143 research outputs found
Relationship between serum bilirubin and uric acid to oxidative stress markers in Italian and Czech populations
No full textRecently, a South-to-North oxidative stress marker gradient has been reported; consistent with known differences in the incidence of coronary heart disease between southern and northern European countries. The aim of the present study was to compare the plasma concentrations of 7-oxocholesterol (7OxCH) and 7 beta-hydroxycholesterol (7BCH) with systemic antioxidants in healthy Italian and Czech subjects. The study was performed in healthy subjects of Italian (n=131) and Czech (n=84) origins. In all subjects routine biochemistry work-ups were performed; additionally, plasma oxysterols and the peroxyl radicals scavenging activity (PERSA) of the sera were determined. Close relationship of serum bilirubin and uric acid to markers of oxidative stress was observed in both examined populations. Compared to the Czechs, the Italian population showed higher plasma concentrations of both oxysterols (7OxCH: 3.6 vs. 6.0 ng/ml, p<10(-6); 7BCH: 5.3 vs. 8.6 ng/ml, p<10(-6)), lower PERSA (p<10(-6)), and lower serum concentrations of bilirubin and uric acid (p<10(-6) in both cases). The dietary patterns of the Italian population did not match the Mediterranean style, but was more similar to the Continental type of diet, presumably due to non-adherence to a Mediterranean diet.Recently, a South-to-North oxidative stress marker gradient has been reported; consistent with known differences in the incidence of coronary heart disease between southern and northern European countries. The aim of the present study was to compare the plasma concentrations of 7-oxocholesterol (7OxCH) and 7β-hydroxycholesterol (7BCH) with systemic antioxidants in healthy Italian and Czech subjects. The study was performed in healthy subjects of Italian (n=131) and Czech (n=84) origins. In all subjects routine biochemistry work-ups were performed; additionally, plasma oxysterols and the peroxyl radicals scavenging activity (PERSA) of the sera were determined. Close relationship of serum bilirubin and uric acid to markers of oxidative stress was observed in both examined populations. Compared to the Czechs, the Italian population showed higher plasma concentrations of both oxysterols (7OxCH: 3.6 vs. 6.0 ng/ml, p<10−6; 7BCH: 5.3 vs. 8.6 ng/ml, p<10−6), lower PERSA (p<10−6), and lower se
Intestinal metabolisms of bilirubin and the impact of hyperbilirubinaemia on atherogenesis.
No full textAvailable from STL, Prague, CZ / NTK - National Technical LibrarySIGLECZCzech Republi
Go Farm, Young People, and Help Heal the Country
No full text A just and sustainable future will require rebuilding rural America. For too many decades, the countryside has been exploited and depopulated to support urban society, and enrich only suppliers and processors. For too many urban people with progressive politics, rural areas are dismissed as parochial, and resented for holding disproportionate power. And young people in rural communities have moved to cities in search of better opportunities. A better strategy, successfully pioneered a generation ago in Vermont, might be to encourage more young people to live in the country.
In this pamphlet, environmental historian and farmer Brian Donahue argues for empowering rural people so that they can replace the current extractive economy with an attractive economy, and for repopulating the countryside with intrepid young people to help drive change.
Common Sense for Global Crises is a New Perennials Publishing pamphlet series in the radical and reasoned spirit of Thomas Paine. Authors come from a wide variety of backgrounds and walks of life—scholars and activists, scientists and artists, farmers and teachers, elders and youth—reflecting the belief that what we need to know now and in the days ahead will come from diverse and practical perspectives.
Contributors
Brian Donahue is an emeritus professor of American Environmental Studies at Brandeis University. He has also been a farmer for almost fifty years. He is author of Reclaiming the Commons: Community Farming and Forestry in a New England Town (Yale University Press, 1999); and co-author of Wildlands and Woodlands, Farmlands and Communities: Broadening the Vision for New England (Harvard Forest, 2017), and of A New England Food Vision (Food Solutions New England, 2014). He is on the board of the Massachusetts Woodland Institute and The Land Institute.
Bill Vitek is Director of the New Perennials Project and New Perennials Publishing, and a Scholar in Residence at Middlebury College. Vitek taught philosophy for 32 years at Clarkson University, always with the objective of helping students understand that the philosophical imagination can, and must, do useful work in the world. Much of his work has engaged ecological issues, including collaborations with Wes Jackson and The Land Institute for over three decades. Vitek and Jackson co-edited two books, Rooted in the Land: Essays on Community and Place (1996) and The Virtues of Ignorance: Complexity, Sustainability, and the Limits of Knowledge (2008).
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Local Food, More Hope
No full textIn the revolutionary spirit of Thomas Paine, author, historian, and gardener Kathleen Smythe declares in her pamphlet that the time has come for declaring independence from a global agricultural system that robs us of our food sovereignty and treats both consumers and farmers as mere colonial subjects; from the living Earth as inexhaustible rather than an exquisite complex of life that has slowly accumulated for millennia; and from human bodies as receptacles for whatever fossil fuel farming can produce most cheaply. Local food is our best hope in this declaration of inter-independence.
Common Sense for Global Crises is a New Perennials Publishing pamphlet series in the radical and reasoned spirit of Thomas Paine. Authors come from a wide variety of backgrounds and walks of life—scholars and activists, scientists and artists, farmers and teachers, elders and youth—reflecting the belief that what we need to know now and in the days ahead will come from diverse and practical perspectives.
Contributors
Kathleen Smythe is a professor at Xavier University where she addresses questions of contemporary relevance through historical investigation. She prefers bodily-engaged learning as seen in her most recent book, Bicycling Through Paradise: Historical Rides Around Cincinnati (2021). She is trained as an African historian with years of fieldwork experience in Tanzania. Africa’s Past, Our Future highlights ideas and institutions in African history that broaden our social, political, and economic imagination. Whole Earth Living: Reconnecting Earth, History, Body and Mind proposes a new sustainability framework based on long-term human interdependencies with the Earth.
Bill Vitek is Director of the New Perennials Project and New Perennials Publishing, and a Scholar in Residence at Middlebury College. Vitek taught philosophy for 32 years at Clarkson University, always with the objective of helping students understand that the philosophical imagination can, and must, do useful work in the world. Much of his work has engaged ecological issues, including collaborations with Wes Jackson and The Land Institute for over three decades. Vitek and Jackson co-edited two books, Rooted in the Land: Essays on Community and Place (1996) and The Virtues of Ignorance: Complexity, Sustainability, and the Limits of Knowledge (2008). </p
From The Ground Up: Conversations With Wes Jackson
No full textAs human societies hurtle toward collapse, we’re going to need good science, appropriate teaching, and the best of our neighborly traditions to get through. In From the Ground Up, Wes Jackson discusses the challenges and opportunities. He’s a scientist with a sharp analytical mind to evaluate the data, and a lively storyteller who can reach back into the past for lessons that will be essential in a down-powering world.
Jackson supplemented the education he got growing up on a Kansas truck farm with a Ph.D. in genetics, leading to a university career. But he gave that up to start an alternative school and a research center that is now at the heart of work in sustainable agriculture. Along the way, he sharpened his storytelling skills, which are on display in this edited version of podcasts recorded in 2020 with his friend and collaborator Robert Jensen.
Contents
Foreword by Linda Ronstadt
Introduction by Robert Jensen
Intellectual Grounding
Respecting Your Tools
Mad About Science
Methodism to My Madness
The Portrait of an Artist as an Old Man
Bibliography
About the Authors
Contributors
Wes Jackson is cofounder and president emeritus of The Land Institute in Salina, Kansas. He is the author and editor of numerous books, including Hogs Are Up: Stories of the Land, with Digressions and New Roots for Agriculture.
Robert Jensen is professor emeritus in the School of Journalism and Media at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of many books, including The Restless and Relentless Mind of Wes Jackson: Searching for Sustainability and Plain Radical: Living, Loving, and Learning to Leave the Planet Gracefully.
Bill Vitek is Director of the New Perennials Project and New Perennials Publishing, and a Scholar in Residence at Middlebury College. Vitek taught philosophy for 32 years at Clarkson University, always with the objective of helping students understand that the philosophical imagination can, and must, do useful work in the world. Much of his work has engaged ecological issues, including collaborations with Wes Jackson and The Land Institute for over three decades. Vitek and Jackson co-edited two books, Rooted in the Land: Essays on Community and Place (1996) and The Virtues of Ignorance: Complexity, Sustainability, and the Limits of Knowledge (2008).
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Looking to the horizon: The role of bilirubin in development and prevention of age-related chronic diseases
No full textBilirubin, the principal tetrapyrrole, bile pigment and catabolite of haem, is an emerging biomarker of disease resistance, which may be related to several recently documented biological functions. Initially believed to be toxic in infants, the perception of bilirubin has undergone a transformation: it is now considered to be a molecule that may promote health in adults. Data from the last decade demonstrate that mildly elevated serum bilirubin levels are strongly associated with reduced prevalence of chronic diseases, particularly cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), as well as CVD-related mortality and risk factors. Recent data also link bilirubin to other chronic diseases, including cancer and Type 2 diabetes mellitus, and to all-cause mortality. Therefore, there is evidence to suggest that bilirubin is a biomarker for reduced chronic disease prevalence and a predictor of all-cause mortality, which is of important clinical significance. In the present review, detailed information on the association between bilirubin and all-cause mortality, as well as the pathological conditions of CVD, cancer, diabetes and neurodegenerative diseases, is provided. The mechanistic background concerning how bilirubin and its metabolism may influence disease prevention and its clinical relevance is also discussed. Given that the search for novel biomarkers of these diseases, as well as for novel therapeutic modalities, is a key research objective for the near future, bilirubin represents a promising candidate, meeting the criteria of a biomarker, and should be considered more carefully in clinical practice as a molecule that might provide insights into disease resistance. Clearly, however, greater molecular insight is warranted to support and strengthen the conclusion that bilirubin can prevent disease, with future research directions also proposed
Osteopontin – A potential biomarker of advanced liver disease
No full textCirrhosis is a primary cause of liver-related mortality and morbidity. The basic process driving chronic liver disease to cirrhosis is accelerated fibrogenesis. Although the pathogenesis of liver cirrhosis is a multifactorial process, the essential step in the evolution of liver fibrosis is the activation of hepatic stellate cells, which are the main source of collagen produced in the extracellular matrix. This activation process is mediated by multiple growth factors, cytokines, and chemokines. One of the hepatic stellate cell-activating signaling molecules (and also one associated with cell injury and fibrosis) is osteopontin (OPN). OPN concentration in the plasma has been found to be predictive of liver fibrosis in various liver diseases. OPN concentrations correlate significantly with the stage of fibrosis, liver insufficiency, portal hypertension, and the presence of hepatocellular cancer. However, due to its versatile signaling functions, OPN not only contributes to the development of liver cirrhosis, but is also implicated in the pathogenesis of other chronic hepatic diseases such as viral hepatitis, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic steatohepatitis, drug-induced liver injury, and hepatocellular cancer. Thus, the targeting of OPN pathways seems to be a promising approach in the treatment of chronic liver diseases
Drivers for power SiC MOSFET transistors
No full textThe bachelor thesis describes gate driving principles of power MOSFET transistors made of silicon carbide material. The autor's aim is describing a different types of gate drivers and basic rules during process of designing gate drivers. In the theoretical part, the author will mount printed circuit board of gate driver designed on UVEE FEKT VUT Brno and verify functionality
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