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R. Coningham et al., "The earliest Buddhist shrine: Excavating the birthplace of the Buddha, Lumbini (Nepal)," Antiquity 87, no. 338 (2013): 1104-1123. doi:10.1017/S0003598X00049899

Human upper extremity has numerous functions in day-to-day life. Strokes lead to weakening in hand muscles because of which the patient is unable to hold an object properly. Stroke related problems are treated by physiotherapy and grip strength recovery is assessed by the devices such as Jamar dynamometer and pinch meter. In this paper, load cell and Force Sensing Resistor sensors are used which mimics the use of Jamar dynamometer and assesses the patient recovery quantitatively. The sensory unit consists of the load cell which is used to sense the data and give it to the Wheatstone bridge. Participant is asked to apply force on the developed hand dynamometer and the values of grip strength forces are recorded in the system. This device transmits the participant data wirelessly using the Bluetooth module. Load cell and Force Sensing Resistors (FSR) sensor data are stored in Rapid Miner and the graphs of grip strength are plotted. Thus, the developed prototype helps to determine the grip strength of a disabled person hand using low-cost devices and possible to compare the present and previous results of the assessment. The field of application of this tool is in physiotherapy and occupational therapy.

INTRODUCTION: Infertility is considered one of the main public health issues and about 40% - 50% males are involved in the infertility cases. The most common cause of male infertility is abnormal semen parameters. Ultrasound examinations of scrotum and semen analysis are the common investigations done in evaluating male sub fertility. An atrophic testis is closely associated with oligospermia. OBJECTIVE: To correlate the testicular volume as measured with ultrasonography and sperm count of the males METHODS: Patients aged between 27 and 48 years were our study participants. Fifty males who presented for infertility evaluation unit were investigated with ultrasonography of testes and semen analysis. RESULTS: The tendency of the graph showed increase in sperm count in relation to increase in testicular volume. Smaller the testicular size, lesser was the sperm count. CONCLUSION: Our comparative prospective study showed that small testicular size was associated with decreased sperm count and as the testicular size increases the sperm count also

novel fungal species systematics

Cancer-Associated Fibroblasts (CAFs) are crucial in genesis and progression of tumors; however, cervical CAFs (C-CAFs) are not well characterized. Estradiol (E2) has been implicated as a cofactor in human papillomavirus (HPV)-mediated cervical cancer (CxCa), both in animal models and in women using oral contraceptives; however, the exact role of the hormone is unclear. Human C-CAFs have recently been shown to express estrogen receptor alpha (ER-α). We investigated gene expression patterns in ex vivo cultured early and late stage C-CAFs in the context of E2. CAFs were isolated from four patients with early and two patients with late stage CxCa. ER-α expression in CxCa tissues was localized to stromal fibroblast-like cells and confirmed in ex vivo cultured C-CAFs. Two ER antagonists (ICI 182,780 and Methyl Piperidino Pyrazole) were used to unravel ER signaling in CAFs. Microarray technology was used for expression profiling and validated by quantitative reverse transcription PCR. The transcriptomes of C-CAFs across stages indicated their activated state. C-CAFs had gene expression patterns associated with both pro-tumorigenic and pro-inflammatory signaling. Late-stage C-CAFs compared to those of early stage appeared to be more actively metabolizing and cycling but expressed fewer genes related to immune function. We report differential expression profiles between C-CAFs: early vs. late stage and in the presence of ER antagonists. Both ER antagonists seemed to modulate C-CAF function by down regulating genes associated with cell cycle and metabolism, affecting angiogenesis and cancer progression. This study characterized C-CAFs from early and late stage disease, and experiments with ER inhibitors emphasized the probable importance of canonical ER-α signaling. Interfering with paracrine signaling through fibroblast ER-α is worth exploiting as a targeted therapy in CxCa management.

We present a theoretical study of the exciton binding energy for anisotropic two-dimensional crystals. We obtain analytical expressions from variational wave functions in different limits of the screening length to exciton size ratio and compare them with numerical solutions, both variational and exact. As an example, we apply these results to phosphorene, a monolayer of black phosphorous. Aided by density functional theory calculations for the evaluation of the two-dimensional polarizability, our analytical solution for the exciton binding energy gives a result which is very close to the numerical ones and, in turn, is comparable to the experimental value, as recently reported., Comment: 9 pages, 11 figures. v2 is the published version (in PRB) plus some extra small details, and corrected factor of 2 in the y-axis of Fig. 6!! Important corrections with respect to previous cond-mat version: Fig. 2, Fig. 3, Fig. 6, and extra details in the captions of Section IV

Designing a robust algorithm for visual object tracking has been a challenging task since many years. There are trackers in the literature that are reasonably accurate for many tracking scenarios but most of them are computationally expensive. This narrows down their applicability as many tracking applications demand real time response. In this paper, we present a tracker based on random ferns. Tracking is posed as a classification problem and classification is done using ferns. We used ferns as they rely on binary features and are extremely fast at both training and classification as compared to other classification algorithms. Our experiments show that the proposed tracker performs well on some of the most challenging tracking datasets and executes much faster than one of the state-of-the-art trackers, without much difference in tracking accuracy.

Computational architectures for signal processing applications involve extensive use of multipliers. Operations in image processing like image sharpening, smoothing, feature extraction, segmentation etc involve large number of multiplications. Embedded computational architectures for such systems require low power design with minimal trade off in speed and area. Multiplier architectures proposed in literature seek to reduce power dissipation by reduction of effective switching activity or reduction in effective switched capacitance. Some of the architectures seek pre-computation as an area trade off for power. We propose a architecture for unsigned integer multiplication intended to be used in implementation of data path for real time image processing. The multiplier is based on divide and conquers approach, which provides significant reduction in power dissipation if the inputs are from a source of correlated data as compared to regular array based multipliers. Such inputs are common in signal processing where the inputs are samples of real world signals from a sensor. We characterize a family of unsigned integer multiplier architectures by considering three multipliers for each of the 8, 16 and 32 bit word length cases and compare their performance against the Array and Wallace multiplier architectures used for similar class of applications. It has been observed in our experiments that the proposed multiplier can have a power advantage of up to 34.92% as compared to Array multiplier when subjected to image data, with equal area characteristic and a very marginal trade off in speed.

126 patients (82 males and 44 females) aged above 12 years, suffering from tinea corporis and/or tinea cruris, were treated with either itraconazole (100 mg once a day for 2 weeks and then plecebo for 2 weeks) (63 patients), or griseofulvin (250 mg twice a day for 4 weeks). 90.47% of the patients treated with itraconzole improved whereas griseofulvin imporved 76.19% of patients, clinically. Mycological response was 72% with itraconazole and 57% with griseofulvin

Journal URL: http://www.proteinscience.org/; http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/121502357/home

Journal URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00145793

Journal URL: http://www.medhyg.ch/mh/produits/european_journal_of_drug_metabolism

Journal URL: http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/loi/ejb

Journal URL: http://www.jbc.org/

Journal URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00222836

Journal URL: http://www.jbc.org/

Journal URL: http://www.proteinscience.org/; http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/121502357/home

Journal URL: http://www.proteinscience.org/; http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/121502357/home

Journal URL: http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/loi/ejb

Journal URL: http://www.proteinscience.org/; http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/121502357/home

Journal URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00039861