India comfortably beats the other BRICS countries:

India comfortably beats the other BRICS countries: normally Russia and Brazil rank 13th and 15th in total output, and Brazil occupies 20th place in citation frequency.[5] When different scientific disciplines are analyzed separately, India scores well in material science, agricultural science, and chemistry, contributing >5% of global papers. Among medical and allied sciences, its best performance is in pharmacology (3.37%). Microbiology (2.33%), immunology (1.35%), molecular biology and genetics (1.27%), and clinical medicine (1.26%) show India delivering a below-par performance as compared to other countries. Our poorest performance is in neurosciences and behavior, and psychology/psychiatry where we contribute 0.60% and 0.33% of global research.

When assessed as impact/citation relative to the world our cites-per-paper is low in all medical fields. We are unable to achieve a better than 36% impact in any medical field.[7] The relatively poor numerical strength and below par visibility of Indian medical writers is due to many reasons. Limited access to international libraries, poor accessibility to research tools/finance to many professional medical writing and biostatistics documentation impacts our work negatively.[4] These factors; however, are being addressed through multiple programs throughout the country. This trend holds promise for Indian researchers, who are gradually staking claim to their rightful place under the sun. This communication hopes to highlight the improvement in Indian rankings in the field of research; thus, encouraging younger physicians to actively engage in this field.

At the same time, it sends a message to focus on quality, not only quantity, and improve the citability of published work.

On November 3rd and 4th, 2012, Manipal Hospital, Bangalore and Association for the Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs (AAHRPP) co-hosted an invitation only regional conference titled ??Practical Solutions to Challenges in Research Ethics.?? The impetus for this conference grow out of a desire to help other Indian hospitals that conduct clinical Entinostat trials more fully develop high-quality research programs and provide the high standards of protection for human research participants. This paper is a synthesis of the major themes of the conference and lays Ixazomib mechanism out an agenda for improving participant protections in India. The themes of the conference were gleaned from the presentations given at the conference and the robust discussions that were a part of the conference; the presenters are recognized for their contribution in the acknowledgments.

They found no change for lumbar flexion range of motion or in lum

They found no change for lumbar flexion range of motion or in lumbar curvature even though hamstring muscle extensibility increased. Furthermore, to date, no studies have specifically examined selleck inhibitor the acute effects of hamstring stretching in sagittal spinal curvatures and pelvic tilt. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine the acute effects of hamstring stretching in thoracic and lumbar spinal curvatures and pelvic tilt in standing and trunk flexion postures. Material and Methods Participants Fifty-five employees of the police force service in an urban area (29.24 �� 7.41 years, body height 178.64 �� 5.14 cm, body mass 80.72 �� 9.50 kg) were recruited. Subjects practiced recreational physical exercise but were not participating in any structured flexibility training at the time of the study.

All the subjects were informed of the nature and the aim of this study before they signed an informed consent form. This study was approved by the Ethics and Research Committee of the University of Murcia. All subjects were asked to complete a health-screening questionnaire about their physical activity pattern, previous hamstring injuries and stretching and low back pain history. Subjects were excluded if (1) they had had any hamstring injury (hamstring muscle strain, hamstring spasm, or tendinopathies) within the last 6 months or (2) they had a history of low back pain in the last 2 months. Procedures Sagittal spinal curvatures and pelvic tilt were measured in the relaxed standing, sit-and-reach test and Macrae & Wright test.

Hamstring muscle extensibility was determined in both legs by active straight leg raise test and the sit-and-reach score. Three trials for each measure were administered, and the average value of measures was entered for data analysis. The measurements were made in a randomized order. The subjects were allowed to rest briefly standing up for 5 minutes between measures in the pre-test. At post-test the measures were immediately made without rest to avoid a decrease of extensibility. All measurements were made during the same testing session and were administered under the same environmental conditions. Participants were instructed not to undertake a weight-training session or strenuous exercise the day before testing to ensure consistent test conditions. No warm-up was performed by the subjects prior to the test measurements.

The subjects wore underclothing and no shoes. All measurements were taken around midday on each of the testing days (between 11:00 and 13:00 h) to control diurnal variations in spinal curvatures and hamstring extensibility. Spinal curvatures Entinostat and pelvic tilt were measured using a SpinalMouse system (Idiag, Fehraltdorf, Switzerland). The SpinalMouse is an electronic computer-aided measuring device which measures sagittal spinal range of motion and intersegmental angles in a non-invasive way and is a so-called surface-based technique.

The long-distance events have been held at the Olympic Games sinc

The long-distance events have been held at the Olympic Games since 1908. The 1500 m event has always been a men��s event. The 1986 Olympic Games mark the beginning of women��s 800 m races. PF-01367338 Statistical analysis In order to analyse the improvement in athletes�� performance in a given freestyle event, each time the constant-base and variable-base indices were calculated for the results of eight Olympic Games finalists, while the trend function was selected afterwards. Because a time-series model is a descriptive dynamic model (i.e. one omitting the causes of the course of the analysed phenomenon), the constructed models were verified by testing the significance of the structural parameters (the t-Student test) and the randomness of residuals, as well as the error term autocorrelation (the Durbin-Watson test).

The coefficients of convergence indicating the goodness-of-fit between the constructed models and the empirical data were calculated for all swimming events. Swimmers�� performances at the 2012 Olympic Games in London were predicted using the moving average method and linear and non-linear regressions. The regression models�� goodness-of-fit was estimated with the coefficient of determination. Results 50 m freestyle The data used to produce Graph 1 reveal that the times of both male and female swimmers tend to improve. This tendency is not constant, though, as indicated by their slight regression at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, amounting to 1.5% for women and 1.6% for men. During the 20 analysed years the eight female and male finalists examined here improved their results, on average, by 1.

55 s (6.0%) and 1.28 s (5.5%), respectively. Another interesting finding is that women��s results were systematically moving closer to men��s, as confirmed by the differences between the average women��s and men��s times recorded at the Seoul Olympic Games (3.01 s ) and in Beijing (2.75 s). Moreover, the men��s performance curve plotted in the graph clearly shows that the finalists�� results tend to concentrate, which follows from the rising level of athletic performance, as well as from the growing competition among elite sprint swimmers. Graph 1 Women��s and men��s performances in the 50 m freestyle during the 6 past Olympic Games and the prediction for London 2012 The next step in the analysis was an attempt to predict the results for the upcoming Olympic Games.

The trend function was selected based on moving averages and then its goodness-of-fit to the empirical data was determined. The coefficients of convergence 2 were Brefeldin_A 0.11 and 0.06 for women and men, respectively, thus proving that the goodness-of-fit between the linear trend function and the empirical data was very high �C the trend function could not explain only 11.0% and 6.0% of variability in athletes�� performance. Therefore, because the trend function was defined well, the probable times of the female and male finalists may be 24.15 s and 21.46 s, respectively.

This table also reports the number of times each of the efficient

This table also reports the number of times each of the efficient teams acted as referent in the assessment of the inefficient ones, which is determined as the number of times the corresponding ��j in model (2) is non-zero in the assessment of the different teams. Table 1 Efficient teams: Contributions to the efficiency selleck chemical Nutlin-3a and number of times acting as referent The benchmarking analysis provided by DEA is reported in Table 2. For each inefficient team, in this table we have its actual data (in the first row of each team) and the corresponding efficient targets (in the second row). The third row records the difference between the target and the actual data in relation to the actual data. Large values of these percentages may suggest the need of the team under assessment for improvement in the corresponding aspect of the game.

Table 2 also reports which efficient teams compose the benchmark used in the assessments, together with their contributions as efficient referents in such benchmark, i.e., the ��j��s provided by model (2). Table 2 Benchmarking analysis: Actual data and efficient targets (inefficient teams) Table 3 records the cross-efficiencies (3) and the cross-efficiency scores (4). We note that in our analysis we used a variant of the standard cross-efficiency evaluation that assesses the teams by only using the weights of those that have been rated as efficient in the DEA self-evaluation (Ram��n et al., 2011). Thus, the rows of this table correspond to each of the teams participating in the championship, and in each of them we have the evaluations of their game (the cross-efficiencies) with the weights of each of the efficient teams (under the corresponding column).

The last column of the table shows the cross-efficiency scores and in brackets their corresponding rankings. We can see, for instance, that France ranks 1st followed by Spain, Denmark and Slovakia, in this order. The teams in the rows of the table appear in order of the final classification of the world championship, so we can make comparisons between the two rankings. Table 3 Cross-efficiency evaluation. Discussion On many occasions, tactics are validated on the basis of the achievement of victory, the winning team being rated as the best. However, we should not close the door to the analysis of other teams whose performance can serve as a model of efficiency for the game.

For example, Table 1 shows that the 9 efficient teams achieved the efficiency with different patterns of game. We can see that France used a pattern of game in which all of the factors considered have the same importance. This shows a good performance of France in all of the aspects of the game. Denmark and Spain needed to put more weight in some of the game factors Drug_discovery in order to be rated as efficient. Table 1 reveals that Denmark exploited to some extent its relative strength in G6m, Gwing and G9m in the achievement of the efficiency (with a contribution to the efficiency of 22.

2012; Li et al 2012) and poisoning/overdose deaths (White et al

2012; Li et al. 2012) and poisoning/overdose deaths (White et al. 2011). People may be involved in traffic crashes or poisoning deaths at lower BALs if other drugs are present, and this may modify BAL levels used in establishing attributable fractions for motor-vehicle and poisoning deaths. Most national surveys selleck bio and many research projects inquire about alcohol and drug consumption separately not simultaneously. If alcohol and drugs pharmacologically interact, simultaneous-use questions should be considered. Third, it is important to calculate the secondhand harm alcohol misuse poses. Just as awareness of the secondhand negative consequences of passive smoke inhalation has heightened the public health resolve to curb smoking, learning about the secondhand effects of alcohol misuse may heighten the resolve to study and implement effective interventions to reduce alcohol misuse.

For example, 40 percent of people who die in traffic crashes involving drinking drivers in the United States are not driving. Half of the deaths in crashes involving drinking drivers under the age of 25 are those other than the driver. This has incited citizen activists and policymakers to pass more than 2,000 laws at the State and Federal levels to reduce alcohol-impaired driving (Hingson et al. 2003). Fourth, many prevention activities are implemented at the community level, and community-level data are needed to stimulate the planning and evaluation of those interventions (Hingson and White 2012). Yet most surveillance data-monitoring systems measure behavior and consequences at the State and Federal levels.

Strategies are needed to either facilitate more community-level data collection or to offer technical assistance to concerned communities and researchers so that they can collect their local data using standardized questions and sampling procedures for comparison with other communities, their State, and the Nation. Chronic Conditions When examining either acute-disease and chronic-disease mortality and morbidity, a variety of measurement challenges may produce underreporting. First, drinking levels reported in surveys account for only 40 to 60 percent of alcohol sales (Midanik 1982; World Health Organization [WHO] 2011). Underreporting may lead to underestimates of alcohol��s contribution to chronic disease (Meier et al. 2013).

Second, survey respondents often underestimate alcohol serving sizes, particularly when consumed in containers that vary from accepted standard drink sizes. Memory may become an issue after respondents have consumed so many drinks so rapidly that they incur partial memory lapses or total blackouts. Also, the duration Entinostat of time that respondents are asked to recall consumption can vary in different studies. In general, shorter time periods of recall (e.g., days and weeks) produce higher consumption, estimates than requests for monthly, yearly, or lifetime consumption.

One single study [29] detailed the execution phase, being the pha

One single study [29] detailed the execution phase, being the phase where donors finally arrived at their decision. This study proposed a typology of different donor types: the voluntary type, the compromising type and the passive type. Donors of the voluntary type have an intense will selleck FTY720 to give, their decision-making process is straightforward and they have strong intimacy with their recipient. They are so determined to give that the process of compatibility testing can be stressful because of the fear of being rejected as a donor. On the other hand, donors of the compromising type have a moderate will to give, resulting in a more complicated decision-making process and a passive participation in compatibility tests. These donors volunteer when the test results are positive, feeling that they have no other choice.

In addition, most donors of this type receive financial compensation. Donors of the passive type have a low will to give and are reluctant to take compatibility Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries tests. Their intimacy with the recipient is the lowest. All Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries passive donors Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries are persuaded by family members with financial compensation. 3.1.2. At the Time of Donation The surgical experience of donation was a theme often examined in the articles reviewed. Just before surgery, donors varied in their attitudes regarding surgery. Although some approached it in a calm manner, it was an anxiety provoking Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries event for others, leading authors to suggest that each donor’s needs in this period are unique [40]. Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries Some donors made preparations in case they were to die, such as writing a will [36] and the emotional component of their experience increased in the days leading to the operation [34].

After surgery, numerous studies reported that donors had experienced pain [35, 36, 40, 41, 43], nausea [35, 41], exhaustion [36, 38, 39, 43] and scar problems [41]. AV-951 These effects were expressed as more important than expected, and at some points donors felt they had not been well prepared for these effects. Psychological strain was also mentioned in several studies [33, 36, 39, 40, 43]. Insufficient pain relief could lead to psychological symptoms and reduced emotional capacity in some donors [33, 36, 38, 39], they could experience a sense of loss or grief after donation [42] and the fear of rejection was also an important concern [43]. Regarding the care experience, several studies reported positive experiences [32, 34, 36, 40], such as care that was trustworthy and honest [40], namely, a call from a coordinator some weeks after discharge [36] and the availability of support from the transplant health care team when needed [34].

Under stress condition, leaf SOD activity increased significantly

Under stress condition, leaf SOD activity increased significantly (1.7-fold) in the treated plants, while activity of the H2O2-decomposing enzyme APX remained unchanged. Compared Ponatinib buy with control plants, activity of MDAR, GR and DHAR enzymes increased significantly in treated plants. MDAR and GR exhibited an approximately 1.8-fold and 1.6-fold increase in their activity, respectively, while more than the 2-fold increase was measured for DHAR under As-treatment. CAT activity, however, declined by 2-fold, while GPX level increased 5-fold over control value under As treatment [Table 1]. DISCUSSION Cell membrane stability is often related to As tolerance in plants, and the conductance measurement of EL from leaf cells is usually used as an indicator of membrane damage in As-treated plants.

[40] Change in cell membrane integrity is closely linked with extensive membrane lipid peroxidation in plants.[41,42,43] There is significant evidence that exposure to inorganic As species results in the generation of ROS in plants[20,44] through the conversion of arsenate to highly toxic arsenite within plants.[45] ROS, namely superoxide radicals induce the degradation of phospholipids and the resulting polyunsaturated fatty acids released by such a breakdown are then peroxidised.[46] In the present investigation, marginal increase in tissue MDA content under As exposure indicated non-significant change in rate of lipid peroxidation. Presumably, this helped the plant to maintain membrane integrity as evidenced from the percentage of EL in the treated plant as per control level.

However, higher level of membrane lipid peroxidation and subsequent leakage due to heavy metal-induced generation of ROS was reported in leaves of several common medicinal plants.[12,47] Metal loading of herbal plant parts is of great concern as it can alter the potency of medicinal plants.[47,48] Regulation of cellular redox state is a crucial factor when a plant experiences As-induced oxidative stress. The production of different classes of ROS including H2O2 under different environmental stresses triggers the synthesis of enzymatic antioxidants within the plant cells.[42,43,45] In the present study, increased SOD activity helped the Wedelia plant to quench superoxide radicals under As treatment. However, as has frequently been pointed out, that activity of SOD converts one ROS to another ROS (H2O2).

H2O2 is a predominant oxidant within cell, and its over-accumulation cannot be allowed in an environment where thiol-regulated enzymes Drug_discovery are functioning.[31,33,43] Increased SOD activity coupled with the unchanged level of APX activity and low CAT level might be responsible for higher accumulation of H2O2 in leaves of As-treated Wedelia plants than control plants. Although a positive correlation was usually found between H2O2 accumulation and lipid peroxidation as an obvious indication of oxidative stress,[31] no such relationship was evidenced in the present study.