Effect of hemodialysis on circulating cystatin c levels in patients with end stage renal disease

Plasma cystatin C is an emerging parameter to assess kidney function. Its utility in assessing the adequacy of hemodialysis in patients with end-stage-renal disease has however not been established with certainty. This study was therefore carried out to assess the usefulness of serum cystatin C estimation in patients undergoing low flux membrane hemodialysis. Serum creatinine and cystatin C were estimated in 20 patients before and after undergoing hemodialysis. The mean serum creatinine decreased from a pre-dialysis value of 7.72 mg/dL to a post-dialysis value of 2.90 mg/dL. On the contrary, the mean serum cystatin C levels were found to increase from a pre-dialysis value of 5.97 mg/L to a post-dialysis value of 8.25 mg/L. Therefore, serum cystatin C cannot be used to monitor dialysis adequacy. It however, serves as a surrogate marker of the inadequacy of low flux membrane bicarbonate hemodialysis in clearing low molecular weight proteins from the circulation.     

Rethinking saving: Indian ceremonial gifts as relational and reproductive saving

ABSTRACT

Economic anthropology has long advocated a broader vision of savings than that proposed by economists. This article extends this redefinitional effort by examining ceremonial gifts in India and arguing that they are a specific form of savings. Rural households, including those at the bottom of the pyramid, do save, in the sense of storing, accumulating and circulating value. But this takes place via particular forms of mediation that allow savers to forge or maintain social and emotional relations, to keep control over value – what matters in people’s lives – and over spaces and their own future. We propose terming these practices relational and reproductive saving, insofar as their main objective is to sustain life across generations. By contrast, trying to encourage saving via bank mediation may dispossess populations of control over their wealth, their socialisation, their territories and their time. In an increasingly financialised world of evermore aggressive policies to push people into financial inclusion, the social, symbolic, cultural and political aspects of diverse forms of financial mediation deserve our full attention.     

Infusing an inter‐professional and inter‐university perspective into healthcare education

A national (USA) student‐led, case‐based CLinician/Administrator Relationship Improvement OrganizatioN (CLARION) competition focuses students in medical and related healthcare programs on the provision of healthcare that is safe, timely, equitable, patient‐centred, effective and efficient. Students work in four‐person, inter‐professional teams to research and analyse a designated case. They then present their findings and recommendations to a panel of independent judges. Students, with support from their faculty advisors, approach the case as they see fit. Following initial participation in this CLARION competition, an inter‐professional team of students from two universities and their advisory faculty developed a two‐semester, pre‐competition course as a model to facilitate transformation in healthcare education. The course is theoretical, empirical and practical. It has multiple levels of learning and is designed to mentor students, develop faculty, measure learning outcomes and stimulate administrators in higher education to think creatively about curriculum development across disciplines. This integrated and inter‐professional approach is pivotal in healthcare education to ensure students learn safe and evidence‐based clinical practice that meets the highest standards for quality care.     

Network coding

Network coding is a technique to increase the amount of information flow in a network by making the key observation that information flow is fundamentally different from commodity flow. Whereas, under traditional methods of operation of data networks, intermediate nodes are restricted to simply forwarding their incoming message symbols downstream, network coding achieves vast performance gains by permitting intermediate nodes to carry out algebraic operations on the incoming data. In this article we present a tutorial introduction to network coding as well as an application to the efficient operation of distributed data-storage networks.     

Initiation,Experimentation, Implementation of innovations: The case for Radio Frequency Identification Systems

This research primarily examines the stages hypothesis of the process of technology adoption by management personnel of organizations in the supply chain sector involving the Initiation, Experimentation, and Implementation stages. Further, this research examines key antecedents that may influence the various stages, including top management support, external pressure, and organization size. Using responses provided by top management representatives of 210 supply chain organizations on their organizations’ engagement with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technologies, this research finds that the stages hypothesis holds for RFID technologies. Specifically, organizations were seen to sequentially progress through the Initiation, Experimentation, and Implementation stages. Over 80% of organizations, who had reached the Implementation stage of adoption, had gone through the Initiation and Experimentation stages as well. Additionally, the data showed that the antecedents exerted varying levels of influences on the three stages. Top management support strongly influenced all three stages; external pressure influenced the Initiation and Implementation stages, and organizational size influenced Experimentation and Implementation stages. The paper discusses several implications for research and practice.     

Regulation of DNA conformations and dynamics in flows with hybrid field microfluidics

Visualizing single DNA dynamics in flow provides a wealth of physical insights in biophysics and complex flow study. However, large signal fluctuations, generated from diversified conformations, deformation history dependent dynamics and flow induced stochastic tumbling, often frustrate its wide adoption in single molecule and polymer flow study. We use a hybrid field microfluidic (HFM) approach, in which an electric field is imposed at desired locations and appropriate moments to balance the flow stress on charged molecules, to effectively regulate the initial conformations and the deformation dynamics of macromolecules in flow. With λ-DNA and a steady laminar shear flow as the model system, we herein studied the performance of HFM on regulating DNA trapping, relaxation, coil-stretch transition, and accumulation. DNA molecules were found to get captured in the focused planes when motions caused by flow, and the electric field were balanced. The trapped macromolecules relaxed in two different routes while eventually became more uniform in size and globule conformations. When removing the electric field, the sudden stretching dynamics of DNA molecules exhibited a more pronounced extension overshoot in their transient response under a true step function of flow stress while similar behaviors to what other pioneering work in steady shear flow. Such regulation strategies could be useful to control the conformations of other important macromolecules (e.g., proteins) and help better reveal their molecular dynamics.     

Nature Watch

India is the main abode of theworld’s tallest flying bird called the Sarus Crane. Their population, however, has shown a steady decline over the past few decades. Several factors are believed to be responsible for this. Alterations of the landscape to agriculture leading to habitat loss and other socioecological factors are the main reasons of this declination. This article will introduce some of these features and current status of this famous historical bird.