318 research outputs found
Kearns-Sayre syndrome
No full textKearns-Sayre syndrome (KSS) is a rare neuromuscular disorder. We report a case of a 14-year-old boy diagnosed and treated as myasthenia gravis for (4) years who was eventually diagnosed with KSS. He reported to us 3 years after initial presentation of mild drooping of eyelids with increased severity of ptosis, bilateral external ophthalmoplegia, and atypical retinitis pigmentosa. On multispecialty consultation, he was found to have right bundle branch block, wasting and weakness of limb muscles, and hearing loss. Sartorius muscle biopsy revealed ragged red fibres on trichrome stain. All these findings confirmed the diagnosis of Kearns-Sayre Syndrome (KSS). The take home message is to have a high index of suspicion for KSS when encountering cases of musculoskeletal disorders in subjects below 20 years of age in view of high morbidity and mortality associated with this syndrome
Ophthalmologists saving life of a young patient presenting with sudden simultaneous bilateral retinal artery occlusions secondary to calcific emboli of cardiac origin
No full textWe present a case report of a young 35-year-old previously healthy male with simultaneous central retinal artery occlusion in the right eye and branch retinal artery occlusion in the left eye with visible calcific emboli in both eyes from calcified mitral valve diagnosed on trans-esophageal echocardiography. Patient underwent an urgent life-saving mitral valve replacement surgery within 2 days as Ophthalmologists immediately referred him to Cardiologist moment they visualized calcific emboli in both eyes with bilateral retinal artery occlusions on fundoscopy. Bilateral retinal artery occlusions suggest a source of emboli at the level of the heart or aortic arch. All patients with retinal ischemia should have a complete cardiovascular evaluation supplemented by Transesophageal echocardiography. Many times an Ophthalmologist might be the physician of first contact for patients with cardiac diseases and awareness of the disease is therefore important for all Ophthalmologists. Timely referral and management by Cardiologist/cardiac surgeon may protect patient against serious life-threatening complications
Spiritual leadership for sustainable development policy
No full textSpirituality and leadership, both have an intrinsic goal where they incorporate clarity of understanding, vision and collective action and both have the potential to empower an individual or a team, with commitment and productivity. It is one of the rapidly growing areas of leadership. It takes responsible policymakers and leaders to build a nation that benefits multiple stakeholders and all citizens. The aim of the chapter is to explore the concept of spirituality and show how applied spirituality can provide moral and practical guidance for leaders of public policy to take bold and enlightened steps towards achieving sustainable development (SD) goals. We define spirituality as a way of understanding, inner awareness, personal integration, and a source of values that give ultimate meaning or purpose beyond the egoic self. As such the chapter will go beyond existing discussions of ethical, moral, or values-based leadership and raise issues of how a deeper spiritual understanding of human nature can guide leaders. Some helpful practices like mindfulness are also covered in this chapter. There are various relevant leadership styles including transformational leadership, servant leadership, moral leadership and participatory leadership. Although each of these has some positive characteristics, this chapter with the help of those characteristics would try to get a deeper insight and understanding of how spirituality can stimulate and add more value, and bring integrity, motivation and strong leadership qualities. This chapter covers the existing gap in the literature on applied spirituality and leadership and concludes that leadership when incorporated with spirituality plays a vital role in honing the skills of the leaders and changing their perspective towards the team. The chapter will conclude with ideas for discussion among faculty and students and suggestions for further research into the use of applied spirituality for leadership in sustainable development polic
Merchants of Virtue
No full textMerchants of Virtue explores the question of what it meant to be Hindu in precolonial South Asia. Divya Cherian presents a fine-grained study of everyday life and local politics in the kingdom of Marwar in eighteenth-century western India to uncover how merchants enforced their caste ideals of vegetarianism and bodily austerity as universal markers of Hindu identity. Using legal strategies and alliances with elites, these merchants successfully remade the category of “Hindu,” setting it in contrast to “Untouchable” in a process that reconfigured Hinduism in caste terms. In a history pertinent to understanding India today, Cherian establishes the centrality of caste to the early-modern Hindu self and to its imagination of inadmissible others.
“A refreshingly different perspective on the history of caste and untouchability in India, enlarging the field of scholarship from its focus on the colonial era by telling us how precolonial configurations of power in the locality shaped the everyday experience of caste.” — GOPAL GURU, coauthor of The Cracked Mirror and Experience, Caste, and the Everyday Social
“This provocative and empirically rich study offers a plenitude of fascinating insights into aspects of western Indian history ca. 1800, from kingship and caste hierarchy to abortion and alcohol consumption. Particularly innovative is its focus on the critical role played by merchants in articulating social identities that became widespread in modern times.” — CYNTHIA TALBOT, author of The Last Hindu Emperor
“A pathbreaking book that explodes essentialist views of the construction of Hindu and Muslim identities in precolonial India. Divya Cherian provocatively argues that the category of ‘Hindu’ was the primary locus for a system of radical othering that excluded Untouchables (and Muslims as Untouchables) through mechanisms of state, law, and everyday life.” — CHRISTIAN LEE NOVETZKE, Professor of South Asian and Religious Studies, University of Washingto
Merchants of Virtue
No full textMerchants of Virtue explores the question of what it meant to be Hindu in precolonial South Asia. Divya Cherian presents a fine-grained study of everyday life and local politics in the kingdom of Marwar in eighteenth-century western India to uncover how merchants enforced their caste ideals of vegetarianism and bodily austerity as universal markers of Hindu identity. Using legal strategies and alliances with elites, these merchants successfully remade the category of “Hindu,” setting it in contrast to “Untouchable” in a process that reconfigured Hinduism in caste terms. In a history pertinent to understanding India today, Cherian establishes the centrality of caste to the early-modern Hindu self and to its imagination of inadmissible others.
“A refreshingly different perspective on the history of caste and untouchability in India, enlarging the field of scholarship from its focus on the colonial era by telling us how precolonial configurations of power in the locality shaped the everyday experience of caste.” — GOPAL GURU, coauthor of The Cracked Mirror and Experience, Caste, and the Everyday Social
“This provocative and empirically rich study offers a plenitude of fascinating insights into aspects of western Indian history ca. 1800, from kingship and caste hierarchy to abortion and alcohol consumption. Particularly innovative is its focus on the critical role played by merchants in articulating social identities that became widespread in modern times.” — CYNTHIA TALBOT, author of The Last Hindu Emperor
“A pathbreaking book that explodes essentialist views of the construction of Hindu and Muslim identities in precolonial India. Divya Cherian provocatively argues that the category of ‘Hindu’ was the primary locus for a system of radical othering that excluded Untouchables (and Muslims as Untouchables) through mechanisms of state, law, and everyday life.” — CHRISTIAN LEE NOVETZKE, Professor of South Asian and Religious Studies, University of Washingto
Improved collision detection in StarLogo Nova
No full textThesis: M. Eng., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2015.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (page 65).StarLogo Nova is blocks-based educational software that allows students to write and play their own 3D games online. It is the online version of StarLogo TNG. This thesis explores the problem of needing more accurate collision detection in StarLogo Nova while maintaining reasonable performance. Three new collision detection systems for StarLogo Nova are developed and evaluated. Compared to the spheres used to perform collision checks in the current system, the first new system, called the TightestFitCollider, introduces a variety of bounding spheres, bounding boxes, and bounding capsules as bounding structures that may fit the models in StarLogo Nova more closely. The second system, called the HierarchicalCollider, uses hierarchies of bounding boxes to perform even more precise collision detection than the TightestFitCollider. Finally, the third system combines the first two systems, so that the advantages of each can be used as appropriate. The three systems are evaluated for their accuracy and performance within the StarLogo Nova framework.by Divya Bajekal.M. Eng
Influence of deformable substrates on macroscopic and microscopic phenomenon of tissue
No full textOne of the most important aspects by which cells adapt to their environment is their interaction with their extracellular matrix. The goal of this thesis is to design deformable substrates with controllable mechanical and biochemical properties and to understand cell-substrate interaction at both microscopic and macroscopic scales. First part of the thesis aims to develop biodegradable hydrogels as delivery vehicles for cellular and small molecular therapeutics and also for potential tissue engineering constructs. The second part deals with development of an assessment tool for analyzing changes in tissue mechanics. In the first part of this thesis, we studied the interaction of the dental pulp stem cells with enzymatically crosslinked gelatin hydrogels of tunable stiffness (8KPa-0.1KPa). Dental pulp stem cells (DPSCs) are known to undergo odontogenesis when grown with Dexamethasone (Dex). The purpose of this study was to investigate the odontogenic impact of substrates on DPSCs in the absence of Dex. Through our experiments we identified hydrogels that support DPSC biomineralization and odontogenesis. These scaffolds were self-mineralizing and may prove useful as a biodegradable scaffold for dentin regeneration. In the second part, we prepared physically crosslinked polymer composite hydrogels of variable stiffness. We studied the rheological properties of these hydrogel scaffolds and related it to the type of bonding, degree of crosslinking and mechanical structure of the hydrogels. We showed the successful application of these hydrogels as potential drug delivery vehicles by studying the controlled release of Salicylic Acid. Their potential use as tissue engineered constructs was also shown by dermal fibroblasts adhesion and proliferation. In the last part of this thesis, we successfully developed a non-invasive Digital Image Speckle Correlation (DISC) technique for the precise quantification of the magnitude and duration of facial muscle paralysis inflicted by the Botulinum toxin (BTX-A). We were able to precisely characterize the mechanics of skin abnormalities and macroscopic response of collective cellular motion. Due to the generality of this method we were able to extend the use of DISC for diagnosis and prognosis of patients with vestibular schwannomas. Our results are based on successful human clinical trials of vestibular schwannomas and facial paralysis patients,136 page
Influence of deformable substrates on macroscopic and microscopic phenomenon of tissue
No full text136 pg.One of the most important aspects by which cells adapt to their environment is their interaction with their extracellular matrix. The goal of this thesis is to design deformable substrates with controllable mechanical and biochemical properties and to understand cell-substrate interaction at both microscopic and macroscopic scales. First part of the thesis aims to develop biodegradable hydrogels as delivery vehicles for cellular and small molecular therapeutics and also for potential tissue engineering constructs. The second part deals with development of an assessment tool for analyzing changes in tissue mechanics. In the first part of this thesis, we studied the interaction of the dental pulp stem cells with enzymatically crosslinked gelatin hydrogels of tunable stiffness (8KPa-0.1KPa). Dental pulp stem cells (DPSCs) are known to undergo odontogenesis when grown with Dexamethasone (Dex). The purpose of this study was to investigate the odontogenic impact of substrates on DPSCs in the absence of Dex. Through our experiments we identified hydrogels that support DPSC biomineralization and odontogenesis. These scaffolds were self-mineralizing and may prove useful as a biodegradable scaffold for dentin regeneration. In the second part, we prepared physically crosslinked polymer composite hydrogels of variable stiffness. We studied the rheological properties of these hydrogel scaffolds and related it to the type of bonding, degree of crosslinking and mechanical structure of the hydrogels. We showed the successful application of these hydrogels as potential drug delivery vehicles by studying the controlled release of Salicylic Acid. Their potential use as tissue engineered constructs was also shown by dermal fibroblasts adhesion and proliferation. In the last part of this thesis, we successfully developed a non-invasive Digital Image Speckle Correlation (DISC) technique for the precise quantification of the magnitude and duration of facial muscle paralysis inflicted by the Botulinum toxin (BTX-A). We were able to precisely characterize the mechanics of skin abnormalities and macroscopic response of collective cellular motion. Due to the generality of this method we were able to extend the use of DISC for diagnosis and prognosis of patients with vestibular schwannomas. Our results are based on successful human clinical trials of vestibular schwannomas and facial paralysis patientsAdvisor(s): Rafailovich, Miriam H. Committee Member(s): Sokolov, Jonathan ; Jurukovski, Vladimir ; Simon, Marcia.Stony Brook University Libraries. SBU Graduate School in Department of Materials Science and Engineering. Charles Taber (Dean of Graduate School)
Antiepileptic drugs for the primary and secondary prevention of seizures after subarachnoid haemorrhage
No full textBackground: subarachnoid haemorrhage may result in seizures both acutely and in the longer term. The use of antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) in the primary and secondary prevention of seizures after subarachnoid haemorrhage is uncertain, and there is currently no consensus on treatment.Objectives: to assess the effects of AEDs for the primary and secondary prevention of seizures after subarachnoid haemorrhage.Search methods: we searched the Cochrane Epilepsy Group Specialised Register, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) (2013, Issue 1) in The Cochrane Library, and MEDLINE (1946 to 12th March 2013). We checked the reference lists of articles retrieved from these searches.Selection criteria: we considered all randomised and quasi-randomised controlled trials in which patients were assigned to a treatment (one or more AEDs) or placebo.Data collection and analysis: two review authors (RM and JK) independently screened and assessed the methodological quality of the studies. If studies were included, one author extracted the data and the other checked it.Main results: no relevant studies were found.Authors' conclusions: there was no evidence to support or refute the use of antiepileptic drugs for the primary or secondary prevention of seizures related to subarachnoid haemorrhage. Well-designed randomised controlled trials are urgently needed to guide clinical practice
- …
