Gangliosides as Biomarkers of Human Brain Diseases: Trends in Discovery and Characterization by High-Performance Mass Spectrometry

Gangliosides are effective biochemical markers of brain pathologies, being also in the focus of research as potential therapeutic targets. Accurate brain ganglioside mapping is an essential requirement for correlating the specificity of their composition with a certain pathological state and establishing a well-defined set of biomarkers. Among all bioanalytical methods conceived for this purpose, mass spectrometry (MS) has developed into one of the most valuable, due to the wealth and consistency of structural information provided. In this context, the present article reviews the achievements of MS in discovery and structural analysis of gangliosides associated with severe brain pathologies. The first part is dedicated to the contributions of MS in the assessment of ganglioside composition and role in the specific neurodegenerative disorders: Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. A large subsequent section is devoted to cephalic disorders (CD), with an emphasis on the MS of gangliosides in anencephaly, the most common and severe disease in the CD spectrum. The last part is focused on the major accomplishments of MS-based methods in the discovery of ganglioside species, which are associated with primary and secondary brain tumors and may either facilitate an early diagnosis or represent target molecules for immunotherapy oriented against brain cancers.

Symmetrical Polyarthropathy and Hepatosplenomegaly as a Manifestation of Parvovirus B-19: A Case Report

This case was of a 35-years old Egyptian lady, who works as a primary school teacher, who presented to the OPD with complaints of persistent high fever for two days. Along with this fever, she also had severe pain in multiple joints of both hands, wrists, knees, and ankles. In addition, the woman also complained of having developed a rash on both her legs, which was so painful that she was unable to stand without pain. The pain was agonizing and it prevented her from performing her usual jobs as normal. But that was the extent of her symptoms. She did not complain of a cough, shortness of breath, chest pain, back pain, abdominal pain, or any other pain for that matter. In a summary, none of the factors and symptoms that could have pointed towards the patient suffering from a case of COVID19 were present. Moreover, there was no recent history of travel. She also had not contracted any gastrointestinal or genitourinary infections in the preceding few days. The clinical examination of the patient revealed no abnormalities at all. The only thing worth noting was remarkable swelling and tenderness over the metacarpophalangeal and proximal interphalangeal joints. The following series of events are discussed in detail in the subsequent section, and it was concluded that the woman might be suffering from the parvovirus B19 infection. She had several favorable causative factors that pointed toward this diagnosis, with the most important one being her in close contact with primary school children, who are most the likely age group, between five and twenty years, to carry this infection and also contract it. Adults can contract the infection from children, but the range of symptoms varies from person to person. In this case of the woman, further evaluations and investigations were needed to confirm the diagnosis, which was likely due to the obvious risk factors present in this case.

Co-therapy in a Group Setting: Benefits and Challenges in Facilitating Co-Therapy Music Therapy in a Small Group Setting

<p>This study provides my findings on the issue of co-therapy in music therapy practice with children and young adults, based on my personal experience in placement during my final year as a student practitioner for music therapy. The study discusses co-therapy from the point of view that, like any other example of team work, co-therapy has advantages and benefits, as well as disadvantages, difficulties and challenges. The study looks at the practice of co-therapy in detail, to reach conclusions about those benefits and challenges. It uses examples of co-therapy with small groups of clients with a range of different needs, to provide a wide picture of how co-therapy could be used effectively in music therapy, but also to discuss the issues that occurred when co-facilitating. The results of the analysis are presented in the findings section and discussed in the subsequent section. It is important to note that these results, as in other qualitative research studies, are based on personal interpretations and should not be viewed as facts. They can, however, serve as recommendations and points for consideration for students, new and experienced practitioners who might consider co-therapy as a practice.</p>

Co-therapy in a Group Setting: Benefits and Challenges in Facilitating Co-Therapy Music Therapy in a Small Group Setting

<p>This study provides my findings on the issue of co-therapy in music therapy practice with children and young adults, based on my personal experience in placement during my final year as a student practitioner for music therapy. The study discusses co-therapy from the point of view that, like any other example of team work, co-therapy has advantages and benefits, as well as disadvantages, difficulties and challenges. The study looks at the practice of co-therapy in detail, to reach conclusions about those benefits and challenges. It uses examples of co-therapy with small groups of clients with a range of different needs, to provide a wide picture of how co-therapy could be used effectively in music therapy, but also to discuss the issues that occurred when co-facilitating. The results of the analysis are presented in the findings section and discussed in the subsequent section. It is important to note that these results, as in other qualitative research studies, are based on personal interpretations and should not be viewed as facts. They can, however, serve as recommendations and points for consideration for students, new and experienced practitioners who might consider co-therapy as a practice.</p>

Health

This chapter deals with what is said to be the most important thing in life: health. Health, therefore, is a big deal in all OECD countries, which on average spent almost one-tenth of their GDP on their health-care system. These health-care systems are at the centre of this chapter. After having discussed their origins and developments and the existing typologies of health-care systems we analyse the three functions of each health-care system in detail, i.e. finance, delivery, and regulation. In a nutshell, we find that systems have become more complex and more hybrid over time, while the clear distinctions between different system types have been blurred. One reason for this is the attempt to pick up elements from other system types in order to increase effectiveness and efficiency. As different systems produce different results, performance measurement has become of increasing interest, an issue we turn on then. Respective approaches, however, are still—at best—highly disputable. As health-care systems seem to be in a state of permanent reform, in a subsequent section we present approaches to explain such reforms coming from different strands of theory. The chapter concludes with a view on international and global health, highlighting that health governance issues emerge at the interface of local, national, regional, and global interests.

Joseph Wright’s sources in the English Dialect Dictionary: evidence of spoken English from EDD Online

Linguists of historical English, of traditional dialects and present-day varieties of English, generally rely on written texts, now often available in the form of corpora. However, the historical development of English, including its regional dialects, was naturally rooted in the spoken vernacular, rather than the literary standard. This paper, based on EDD Online (3.0), therefore, argues that the wealth of sources as used by Wright in his comprehensive English Dialect Dictionary (EDD) should no longer be disregarded, given that no better information is available. After a critical assessment of the widespread scepticism towards the EDD sources and of the different motivation of scholars not primarily concerned with traditional dialects (such as OED lexicographers), the paper first provides a survey of the different types of sources used by the EDD and presented in different lists and tables in EDD Online, and then focuses on the unpublished sources. The subsequent section shows that part of the problem of spoken sources results from the unjustified insistence of many scholars on phonetics to be the level of linguistic interest. In answer to the OED’s scepticism towards Wright’s sources as expressed in a paper by Durkin (2010a), the final section provides an analysis of Northamptonshire dialect words as a test case, with various linguistic issues beyond the OED’s focus on the temporal frame of reference.

A Theory of Media Multitasking Intensity

This article first situates media multitasking in the changing media ecology. Then, grounded in concepts of stress and flow, limited capacity, and threaded cognition, it develops a four-dimensional theory of media multitasking intensity. Based on the key aspects of media multitasking intensity, the subsequent section proposes two primary influences (executive functioning and self-regulation) and one primary outcome (general stress). An application example focuses on several media multitasking issues and the stress outcome for adolescents within their family environment. The final section suggests a few key methodological implications for studying the theory of media multitasking intensity (self-report, and both temporal and social contexts). The theory of media multitasking intensity generates insights about the functional (i.e., valuable) variation within experiences of media as they overlap with and interrupt experiences of the physical and mediated world.

A Decade of Impact of Monetary Policy on Food Inflation: An Overview and Future Direction

This article presents a systematic literature review spanning the decade of 2010–2020 in a thematic fashion. It provides an in-depth analysis of how monetary policy regimes are responding to food inflation. It discusses about factors driving food inflation and the manner in which efficiency of financial markets facilitate policy transmission. Further, it explains how food insecurity is exacerbated by rise in food prices and the way high-income countries protect their farmers through input subsidies, indirectly contributing to global food price hike. It also argues that a strong monetary policy credibility can lend stationarity and mean-reversion to inflation rates. Next, it discusses the issues faced by central banks in measurement of inflation such as conflict of choice in different inflation measures and supply side constraints ranging from high farm-to-fork mark-ups to cartelization and hoarding. In subsequent section, it deals with the question whether to target headline or core inflation. After that, it presents a snapshot of various advanced and emerging countries operating their monetary policy in the presence of fiscal policy. It illustrates that the degree of fiscal intervention should be decided according to individual threshold of every country, taking into account the proportion of Ricardian and non-Ricardian population.

The Role of Theory in Empirical L2 Research on Task-Based Language Teaching for Young L2 Learners

This forum will explore the extent to which theory has played a role in empirical research on Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) for young L2 learners and highlight opportunities that exist for future research. To begin, the most relevant theoretical entities to TBLT will be introduced. This theoretical background will set the stage for the subsequent section–– a review of three empirical studies on task-based learning with young L2 learners: Newton and Bui (2017), Zhu (2020), and Azkarai and Oliver (2019). Then, the three studies are discussed with regard to the role theory plays. Finally, some trends that come to light through the review of the studies are identified, and arguments are made vis-à-vis the need for more theory-driven, principled approaches to the empirical research on TBLT with children.

ICT, Smart Systems, and Standardization

This chapter first provides a brief introduction to the links between standards and standardization, innovation, and economics. This will be followed a description of the complex web of Standards Setting Organizations (SSOs) in the ICT/smart systems sector. Subsequently, a flexible tool to describe the characteristics of an SSO will be discussed. This will be followed by the description of a typical standards setting process. These three aspects are only parts of the fairly complex task of standardization management, which will be described next. The subsequent section will briefly cover national standardization strategies. Finally, some likely future research directions are sketched.