Carnosine in health and disease

Abstract

Carnosine was originally discovered in skeletal muscle, where it exists in larger amounts than in other tissues. The majority of research into the physiological roles of carnosine have been conducted on skeletal muscle. Given this and the potential for muscle carnosine content to be increased with supplementation, there is now a large body of research examining the ergogenic effects (or otherwise) of carnosine. More recent research, however, points towards a potential for carnosine to exert a wider range of physiological effects in other tissues, including the brain, heart, pancreas, kidney and cancer cells. Taken together, this is suggestive of a potential for carnosine to have therapeutic benefits in health and disease, although this is by no means without complication. Herein, we will provide a review of the current literature relating to the potential therapeutic effects of carnosine in health and disease.     

Book reviews

Association of Research Libraries     

Book reviews

^cAbd al‐Malik b. Habib. Kitāb al‐Ta'rij (La historia). Edición y estudio por Jorge Aguadé. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas & Instituto de Cooperación con el Mundo Arabe, 1991 (Fuentes Arabico‐Hispanas, 1). 163 + 224 pp. [Arabic title: Kltāb al‐Ta'tikh]

Kedar, Benjamin Z., ed. The Horns of Hattin. Jerusalem and London: Yad Izhak Ben‐Zvi, Israel Exploration Society and Variorum 1992. 368 pp., 12 plates; $74.75 (cloth).

Köprülü, Mehmed Fuad. The Seljuks of Anatolia: Their History and Culture According to Local Muslim Sources. Translated and edited by Gary Leiser. Salt Lake City: University of Utah, 1992. xi +101 pp., $22.00 (cloth).

Cameron, Averil and Conrad, Lawrence I., eds. The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East: Problems in the Literary Source Material (Papers in the First Workshop on Late Antiquity and Early Islam). Princeton: The Darwin Press, 1992. xiv + 428pp., 12 plates; $29.25 (cloth).

Vereno, Ingolf. Studien zum ältesten alchemistischen Schrifttum. Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1992 (Islamkundliche Untersuchungen, 155). 414pp.

Tolan, John. Petrus Alfonsi and his Medieval Readers. Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 1993. xv + 288pp., $34.95 (cloth), $16.95 (paper).

Lassner, Jacob. Demonizing the Queen of Sheba: Boundaries of Gender and Culture in Postbiblical Judaism and Medieval Islam. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1994. 281 pp., $19.95 (paper), $49.95 (cloth).

Menocal, María Rosa. Shards of Love: Exile and the Origins of the Lyric. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1994. xv + 295pp., $34.95 (cloth), $14.95 (paper).

Massignon, Louis. The Passion of al‐Hallāj, Mystic and Martyr of Islam. Translated and edited by Herbert Mason. Abridged edition, Bollingen Series XCVIII. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. xxxi + 293pp.

Viguera Molins, Maria Jesús. El Islam en Aragón. Saragossa: Caja de Ahorros de la Inmaculada, 1995 (Colección “Mariano de Pano y Ruata”, 9), 174 pp., 182 ills. in colour, maps, diagrams, charts etc No price stated.     

The inadvertent creation of a neocolonial culture: A study of western sojourners in India

Field work and structured interviews with 139 foreign sojourners in India were analyzed to describe the socialization of aliens into their role. Attitude scales measuring favorability toward the host country and people were also examined in relation to the respondent's occupational status and elapsed time in India. The results from the field work and interviews suggest that the privileges and high status accorded many Western visitors may contribute to the visitors' derogation of their hosts, a process which is often subtle but unmistakable. The visitors appear to become socialized into the world of aliens rather than the world of their hosts. The higher the visitor's status and the longer the elapsed time in India, the more pronounced these patterns appear. While the correlational nature of the study makes it impossible to determine whether persons with initially unfavorable attitudes are selected into the high status positions or whether the positions themselves create such attitudes, it appears reasonable to conclude that there would be less derogation and alienation if the lures of status and money were removed; persons would be neither selected nor influenced by such factors.     

Google Scholar's Coverage of the Engineering Literature 10 years Later

In 2008 Meier and Conkling first tested Google Scholar's coverage of the engineering literature against citations gathered from the Compendex database. Since that time, other studies have used the same methodology and found improvement in Google Scholar's coverage. This study uses engineering dissertations from Proquest Dissertations & Theses to create a data set of citations for the comparison of fee-based databases, Compendex and Scopus, against Google Scholar. From 1950 to 2017 Google Scholar outperformed both Compendex and Scopus in discoverability of citations in nine engineering subjects. These results have implications for collection management and information literacy program planning for librarians.