Induced mitochondrial membrane potential for modeling solitonic conduction of electrotonic signals

A cable model that includes polarization-induced capacitive current is derived for modeling the solitonic conduction of electrotonic potentials in neuronal branchlets with microstructure containing endoplasmic membranes. A solution of the nonlinear cable equation modified for fissured intracellular medium with a source term representing charge ‘soakage’ is used to show how intracellular capacitive effects of bound electrical charges within mitochondrial membranes can influence electrotonic signals expressed as solitary waves. The elastic collision resulting from a head-on collision of two solitary waves results in localized and non-dispersing electrical solitons created by the nonlinearity of the source term. It has been shown that solitons in neurons with mitochondrial membrane and quasi-electrostatic interactions of charges held by the microstructure (i.e., charge ‘soakage’) have a slower velocity of propagation compared with solitons in neurons with microstructure, but without endoplasmic membranes. When the equilibrium potential is a small deviation from rest, the nonohmic conductance acts as a leaky channel and the solitons are small compared when the equilibrium potential is large and the outer mitochondrial membrane acts as an amplifier, boosting the amplitude of the endogenously generated solitons. These findings demonstrate a functional role of quasi-electrostatic interactions of bound electrical charges held by microstructure for sustaining solitons with robust self-regulation in their amplitude through changes in the mitochondrial membrane equilibrium potential. The implication of our results indicate that a phenomenological description of ionic current can be successfully modeled with displacement current in Maxwell’s equations as a conduction process involving quasi-electrostatic interactions without the inclusion of diffusive current. This is the first study in which solitonic conduction of electrotonic potentials are generated by polarization-induced capacitive current in microstructure and nonohmic mitochondrial membrane current.

Solitonic conduction of electrotonic signals in neuronal branchlets with polarized microstructure

A model of solitonic conduction in neuronal branchlets with microstructure is presented. The application of cable theory to neurons with microstructure results in a nonlinear cable equation that is solved using a direct method to obtain analytical approximations of traveling wave solutions. It is shown that a linear superposition of two oppositely directed traveling waves demonstrate solitonic interaction: colliding waves can penetrate through each other, and continue fully intact as the exact pulses that entered the collision. These findings indicate that microstructure when polarized can sustain solitary waves that propagate at a constant velocity without attenuation or distortion in the absence of synaptic transmission. Solitonic conduction in a neuronal branchlet arising from polarizability of its microstructure is a novel signaling mode of electrotonic signals in thin processes (<0.5 μm diameter).

Ambulatory screening of diabetic neuropathy and predictors of its severity in outpatient settings

INTRODUCTION

Diabetic neuropathy is one of the most common causes of chronic neuropathic symptomatology and the most disabling and difficult-to-treat diabetic microangiopathic complication. The neuropathies associated with diabetes are typically classified into generalized, focal and multifocal varieties. There exists a scarcity of literature studying the correlation of different patient- and disease-related variables with severity of neuropathy.

OBJECTIVES

This study aims to delineate the prevalence of diabetic neuropathy in type 2 diabetes, describe its characteristics and find out predictors of its severity.

MATERIAL AND METHODS

Eight hundred consecutive diabetic patients presenting to outpatient department (OPD) of Khan Research Labs (KRL) General Hospital and Centre for Diabetes and Liver diseases, Islamabad, during March-June, 2015 were made to complete a self-administered questionnaire (Michigan Neuropathy Screening Instrument-MNSI) and underwent a thorough physical examination according to MNSI protocols. A score of >2 was considered to be diagnostic for DPN. Patient and disease variables were noted. MNSI score was used as an index of severity of diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN). Correlation of several patient- and disease-related variables with the severity of DPN was determined using multivariate regression.

RESULTS

Out of a total 800 patients screened, 90 (11.25%) were found to have diabetic neuropathy. Of these 90, 45.5% were males, the median age was 54.47 ± 10.87 years and the median duration of diabetes was 11.12 ± 9.8 years. The most common symptom was found to be numbness (63.6%) followed by generalized body weakness (61.5%). The common findings on physical examination were dry skin/callus (38.7%) and deformities (14.7%). Duration of diabetes was found to be the strongest predictor for development and severity of diabetic neuropathy followed by glycemic controls (HbA1c values) and age.

CONCLUSION

Duration of diabetes rather than diabetic controls predicts better the development and severity of diabetic neuropathy indicating a failure of intensive treatment to avert such complications.

[Limited Data for Second Opinion Programs: a Systematic Review]

Objective: According to a new legislation that will be set up in 2016, patients with an indication for elective surgery have the right to obtain a second opinion. The Federal Joint Committee has to provide a list of indications where this legislation will come into effect. The aim of this systematic review is to summarize available data on second opinion programs and to analyze the indications that should be covered by the new legislation. Methods: Medline, Embase, Proquest and Google scholar were searched for relevant studies in March 2015. To be included, primary studies had to deal with a surgical, orthopedic or gynecological elective procedure, and report agreement between first and second opinion. Study selection and critical appraisal were carried out by 2 reviewers independently. Disagreements were resolved by discussion. Data were extracted and analyzed. Results: In total, 17 studies fulfilled all inclusion criteria. All but one study were from the United States and only 3 studies have been published since 2000. The majority of studies were published in the 70 s and 80 s. Overall, agreement rates varied substantially from 43.0% to 95.5%. Most studies dealt with hysterectomy (n=6), cholecystectomy (n=5) and knee surgery (n=5). Median agreement rates for these procedures were 77.9% (range: 72.7-92.0%), 92.0% (88.2-95.5%) and 85.6% (76.1-93.5%), respectively, in obligatory second opinion programs and 63.0% (58.0-66.7%) and 87.0% (78.0-87.9%) in voluntary second opinion programs. Not enough data were available for knee surgery. Conclusions: Current data on second opinion programs is very limited. There is no data for Germany. Following this, it remains unclear which data or evidence will be used by the Federal Joint Committee to set up the new legislation. However, the findings suggest a potential for second opinion programs. They should be investigated in controlled trials in future.

SNPs in Entire Mitochondrial Genome Sequences (≈15.4 kb) and cox1 Sequences (≈486 bp) Resolve Body and Head Lice From Doubly Infected People From Ethiopia, China, Nepal, and Iran But Not France

Some people host lice on the clothing as well as the head. Whether body lice and head lice are distinct species or merely variants of the same species remains contentious. We sought to ascertain the extent to which lice from these different habitats might interbreed on doubly infected people by comparing their entire mitochondrial genome sequences. Toward this end, we analyzed two sets of published genetic data from double-infections of body lice and head lice: 1) entire mitochondrial coding regions (≈15.4 kb) from body lice and head lice from seven doubly infected people from Ethiopia, China, and France; and 2) part of the cox1 gene (≈486 bp) from body lice and head lice from a further nine doubly infected people from China, Nepal, and Iran. These mitochondrial data, from 65 lice, revealed extraordinary variation in the number of single nucleotide polymorphisms between the individual body lice and individual head lice of double-infections: from 1.096 kb of 15.4 kb (7.6%) to 2 bps of 15.4 kb (0.01%). We detected coinfections of lice of Clades A and C on the scalp hair of three of the eight people from Nepal: one person of the two people from Kathmandu and two of the six people from Pokhara. Lice of Clades A and B coinfected the scalp hair of one person from Atherton, Far North Queensland, Australia. These findings argue for additional large-scale studies of the body lice and head lice of double-infected people.

Second-generation sequencing of entire mitochondrial coding-regions (∼15.4 kb) holds promise for study of the phylogeny and taxonomy of human body lice and head lice

The Illumina Hiseq platform was used to sequence the entire mitochondrial coding-regions of 20 body lice, Pediculus humanus Linnaeus, and head lice, P. capitis De Geer (Phthiraptera: Pediculidae), from eight towns and cities in five countries: Ethiopia, France, China, Australia and the U.S.A. These data (∼310 kb) were used to see how much more informative entire mitochondrial coding-region sequences were than partial mitochondrial coding-region sequences, and thus to guide the design of future studies of the phylogeny, origin, evolution and taxonomy of body lice and head lice. Phylogenies were compared from entire coding-region sequences (∼15.4 kb), entire cox1 (∼1.5 kb), partial cox1 (∼700 bp) and partial cytb (∼600 bp) sequences. On the one hand, phylogenies from entire mitochondrial coding-region sequences (∼15.4 kb) were much more informative than phylogenies from entire cox1 sequences (∼1.5 kb) and partial gene sequences (∼600 to ∼700 bp). For example, 19 branches had > 95% bootstrap support in our maximum likelihood tree from the entire mitochondrial coding-regions (∼15.4 kb) whereas the tree from 700 bp cox1 had only two branches with bootstrap support > 95%. Yet, by contrast, partial cytb (∼600 bp) and partial cox1 (∼486 bp) sequences were sufficient to genotype lice to Clade A, B or C. The sequences of the mitochondrial genomes of the P. humanus, P. capitis and P. schaeffi Fahrenholz studied are in NCBI GenBank under the accession numbers KC660761-800, KC685631-6330, KC241882-97, EU219988-95, HM241895-8 and JX080388-407.

Three genetic systems controlling growth, development and productivity of rice (Oryza sativa L.): a reevaluation of the 'Green Revolution'

The Green Revolution (GR-I) included worldwide adoption of semi-dwarf rice cultivars (SRCs) with mutant alleles at GA20ox2 or SD1 encoding gibberellin 20-oxidase. Two series of experiments were conducted to characterize the pleiotropic effects of SD1 and its relationships with large numbers of QTLs affecting rice growth, development and productivity. The pleiotropic effects of SD1 in the IR64 genetic background for increased height, root length/mass and grain weight, and for reduced spikelet fertility and delayed heading were first demonstrated using large populations derived from near isogenic IR64 lines of SD1. In the second set of experiments, QTLs controlling nine growth and yield traits were characterized using a new molecular quantitative genetics model and the phenotypic data of the well-known IR64/Azucena DH population evaluated across 11 environments, which revealed three genetic systems: the SD1-mediated, SD1-repressed and SD1-independent pathways that control rice growth, development and productivity. The SD1-mediated system comprised 43 functional genetic units (FGUs) controlled by GA. The SD1-repressed system was the alternative one comprising 38 FGUs that were only expressed in the mutant sd1 backgrounds. The SD1-independent one comprised 64 FGUs that were independent of SD1. GR-I resulted from the overall differences between the former two systems in the three aspects: (1) trait/environment-specific contributions; (2) distribution of favorable alleles for increased productivity in the parents; and (3) different responses to (fertilizer) inputs. Our results suggest that at 71.4 % of the detected loci, a QTL resulted from the difference between a functional allele and a loss-of-function mutant, whereas at the remaining 28.6 % of loci, from two functional alleles with differentiated effects. Our results suggest two general strategies to achieve GR-II (1) by further exploiting the genetic potential of the SD1-repressed and SD1-independent pathways and (2) by restoring the SD1-mediated pathways, or 'back to the nature' to fully exploit the genetic diversity of those loci in the SD1-mediated pathways which are virtually inaccessible to most rice-breeding programs worldwide that are exclusively based on sd1.

Fast, Slow, Stopping and Storing Light Simultaneously using a PANDA Ring On-Chip

Past and slow light behaviors are the interesting aspects of light which can be useful for many fundamental and applied researches. Pornsuwancharoen and Yupapin et al. [1] have proposed the use of a simple device called “microring resonator” to perform such behaviors. In this research work, the four different behaviors of light i.e., fast, slow, stopping and storing of light where investigated using a ring resonator. Nowadays, stopping or cooling light beam has become the promising technique for atom/molecule trapping investigations (using static or dynamic tweezers), especially, after the announcement of Nobel Prize 2012 in Physics on the whispering gallery modes [2, 3]. There are two more kinds of devices that can be used to trap light beams, the use of microcavity arrays performed by Yanik and Fan [4], and nonlinear microring resonator by Yupapin and Pornsuwancharoen [5] for stopping light (laser beam). Nanyang Technological University scientists have also done experiment to slowing the light in microresonators using a microring system recently [6]. This concept is a concrete backbone for many applications.

Optical manipulation of nano-micro needle array for large volume molecular diagnosis

Optical vorticesare generated and controlled to form trapping tools in the same way as optical tweezers. By using the intense optical vortices generated within the PANDA ring resonator, the required atoms/molecules can be trapped and moved (transported) dynamically within the wavelength router or network. The advantage of the proposed system is that a transmitter and receiver can be formed within the same system, which is available for atoms/molecules storage and transportation based on methods that have been proposed to deliver drugs into cells for specific diagnosis.

Combined high thoracic and lumbar epidural block for a patient with severe peripheral vascular disease undergoing axillo bifemoral bypass surgery

A 63 years old patient with severely impaired pulmonary function presented with bilateral lower limb vascular blockade and was operated for emergency aortobifemoral bypass. The patient was considered to be at very high risk for general anesthesia but doing the case under regional anesthesia was also challenging because of the multiple dermatomal levels needed to be anesthetized and because of the potential of adverse effects with such extensive block. There are only a few reported cases of using combination of central neuraxial blocks. The procedure was successfully performed using combined high thoracic and lumbar epidural blockade with two different local anesthetics to minimizing toxicity and observing no adverse effects related to anesthesia technique.

Human facial neural activities and gesture recognition for machine-interfacing applications

The authors present a new method of recognizing different human facial gestures through their neural activities and muscle movements, which can be used in machine-interfacing applications. Human-machine interface (HMI) technology utilizes human neural activities as input controllers for the machine. Recently, much work has been done on the specific application of facial electromyography (EMG)-based HMI, which have used limited and fixed numbers of facial gestures. In this work, a multipurpose interface is suggested that can support 2-11 control commands that can be applied to various HMI systems. The significance of this work is finding the most accurate facial gestures for any application with a maximum of eleven control commands. Eleven facial gesture EMGs are recorded from ten volunteers. Detected EMGs are passed through a band-pass filter and root mean square features are extracted. Various combinations of gestures with a different number of gestures in each group are made from the existing facial gestures. Finally, all combinations are trained and classified by a Fuzzy c-means classifier. In conclusion, combinations with the highest recognition accuracy in each group are chosen. An average accuracy >90% of chosen combinations proved their ability to be used as command controllers.

Molecular diagnosis using multi drug delivery network and stability

By using a pair of tweezers to generate the intense optical vortices within the PANDA ring resonator, the required molecules (drug volumes) can be trapped and moved dynamically within the molecular bus networks, in which the required diagnosis or drug delivery targets can be performed within the network. The advantage of the proposed system is that the proposed diagnostic method can perform within the tiny system (thin film device or circuit), which can be available for a human embedded device for diagnostic use. The channel spacing of the trapped volumes (molecules) within the bus molecular networks can be provided.

Multi-access drug delivery network and stability

A novel design of a multi-drug delivery network and diagnosis using a molecular network is proposed. By using a pair of tweezers to generate the intense optical vortices within the PANDA ring resonator, the required molecules (drug volumes) can be trapped and moved dynamically within the molecular bus networks, in which the required drug delivery targets can be achieved within the network. The advantage of the proposed system is that the diagnostic method can be used within a tiny system (thin film device or circuit), which is available as an embedded device for diagnostic use in patients. In practice, the large molecular networks such as ring, star, and bus networks can be integrated to form a large drug delivery system. The channel spacing of the trapped volumes (molecules) within the bus molecular networks can be provided by using the appropriate free spectrum range, which is analyzed and discussed in the terms of crosstalk effects. In this work, crosstalk effects of about 0.1% are noted, which can be neglected and does not affect the network stability.

Molecular network topology and reliability for multipurpose diagnosis

This investigation proposes the use of molecular network topology for drug delivery and diagnosis network design. Three modules of molecular network topologies, such as bus, star, and ring networks, are designed and manipulated based on a micro- and nanoring resonator system. The transportation of the trapping molecules by light in the network is described and the theoretical background is reviewed. The quality of the network is analyzed and calculated in terms of signal transmission (ie, signal to noise ratio and crosstalk effects). Results obtained show that a bus network has advantages over star and ring networks, where the use of mesh networks is possible. In application, a thin film network can be fabricated in the form of a waveguide and embedded in artificial bone, which can be connected to the required drug targets. The particular drug/nutrient can be transported to the required targets via the particular network used.

Chronomodulated drug delivery system of salbutamol sulphate for the treatment of nocturnal asthma

A time dependent pulsed release system consisting of an effervescent core surrounded by consecutive layers of swelling and rupturable polymers was prepared and evaluated. The cores containing salbutamol sulphate as bioactive agent were prepared by direct compression method using different ratios of microcrystalline cellulose and effervescent agent and then coated sequentially with an inner swelling layer containing a hydrocolloid, hydroxypropylmethylcellulose E5 and an outer rupturable layer having Eudragit RL/RS (1:1). The effects of various processing and formulative parameters on the performance of system were studied. The rupture and dissolution tests were studied using the USP paddle method at 50 rpm in 0.1 N HCl and phosphate buffer pH 6.8. The lag time of the drug release decreased by increasing the inner swelling layer and increased by increasing the rupturing layer level. All the results obtained in the present study suggest that osmotic pumping effect was involved which eventually lead to the drug release.

Development and in vitro Evaluation of Enteric Coated Multiparticulate System for Resistant Tuberculosis

The multiparticulate formulation of sodium para aminosalicylate for oral administration was developed by extrusion spheronization technique. Microcrystalline cellulose was used as filler in concentration of 14.4% w/w. Pellets were coated with Eudragit L 30 D-55 using fluidized bed processor. Different weight gains of acrylic polymer were applied onto the pellets and evaluated for in vitro dissolution behavior in 0.1 N HCl for two hours and then media was changed to phosphate buffer pH 6.8. A 60% w/w coating level of Eudragit L30 D 55 has produced the most acceptable results against the gastric attack. 3% Seal coat of HPMC E5 was also applied in order to protect the drug from migration into the Eudragit coat and film coat was applied in order to prevent aggregation of pellets in the dissolution media. Morphological characteristics of developed pellets were also investigated by scanning electron microscopy and found to be smooth and spherical. Developed system was found to be suitable for the delivery of Sod PAS in to intestinal region.

Proposal for Alzheimer's diagnosis using molecular buffer and bus network

A novel design of an optical trapping tool for tangle protein (tau tangles, β-amyloid plaques) and molecular motor storage and delivery using a PANDA ring resonator is proposed. The optical vortices can be generated and controlled to form the trapping tools in the same way as the optical tweezers. In theory, the trapping force is formed by the combination between the gradient field and scattering photons, and is reviewed. By using the intense optical vortices generated within the PANDA ring resonator, the required molecular volumes can be trapped and moved dynamically within the molecular buffer and bus network. The tangle protein and molecular motor can transport and connect to the required destinations, enabling availability for Alzheimer's diagnosis.

Blood cleaner on-chip design for artificial human kidney manipulation

A novel design of a blood cleaner on-chip using an optical waveguide known as a PANDA ring resonator is proposed. By controlling some suitable parameters, the optical vortices (gradient optical fields/wells) can be generated and used to form the trapping tools in the same way as optical tweezers. In operation, the trapping force is formed by the combination between the gradient field and scattering photons by using the intense optical vortices generated within the PANDA ring resonator. This can be used for blood waste trapping and moves dynamically within the blood cleaner on-chip system (artificial kidney), and is performed within the wavelength routers. Finally, the blood quality test is exploited by the external probe before sending to the destination. The advantage of the proposed kidney on-chip system is that the unwanted substances can be trapped and filtered from the artificial kidney, which can be available for blood cleaning applications.