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Cellular senescence (CS) is increasingly implicated in the etiology of age-related diseases. While CS can facilitate physiological processes such as tissue repair and wound healing, senescent cells also contribute to pathophysiological processes involving macromolecular damage and metabolic dysregulation that characterize multiple morbid and prevalent diseases, including Alzheimer's disease, osteoarthritis, atherosclerotic vascular disease, diabetes mellitus, and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). Preclinical studies targeting senescent cells and the senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP) with "senotherapeutics" have demonstrated improvement in age-related morbidity associated with these disease states. Despite promising results from these preclinical trials, few human clinical trials have been conducted. A first-in-human, open-label, pilot study of the senolytic combination of dasatinib and quercetin (DQ) in patients with IPF showed improved physical function and mobility. In this review, we will discuss our current understanding of cellular senescence, its role in age-associated diseases, with a specific focus on IPF, and potential for senotherapeutics in the treatment of fibrotic lung diseases.

Background Management of patients with interstitial lung disease (ILD) requires subspecialized, comprehensive, multidisciplinary care. The Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation established the Care Center Network (CCN) in 2013 with identified criteria to become a designated CCN site. Despite these criteria, the essential components of an ILD clinic remain unknown. Research Questions How are ILD clinics within the CCN structured? What are the essential components of an ILD clinic according to ILD physician experts, patients, and caregivers? Study Design and Methods This study had three components. First, all 68 CCN sites were surveyed to determine the characteristics of their current ILD clinics. Second, an online, three-round modified Delphi survey was conducted between October and December 2019 with 48 ILD experts participating in total. Items for round 1 were generated using expert interviews. During rounds 1 and 2, experts rated the importance of each item on a 5-point Likert scale. The a priori threshold for consensus was more than 75% of experts rating an item as important or very important. In round 3, experts graded items that met consensus and ranked items deemed essential for an ILD clinic. Third, ILD patient and caregiver focus groups were conducted and analyzed for content to determine their perspectives of an ideal ILD clinic. Results Forty items across four categories (members, infrastructure, resources, and multidisciplinary conference) achieved consensus as essential to an ILD clinic. Patient and caregiver focus groups identified three major themes: comprehensive, patient-centered medical care; expanded access to care; and comprehensive support for living and coping with ILD. Interpretation The essential components of an ILD clinic are well-aligned between physician experts and patients. Future research can use these findings to evaluate the impact of these components on patient outcomes and to inform best practices for ILD clinics throughout the world.

This article aims to provide an overview on the diagnosis and management of hypersensitivity pneumonitis (HP). We will focus on the issues surrounding the lack of an international consensus on the diagnosis of HP, and review the existing treatment options for HP. There is emerging international consensus that HP should be classified based on clinical, radiologic, and pathologic features and not solely on disease duration. Environmental assessment and antigen avoidance remains the most important step in managing HP. Antifibrotics may soon become a viable option for chronic HP in the near future. Well-designed prospective controlled studies are underway. Substantial gaps still remain in our understanding of the diagnosis and management of HP. Further research should focus on establishing internationally accepted diagnostic criteria and clinical practice guidelines to aid the clinician in the challenging treatment of patients with HP.

The way people walk is a strong correlate of their identity. Several studies have shown that both humans and machines can recognize individuals just by their gait, given that proper measurements of the observed motion patterns are available. For surveillance applications, gait is also attractive, because it does not require active collaboration from users and is hard to fake. However, the acquisition of good-quality measures of a person’s motion patterns in unconstrained environments, (e.g., in person re-identification applications) has proved very challenging in practice. Existing technology (video cameras) suffer from changes in viewpoint, daylight, clothing, accessories, and other variations in the person’s appearance. Novel three-dimensional sensors are bringing new promises to the field, but still many research issues are open. This article presents a survey of the work done in gait analysis for re-identification in the past decade, looking at the main approaches, datasets, and evaluation methodologies. We identify several relevant dimensions of the problem and provide a taxonomic analysis of the current state of the art. Finally, we discuss the levels of performance achievable with the current technology and give a perspective of the most challenging and promising directions of research for the future.

Importance: Alteration in lung microbes is associated with disease progression in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Objective: To assess the effect of antimicrobial therapy on clinical outcomes. Design, Setting, and Participants: Pragmatic, randomized, unblinded clinical trial conducted across 35 US sites. A total of 513 patients older than 40 years were randomized from August 2017 to June 2019 (final follow-up was January 2020). Interventions: Patients were randomized in a 1:1 allocation ratio to receive antimicrobials (n = 254) or usual care alone (n = 259). Antimicrobials included co-trimoxazole (trimethoprim 160 mg/sulfamethoxazole 800 mg twice daily plus folic acid 5 mg daily, n = 128) or doxycycline (100 mg once daily if body weight

The INBUILD trial investigated the efficacy and safety of nintedanib versus placebo in patients with progressive fibrosing interstitial lung diseases (ILDs) other than idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). We aimed to establish the effects of nintedanib in subgroups based on ILD diagnosis., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Background Cellular senescence is a key mechanism that drives age-related diseases, but has yet to be targeted therapeutically in humans. Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a progressive, fatal cellular senescence-associated disease. Selectively ablating senescent cells using dasatinib plus quercetin (DQ) alleviates IPF-related dysfunction in bleomycin-administered mice. Methods A two-center, open-label study of intermittent DQ (D:100 mg/day, Q:1250 mg/day, three-days/week over three-weeks) was conducted in participants with IPF (n = 14) to evaluate feasibility of implementing a senolytic intervention. The primary endpoints were retention rates and completion rates for planned clinical assessments. Secondary endpoints were safety and change in functional and reported health measures. Associations with the senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP) were explored. Findings Fourteen patients with stable IPF were recruited. The retention rate was 100% with no DQ discontinuation; planned clinical assessments were complete in 13/14 participants. One serious adverse event was reported. Non-serious events were primarily mild-moderate, with respiratory symptoms (n = 16 total events), skin irritation/bruising (n = 14), and gastrointestinal discomfort (n = 12) being most frequent. Physical function evaluated as 6-min walk distance, 4-m gait speed, and chair-stands time was significantly and clinically-meaningfully improved (p

The bi-cable reversible aerial ropeway had been built as a winch system exclusively for goods transport. During upwards transport the winch was brusquely stopped by the operator. This caused the winch rope to slack and eventually to fracture at the moment of the jerky stretching by the backward rolling carriage. The brakeless carriage sped downhill along the track rope and finally crashed into the lower station leading to the unfortunate death of the farmer sitting unlawfully in the carriage. The steel wire rope (∅ 6 mm, type 6 × 7-FC) showed no indication of the typical failure mechanism of moving ropes, i.e. fretting fatigue. The single wires were broken in almost the same cross section showing a mixture of conical and shear fractures. This unusual fracture pattern could have been either the consequence of a local pre-damage or of an excessive lateral pressure and bending at the cross point of two windings on the winch. The latter alternative was evaluated by a test setup, allowing continuous increase of the deflection angle β until fracture of the rope. As a rule of thumb for β The quantified susceptibility of the rope's ultimate load to lateral pressure at sharp bending can also support future investigations of similar failure cases and risk analyses.

Thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP) is a specific type of primary thrombotic microangiopathy syndrome characterized by microangiopathic hemolytic anemia, thrombocytopenia, and organ failure. Although relatively rare, if left unrecognized and untreated, multisystem organ failure ensues and survival is poor. Early use of therapeutic plasma exchange has significantly improved mortality and the subsequent risk of relapse. Therefore, prompt recognition of this medical emergency is essential. Diagnosis rests on maintaining a low index of suspicion for TTP in a patient presenting with microangiopathic hemolytic anemia and thrombocytopenia in the absence of an alternative diagnosis. Adjunctive testing including ADAMTS13 activity levels and ADAMTS13 autoantibody testing may help confirm the diagnosis and predict relapse risk. In addition to plasma exchange, aggressive immunosuppression with high-dose corticosteroids is recommended. Refractory TTP may require intensification of plasma exchange and the addition of rituximab. In this chapter, we will review the essential practical diagnostic and management considerations for TTP in the context of a clinical case.

Attention models are widely used in Vision-language (V-L) tasks to perform the visual-textual correlation. Humans perform such a correlation with a strong linguistic understanding of the visual world. However, even the best performing attention model in V-L tasks lacks such a high-level linguistic understanding, thus creating a semantic gap between the modalities. In this paper, we propose an attention mechanism - Linguistically-aware Attention (LAT) - that leverages object attributes obtained from generic object detectors along with pre-trained language models to reduce this semantic gap. LAT represents visual and textual modalities in a common linguistically-rich space, thus providing linguistic awareness to the attention process. We apply and demonstrate the effectiveness of LAT in three V-L tasks: Counting-VQA, VQA, and Image captioning. In Counting-VQA, we propose a novel counting-specific VQA model to predict an intuitive count and achieve state-of-the-art results on five datasets. In VQA and Captioning, we show the generic nature and effectiveness of LAT by adapting it into various baselines and consistently improving their performance.

Practical autonomous driving systems face two crucial challenges: memory constraints and domain gap issues. In this paper, we present a novel approach to learn domain adaptive knowledge in models with limited memory, thus bestowing the model with the ability to deal with these issues in a comprehensive manner. We term this as "Domain Adaptive Knowledge Distillation" and address the same in the context of unsupervised domain-adaptive semantic segmentation by proposing a multi-level distillation strategy to effectively distil knowledge at different levels. Further, we introduce a novel cross entropy loss that leverages pseudo labels from the teacher. These pseudo teacher labels play a multifaceted role towards: (i) knowledge distillation from the teacher network to the student network & (ii) serving as a proxy for the ground truth for target domain images, where the problem is completely unsupervised. We introduce four paradigms for distilling domain adaptive knowledge and carry out extensive experiments and ablation studies on real-to-real as well as synthetic-to-real scenarios. Our experiments demonstrate the profound success of our proposed method., Accepted for publication at Autonomous Vehicle Vision Workshop at WACV 2021, 10 pages (including references)

Comparative study is conducted by applying deep and shallow network on energy data for non-intrusive load monitoring (NILM) applications. From the total energy consumption, various appliance consumption can be disaggregated using shallow and deep networks. The study highlights the effective method for energy disaggregation from the total energy consumption using algorithms rather than the expensive method of separately metering individual loads. Shallow algorithm support vector regression and deep learning algorithms such as deep neural network (DNN) and long short term memory (LSTM) are used in this study and their performance is evaluated.

Close monitoring of patients with fibrosing interstitial lung diseases (ILDs) is important to enable prompt identification and management of progressive disease. Monitoring should involve regular assessment of physiology (including pulmonary function tests), symptoms, and, when appropriate, high-resolution computed tomography. The management of patients with fibrosing ILDs requires a multidisciplinary approach and should be individualized based on factors such as disease severity, evidence of progression, risk factors for progression, comorbidities, and the preferences of the patient. In this narrative review, we discuss how patients with fibrosing ILDs can be effectively monitored and managed in clinical practice.

In this work, we propose a novel context-aware framework towards long-term person re-identification. In contrast to the classical context-unaware architecture, in this method we exploit contextual features that can be identified reliably and guide the re-identification process in a much faster and accurate manner. The system is designed for the long-term Re-ID in walking scenarios, so persons are characterized by soft-biometric features (i.e., anthropometric and gait) acquired using a Kinect\(^\mathrm {TM}\) v.2 sensor. Context is associated to the posture of the person with respect to the camera, since the quality of the data acquired from the used sensor significantly depends on this variable. Within each context, only the most relevant features are selected with the help of feature selection techniques, and custom individual classifiers are trained. Afterwards, a context-aware ensemble fusion strategy which we term as ‘Context specific score-level fusion’, merges the results of individual classifiers. In typical ‘in-the-wild’ scenarios the samples of a person may not appear in all contexts of interest. To tackle this problem we propose a cross-context analysis where features are mapped between contexts and allow the transfer of the identification characteristics of a person between different contexts. We demonstrate in this work the experimental verification of the performance of the proposed context-aware system against the classical context-unaware system. We include in the results the analysis of switching context conditions within a video sequence through a pilot study of circular path movement. All the analysis accentuate the impact of contexts in simplifying the searching process by bestowing promising results.

Although these conditions are rare, a proportion of patients with interstitial lung diseases (ILDs) may develop a progressive-fibrosing phenotype. Progressive fibrosis is associated with worsening respiratory symptoms, lung function decline, limited response to immunomodulatory therapies, decreased quality of life and, potentially, early death. Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis may be regarded as a model for other progressive-fibrosing ILDs. Here we focus on other ILDs that may present a progressive-fibrosing phenotype, namely idiopathic nonspecific interstitial pneumonia, unclassifiable idiopathic interstitial pneumonia, connective tissue disease-associated ILDs (e.g. rheumatoid arthritis-related ILD), fibrotic chronic hypersensitivity pneumonitis, fibrotic chronic sarcoidosis and ILDs related to other occupational exposures. Differential diagnosis of these ILDs can be challenging, and requires detailed consideration of clinical, radiological and histopathological features. Accurate and early diagnosis is crucial to ensure that patients are treated optimally. ispartof: EUROPEAN RESPIRATORY REVIEW vol:27 issue:150 ispartof: location:England status: published

Background Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a progressive fibrosing lung disease of unknown etiology. Inter-society consensus guidelines on IPF diagnosis and management outline radiologic patterns including definite usual interstitial pneumonia (UIP), possible UIP, and inconsistent with UIP. We evaluate these diagnostic categories as prognostic markers among patients with IPF. Methods Included subjects had biopsy-proven UIP, a multidisciplinary team diagnosis of IPF, and a baseline high-resolution computed tomography (HRCT). Thoracic radiologists assigned the radiologic pattern and documented the presence and extent of specific radiologic findings. The outcome of interest was lung transplant-free survival. Results IPF patients with a possible UIP pattern on HRCT had significantly longer Kaplan-Meier event-free survival compared to those with definite UIP pattern (5.21 and 3.57 years, respectively, p = 0.002). In a multivariable Cox proportional hazards model adjusted for baseline age, gender, %-predicted FVC, and %-predicted DLCO via the GAP Stage, extent of fibrosis (via the traction bronchiectasis score) and ever-smoker status, possible UIP pattern on HRCT (versus definite UIP) was associated with reduced hazard of death or lung transplant (HR = 0.42, CI 95% 0.23–0.78, p = 0.006). Conclusions Radiologic diagnosis categories outlined by inter-society consensus guidelines is a widely-reported and potentially useful prognostic marker in IPF patients, with possible UIP pattern on HRCT associated with a favorable prognosis compared to definite UIP pattern, after adjusting for relevant covariates.

In this work, we present a context-aware ensemble fusion framework based on soft-biometric features, for long term person re-identification (Re-ID) in wild surveillance scenarios. The characteristics of a person that best correlate to its identity depend strongly on the view point. For instance, a person with a short stride gait is better perceived from a lateral view, whereas a person with a large chest is more distinct from a frontal view. Thus we associate context to the viewing direction of walking people in a surveillance scenario and choose the best features for each case. Using the MS KinectTM sensor v.2, we collect data from walking subjects and extract associated anthropometric and gait features. Each context is analysed with a Feature selection technique (Sequential Forward Selection) so that only the most relevant features for the context are retained. Then, individual context-specific classifiers are trained leveraging those selected features. Finally, we propose a contextaware ensemble fusion strategy, which we term as 'Contextspecific score-level fusion', based on the adaptive weighted sum of the results of individual classifiers. The proposed contextaware Re-ID framework demonstrate significant performance improvement both in terms of speed (up to 4.5 times faster) and accuracy (up to 17% rank-1 Re-ID rate) compared to the Context-unaware systems. From the study, we show that gait features are better for lateral views and anthropometric features are better for frontal views, confirming the results of previous studies.

Background Currently available antifibrotic treatments may slow down disease progression in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), but are associated with potentially significant side effects and are costly. Mycophenolate mofetil (MMF) is well known for its potent immunosuppressive properties and possesses important antiproliferative and antifibrotic effects. The safety and effectiveness of MMF in IPF is unknown. Methods We performed a retrospective multicohort analysis of IPF patients treated with MMF compared to those treated with either ineffective/harmful treatments or no treatment. Longitudinal change in forced vital capacity (FVC) between the groups was analyzed using a mixed model with random intercept and slope allowing for repeated measures within subjects. Categorical change in FVC, median overall survival, and adverse events were also assessed. Results Forty-one IPF patients were included: 11 treated with MMF, 20 treated with ineffective/harmful agents (such as prednisone, azathioprine, and/or NAC), and 10 did not receive any specific treatment for their IPF. After one year, there was a trend towards reduced FVC decline in the MMF-treated group (-76.3 mL, -2.4% of predicted) compared to the non-MMF-treated (-165 mL, -8.9% of predicted) and the no-treatment (-239 mL, -11.5% of predicted) groups, respectively. By categorical change, there was a trend towards greater FVC stability in the MMF-treated group (87.5%) compared to the non-MMF-treated (57%) and the no-treatment groups (50%), respectively. MMF-treated IPF patients had a trend towards improved median overall survival (40.3 months) compared to the non-MMF-treated (25.5 months) and the no-treatment (29.3 months) groups, respectively. Treatment-related adverse events were not different between groups; however, very few adverse events were reported overall. Conclusions MMF treatment was associated with potentially clinically important trends toward reduced annual FVC decline (similar to approved antifibrotics), greater FVC stability and improved overall survival in IPF patients. MMF was generally safe, well tolerated, and relatively inexpensive. Future prospective studies of MMF in combination with antifibrotic therapy in IPF are needed.

The geroscience hypothesis holds that targeting fundamental mechanisms of aging has the potential to prevent or reduce severity of multiple age-related diseases. Cellular senescence is a key mechanism that may be driving disease in human aging, including Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), a progressive, ultimately fatal, senescence-associated disease. Importantly, cellular senescence may be targeted therapeutically. Senolytic agents are drugs that selectively induce senescent cell apoptosis by transiently disabling anti-apoptotic pathways. Selective ablation of senescent cells using the senolytic drug combination dasatinib plus quercetin (DQ) alleviates IPF-related dysfunction in bleomycin-administered IPF mouse model. We conducted the first-in-human trial of senolytics in IPF patients, and our data indicate that short-term, intermittent administration of DQ may alleviate physical dysfunction that accompanies IPF in human aging, including clinically-meaningfully improvements in mobility (p

The last two decades have been a period of rapid advancement in our understanding of plant biology and its related developmental processes. This advancement has been facilitated by the adoption of plant models for most of the economically important plant families, as well as the development of enriched genetic, genomic, transcriptomic and metabolomic resources. In recent years, sequencing projects on major crops have further enhanced our understanding of their genomic structure, evolution, gene functions, and, most importantly, this knowledge has been utilized for crop improvement. The Brassicaceae family contains several important research and agricultural species, including the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana and economically important Brassica crops that are of great importance to human health and agriculture. Exploiting heterosis for yield enhancement, increasing tolerance against biotic and abiotic factors, and improving nutritional value remain the priorities in Brassica crop improvement. This review summarizes the potential of recently adopted genetic and genomic resources, as well as the basic knowledge obtained from studying the closest model plant A. thaliana, to accelerate the crop improvement programs in Brassica crops.

Hemodynamically unstable hematochezia is an uncommon manifestation of lower gastrointestinal bleeding. However, given the usually older age and multiple comorbidities of the typical patient, acute lower gastrointestinal bleeding can be associated with poor outcomes unless emergent life-saving care is delivered. In this context, early recognition and aggressive resuscitation is essential for a patient presenting with hemodynamically significant hematochezia. Accurate discrimination between upper and lower gastrointestinal sources of hemorrhage is of utmost importance as this has significant implications with respect to prognosis, differential diagnosis, and provides guidance for additional diagnostic testing, such as endoscopy, as well as life-saving therapeutic interventions. Depending on clinical stability and severity of bleeding, diagnosis may require urgent colonoscopy, nuclear red blood cell scan, multidetector CT of the abdomen, and/or mesenteric angiography. Colonoscopy and mesenteric angiography may be both diagnostic and therapeutic when performed. Optimal management of a patient with acute lower gastrointestinal bleeding requires consultation and coordination of a multidisciplinary team of expert specialists to improve patient outcomes.

The composite physiologic index (CPI) was derived to represent the extent of fibrosis on high-resolution computed tomography (HRCT), adjusting for emphysema in patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). We hypothesised that longitudinal change in CPI would better predict mortality than forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV(1)), forced vital capacity (FVC) or diffusing capacity of the lung for carbon monoxide (D(L,CO)) in all patients with IPF, and especially in those with combined pulmonary fibrosis and emphysema (CPFE). Cox proportional hazard models were performed on pulmonary function data from IPF patients at baseline (n = 321), 6 months (n = 211) and 12 months (n = 144). Presence of CPFE was determined by HRCT. A five-point increase in CPI over 12 months predicted subsequent mortality (HR 2.1, p = 0.004). At 12 months, a 10% relative decline in FVC, a 15% relative decline in D(L,CO) or an absolute increase in CPI of five points all discriminated median survival by 2.1 to 2.2 yrs versus patients with lesser change. Half our cohort had CPFE. In patients with moderate/severe emphysema, only a 10% decline in FEV(1) predicted mortality (HR 3.7, p = 0.046). In IPF, a five-point increase in CPI over 12 months predicts mortality similarly to relative declines of 10% in FVC or 15% in D(L,CO). For CPFE patients, change in FEV(1) was the best predictor of mortality.

In this work, we propose a novel methodology of re-identifying people in frontal video sequences, based on a spatio-temporal representation of the gait based on optic flow features, which we call Histogram Of Flow Energy Image (HOFEI). Optic Flow based methods do not require the silhouette computation thus avoiding image segmentation issues and enabling online re-identification (Re-ID) tasks. Not many works addressed Re-ID with optic flow features in frontal gait. Here, we conduct an extensive study on CASIA dataset, as well as its application in a realistic surveillance scenario- HDA Person dataset. Results show, for the first time, the feasibility of gait re-identification in frontal sequences, without the need for image segmentation.

Aims: To observe the various pressor responses to laryngoscopy and intubation in normotensive patient undergoing elective surgery under general anesthesia and use of three different attenuating doses (400, 800, 1200 mcg) of intranasal nitroglycerine administered five minutes before laryngoscopy and intubation, to observe the efficacy and safety. Settings and Design: Randomized study. Materials and Methods: The study was carried out in a total of 60 patients. ASA grade 1 and II patients posted for elective surgeries under general anesthesia were included. Patients received different doses of intranasal nitroglycerine five minutes before induction as given below Group 1-received 400 micrograms-20 patients Group 2-received 800 micrograms-20 patients Group 3-received 1200 micrograms-20 patients. Statistical Analysis: Student's t test. Results and Summary: Results were statistically analyzed. All three groups effectively attenuated the pressor response to laryngoscopy and intubation. Maximum rise in heart rate was seen in group III (23.86%). Maximum fall in systolic (19.6%), diastolic (30.76%), and mean arterial blood pressure (25.53%) was observed in group III at 10 th minute of laryngoscopy and intubation. Conclusion: Best results of attenuation of pressor response were seen with 400 and 800 micrograms of intranasal nitroglycerine. One thousand and two hundred micrograms dose caused maximum increase in heart rate and caused maximum fall in blood pressure, hence it is advisable to use increased dose with caution in attenuation of pressor response to laryngoscopy and intubation.

Incidence rates of occupational fractures at various anatomic sites and associated risk factors have not been well documented. We identified 3490 work-related fractures from a West Virginia Workers Compensation database that occurred between July 1, 1994, and June 30, 1995. The annual incidence rate was 55 per 10,000 workers, which is substantially higher than the work-related fracture rates reported previously. The incidence rate of fracture was highest in the agricultural sector, followed by the mining, construction, and manufacturing sectors (202.0, 165.2, 116.7, and 88.0 per 10,000 workers, respectively). The age-specific gender distribution comparing fracture and non-fracture injuries showed a bimodal distribution, with greater proportions of female employees at the younger and older age groups. Fracture of the phalanges was the most common, followed by fractures of the foot bone and carpal bone (15.8, 9.5, and 7.9 per 10,000 workers, respectively). In a multiple logistic regression analysis, age, gender, occupation, caught in-between objects, fall, struck by or against object, and vehicle collision were significant independent predictors of fracture (all sites combined). We believe work-related fractures to be a bigger problem than previously reported. The association among gender, age, occupation, and causes of fractures identified in this study will be useful in developing gender- and occupation-specific prevention intervention.

BACKGROUND: Population-based incidence rates of work-related burn injuries and associated risk factors specific to anatomic sites and degree of burn are not known. METHODS: Using a state-managed workers' compensation database, we estimated incidence rates of work-related burn injuries and identified high-risk occupations and associated exposures. RESULTS: The annual incidence rate of occupational burn was 26.4 per 10,000 workers, with the highest rate observed in the manufacturing sector for males and in the service sector for females. Welders, cooks, laborers, food service workers, and mechanics had higher incidence rates of burn injury compared with other occupations. Wrist and hand burns accounted for a majority of burn injuries, with females experiencing greater incidence of these distal upper extremity burns (8.9 in females and 6.7 in males per 10,000 workers, respectively). Third-degree burns (incidence rate, 1.3 per 10,000 workers) were also most frequently observed in the upper extremities compared with other anatomic sites. The majority of wrist and hand burns were caused by hot liquids/ objects, whereas the majority of eye burns were associated with chemical exposures. Younger cooks and food service workers were at greater risk of burn than older coworkers. CONCLUSION: Specific occupations are associated with degree of burn, anatomic site, and exposures. This information will be useful for targeted intervention among high-risk occupations and work groups.

Cardiomyopathy is considered as a heart muscle disease of multiple aetiologies, unlike other cardiac diseases related to a definitive pathophysiology. With more and more research and with the advent of genetic analysis pin pointing the disease causing mutations, causative factors have been defined and classifications and definitions have changed over time. Patients with these conditions present to anaesthesiologists in elective and emergency situations, placement of automated internal cardioverter defibrillator (AICD) devices or biventricular pacing but may also be diagnosed at anaesthetic pre-assessment. We describe cardiomyopathies such as dilated cardiomyopathy, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, post-partum cardiomyopathy and Takotsubo cardiomyopathy in brief and their anaesthetic management.

Background In the context of recent emphasis on developing trauma care systems globally, a Pan-India trauma care system is getting ready. Given the well known regional disparities in health systems in India, evaluation of its parts (states) becomes important if the sum of the parts (the Nation) needs to develop a system in an equitable way. Trauma System Maturity Index (TSMI) and other guidelines by WHO, along with Geographical Information System (GIS) provides an opportunity for such evaluation and evidence based policy making. Methods A cross sectional analytical study was done to grade trauma care system maturity of 10 representative states in India. Four major components of trauma system were assessed, including pre-hospital care, education and training, facility based trauma care and quality assurance; using a structured schedule prepared in line with WHO TSMI and 7 major guidelines for trauma care by WHO. In addition to this, GIS based analyses were done to assess the geographical distribution of trauma care facilities. The GIS data was analysed using ArcGIS version 9.1 and data for TSMI analysed using SPSS version 17.0. Results While most of the state trauma care systems were graded level 2 for prehospital care and quality assurance, almost all systems graded 1 for facility based trauma care. Host of variables within the components were analysed and critical areas were identified where in small initiatives would evolve the trauma system to next level of maturity grading. GIS based analyses showed that even with in the states the access to trauma care services is alarmingly inequitable. Better grade in TSMI translated as better outcome in terms of trauma related mortality. Conclusions The trauma care systems in different states are in diverse phases of evolution and their TSMI grade reflects their system performance. Study also projects successful examples which can be adapted by other states and countries with similar policy environment.

Automatic human recognition systems based on biometrics are becoming increasingly popular in today's world. In particular, gait recognition (i.e., recognition based on the peculiar manner of walking) is especially interesting since it allows the recognition even at a distance, without explicit user co-operation. In this paper, depth information is integrated in a silhouette-based gait recognition scheme, in order to produce a hybrid 2D-3D frontal gait recognition scheme. The depth information of the human silhouette is obtained with a Kinect camera, from which a three dimentional (3D) human point cloud is obtained. In the proposed multimodal framework, feature extraction is done by considering the full 3D human point cloud, as well as three 2D projections of it, corresponding to the top, front and side-views of the human subject. The experimental results for this multimodal scheme, based on both 3D and 2D data, show superior recognition rates, when compared to existing front-view gait recognition schemes.

Ceftaroline fosamil (ceftaroline) was recently approved for the treatment of community- acquired pneumonia (CAP) and complicated skin infections. This newly developed cephalosporin possesses a broad spectrum of activity against gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria. Most importantly, ceftaroline demonstrates potent in vitro antimicrobial activity against multi-drug resistant Streptococcus pneumoniae and methicillin-resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus. In two Phase III, double-blinded, randomized, prospective trials (FOCUS 1 and FOCUS 2), ceftaroline was shown to be non-inferior to ceftriaxone for the treatment of CAP in hospitalized patients. Ceftaroline exhibits low resistance rates and a safety profile similar to that of other cephalosporins. In this review, we will evaluate the pharmacological characteristics, safety, antimicrobial properties, and efficacy of ceftaroline and its applications in the treatment of CAP.

This paper presents details of small disaster-relief robots that move inside a building to locate a specific object or person and find the shortest route from the object to outside using swarm intelligence routing. Multiple small robots are used for redundancy and ease of access to remote areas. Each robot has different sensors (Camera, ultrasonic sensor, temperature sensor etc) to locate the object of interest in various lighting conditions. These robots communicate with each other, dynamically isolate the failed robots and form a group of nodes (robots). In this paper we discuss also ant colony optimization (ACO) techniques to find the shortest route between the object of interest and the outside. The ACO algorithm used is described briefly. We use a practical test bed consisting of TI Evalbot small robots. Real time task scheduling on these robots are done using uC/OS. Description of the object identification image processing algorithm is also given.

Wireless security is becoming an important area of product research and development. Wireless Intrusion detection Systems are commonly used in WLAN network for detecting wireless attacks. Classifiers are commonly used as detectors in these systems. Finding an efficient classifier as well selecting best set of features becomes very important for implementing these intrusion detection systems. In this paper, we are finding optimital set of features from collected WLAN data using a Ranking Algorithm technique. Then with the aid of different data mining techniques such as K-Means, self organizing map and decision tree, these features are analyzed and the performance comparison is carried out.