Vitamin D metabolites and analytical challenges.

Vitamin D is an essential micronutrient for bone health and the general cellular functions of the body. Its insufficiency/deficiency leads to the pathophysiology of disorders like diabetes, cancer, autoimmune, neurodegenerative, and cardiovascular diseases. Clinical interest in Vitamin D metabolites and their role in various medical disorders have contributed to an increase in laboratory demands for vitamin D measurements.

Serum Inflammatory Markers in Patients with Guillain Barre Syndrome.

Background: Guillain Barre syndrome (GBS) is an immune-mediated peripheral neuropathy characterized by the demyelination and axonal damage of the peripheral neurons. The pathogenesis of GBS involves the breakdown of the blood-brain barrier after which pro inflammatory cytokines attack the neurons in the peripheral nervous system.

Aims: This study aims to evaluate five markers, namely matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-2 and MMP-9, vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)-A, basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF), and SFLT-1, which could have a role in the inflammatory response in patients with GBS and healthy controls.

Assessment for learning: a needs analysis study using formative assessment to evaluate the need for curriculum reform in basic sciences.

A needs analysis study for curriculum reform in basic sciences was conducted at Melaka Manipal Medical College, India, by means of a formative assessment method, namely Basic Science Retention Examination (BSRE). Students participated in a BSRE, which comprised recall and clinical multiple-choice questions in six discipline areas. They also rated the clinical relevance of each question and provided responses to three open-text questions about the exam.

Deep learning improves antimicrobial peptide recognition.

Motivation: Bacterial resistance to antibiotics is a growing concern. Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), natural components of innate immunity, are popular targets for developing new drugs. Machine learning methods are now commonly adopted by wet-laboratory researchers to screen for promising candidates.

Improving Recognition of Antimicrobial Peptides and Target Selectivity through Machine Learning and Genetic Programming.

Growing bacterial resistance to antibiotics is spurring research on utilizing naturally-occurring antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) as templates for novel drug design. While experimentalists mainly focus on systematic point mutations to measure the effect on antibacterial activity, the computational community seeks to understand what determines such activity in a machine learning setting. The latter seeks to identify the biological signals or features that govern activity.

Teaching and Assessing Reflecting Skills among Undergraduate Medical Students Experiencing Research.

Introduction: Reflection is the integral component of lifelong learning. Hence, there is a need for incorporating opportunities for students in the curriculum, to develop these skills.

Aim: To evaluate the feasibility of incorporating teaching-learning activity on reflection early in the undergraduate medical curriculum using research experience as a context, and, to determine whether the reflective skills of students improve upon training.

Theoretical and Empirical Analysis of a Spatial EA Parallel Boosting Algorithm.

Many real-world problems involve massive amounts of data. Under these circumstances learning algorithms often become prohibitively expensive, making scalability a pressing issue to be addressed. A common approach is to perform sampling to reduce the size of the dataset and enable efficient learning.

Audio-visual aid in teaching "fatty liver".

Use of audio visual tools to aid in medical education is ever on a rise. Our study intends to find the efficacy of a video prepared on "fatty liver," a topic that is often a challenge for pre-clinical teachers, in enhancing cognitive processing and ultimately learning. We prepared a video presentation of 11:36 min, incorporating various concepts of the topic, while keeping in view Mayer's and Ellaway guidelines for multimedia presentation.

Effective automated feature construction and selection for classification of biological sequences.

Background: Many open problems in bioinformatics involve elucidating underlying functional signals in biological sequences. DNA sequences, in particular, are characterized by rich architectures in which functional signals are increasingly found to combine local and distal interactions at the nucleotide level. Problems of interest include detection of regulatory regions, splice sites, exons, hypersensitive sites, and more.

A questionnaire survey of awareness of physical activity among the faculties of medical college.

Background: The physical activity in teaching faculties is an important aspect to maintain good health. This not only prevents the various non - communicable diseases but also has role in secondary prevention of diseases. It is also proven that the growing epidemic of obesity mostly in children is linked to recent decline in physical activity levels both in home, school and working places.

Pathophysiology and diagnosis of Guillain-Barré syndrome - challenges and needs.

Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) is an autoimmune polyneuropathy which presents with acute onset and rapid progression of flaccid, hyporeflexi quadriparesis. Both sensory and autonomic nerve involvement is seen. GBS has various subtypes that vary in their pathophysiology.

The effect of Remin Pro® on bleached enamel hardness: an in-vitro study.

Introduction: Remineralization as a treatment procedure has received a lot of attention both from clinicians as well as researchers. The objective of this study was to assess the effect of Remin Pro® on enamel microhardness after bleaching the teeth with McInnes bleaching agent using Vickers microhardness tester.

Materials And Methods: In this study, freshly extracted ten central incisors were taken which were subjected to baseline indentation by using Vickers microhardness indenter and then McInnes bleaching solution was applied for 5 min to demineralize these teeth.

Superoxide dismutase enzyme and thiol antioxidants in gingival crevicular fluid and saliva.

Background: The possibility of impaired antioxidant status and so increased oxidative damage in periodontal disease is being conjectured. The present randomized controlled study was carried out with the objective of analyzing the activity of superoxide dismutase enzyme and thiol antioxidants in gingival crevicular fluid (GCF) and saliva as indicators of response to periodontal therapy.

Materials And Methods: SUBJECTS WERE SCREENED AND RANDOMLY DIVIDED INTO THREE GROUPS: 23 periodontally healthy controls, 24 with gingivitis, and 23 with periodontitis.

Role of delayed light polymerization of a dual-cured composite base on marginal adaptation of class II posterior composite open-sandwich restoration.

Objective: To determine the effect of delayed light polymerization of a dual-cured composite base material on the marginal adaptation of class II composite restoration.

Materials And Methods: 35 extracted human molar teeth were used to prepare class II mesio-occlusal or disto-occlusal slot preparations with gingival margins at the CEJ. The teeth were restored using an open-sandwich technique with a 2mm base increment of dual-cured composite, and divided into 5 groups based on the mode of the polymerization of the dual-cured composite base: Group A - self-cured after placement (5 mins), Group B - light-cured immediately after placement, Group C - light-cured 30 seconds after placement, Group D - light-cured 60 seconds after placement, Group E - light-cured 120 seconds after placement.

An evolutionary algorithm approach for feature generation from sequence data and its application to DNA splice site prediction.

Associating functional information with biological sequences remains a challenge for machine learning methods. The performance of these methods often depends on deriving predictive features from the sequences sought to be classified. Feature generation is a difficult problem, as the connection between the sequence features and the sought property is not known a priori.

A two-stage evolutionary approach for effective classification of hypersensitive DNA sequences.

Hypersensitive (HS) sites in genomic sequences are reliable markers of DNA regulatory regions that control gene expression. Annotation of regulatory regions is important in understanding phenotypical differences among cells and diseases linked to pathologies in protein expression. Several computational techniques are devoted to mapping out regulatory regions in DNA by initially identifying HS sequences.

Indicators of oxidative stress in thyroid cancer.

Ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP), myeloperoxidase (MPO) activity and the levels of protein thiols and carbonyls were estimated in the blood samples of thyroid cancer patients (n = 20) before and after thyroidectomy, as well as in healthy controls (n = 10) to study the extent of damage caused by tumor tissue proliferation-induced oxidative stress and to ascertain that oxidative stress levels drop, when there was no proliferation. A significant decrease (p<0.001) in the levels of serum protein thiols and FRAP as well as a significant increase (p<0.

Association of cigarette smoking with superoxide dismutase enzyme levels in subjects with chronic periodontitis.

Background: Smoking, which is an important risk factor for periodontitis, induces oxidative stress in the body and causes an imbalance between reactive oxygen species (ROS) and antioxidants, such as superoxide dismutase (SOD). In the present study, the influence of smoking on the periodontium was determined by estimating the levels of SOD in light and heavy smokers with periodontitis.

Methods: Seventy subjects in the age range of 20 to 55 years, including 60 smokers and 10 non-smokers (controls), were selected.

Activated epidermal growth factor receptor as a novel target in pancreatic cancer therapy.

Pancreatic cancer is one of the most fatal among all solid malignancies. Targeted therapeutic approaches have the potential to transform cancer therapy as exemplified by the success of several tyrosine kinase inhibitors. Prompted by this, comprehensive profiling of tyrosine kinases and their substrates was carried out using a panel of low passage pancreatic cancer cell lines.

Maternal and fetal indicators of oxidative stress during intrauterine growth retardation (IUGR).

The present study demonstrates the possibility of increased lipid peroxidation and protein oxidation in both maternal and fetal erythrocytes as markers of oxygen radical activity during intrauterine growth retardation. The erythrocyte MDA levels were significantly elevated in mothers of IUGR babies when compared to controls (p<0.01).

Deep Impact: observations from a worldwide Earth-based campaign.

On 4 July 2005, many observatories around the world and in space observed the collision of Deep Impact with comet 9P/Tempel 1 or its aftermath. This was an unprecedented coordinated observational campaign. These data show that (i) there was new material after impact that was compositionally different from that seen before impact; (ii) the ratio of dust mass to gas mass in the ejecta was much larger than before impact; (iii) the new activity did not last more than a few days, and by 9 July the comet's behavior was indistinguishable from its pre-impact behavior; and (iv) there were interesting transient phenomena that may be correlated with cratering physics.

Erythrocyte indicators of oxidative stress in gestational diabetes.

Foetuses born to mothers with gestational diabetes are at increased risk of developing respiratory distress, foetal macrosomia, foetal anomalies and platelet hyperaggregability. High blood glucose level induces oxidative stress and decreases antioxidant defences. The present study discusses the possibility of lipid peroxidation and protein oxidation in both maternal and foetal erythrocytes as an indicator of oxygen radical activity.

Clinical significance of Staphylococcus warneri bacteremia.

Twenty-seven episodes of bacteremia caused by Staphylococcus warneri were identified at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New York between 1984 and 1989. Fourteen of these were thought to represent true bacteremias and 13 to represent contaminants. Of the 14 true bacteremias, 5 were in pediatric and 9 were in adult patients.

Differential scanning calorimetry of the unfolding of myosin subfragment 1, subfragment 2, and heavy meromyosin.

The thermal unfolding of rabbit skeletal heavy meromyosin (HMM), myosin subfragment 1, and subfragment 2 has been studied by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). Two distinct endotherms are observed in the DSC scan of heavy meromyosin. The first endotherm, with a Tm of 41 degrees C at pH 7.