Thallium poisoning presenting with abdominal colic, paresthesia, and irritability

We have determined the complete nucleotide sequence for the cDNA encoding rat eosinophil major basic protein (MBP) using the rapid amplification of cDNA ends (RACE) procedure. The deduced amino acid sequence revealed that the rat prepro-MBP has three functional domains, namely the signal peptide, the acidic peptide that contains numerous acidic amino acids, and the mature MBP, as in human and guinea pig MBP.     

Influence of foods on the absorption of antimicrobial agents]

Understanding the interaction between foods and antimicrobial agents is an aspect of therapy which may have an important clinical repercussion, which is why it must not be forgotten. This study reviews the interactions of foods with the anti-microbial agents which occur at the level of absorption, considering the mechanisms involved. The food-drug interaction can cause an increase, a decrease, or a delay in the bio-availability of the anti-microbial agents; foods may have no affect on the absorption of the anti-microbial agents, or they may improve the gastrointestinal tolerance. The Food and Drug Administration's bioequivalency criteria for considering whether or not there is an alteration in absorption have an orientative function, as generally all studies are conducted on healthy volunteers, but in clinical practice one must consider the physiological and pathological condition of the patient. The composition of the diet as well as the volume of liquid administered are other aspects which should be considered, as these may exert a different effect depending on the type of drug. After ingesting fatty foods, there is an increased absorption of albendazole, griseofulvin, itraconazole, and mebendazole. All foods but especially carbohydrates reduce the absorption of isoniazide. Among the anti-HIV drugs, the following must be administered on an empty stomach: didanosine, indinavir zalcitabine , and zidovudine ; lamivudine can be administered either on an empty or on a full stomach, because although food delays the absorption, it does not affect the amount absorbed; the absorption of stavudine is not affected by foods; ritonavir should be administered together with tile meals, and saquinavir must be administered after ingestion of food. It is advisable to administer clarithromycin together with foods, and azythromycin on an empty stomach; the same holds true for perfloxacin and rifabutine as for lamivudine.     

Ontology learning from biomedical natural language documents using UMLS

The generation of new knowledge is continuous in biomedical domains, thus biomedical literature is becoming harder to understand. Ontologies provide vocabulary standardization, so they can be helpful to facilitate the understanding of biomedical texts. In this work, a methodology for building biomedical ontologies from texts is presented. This approach relies on natural language processing and incremental knowledge acquisition techniques to obtain the relevant concepts and relations to be included in an OWL ontology. Additionally, we provide an algorithm to connect the isolated concepts regions in the ontology using UMLS. We also discuss in this paper the experiment carried out to validate our approach and its positive results in terms of performance and scalability.     

Loss processes affecting submicrometer particles in a house heavily affected by road traffic emissions

The fraction of outdoor aerosol that penetrates into indoor environments plays an important role in determining the contribution of outdoor particles to the total lung dose of particles in human exposure. The objective of this study was to investigate the physical processes affecting migration of outdoor traffic particles into indoor environments. Particle number size distributions were measured by a fast mobility particle sizer system in both indoor and outdoor environments of a house located in close proximity to a busy street in Bologna (Italy) in the period February–April 2012. Indoor to outdoor (I/O) ratios for submicron particle number concentrations showed strong dependence on particle size and meteorological conditions. The loss rates of particles due to deposition, coagulation, and evaporation were determined using dynamic mass balance and coagulation models. Higher loss rates were found for small particles (nucleation and Aitken mode) indoors than for larger particles (accumulation mode). The coagulation and evaporation processes made a significant contribution to the loss of traffic nanoparticles indoors, especially during the day time. Application of positive matrix factorization to the indoor and outdoor particle size distributions showed a substantial loss of traffic-generated nucleation mode particles in the indoor environment, with evaporation playing a major role.

Copyright © 2017 American Association for Aerosol Research     

Evidence of Land-use Controlled Water Storage Depletion in Hai River Basin,North China

Although critical for human sustenance, irrational land use could cause land resources depletion, environmental degradation, food insecurity and social instability. This study uses Landsat images (06/09/1979 and 12/08/2009) with historical precipitation data (1955–2012) to analyze land use change in relation to surface water storage change in Hai River Basin, North China. Based on analysis in ENVI (Environment for Visualizing Images) and ArcMap, land area under water in 1979 is 1.8 % and that in 2009 is 0.6 % of the 23 826 km² study area. Although the rate of precipitation decline in 1955–2012 is 4.41 mm/year, it is almost the same for 1979 (582 mm) and 2009 (564 mm). This suggests that drought or flooding has no significant effect on the water storage change. For 1979–2009, land area under forest and grass decreases respectively by 54.2 % and 70.7 %. Then that under settlement, farmland and others increases respectively by 64.8 %, 56.0 % and 63.6 %. The loss of land area under water is 64.6 %, which is more the effect of land use change and the related water use in the region. Irrespectively, more water-efficient land use measures could ensure the sustainability and availability of water resources for future use in the predominantly agrarian semiarid region.     

The socio-economic impacts of climate change on water resources in South Africa

Using a computable general equilibrium approach, this study investigates the economy-wide impact of reductions in water resources in South Africa due to climate change. The simulation results show a potentially general deterioration in household welfare. Poor households are the most vulnerable. Short-run policy simulations suggest that this vulnerability can be reduced through welfare policies that maintain food consumption levels for households in the two lowest income quintiles.     

Probabilistic shelf life assessment of white button mushrooms through sensorial properties analysis

Sensory test was carried out on different batches of white button mushrooms stored at various temperatures (5, 10, 15 °C and 3.5 °C control) for 5-7days to find the effect of temperature and storage time on the sensory characteristics. Acceptance or rejection of the mushrooms was used to evaluate the shelf life of the product. Sensory data was modelled using mixed-effects logistic regression model. Quality parameters were significantly (p < 0.001) affected by the temperature of storage. It was found out that variances for all sensory qualities except cap hardness were more influenced by the panel variation compared to variation between mushrooms in random effect calculation. It was concluded that overall acceptability was more influenced by the cap hardness and maturity of the mushrooms than overall visual quality. A methodology to define conservative estimations of shelf life based on probabilistic assumptions, without resorting to “rule-of-thumb” conservative assessments is presented in this article.