Stress-induced sex differences in spatial naviagation

Certain forms of spatial navigation are centered, neuroanatomically, on the hippocampal formation, a brain structure vulnerable to increased levels of the stress hormone cortisol. Although empirical studies have identified a substantial sex difference, in favor of males, on laboratory-based spatial navigation tasks, little research has investigated whether, and how, these sex differences manifest under conditions of psychological or physiological stress. The current study aimed to resolve some of the inconsistencies in the literature, and to investigate the relations between stress and performance in male and female participants. The current study followed a mixed quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design in which men (n = 23) and women (n = 23) were tested on two separate days (the first day under control conditions and the second under stressful conditions). I utilized a novel stress induction paradigm (the Fear Factor Stress Test) that would produce both hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and autonomic nervous system activity in men and women, and created a spatial navigation virtual environment task that would allow for cue usage of both landmarks and gradients. Participants also completed the Card Rotations Test as an assessment of their mental rotation abilities. I hypothesized that (a) men would perform better on spatial navigation tasks than women on Day 1 (i.e., the control condition) despite the availability of landmark cues, and (b) stress would affect spatial navigation performance in women more than in men. Results suggested that the stressor used was effective in eliciting appropriate responses in both men and women, however women showed smaller cortisol increases than men, relative to baseline. Regarding the navigation task, under unstressed conditions men showed a steeper learning curve than women in an unchanged environment, and performed better than women only when a proximal landmark cue was removed from the environment. Furthermore, findings suggested that acute psychosocial stress enhanced navigational performance in men, but impaired such performance in women. Regarding the mental rotation task, no sex differences were observed under unstressed conditions; however, under the stressed condition men improved in their performance whereas women were relatively unaffected. It appears then that men's spatial ability might, under particular conditions and on particular tasks, be enhanced following exposure to a stressor. Furthermore, the pattern of results observed in the spatial navigation task suggests that the types of navigation-aiding cues in an environment (as well as location of these cues relative to the target) play a significant role in eliciting sex differences in navigational performance following exposure to a psychosocial stressor

Breaking bad news of cancer diagnosis - the patient’s perspective

Background: Communication between physicians and patients is a fundamental aspect of cancer care. Bad news could be defined as "any information, which adversely affects an individual's view of his or her future”. The aim of the research study was to explore the patient’s perspective on receiving cancer news and their expectations regarding the same.Methods: A cross-sectional study was performed in our tertiary care teaching hospital. 50 consenting cancer patients from 18 to 60 years of age were interviewed on the basis of a structured, validated questionnaire.Results: On analysis of the 50 patients ‘answers, it was found that 37 were females and 13 were males, the average age being 50.07 years. The common diagnosis in females was breast cancer (20 patients) and in males it was lung cancer (5 patients). All the patients wanted relatives present with them when the bad news was broken to them.  In 66.6% patients, the news was broken by a junior resident, 15% of the doctors didn't greet the patients, 10% of the patients were told the news suddenly, while 99% of the doctors didn’t explain any positive aspects of the disease related to the treatment outcome.Conclusions: This study provides an insight into the expectations of patients from their physicians with regard to the process of breaking bad news

In vitro study of some plant extracts against Alternaria brassicae and Alternaria brassicicola

Madhya Pradesh is an important rapeseed-mustard producing state of India contributing nearly of the total production in the country. The present study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of some botanicals viz., Neem, Eucalyptus, Datura, Pudina, Tulsi, Lantana under crude and Forms @ against 10% Alternaria brassicae under in vitro condition by poisoned food technique. Neem and Eucalyptus were also evaluated in the oil forms.  Nearly all the tested botanicals found effective against these fungi. Among the crude extract 10 per cent the minimum growth was recorded in Neem followed by Eucalyptus, Tulsi, Lantana, Datura and Pudina. Neem was significantly superior over Tulsi, Lantana, Datura and Pudina but at par with Eucalyptus. Under boil forms the minimum radial growth was also recorded in Neem. The oil extract (Neem and Eucalyptus) were found less effective as compared to crude and boil extracts

Acute Lower Respiratory Infection in Childhood and Household Fuel Use in Bhaktapur, Nepal

Background: Globally, solid fuels are used by about 3 billion people for cooking. These fuels have been associated with many health effects, including acute lower respiratory infection (ALRI) in young children. Nepal has a high prevalence of use of biomass for cooking and heating. Objective: This case–control study was conducted among a population in the Bhaktapur municipality, Nepal, to investigate the relationship of cookfuel type to ALRI in young children. Methods: Cases with ALRI and age-matched controls were enrolled from an open cohort of children 2–35 months old, under active monthly surveillance for ALRI. A questionnaire was used to obtain information on family characteristics, including household cooking and heating appliances and fuels. The main analysis was carried out using conditional logistic regression. Population-attributable fractions (PAF) for stove types were calculated. Results: A total of 917 children (452 cases and 465 controls) were recruited into the study. Relative to use of electricity for cooking, ALRI was increased in association with any use of biomass stoves [odds ratio (OR) = 1.93; 95% CI: 1.24, 2.98], kerosene stoves (OR = 1.87; 95% CI: 1.24, 2.83), and gas stoves (OR = 1.62; 95% CI: 1.05, 2.50). Use of wood, kerosene, or coal heating was also associated with ALRI (OR = 1.45; 95% CI: 0.97, 2.14), compared with no heating or electricity or gas heating. PAFs for ALRI were 18.0% (95% CI: 8.1, 26.9%) and 18.7% (95% CI: 8.4%–27.8%), for biomass and kerosene stoves, respectively. Conclusions: The study supports previous reports indicating that use of biomass as a household fuel is a risk factor for ALRI, and provides new evidence that use of kerosene for cooking may also be a risk factor for ALRI in young children

MRBrainS Challenge: Online Evaluation Framework for Brain Image Segmentation in 3T MRI Scans

Many methods have been proposed for tissue segmentation in brain MRI scans. The multitude of methods proposed complicates the choice of one method above others. We have therefore established the MRBrainS online evaluation framework for evaluating (semi) automatic algorithms that segment gray matter (GM), white matter (WM), and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) on 3T brain MRI scans of elderly subjects (65-80 y). Participants apply their algorithms to the provided data, after which their results are evaluated and ranked. Full manual segmentations of GM, WM, and CSF are available for all scans and used as the reference standard. Five datasets are provided for training and fifteen for testing. The evaluated methods are ranked based on their overall performance to segment GM, WM, and CSF and evaluated using three evaluation metrics (Dice, H95, and AVD) and the results are published on the MRBrainS13 website. We present the results of eleven segmentation algorithms that participated in the MRBrainS13 challenge workshop at MICCAI, where the framework was launched, and three commonly used freeware packages: FreeSurfer, FSL, and SPM. The MRBrainS evaluation framework provides an objective and direct comparison of all evaluated algorithms and can aid in selecting the best performing method for the segmentation goal at hand.This study was financially supported by IMDI Grant 104002002 (Brainbox) from ZonMw, the Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development, within kind sponsoring by Philips, the University Medical Center Utrecht, and Eindhoven University of Technology. The authors would like to acknowledge the following members of the Utrecht Vascular Cognitive Impairment Study Group who were not included as coauthors of this paper but were involved in the recruitment of study participants and MRI acquisition at the UMC Utrecht (in alphabetical order by department): E. van den Berg, M. Brundel, S. Heringa, and L. J. Kappelle of the Department of Neurology, P. R. Luijten and W. P. Th. M. Mali of the Department of Radiology, and A. Algra and G. E. H. M. Rutten of the Julius Center for Health Sciences and Primary Care. The research of Geert Jan Biessels and the VCI group was financially supported by VIDI Grant 91711384 from ZonMw and by Grant 2010T073 of the Netherlands Heart Foundation. The research of Jeroen de Bresser is financially supported by a research talent fellowship of the University Medical Center Utrecht (Netherlands). The research of Annegreet van Opbroek and Marleen de Bruijne is financially supported by a research grant from NWO (the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research). The authors would like to acknowledge MeVis Medical Solutions AG (Bremen, Germany) for providing MeVisLab. Duygu Sarikaya and Liang Zhao acknowledge their Advisor Professor Jason Corso for his guidance. Duygu Sarikaya is supported by NIH 1 R21CA160825-01 and Liang Zhao is partially supported by the China Scholarship Council (CSC).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Is Quality in Capacity Building and Training Institution Development Matters the Most? Setting Benchmarking Process and Benchmark Standards for Training Institutions WALMI Bhopal a Case in Point

Water and Land Management Institutes across country had a very specific mandate tocater the needs of the specific target group like land and water managers, irrigation engineers,civil engineers, water management specialists, agriculture specialists, gender and socialdevelopment experts, professionals, para – professionals, community leaders, water users andfarmers. Over time the WALMIs in different states took larger responsibilities and widened theirnetwork, venturing in natural resources development and management, community basedinstitution development and management, monitoring, evaluation, learning and documentation inthe cross sectoral setting. The WALMI, Bhopal in its recent past have been at the fulcrum of thetraining and institution development in the state of Madhya Pradesh. WALMI, Bhopal being oneof the key training institutions aspire to evolve a broad framework of quality management in thetraining and development, with the sole objective of setting benchmark standards for state leveltraining institutions, it conducted a National Workshop at Bhopal. The present paper outlines thepurpose, process and products that may suit the current and future requirements of the statelevel training institutions in the state and elsewhere. The workshop proceedings led to theinternal churning and ignited the process of coining the benchmark standards for academicqualities, enabling infrastructures, standard operating processes to conduct and manage thetrainings and forging the inter – institutional linkages in the current and future institutional eco– system. The paper also provides the opportunities for the readers and professionals interestedin training and capacity building of the human resources at various levels to contribute andenrich the process of adopting and adapting to the new benchmarking system and benchmarkstandards. It provides an opportunity to provide the best practices evolved over time andmainstream the key learning by converting the best practices in to indicators. The paper alsohighlights the critical gaps and underlines the information requirement to satisfy the necessaryand sufficient conditions for effective measurement and monitoring framework for qualitymanagement at such training institutions.&nbsp

Cushing's syndrome caused by ectopic ACTH secretion from pulmonary tumourlets

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An experimental study on wistar rats to see the effect of Gymnema sylvestre on blood pressure

Background: Hypertension is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality globally. It is a well-known risk factor for an array of adverse cardiovascular outcomes. Obesity is considered as one of the major contributing factors to essential hypertension in humans. Obesity in itself is a risk factor for conditions like insulin resistance, hypertension, stroke, ischemic heart diseases, CHF etc. Undoubtedly in recent times we have achieved great advances in terms of management of hypertension but still we have miles to cover to have dominance over it. Gymnema sylvestre is a valuable indigenous herb. A number of animal and human studies have shown the potential role of Gymnema sylvestre (GS) as an anti-diabetic and anti-obesity agent.Methods: Adult Female Wistar rats, weighing between 150-200 gm, were included in the study. They were randomly divided into five groups with six rats in each group. High Fat Diet (HFD) was given for 4 weeks to induce hypertension in all the groups except group I which was fed with normal chow. Drugs along with respective diets were given to the rats for next 4 weeks by oral feeding cannula. Systolic blood pressure was measured by NIBP controller machine.Results: On feeding rats with HFD for 4 weeks the mean systolic blood pressure increased significantly. After giving drugs GS (100mg/kg), GS (200mg/kg) and Amlodipine (10mg/kg) to groups III, IV, V respectively for next 4 weeks, mean systolic blood pressure fell significantly (p <0.05) as compared to group II (HFD control group). At final evaluation at week 8 (as compared to Group 2) SBP got maximally reduced in Group 5 (35.1%) followed by Group 4 (26.4%), Group 3 (20.1%). On comparing Amlodipine standard (group 5) with other groups, a significant difference was found. This showed that Gymnema sylvestre reduced the elevated systolic blood pressure significantly but this anti-hypertensive effect was inferior to Amlodipine.Conclusions: The present study concludes that Gymnema sylvestre has a potent dose- dependent antihypertensive action but the effect is inferior to Amlodipine. Hence it can be used as an add-on to standard drugs for hypertension