OBJECTIVES The number of clinical studies evaluating the new tubular biomarker urinary neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (U-NGAL) in urine are increasing. There is no consensus whether absolute U-NGAL concentrations or urinary NGAL/creatinine (U-NGAL/Cr) ratios should be used when chronic tubular dysfunction is studied. The aim was to study the biological variation of U-NGAL in healthy...

OBJECTIVE To determine cerebral regional concentrations of N-acetyl aspartate (NAA), total choline (Cho), and total creatine (Cr) in Rett syndrome (RS) using 1H magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging (MRSI). BACKGROUND The biochemical defect underlying RS is unknown. Because in vivo MRSI can detect important cerebral metabolites, MRSI has a potential to reveal impairment of regional cerebra...

Nowadays, heavy metal pollution has become a serious environmental problem on global scale. The heavy metals are non-biodegradable in nature, which can easily accumulate in the organisms of lower trophic level, and enter to the human body system through food chain. From this backdrop, the present experiment highlighted the effect of three heavy metals (Cr, Pb, and Mn) in different concentration...

Recent measurements of the positron/electron ratio in the cosmic ray (CR) flux exhibits an apparent anomaly (Adriani et al. 2009), whereby this ratio increases between 10 and 100 GeV. We show that inhomogeneity of CR sources on a scale of order a kpc, can naturally explain this anomaly. If the nearest major CR source is about a kpc away, then low energy electrons (∼ 1 GeV) can easily reach us. ...

UNLABELLED Hydroxyethyl starches (HES) are almost exclusively excreted glomerularly, in part after hydrolysis by amylase. HES 130/0.4 (Voluven; Fresenius Kabi Deutschland GmbH, Bad Homburg, Germany) was developed to improve pharmacokinetics whereas preserving the efficacy of volume effect. We studied the dependency of pharmacokinetics of HES 130/0.4 on renal function. Nineteen volunteers with s...

The increasing industrial development of recent decades has lead to the production of increasing quantities of waste containing heavy metals, elements often harmful to the environment, which in the past were not properly disposed of, thus inducing soil and groundwater pollution. In particular, chromium (Cr) and its derivatives are largely used in industries such as textiles, electronics, metall...

The Mn–Cr decay system, in which Mn decays to Cr (t1/2 = 3.7 Ma) has been widely used to construct Cr/Cr vs. Mn/Cr isochrons and thus determine relative ages of early solar system objects or events, assuming that the initial Cr isotopic ratio, (Cr/Cr)o, equals ( Mn/Cr)o. With the primary objective of interpretation of these ages within a diffusion kinetic framework, we have determined the trace...

The growing incidence of oral cancer (OC) in Taiwan has become a crucial public health concern. In particular, Changhua, a county in central Taiwan, carries persistently high OC incidence rate, with an alarmingly high male/female ratio of OC incidence. Previous epidemiological studies had found that the incidence is spatially correlated with the level of soil content to certain heavy metals in ...

Hypoglycemia is common during development and is associated with the risk of neurodevelopmental deficits in human infants. The effects of hypoglycemia on the developing hippocampus are poorly understood. The sequential changes in energy substrates, amino acids and phosphocreatine were measured from the hippocampus during 180 min of insulin-induced hypoglycemia (blood glucose < 2.5 mmol/L) in 14...