher in patients with early senile (0.25±0.05 μm/dl, P<0.05) and advanced senile cataract (0.29±0.05 μm/dl, P<0.001) as compared to healthy controls (0.22±0.07 μm/dl). Erythrocyte superoxide dismutase levels were lower in patients with early senile (730±60.5 units/gm Hb) and significantly lower in advanced senile (712±50.2 units/gm Hb, P<0.05) cataract than those in healthy controls (767±59.5 units/gm Hb). Serum α-tocopherol was significantly lower (P<0.05) in only advanced senile cataract (0.69±0.08 mg/dl) but not in early senile cataract (0.75±0.08 mg/dl) when compared with healthy controls (0.75±0.09 mg/dl). There was no significant difference in the erythrocyte concentration of reduced glutathione and serum levels of total proteins, β-carotene, vitamin A, ascorbic acid, calcium, magnesium and zinc.     

Effect of preoperative stress on serum lipoperoxide levels

To test the concept of intense psychogenic stress manifesting as organic lesion, effect of pre-operative stress on serum lipid peroxide levels in 30 otherwise healthy patients to undergo major abdominal elective surgery has been studied and compared with healthy controls. Significant elevations in serum lipid peroxide levels both on hospitalization and at pre-operative stage were noticed in comparison with healthy controls. However, serum lipid peroxide levels at pre-operative stage did not show significant fluctuations in comparison with those at the time of admission, suggestive of no probable further increment in autoxidation of unsaturated fatty acids of membrane lipids and proper handling by scavenging enzyme system.     

Developing strong transition-focused IEPS using labour market data

Employment rates and post-school transition outcomes for individuals with disabilities remain alarmingly low compared to peers without disabilities. Transition-Focused Individualized Education Plans (TF-IEPs) often centre on skills associated with employment experience opportunities that are immediately available to the individual with a disability. While the transition plans focus on the student's strengths and areas of interest, less attention is paid to the guidance and support a student might need in choosing a sustainable career. We contend that teams must develop transition plans with specific attention to projected labour market data. Using this information will ensure that we are preparing students with disabilities for long-term success. This article describes how school teams can use an in-depth labour market analysis to develop robust transition plans. These plans will prepare students for careers that will last far into the future.     

Gregory Bateson,Niklas Luhmann,and Ecological Communication

Cognizant of the evolving academic discipline of ecological communication (EC), I offer this essay as a follow-up to my previous publication—a critical exegesis of Niklas Luhmann's Ecological Communication (1989)—in this journal. Hoping to throw more light on Luhmann's formulations, I introduce and interpret those writings of Gregory Bateson that apparently influenced the former—and/or attempted to link ecology with communication. While I do not necessarily advocate either of these two thinkers' overall philosophical frameworks, I believe that they deserve attention—at the least insofar as they provide a measure of contrast to the contemporary academic discourse of EC (which remains shallow, intellectually parochial, and nonrigorous). That aside, many specific ideas developed by these two thinkers will interest a wide range of constituencies—especially those devoted to the study of information, communication, and ecology.     

Comparative efficacy of shilajeet and gum guggal (commiphora mukul) in preventing diet induced hypercholesterolemia in wistar rats

Shilajeet, a polycrest ayurvedic drug hitherto unknown for its hypolipidemic effect has been shown to lower serum cholesterol, liver cholesterol, serum triglycerides and serum phosphlipids of wistar rats fed on a cholesterol (1%) supplemented diet, by 39, 55, 47 and 25 per cent respectively, when 0.2 per cent of it was incorporated in the diet. In comparison, gum guggal (2.0 per cent in the diet) lowered the serum cholesterol, liver cholesterol, serum triglycerides and serum phospholipids by 36, 60, 49 and 8 per cent respectively. The increase in HDL-cholesterol by shilajeet was much higher (53%) compared to that by gum guggal (29%).     

Skeletal Muscle Strength and Endurance in Recipients of Lung Transplants

Purpose: Exercise limitation in recipients of lung transplant may be a result of abnormalities in the skeletal muscle. However, it is not clear whether these abnormalities are merely a reflection of the changes observed in the pretransplant condition. The purpose of this paper was to compare thigh muscle volume and composition, strength, and endurance in lung transplant recipients to people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).Methods: Single lung transplant recipients (n=6) and people with COPD (n=6), matched for age, sex, and BMI participated in the study. Subjects underwent MRI to determine muscle size and composition, lower extremity strength testing and an isometric endurance test of the quadriceps.Results: Lung transplant recipients had similar muscle volumes and intramuscular fat infiltration of their thigh muscles and similar strength of the quadriceps and hamstrings to people with COPD who had not undergone transplant. However, quadriceps endurance tended to be lower in transplant recipients compared to people with COPD (15 ± 7 seconds in transplant versus 31 ± 12 seconds in COPD, p = 0.08).Conclusions: Recipients of lung transplant showed similar changes in muscle size and strength as people with COPD, however muscle endurance tended to be lower in people with lung transplants. Impairments in muscle endurance may reflect the effects of immunosuppressant medications on skeletal muscle in people with lung transplant.Key Words: lung transplant, muscle function, MRI     

Discriminative probabilistic models for expert search in heterogeneous information sources

In many realistic settings of expert finding, the evidence for expertise often comes from heterogeneous knowledge sources. As some sources tend to be more reliable and indicative than the others, different information sources need to receive different weights to reflect their degrees of importance. However, most previous studies in expert finding did not differentiate data sources, which may lead to unsatisfactory performance in the settings where the heterogeneity of data sources is present. In this paper, we investigate how to merge and weight heterogeneous knowledge sources in the context of expert finding. A relevance-based supervised learning framework is presented to learn the combination weights from training data. Beyond just learning a fixed combination strategy for all the queries and experts, we propose a series of discriminative probabilistic models which have increasing capability to associate the combination weights with specific experts and queries. In the last (and also the most sophisticated) proposed model, the combination weights depend on both expert classes and query topics, and these classes/topics are derived from expert and query features. Compared with expert and query independent combination methods, the proposed combination strategy can better adjust to different types of experts and queries. In consequence, the model yields much flexibility of combining data sources when dealing with a broad range of expertise areas and a large variation in experts. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that designs discriminative learning models to rank experts. Empirical studies on two real world faculty expertise testbeds demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed discriminative learning models.