Search

To reduce TB deaths, Tamil Nadu, a southern Indian state, implemented the first state-wide differentiated TB care strategy starting April 2022. Triage-positive severely ill patients are prioritised for comprehensive assessment and inpatient care. Routine program data during October–December 2022 revealed that documentation of total score after comprehensive assessment was available in only 39%, possibly indicating poor quality of comprehensive assessment. We confirmed this using operational research. The case record form to record comprehensive assessment was used only in 26% and among these, the completeness and correctness in filling out the form were sub-optimal. There is a clear need to enhance the quality of comprehensive assessments.

Abstract Background To report the role of Polymerase Chain Reaction in confirming the diagnosis of presumed Mycobacterium Tuberculosis (MTB) Intermediate Uveitis. Method Retrospective analysis of 22 eyes of 14 cases of presumed tubercular intermediate uveitis wherein intraocular fluid was tested for MTB DNA by Nested & Real-time PCR, based on clinical suspicion of tubercular aetiology. QuantiFERON TB gold test and High-Resolution CT Chest were done. Patients were treated with anti-tubercular therapy with oral steroids & immunomodulators. In the study, eleven were male (79%) and three female (21%). The median age was 34 years. Nested PCR for both IS 6110 & MPB 64 was positive in 64% of the cases, IS 6110 positive in 23% and MPB 64 positive in 15%. Real-time PCR was positive in 48% of the cases. Vision improved in 33% of cases, maintained in 57%, and worsened in 10% of cases. Conclusion Presumed Tubercular intermediate uveitis can be confirmed by PCR of intraocular fluids. Anti-tubercular therapy with immunosuppression can improve vision and prevent recurrences in such cases.

This paper investigates ensemble feature selection using the q-rung orthopair hesitant fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) process. A novel algorithm is proposed for the study of ensemble feature selection and it is called as q-rung orthopair hesitant fuzzy MCDM extended to the Visekriterijumska optimizacija Ikompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) (q-ROHFS VIKOR). This is the first time in the literature an ensemble feature selection problem is modelled as a q-rung orthopair hesitant fuzzy MCDM extended to VIKOR technique. In the proposed method, every feature is ranked based on different available rankers and a preference matrix is obtained. In the sigmoidal transformation, the tuning parameter $$a$$ a plays a vital role in the fuzzification process. This tuning parameter reduces the computation run-time in the fuzzification process for different high-dimensional datasets that are considered in this paper. By using q-ROHFS VIKOR method, a score is assigned to each feature based on the values of the preference matrix. At last, an output rank vector is produced for all features from which the user can select the desired number of features. To prove the efficiency and optimality of the proposed method, the comparison with basic filter-based feature selections and ensemble feature selection using feature ranking strategy is obtained. The proposed method in this paper is superior and efficient than the ensemble methods based on the accuracy and F-score levels upto 0.96. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the problem of multi-stability analysis for fractional-order quaternion-valued neural networks (QVNNs) with time delay. Based on the geometrical properties of activation functions and intermediate value theorem, some conditions are derived for the existence of at least $ (2\mathcal{K}_p^R+1)^n, (2\mathcal{K}_p^I+1)^n, (2\mathcal{K}_p^J+1)^n, (2\mathcal{K}_p^K+1)^n $ equilibrium points, in which $ [(\mathcal{K}_p^R+1)]^n, [(\mathcal{K}_p^I+1)]^n, [(\mathcal{K}_p^J+1)]^n, [(\mathcal{K}_p^K+1)]^n $ of them are uniformly stable while the other equilibrium points become unstable. Thus the developed results show that the QVNNs can have more generalized properties than the real-valued neural networks (RVNNs) or complex-valued neural networks (CVNNs). Finally, two simulation results are given to illustrate the effectiveness and validity of our obtained theoretical results.

Purpose: To evaluate the correlation of quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) to the clinical characteristics of patients with viral retinitis.Methods: Retrospective case series. Results: Aqueous or vitreous samples of 20 out of 35 eyes showed qRT-PCR positivity for virus etiology (57.14%). Cytomegalovirus (CMV) was most commonly identified in nine eyes (45%). The mean DNA copy number was 2,68,339.65 copies/mL (range: 90–3205397). DNA copy number significantly correlated with the extent of clinical involvement (P = 0.013); however, there was no correlation between DNA copy number and presenting visual acuity (P = 0.31), macular involvement (P = 0.675), optic nerve involvement (P = 0.14), and development of retinal detachment (P = 0.73). There was a significant correlation between the number of DNA copies and the timing of sampling (P = 0.0005). Samples taken earlier in the course of the disease had higher viral copies than later ones. Conclusion: qRT-PCR is useful in confirming a viral etiology in over 50% of cases of suspected viral retinitis. It correlates well with the extent of clinical involvement and timing of sampling.

In this article, the feature selection (FS) process is taken as a multi criteria decision making (MCDM) problem. Also, to consider the impreciseness arising in the real time data, the values of the decision matrix procured after the ridge regression is fuzzified into dual hesitant q-rung orthopair fuzzy set. For the information fusion process, we have proposed various aggregation operators such as the Dual Hesitant q-rung orthopair fuzzy weighted Dombi arithmetic aggregation operator, Dual Hesitant q-rung orthopair fuzzy weighted Dombi geometric aggregation operator, Dual Hesitant q-rung orthopair fuzzy ordered weighted Dombi arithmetic aggregation operator and Dual Hesitant q-rung orthopair fuzzy ordered weighted Dombi geometric aggregation operator. A multi-label feature selection method is proposed using these MCDM techniques formed by the aggregation operators. This algorithm, initially, obtains the values of the decision matrix through the process of ridge regression. The weight vector required for the MCDM process is calculated using entropy. Further, the data are fuzzified and the MCDM process proposed using the aforementioned aggregation operators are utilized. A rank vector is obtained by utilizing the score function to select the desired number of features. It should be noted that through changing the aggregation operator, the algorithm can be altered. Experimental evaluation that compares the proposed method to other existing methods in terms of evaluation metrics demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed method and their significance is also evaluated.

Biomedical waste (BMW) is any sort of litter generated in the course of human or animal research operations, such as diagnosis, treatment, or immunization, or during the development or trial of pharmaceutical products or in health camps. In dental sectors, BMW, if not adequately handled, can provide a number of health risks to dental practitioners, patients, and other dental healthcare service providers who operate in dental offices. The aim of the study is to examine the knowledge, awareness, and practice of BMW segregation among dental offices. A well-framed questionnaire containing 10 self-structured questions was formed and distributed among 100 students of dentistry through an online Google Forms link. The results were collected, tabulated, and statistically analyzed using the Software SPSS. Chi-square test was performed to assess the P value. Biological waste segregation was known to 98% of the participants, in which most of them had more than 10 years of expertise in dentistry. It is evident that dentists with a lot of experience over the years in the field of dentistry possess considerably increased awareness regarding the segregation of BMWs in their dental offices. Chi-square test done between the years of experience in dentistry and the knowledge on BMW segregation reveals that 0.031 < 0.05 is the P value, which is statistically significant. Most dentists having experience of above 10 years in the field of dentistry have excellent knowledge and practice of segregating BMWs in their dental offices.

Resin-based composites are increasingly employed in dental restorations due to their esthetics. Flexural strength is the characteristic feature of a substance, and it can be described as the stress present in the material just before it renders in a flexure test. The purpose of this study was to determine the flexural strength of a bulk-fill composite following immersion in fruit juices. Ten samples of bulk-fill type composite filling material were created, with four samples from Restofill (Group 1) and four samples from Ivoclar Vivadent (Group 2). Out of which, four specimens of each brand were included for immersion in fruit juices; two specimens were kept as control. The eight samples were put through a flexural strength test, with four remaining as controls, before being measured for maximum force and displacement on the Instron E3000 universal testing equipment. SPSS version 23 (IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 23.0. Armonk, NY: IBM Corp.) was used to examine the calculated flexural strength. The composite Ivoclar has a mean flexural strength of 20.52, whereas the composite Restofill has a mean flexural strength of 20.55. The P value for the independent sample t-test between the two groups, Ivoclar and Restofill, was 0.089 (>0.05), which is statistically insignificant. It is clear from this research that the bulk-fill composite resin Ivoclar has a low flexural strength when compared to the sample Restofill after immersion in fruit juices.

This article studies the finite-time (FNT) and fixed-time (FXT) stability theorems of general fractional-order impulsive discontinuous systems (FOIDSs) through an indefinite Lyapunov functional (LF) approach. Using differential inclusion theory and set-valued map concept, the general FOIDSs can be transformed into fractional-order impulsive differential inclusions (FOIDIs). Two new stability theorems on finite and FXT stability of FOIDSs with finite impulsive instants are derived using an indefinite LF and fractional derivatives of the LF on some impulsive instants, respectively. The settling time is explicitly calculated. The obtained theoretical findings are applied to fractional-order discontinuous multi-agent systems. Discrete control schemes and indefinite Lyapunov-Krasovskii functions (LKFs) are also developed for ensuring FXT synchronization in fractional-order discontinuous multiagent systems. To demonstrate the efficiency and feasibility of the proposed method, some numerical simulations are conducted.

Abstract Eales’ disease is a retinal vasculitis characterized by retinal inflammation, ischemia, and neovascularization. Exact pathogenesis of this disease is yet to be found out. We present a 29-year-old male, diagnosed with Eales’ disease in both eyes with persistent intraocular inflammation. Enucleation of the pthisical right eye was subjected for histopathological examination immunohistochemistry and molecular biologic study for mycobacterial tuberculosis DNA. Our study showed that Eales disease is probably a T cell mediated disease which is triggered by mycobacterial TB DNA. Further studies are needed to confirm our findings.

This abstract describes an IoT-based system for fault detection and diagnosis in solar PV panels. The proposed Fuzzy logic-based fault detection algorithms aims to improve the performance and reliability of solar PV panels, which can be affected by various faults such as shading, soiling, degradation, and electrical faults. The system includes wireless sensor nodes that are deployed on the panels to collect data on their electrical parameters and environmental conditions, such as temperature, irradiance, and humidity. The collected data is then transmitted to a central server for processing and analysis using machine learning algorithms. The system can detect and diagnose faults in real-time, and provide alerts and recommendations to maintenance personnel to take appropriate actions to prevent further damage or downtime. The system has several advantages over traditional manual inspection and maintenance methods, including reduced downtime, lower maintenance costs, and improved energy efficiency. The proposed system has been validated through experimental tests, and the results show that it can accurately detect and diagnose faults in solar PV panels with high reliability and efficiency.

Water footprint (WF) is a comprehensive summation of the volume of freshwater consumed directly and indirectly in all the steps of the production chain of a product. The water footprint concept has been widely used in agricultural water resources management. Water for irrigation is supplied in Sri Lanka to farmers at no cost, and thus the question is arising, whether the current management strategies the authorities and the farmers follow are appropriate to achieve productive water utilization. Therefore, this study aims at evaluating the water footprint of rice production in an irrigation scheme in the dry zone of Sri Lanka, the Walawe irrigation scheme. Due to the unreliability of the rainfall in the study area paddy cultivation depends entirely on irrigation, thus, the WFblue, in other terms the volume of water evaporated from the irrigation water supply is considered as the total WF (WFtot) in this study. Actual crop evapotranspiration (equivalent to ETblue) was estimated based on the Penman-Monteith (P-M) model integrating effective rainfall, and crop coefficient published in Sri Lankan Irrigation Design Guidelines. The study spanned for three irrigation years from 2018–2021. Actual irrigation water issued to the field was estimated based on the data recorded by the government body responsible for irrigation water management of the area—Mahaweli Authority of Sri Lanka. The total volume of percolated water was computed employing the water balance method while assuming runoff is negligible. Results show that the average annual WFblue found to be 2.27 m3/kg, which is higher than global and national WFtot. As the crop yield in the study area (6.5 ton/ha) is also higher than the global (4.49 ton/ha) and national (3.5 ton/ha) yields, a conclusion was drawn that the irrigation water usage (CWUTblue) in the area may be significantly higher. It was then noted the higher CWUTblue was due to relatively higher evapotranspiration in the area. Thus, it is vital to reduce excess water usage by shifting irrigation practices from flooded irrigation to the System of Rice Intensification (SRI).

A 31-year-old male patient presented with sudden onset loss of vision in the left eye. Ocular examination revealed significant vitritis with chorioretinitis lesion in the posterior pole. Subsequent investigations revealed positive human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and syphilis serology; chest imaging revealed active pulmonary tuberculosis. Polymerase chain reaction from aqueous aspirate was positive for Mycobacterium tuberculosis. There was complete resolution of the lesions following antisyphilitic medications, antitubercular therapy along with highly active antiretroviral therapy. Syphilis and tuberculosis coinfection in a previously unknown HIV patient is rare but can occur. It is worthwhile to look for multiple coinfections in HIV patients.

This case report represents an unusual presentation of Mycobacterium tuberculosis-associated corneal ulcer with hypopyon. A 64-year-old man presented with a hypopyon corneal ulcer in the right eye. His corneal scrapings were negative, and the ulcer was not responding to empirical antimicrobial therapy. A real-time polymerase chain reaction from an aqueous aspirate of the right eye detected 422 copies of M. tuberculosis. Subsequent investigations revealed positive Mantoux and interferon-gamma release assay, supportive radiology. The patient was successfully treated with a course of antitubercular therapy and topical steroids. Hypopyon corneal ulcer, though a rare manifestation of ocular tuberculosis, should be considered in cases not responding to standard antimicrobial therapy.

Mass lesions arising from the anterior segment in children involving the iris and ciliary body can be of myogenic, neurogenic, or hematogenic/vascular origin. These include nevi, melanomas, adenoma, adenocarcinoma, cysts, metastatic tumours among others. Multiple iris mass lesions due to tuberculosis in children are rare. We present an uncommon atypical presentation of multiple anterior segment mass lesions referred to us as neoplasia. Although excision biopsy can be diagnostic, it was deferred and anterior chamber tap was done. Aqueous cytology was suspicious of juvenile xanthogranuloma (JXG) but polymerase chain reaction (PCR) confirmed tuberculous etiology. Treatment with antituberculous therapy (ATT) and steroids lead to complete resolution of the lesions.

Composite is usually a mixture of two phases. The composites used in dentistry have high durability. The individual properties of each phase are important to increase the mechanical property of the composite. This study aimed to determine the surface roughness changes of two composite resin restorative materials after thermocycling. Two of the commercially available composites were chosen (Nanocomposite 3M Z350 and Nanohybrid composite 3M Z250). The composite disks of dimension 10mm diameter and 3mm height were prepared using silicone molds, and every increment was light cured for 30s. A stylus profilometer was used to assess the surface roughness pre thermocycling, and then, the disks were subjected to an integrated thermocycler (T.S-4.4) for 1000 cycles. The post surface roughness was obtained after the thermocycling process using the same stylus profilometer. The surface parameter values before and after thermocycling of the 3M Z350 sample is less than that of 3M Z250. There was a significant difference between the Rz and Rq values of the two different commercially available composite materials. Thus, the present study concludes that thermocycling influenced the surface roughness of composite resin and increased the surface roughness of both the 3M Z250 & Z350 composites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analysis is an important tool in the diagnosis of infectious uveitis. A retrospective, interventional study of PCR analysis of ocular fluid in suspected infectious uveitis cases between January 2014 to July 2016 was done. Nested, real-time and broad range PCR was performed for detection of the genome of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, herpes virus family, Chikungunya virus, Toxoplasma gondii, fungus, eubacterium and propionibacterium acne. Results Total of 100 cases included, mean age was 39.2 ± 15.4 years. Uveitis was unilateral in 82% and granulomatous in 40%. Mean visual acuity at the initial visit and final visit was 0.73 logMar and 0.63 logMar respectively. PCR analysis confirmed the clinical diagnosis in 70.1% patients. The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value of PCR analysis was 90.2%, 93.9%, 93.9% and 90.2% respectively. The quantitative value of real-time M. tb. Positive PCR ranged from 32c/ml to 2722 c/ml. Conclusions PCR assay is an accurate technique with high sensitivity and specificity to diagnose the DNA genome in infectious uveitis.

Intraocular (IO) inflammation in patients with Human immune deficiency virus (HIV) infection can be due to opportunistic infections, immune recovery uveitis, drugs used in the management or a primary manifestation of HIV itself. We studied the role of RT-PCR for HIV RNA in confirming the diagnosis of HIV induced uveitis and its useful in the management and follow-up of these patients.

Education is a cornerstone of human development, and advancements in technology have opened new avenues for enhancing learning experiences. In the context of primary education, where foundational knowledge is established, integrating cutting-edge technology can have a profound impact. This system introduces an innovative integrated educational system consisting of four distinct elements, all aimed at improving primary students' learning outcomes within the subject of Environmental Science. The first involves a training module that integrates subject-specific questions and answers. The model presents questions visually and audibly, allowing students to answer using either a keyboard or image upload. The system evaluates responses, calculates scores, and offers corrective feedback for incorrectly answered questions, fostering comprehension. In the second element, a chatbot-based model addresses students' syllabus-related queries. Utilizing voice control and grammar correction, the system provides accurate answers and distinguishes non-syllabus inquiries. Repetitive queries prompt detailed responses with examples, promoting personalized learning and boosting confidence. The third focuses on recommending tutorial videos based on students' knowledge levels. Using quiz scores, the model categorizes students as beginners, intermediates, or advanced learners, and suggests appropriate tutorial videos to facilitate targeted skill development. Lastly, the game suggestion utilizes a quizbased approach to tailor game recommendations. By selecting lessons and responding to related quizzes, students' performance is evaluated. The system then suggests skill-enhancing games aligned with their proficiency level, reinforcing lesson-based knowledge. This integrated system offers a multifaceted approach to education, combining interactive questioning, AI-driven clarification, tutorial video recommendations, and gamified learning. This approach cultivates personalized learning journeys, fosters engagement, and empowers primary students in mastering Environmental Science concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Promising therapy is requisite for the treatment of colon cancer to overcome the current treatment regimen and limitations associated with its adverse effects. Conventional chemotherapeutic drugs administered in the treatment constitute low solubility of anticancer drugs and lack of specificity, leading to serious side effects due to the nonspecific uptake of drugs by normal healthy cells. Additionally, surgery and radiotherapy involved in the treatment have not shown remarkable progress due to their cost effect and laborious process. Nanocarriers are being designed to overcome the limitations of drugs administered by the conventional route. They do not degrade in the gastrointestinal tract before reaching the colonic site and enhance their Enhanced permeation and retention (EPR) effect. This review emphasizes various nanoparticles and their surface-modified ligands help in the pathogenesis of colon cancer, how nanoparticles-mediated drug delivery system differentiate from conventional treatment and their various advantages in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of colon cancer. By utilizing various nano-formulation using various strategies employed in nanoparticles mediated drug delivery systems and enlists the mechanistic outcomes of nano-formulated drugs, targeting of the drug through active and passive mechanisms and their preclinical and in vivo experimental works and overcoming conventional treatments. We have made a wide review of various nanoparticle designs and aim to reveal possible mechanisms by targeting specific ligands such that cellular uptake, improved bioavailability, and pharmacokinetics could be enhanced. This information will be helpful in the expansion of these nanocarriers and aid in drug delivery treatment of colon cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Minimizing the carrier–phonon interactions in polar semiconductors is of great importance for designing hot carrier optoelectronic devices, as it is directly related to the excitonic energy dissipation. Phonon modifications, together with the hot phonon bottleneck effect in nanocrystals, are known to effectively reduce the carrier–phonon interactions. With this aim, we report the excellent sensitizing properties of strontium doped lead sulphide (Sr:PbS) nanoparticles for optoelectronics applications. The transition states involved in the multiple exciton generation (MEG) are probed by the derivatives of the absorbance spectra. The high carrier concentration in Sr:PbS leads to the bottleneck effect, which is confirmed by the Burstein–Moss shift and I–V characterization. Furthermore, the excitonic carrier–phonon interactions are studied by examining the strength of their coupling effect via Huang–Rhys factor. Compared to the coupling strength of pure PbS, that of Sr:PbS is notably decreased and this consequently suppresses energy dissipation occurring through carrier–phonon interactions. The first-principles calculations confirm that the Sr dopant locally creates a phononic bandgap that inhibits the energy dissipation by decreasing Klemens decay. The results throughout the study demonstrate effective and facile means to decrease the excitonic energy loss in active materials for hot carrier optoelectronic devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Home automation refers to the converting of all the electrical and electronic devices into an automatically operating system to the user-defined conditions and includes the reduction of human efforts. This system includes the established communication between the cloud and the physical devices. This system has a low-cost microcontroller that enables cloud communication. We provide the optimized system with the ESP 8266 Wi-Fi controller integrated Arduino and the input sensors to provide the required input to the controller. Generally, establishment facility of cloud will produce high cost but we provide with the lowcost cloud accessing and low power consumption with ESP 8266. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Advancement in treatment modalities has improved as a result of research. Individual’s critical thinking and analysis has enhanced. In the advent of incorporating their clinical trials into practice, it had greatly improved in treating patients and enhancing patients care. Aim: To compare the awareness, attitude and obstacles in the field of research among interns, postgraduate students and faculty members among Dental professionals. Materials and Method: An institutional based cross sectional questionnaire survey was conducted among interns, postgraduates and faculty members of the dental profession. A sample size of 261 was determined. Ethical clearance was obtained from Institutional Ethics Committee. Statistical Analysis: Descriptive statistics, chi-square test and student’s t-test were used to analyze the data. Results: On analyzing the questionnaire, 61.2%of study subjects were currently guiding and undertaking research projects. Majority of the subjects stated that doing research enhanced their critical thinking and knowledge. The most common obstacle stated for research was lack of time and lack of financial incentives. When assessing barriers to publishing an article, it was reported that lack of publication related knowledge was the most major obstacle in all groups. Majority of the post graduates and faculty members prefer to conduct recent advance based research; whereas interns prefer to do research based on innovative idea which was statistically significant. Conclusion: This research study revealed positive attitude toward research among dental professionals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adequate sleep is very important for physical and mental well being and to have a good quality of life. Inadequate sleep refers to not sleeping along enough or considered when there is poor quality of sleep. The short-term effects of inadequate sleep includes irritability, drowsiness or sleepiness, reduced alertness, lack of attention and reduced motor skills. Inadequate sleep or insufficient sleep when continued over a long duration can severely affect the health of an individual. In order to insist on the importance of sleep and to create awareness on the impact of insufficient sleep, the present study was conducted. The aim of the study is to analyse the knowledge and awareness of insufficient sleep being a productivity killer among dental students. An online survey consisting of 100 dental students on a random basis. 15 self-administered questionnaires were prepared in google forms and distributed via online means. Descriptive statistics was carried out. Chi square analysis along with correlation was done. The results were expressed in the form of pie charts and bar graphs. 74% of the participants stated that inadequate sleep leads to stress. 71% of the participants were aware that inadequate sleep leads to psychological disturbances. This study concluded that there exists a moderate level of awareness regarding insufficient sleep being a productivity killer among the dental students. Moreover, public healthcare programmes and demonstrations can be held to establish furthermore knowledge about sleep deprivation and its consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Chronic venous ulcers sometimes fail to heal in spite of adequate treatment. Nonhealing is possibly because of chronic activation of ß-2 adrenergic receptor (B2-AR) in the keratinocytes by endogenously generated catecholamines, which inhibits keratinocyte migration. Blocking of B2-AR using ß-blockers has been reported to promote wound healing through keratinocyte migration, angiogenesis, and fibroblast migration. Topical timolol, a B2-AR antagonist, is used to promote wound healing. Aims and Objectives: The aim of this study was to compare the efficacy of topical timolol versus saline in chronic venous leg ulcers and to compare the mean reduction in ulcer area at the end of 4 weeks. Materials and Methods: Twenty patients were randomized into two groups. Patients in Group 1 were treated with one drop of 0.5% topical timolol every alternate days for 4 weeks. Ulcer margins were measured and ulcer area calculated every week for 4 weeks. Similar dressing and measurement were carried out for patients with saline for 4 weeks. Healing rate was assessed by the percentage of reduction of ulcer area of both groups at week 4. Results: The mean reduction in the ulcer size in timolol group was 86.80%, and in saline group 43.82% at the end of 4 weeks. Conclusion: Topical timolol is an easy, noninvasive therapy that can be recommended for chronic ulcer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates ensemble feature selection using the q-rung orthopair hesitant fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) process. A novel algorithm is proposed for the study of ensemble feature selection and it is called as q-rung orthopair hesitant fuzzy MCDM extended to the Visekriterijumska optimizacija Ikompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) (q-ROHFS VIKOR). This is the first time in the literature an ensemble feature selection problem is modelled as a q-rung orthopair hesitant fuzzy MCDM extended to VIKOR technique. In the proposed method, every feature is ranked based on different available rankers and a preference matrix is obtained. In the sigmoidal transformation, the tuning parameter a plays a vital role in the fuzzification process. This tuning parameter reduces the computation run-time in the fuzzification process for different high-dimensional datasets that are considered in this paper. By using q-ROHFS VIKOR method, a score is assigned to each feature based on the values of the preference matrix. At last, an output rank vector is produced for all features from which the user can select the desired number of features. To prove the efficiency and optimality of the proposed method, the comparison with basic filter-based feature selections and ensemble feature selection using feature ranking strategy is obtained. The proposed method in this paper is superior and efficient than the ensemble methods based on the accuracy and F-score levels upto 0.96. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: The aim of this study was to compare the compressive and tensile strength of two different brands of conventional glass ionomer cement (GIC), with new zirconia-reinforced GIC and silver amalgam., Materials and Methodology: Eighty specimens with 20 samples in each group were prepared (Group 1-Fuji IX GIC, Group 2-FX-II Shofu GIC, Group 3-Amalgam, and Group 4-Zirconia-reinforced glass ionomer [Zirconomer]) for compressive strength (CS) using cylinder molds with dimensions 6.0 mm diameter × 12.0 mm height. Eighty specimens using cylinder molds with dimensions 6.0 mm diameter × 3.0 mm height were prepared for testing diametral tensile strength (DTS). CS test was carried out using Micro Universal Testing Machine (Mecmesin, PPT Group, UK) having a crosshead speed of 1.0 mm/min. DTS was determined using Instron universal testing machine at a crosshead speed of 1.0 mm/min. The data were submitted to two-way analysis of varianceand post hoc Tukey tests (alpha = 0.05). The mean CS value was more for Group III (256.2), followed by Group IV (181.2 Megapascals [MPa]), Group II (129.8 MPa), and the least was Group I (117.9 MPa)., Result: The mean DTS value was high in Group III (73.7 MPa), followed by Group IV (58.0 MPa), Group II (36.0 MPa), and the least was seen in Group I (23.2 MPa)., Conclusion: It can be concluded that although Zirconomer has mechanical properties greater than that of unmodified GICs, additional studies are essential to evaluate its long-time ability., Competing Interests: There are no conflicts of interest., (Copyright: © 2024 Journal of Conservative Dentistry and Endodontics.)