Search results for "indicators"

Comparison of the performance of butanol and pentanol as modifiers in the micellar chromatographic determination of some phenethylamines

2000

Abstract A procedure was developed for the determination of several phenethylamines (amphetamine, arterenol, ephedrine, phenylephrine, phenylpropanolamine, mephentermine, methoxyphenamine, pseudoephedrine and tyramine), using micellar mobile phases of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS), a C18 column and UV detection. The drugs were eluted at short retention times with conventional acetonitrile–water or methanol–water mobile phases. In contrast, in the micellar system, they were strongly retained due to association with the surfactant adsorbed on the stationary phase, and needed the addition of butanol or pentanol to be eluted from the column. These modifiers allowed a simple way of controlling th…

Legislative basis for corporate social responsibility reporting

2014

Framing Caesarean Section Reduction Policies Through a Dynamic Performance Management Approach: A Maternity Pathway Case-Based Analysis

2017

The World Health Organization since the last three decades strongly encourages countries to reduce the caesarean section (CS) rate down to 10–15%. However, this goal nowadays appears still far from its achievement. Public decision-makers are indeed struggling to design and implement effective policies to reduce the CS rate. The literature provides a wide range of factors causing a change in the CS rate, such as the patient clinical profile and the healthcare service quality provided. Maternity pathway (MP) is considered a mean through which to standardize the cares and to reduce CSs. This study investigates the MP recently introduced in Sicilian local health authorities. Based on such an an…

Application of the 6-aminoquinolyl-N-hydroxysccinimidyl carbamate (AQC) reagent to the RP-HPLC determination of amino acids in infant foods.

2005

The validation of a pre-column derivatization procedure with 6-aminoquinolyl-N-hydroxysuccinimidyl carbamate (AQC) to the determination of the amino acid content by RP-HPLC with fluorescence detection (lambda excitation 250 nm, lambda emission 395 nm) in milk-cereal based infant foods was carried out. The analytical parameters: linearity (0.0025-0.2mM), precision of the method (0.2-3.5% variation coefficients), accuracy (derivatization: 86-106% average recovery and method: 88.3-118.2% average recovery) and the limits of detection (0.016-0.367 microM) and quantification (0.044-1.073 microM) were determined. Glutamic acid, proline and leucine were the most abundant amino acid whereas the lowe…

Thermodynamic analysis of binding between drugs and glycosaminoglycans by isothermal titration calorimetry and fluorescence spectroscopy

2007

The thermodynamics of the interaction of positively charged drug molecules with negatively charged glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) is investigated by isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) and fluorescence spectroscopy. The drugs considered are propranolol hydrochloride, tacrine, and aminacrine, and the polymers used as model GAGs are dextran sulfate, chondroitin sulfate, and hyaluronic acid. The ITC results show that the interaction between drugs and GAGs is via direct binding and that GAGs bind to drugs at one set of sites. Large negative values of heat capacity change (DeltaC(p)) are observed upon binding of GAGs to drugs. Such negative DeltaC(p) is not expected for purely electrostatic intera…

Fully reliable a posteriori error control for evolutionary problems

2015

Anti-inflammatory effects of chemically modified tetracyclines by the inhibition of nitric oxide and interleukin-12 synthesis in J774 cell line

2001

We investigated the effects of chemically modified tetracyclines (CMTs) on the production of nitric oxide (NO) and on the synthesis of some cytokines: tumour necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha), interleukin(IL)-10 and IL-12 in lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-treated J774 cell line. Furthermore, we studied the ability of these drugs to modify the viability in LPS-stimulated J774 macrophages. CMTs decreased, in a dose-dependent manner, inducible NO synthase (iNOS) activity and, consequently, nitrite formation in J774 cultures. The CMT-induced decrease in NO production is due to the inhibition of enzyme activity rather than to a direct effect on enzyme expression. The absence of the inhibition in mRNA …

Contribution to development of microbial bioindicators for assessing the impact of agricultural pratices on soil

2015

Soil is the support of agricultural production. It performs many functions essential to the provision of ecosystem services necessary for the well-being of our societies. Soil physicochemical and biological properties have been altered by the development of intensive agriculture while it is a non-renewable resource, revealing the need to develop new management practices suitable for the sustainability of soil quality. This also marked the entry into the “Agroecology” era, which promotes the development of new agricultural systems optimizing services provided by biodiversity to reduce the use of inputs and energy use. To achieve this aim, the development of a range of indicators to assess th…

China's economic, environmental and social development in crossfire : province-specific analysis of China's ecological modernization and sustainabili…

2014

Häyhä, Laura. China’s Economic, Environmental and Social Development in Crossfire – Province-specific Analysis of China’s Ecological Modernization and Sustainability. Master thesis. Autumn 2014. Supervisor: Pertti Jokivuori. Sociology. University of Jyväskylä. Pages 89 + 1 appendix. This study concentrated to examine ecological modernization process and sustainability of Chinese provinces. The examination focused on the differences between the westernmost and the easternmost China. Data of Chinese Statistical Yearbook was used during the years 2001–2010. Analyses were implemented with SPSS 20. and Excel 2010. Among general statistical analysis, Principal Component Analysis and a relatively …

The use of zooplankton metrics to determine the trophic status and ecological potential: An approach in a large Mediterranean watershed.

2021

In the European Water Framework Directive, zooplankton was not included as a Biological Quality Element despite its important place in the aquatic trophic web. In the present study on zooplankton abundances and biomasses, we used several metrics to test their ability to detect differences among trophic statuses and ecological potential levels, and collected a large sum of data in more than 60 reservoirs at Ebro watershed, on more than 300 sampling occasions over 10 years. Our results indicate that most zooplankton metrics are correlated to environmental variables that determine reservoirs’ trophic states, especially chlorophyll a and total phosphorus. The metrics with better sensitivity to …