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Several chronic diseases lead to skeletal muscle loss and a decline in physical performance. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small, noncoding RNAs, which have exhibited their role in the development and diseased state of the skeletal muscle. miRNA regulates gene expression by binding to the 3′ untranslated region of its target mRNA. Due to the robust stability in biological fluids, miRNAs are ideal candidate as biomarker. These miRNAs provide a novel avenue in strengthening our awareness and knowledge about the factors governing skeletal muscle functions such as development, growth, metabolism, differentiation, and cell proliferation. It also helps in understanding the therapeutic strategies in improving or conserving skeletal muscle health. This review outlines the evidence regarding the present knowledge on the role miRNA as a potential biomarker in skeletal muscle diseases and their exploration might be a unique and potential therapeutic strategy for various skeletal muscle disorders.

Emerging evidence shows co‐infection with atypical bacteria in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) patients. Respiratory illness caused by atypical bacteria such as Mycoplasma pneumoniae, Chlamydia pneumoniae, and Legionella pneumophila may show overlapping manifestations and imaging features with COVID‐19 causing clinical and laboratory diagnostic issues. We conducted a prospective study to identify co‐infections with SARS‐CoV‐2 and atypical bacteria in an Indian tertiary hospital. From June 2020 to January 2021, a total of 194 patients with laboratory‐confirmed COVID‐19 were also tested for atypical bacterial pathogens. For diagnosing M. pneumoniae, a real‐time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay and serology (IgM ELISA) were performed. C. pneumoniae diagnosis was made based on IgM serology. L. pneumophila diagnosis was based on PCR or urinary antigen testing. Clinical and epidemiological features of SARS‐CoV‐2 and atypical bacteria‐positive and ‐negative patient groups were compared. Of the 194 patients admitted with COVID‐19, 17 (8.8%) were also diagnosed with M. pneumoniae (n = 10) or C. pneumoniae infection (n = 7). Confusion, headache, and bilateral infiltrate were found more frequently in the SARS CoV‐2 and atypical bacteria co‐infection group. Patients in the M. pneumoniae or C. pneumoniae co‐infection group were more likely to develop ARDS, required ventilatory support, had a longer hospital length of stay, and higher fatality rate compared to patients with only SARS‐CoV‐2. Our report highlights co‐infection with bacteria causing atypical pneumonia should be considered in patients with SARS‐CoV‐2 depending on the clinical context. Timely identification of co‐existing pathogens can provide pathogen‐targeted treatment and prevent fatal outcomes of patients infected with SARS‐CoV‐2 during the current pandemic.

Considerable attention has recently been drawn at a global level to the serious threat to humans by the new, emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases. Among the infectious vector-borne diseases, dengue, dengue haemorrhagic fever, yellow fever, plague, malaria, leishmaniasis, rodent-borne viruses and arboviruses are considered to be persisting, and sometimes re-emerging, with serious threats to human health. In the Eastern Mediterranean Region, dengue, malaria and leishmaniasis are the significant vector-borne diseases. This article discusses the role of vectors in the re-emergence of malaria, leishmaniasis and dengue fever and their control

Traumatic acute subdural haematoma (SDH) continue to have high mortality & morbidity despite the advent of rapid transportation, CT Scan and Intensive care management. The general surgical procedures for Acute SDH is Craniotomy with removal of haematoma & decompressive craniectomy if necessary. This is a study based in department of surgery. After taking complete history and detailed examination and investigation (CT Scan) was be done. Decision of surgery was be taken by the consultant neurosurgeon of the acute Subdural Haematoma, involvement of aloquent areas and associated other injury of brain.200 patients with head injury who reported at casualty of Gandhi Medical College, and Hamidia Hospital, Bhopal.In our study, Mode of Injury found to be Assault were 20%, Fall were 27% & RTA 53% in Conservative whereas Assault were 06%, Fall were 14% & RTA 80%.The chi-square statistic is 96.3397. The p-value is < 0.00001. The result is significant at p < 0.05. These findings indicate that the thickness/size of acute SDH significantly correlates with the type of management to be done for the patient.Acute subdural haematoma is the major cause of significant morbidity and mortality due to traumatic head injury. Acute subdual haematoma is commonly associated with countercoup injuries and diffuse axonal injury (DAI). The clinical presentation in patients with acute SDH is related to raised ICP and the severity of DAI. C.T. Scan is the investigation of choice in patients with head injury.

In this article, we propose a decentralized energy management system to minimize the daily operating cost of microgrid and the net charging cost of individual plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) while maintaining comfort level and privacy. A novel approach based on stochastic dynamic programming (SDP) with N -person noncooperative game-theoretic approach is used for real-time scheduling of heterogeneous PEVs both ways—in the grid-to-vehicle (G2V) and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) mode. We use the SDP method for full enumeration of all possible decisions while game theory provides quick convergence to Nash-equilibrium. The proposed approach considers uncertainties of renewable generation as well as load demand and offers autonomy to the microgrid operators and PEVs owners to optimize their objectives individually. The effectiveness of the proposed approach has been tested on modified LV CIGRE and modified IEEE 33 bus test networks. The results have been compared with the deterministic and stochastic bi-level optimization. The simulation results exhibit that the proposed algorithm outperforms the other two algorithms in terms of operating cost, incentive to the PEVs owner, robustness to uncertainties, and convergence. The operating cost reduction achieved for the modified CIGRE model and modified IEEE 33 bus with the proposed approach is 20.02% and 36.53%, respectively, as compared to the deterministic framework, whereas 7.64% and 16.35% are the values obtained in comparison with the bi-level approach.

BackgroundCisplatin is a frontline anticancer drug routinely used as part of concurrent chemoradiation administered at 3-weekly (100 mg/m2) dose. However, its role as fractionated weekly dose has achieved favorable outcome in patients with locally advanced squamous cell carcinoma of head and neck (LA-SCCHN) during induction chemotherapy (IC). We therefore sought to compare the toxicity outcomes of patients with LA-SCCHN treated with platinum-based IC at a single institution study using split-dose cisplatin chemotherapy. We compared the hematological and renal toxicity profile between the weekly cisplatin (30 mg/m2) (group A) versus 3-weekly (100 mg/m2) (group B) dosage schedule in this setting.ResultsThe median age of the patients in groups A and B were 49.1 years and 48.27 years respectively with male:female ratio of 4:1. Most of the patients were of oropharyngeal cancers. Group A patients showed greater neutropenia (40.2%) than group B (20.6%). There was statistically significant fall in Hb% level in group A (13.9%) than in group B (11.9%). Renal profile showed greater rise in serum urea and serum creatinine (52.7%) in group B than in group A (52.29%) with statistically significant difference.ConclusionsSince toxicities induced by high-dose cisplatin are irreversible and reduce quality of life in patients, the weekly regimen may be preferred owing to less renal toxicity, lesser hospitalization and more feasible in situations with high patient load and limited resources.

The involvement of external vendors in semiconductor industries increases the chance of hardware Trojan (HT) insertion in different phases of the integrated circuit (IC) design. Recently, several partial reverse engineering (RE) based HT detection techniques are reported, which attempt to reduce the time and complexity involved in the full RE process by applying machine learning or image processing techniques in IC images. However, these techniques fail to extract the relevant image features, not robust to image variations, complicated, less generalizable, and possess a low detection rate. Therefore, to overcome the above limitations, this paper proposes a new partial RE based HT detection technique that detects Trojans from IC layout images using Deep Convolutional Neural Network (DCNN). The proposed DCNN model consists of stacking several convolutional and pooling layers. It layer-wise extracts and selects the most relevant and robust features automatically from the IC images and eliminates the need to apply the feature extraction algorithm separately. To prevent the over-training of the DCNN model, a new stopping condition method and two new metrics, namely Accuracy difference measure (ADM) and Loss difference measure (LDM), are proposed that halts the training only when the performance of our model genuinely drops. Further, to combat the issue of process variations and fabrication noise generated during the RE process, we include noisy images with varying parameters in the training process of the model. We also apply the data augmentation and regularization techniques in the model to address the issues of underfitting and overfitting. Experimental evaluation shows that the proposed technique provides 99% and 97.4% accuracy on Trust-Hub and synthetic ISCAS dataset, respectively, which is on-an-average 15.83% and 21.69% higher than the existing partial RE based techniques.

Introduction Although post radiotherapy (RT) otological complications are complex and common, there is lack of data on its severity and spectrum. We intend to assess the incidence and severity of such ototoxicities in head neck cancer (HNCA) patients. Materials and Methods One year prospective study was conducted on thirty cases of HNCA receiving radiotherapy. Audiometry and tympanometry changes were noted and severity is assessed using Common Toxicity Criteria (CTC) -v2.0 of the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Fisher's Exact Test with two-sided p value was used for comparison of the tympanometric changes. Results The mean age was 55.4 years. The commonest site of HNCA was oral cavity (30%) with 46.6 % in stage II. 40% of cases were in grade II, followed by 27% cases in Grade III. The commonest complaint was pain (86.6%), hearing loss (80%) and 40% post-RT cases reporting Type B curve (relative risk 0.67). Conclusion Post-irradiation pain and OME are a major concern in HNCA patients having grade II (NCI-CTC). Early detection and prophylactic measures will improve the quality of life in such group of patients. This result validates the need for formulating otological diagnostic strategy & therapeutic measures in patients receiving RT to mitigate post-irradiation ototoxicities.

Introduction We investigated the safety of, and glucose control by, the insulin-only configuration of the iLet® bionic pancreas delivering fast-acting insulin aspart (faster aspart), using the same insulin-dosing algorithm but different time to maximal serum drug concentration (tmax) settings, in adults with type 1 diabetes. Methods We performed a single-center, single-blinded, crossover (two 7-day treatment periods) escalation trial over three sequential cohorts. Participants from each cohort were randomized to a default tmax setting (t65 [tmax = 65 min]) followed by a non-default tmax setting (t50 [tmax = 50 min; cohort 1], t40 [tmax = 40 min; cohort 2], t30 [tmax = 30 min; cohort 3]), or vice versa, all with faster aspart. Each cohort randomized eight new participants if escalation-stopping criteria were not met in the previous cohort. Results Overall, 24 participants were randomized into three cohorts. Two participants discontinued treatment, one due to reported ‘low blood glucose’ during the first treatment period of cohort 3 (t30). Mean time in low sensor glucose ( 70% for all cohorts, except the default tmax setting in cohort 1. No severe hypoglycemic episodes were reported. Furthermore, there were no clinically significant differences in adverse events between the groups. Conclusion There were no safety concerns with faster aspart in the iLet at non-default tmax settings. Improvements were observed in mean sensor glucose without increases in low sensor glucose at non-default tmax settings. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT03816761. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13300-021-01087-x., Plain Language Summary One way to give insulin is to use an insulin delivery system. The iLet® is a new type of insulin delivery system that works together with a continuous sugar monitoring tool (CGM). The CGM shows the blood sugar level in the body throughout the day. Based on this, the iLet automatically gives the insulin that is needed to control the blood sugar. Fast-acting insulin aspart (faster aspart) is a type of insulin that doctors can prescribe for use with insulin pens and insulin pumps. The researchers wanted to test the safety of faster aspart when given to people at different delivery settings in the iLet. Twenty-four men and women with type 1 diabetes from the USA took part. The different insulin delivery settings were the standard setting (tmax65 = 65 min) and new settings (tmax50 = 50 min; tmax40 = 40 min; tmax30 = 30 min). The shorter the tmax setting, the faster the insulin was assumed to be absorbed into the body by the iLet. People had good blood sugar control with faster aspart delivered using the iLet. The time with low blood sugar (i.e., < 54 mg/dl) was low for both the standard setting and the new settings. The average blood sugar was lower with the shorter, non-standard tmax settings. No people had serious side effects. No severe hypoglycemic episodes were reported. In this study, researchers found that it was safe to use faster aspart with the different settings in the iLet. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13300-021-01087-x.

Logic locking is a new technique to prevent an integrated circuit from hardware Trojan, piracy, overbuilding, etc. Most of the well-known logic locking techniques are vulnerable to sensitization and cone based attacks. Though the existing techniques try to thwart these attacks, they are highly circuit topology dependent and require significant overhead. Therefore, this paper presents a new lightweight logic locking technique that effectively neutralizes the sensitization and cone based attacks. We further propose new multi key-input gates and a new replacement-based logic locking algorithm. The replacement of design gates with our multi key-input gates not only effectively prevents the key-sensitization and signal probability skew based removal attacks but also removes rare nets from design. On the other hand, our logic locking algorithm significantly increases the brute-force attempts against cone-based attack with minimum replacements by replacing the nodes which have the maximum number of fan-outs and paths to output nodes. We evaluate our technique using ISCAS benchmarks, and the results demonstrate that the proposed key-gates on average reduce 32 percent area-overhead over the XOR/MUX key-gates, whereas our algorithm on average doubles the effective key size while reducing 50 percent area overhead over the best-known technique.

Kidney transplantation (KT) is currently the most realistic treatment option for patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) as it enables them to live longer and provides better quality of life post-transplantation. Before the 1960s, all these patients would die as there was no treatment available. It is the commonest solid organ transplantation carried out in the world at the moment. Organs are harvested from living or cadaveric donors, with living kidney donor organs generally functioning better and for longer periods of time compared to the latter. Issues surrounding organ transplantation in general and kidney transplantation in particular, are fraught with ethical dilemmas due to the shortage of organs, the logistics behind the acquisition of organs, use of living donors including minors and the black market that has sprouted thereof. Entwined in this quagmire are the legal, social and psychological consequences for the individuals involved and the society at large. It is further compounded by religious concerns, which have a significant influence on the society’s acceptance of the practice of organ donation. The practice of organ transplantation is generally accepted by most Islamic scholars as it is concordant to the objectives of Islamic Law (maqasid al Sharī’ah) which prioritize the preservation of human life. However, resistances do arise from some jurists and even physicians of the same Islamic faith despite a fatwas decreeing that organ and tissue transplantations are permissible in Islam under certain conditions. The take-up of organ-donation is still largely poor especially among Muslims. This article therefore hopes to explore the various moral and ethical issues surrounding KT as well as the Islamic viewpoints emanating from it. We hope that this knowledge and understanding will benefit both health-care personnel and the public in general. Bangladesh Journal of Medical Science Vol.20(2) 2021 p.241-249

This paper proposes a robust model for domain recognition of acoustic communication by using Bidirectional LSTM and deep neural network. The proposed model consists of five layers namely: speech recognition, word embedding, a layer of Bidirectional LSTM (BiLSTM) followed by two fully connected layers (FC). Initially, speech is recognized and resultant text is preprocessed before passing to the proposed model to obtain the domain of communication. Word embedding takes the padded sentence as the input sequence and outputs the encoded sentence. LSTM layer is used to capture the temporal features while fully connected layers (FC) are responsible to capture the linear and nonlinear combination of those features. We compared the performance of our proposed model to the conventional machine learning algorithms such as SVM, KNN, Random forest, and Gradient boosting and found that proposed model outperforms with high accuracy, i.e., 90.09%.

This article presents a novel facial biometrics-based hardware security methodology to secure hardware accelerators [such as digital signal processing (DSP) and multimedia intellectual property (IP) cores] against ownership threats/IP piracy. In this approach, an IP vendor’s facial biometrics is first converted into a corresponding facial signature representing digital template, followed by embedding facial signature’s digital template into the design in the form of secret biometric constraints, thereby generating a secured hardware accelerator design. The results report the following qualitative and quantitative analysis of the proposed biometric fingerprint approach: 1) impact of five different facial biometrics constraints on probability of coincidence (Pc) metric (indicating strength of digital evidence). The proposed approach achieves a very low Pc value in the range of 1.54E–5 to 2.01E–5; 2) impact of different facial feature set of a facial biometric image on total number of generated secret constraints and Pc. As evident, for all facial feature sets implemented, Pc ranges between 3.31E–4 and 2.01E–5; and 3) comparative analysis of proposed approach with recent work, for different DSP applications and five different facial biometric images, in terms of Pc. As evident, the proposed approach achieves significantly lower Pc, compared with recent work.

In recent years there is a high demand for assistive devices for the lower limb amputees. Assistive devices play a major role in rehabilitation post prosthesis globally due to problems associated with the prosthesis. This literature research aims to find out an affordable, accessible, and easy to adapt assistive devices for lower limb amputees to analyze gait cycle post prosthesis. The performance of different techniques used to analyze the walking patterns of patients having lower limb amputations by the previous researchers is presented. The efforts made by healthcare professionals in developing rehabilitation duration and prognostics are also identified. A structured review of the literature of the rehabilitation, assistive devices used is carried out. The various methods for the synthesis of planar single and multi-loop linkages along with the methods for defect-rectification are explored. This review addresses the gait analysis methods and assistive devices in lower limb prosthetics systematically and thoroughly.

Logic locking has emerged as a prominent technique to protect an integrated circuit from piracy, overbuilding, and hardware Trojans. Most of the well-known logic locking techniques are vulnerable to satisfiability (SAT) based attack. Though several SAT-resistant logic locking techniques such as Anti-SAT block (ASB) are reported that increase the time to decipher the secret key, the existing techniques are either vulnerable to signal probability skew (SPS) based removal attack or require significant design overhead. Therefore, a new lightweight ASB design and obfuscation technique is proposed that effectively integrate and obfuscates the ASB in the design to thwart removal attack. We first propose a new ASB design/integration approach that effectively thwarts the structural/functional analysis based removal attack with minimum overhead. Further, we also propose an ASB obfuscation approach that shifts the inverter deep in the circuit using De Morgan's law and replaces an ASB gate with a key-gate to thwart SPS based removal attack. Moreover, a new algorithm is proposed that inserts the ASB in the locked design to achieve desired output corruptibility. Finally, a new INV/BUFF key-gate is proposed that constructs the ASB with reduced overhead over the XOR/XNOR. Experimental evaluation on ISCAS-85 benchmarks shows that our ASB design and obfuscation approaches, on an average, reduce area overhead by 25.5% and 22% respectively, and effectively prevent removal attack without reducing any security.

This article presents a novel methodology to secure hardware accelerators (such as digital signal processing (DSP) and multimedia intellectual property (IP) cores) against ownership threats/IP piracy using biometric fingerprinting. In this approach, an IP vendor’s biometric fingerprint is first converted into a corresponding digital template, followed by embedding fingerprint’s digital template into the design in the form of secret biometric constraints; thereby generating a secured hardware accelerator design. The results report the following qualitative and quantitative analysis of the proposed biometric fingerprint approach: 1) impact of 11 different fingerprints on probability of coincidence (Pc) metric. As evident, the proposed approach achieves a very low Pc value in the range of 2.22E−3 to 4.35E−6. Further, the biometric fingerprint achieves total constraints size between minimum 350 bits to maximum 895 bits; 2) impact of six different resource constraints on the design cost overhead of JPEG compression hardware postembedding biometric fingerprint. As evident, for all the resource constraints implemented, the design cost overhead is 0%; and 3) comparative analysis of proposed biometric fingerprint with recent work, for five different signature strength values, in terms of Pc. As evident, the proposed approach achieves minimum 3.9E+2 times and maximum 6.9E+4 times lower Pc, when compared to recent work.

Intellectual property (IP) core of digital signal processing (DSP) kernels act as hardware accelerators in consumer electronics (CE) systems. However due to rising threats of cloning and counterfeiting to an IP core, security remains an important subject of research for these hardware accelerators. This paper presents a novel key-driven hash-chaining based hardware steganography for securing such IP cores used in CE systems. The proposed approach is capable to implant secret invisible stego-marks in design using hash-chaining process that incorporates switches, strong large stego-keys, multiple encoding algorithms and hash blocks. The methodology proposed provides massive security against IP cloning and counterfeiting while incurring nominal design overhead (

The outsourcing of several untrusted intellectual property designs makes the development of integrated circuits vulnerable to piracy, overbuilding, reverse engineering, and hardware Trojan (HT). To thwart the hardware-based attacks, several design-for-trust (DFT) techniques are reported in the literature. In this paper, we analyze that the existing methods are inefficient to prevent hardware Trojan attacks and also exhibit significant design overhead. Hence, we propose a novel DFT technique that effectively increases the immunity of design against the Trojan attack while requiring minimal overhead. In the proposed technique, various new light-weight key-gate topologies are proposed that effectively increase the triggering probability of Trojan at the rare-triggered nets by encrypting the design. We also propose a new encryption algorithm that identifies an optimal node using a new metric called vulnerability factor in-order to replace it with the proposed key-gate. Our encryption algorithm significantly reduces the number of vulnerable-nets with minimum replacements. The simulation results show that the proposed key-gates reduce on an average 34.2 percent and 35.1 percent per-gate area and energy respectively over the stack-based key-gates. Finally, our DFT technique gives on an average 94 percent area overhead reduction as compared to the best known DFT technique on the ISCAS-85 benchmarks.

Reusable Intellectual property (IP) cores are increasingly being integrated in system-on-chips (SoCs) to reduce the SoC design complexity and satisfy the time to market constraint. However, globalization of design supply chain renders the IP cores such as digital signal processer (DSP) hardware accelerators vulnerable to piracy threat. Additionally, integrated circuits (ICs)/ IPs can be fraudulently claimed by a dishonest user. This letter presents a novel biometric fingerprint based hardware security approach using high level synthesis (HLS) framework to safeguard an IC/ IP against false ownership claim and piracy. The proposed approach embeds the IP vendor's biometric fingerprint into a hardware accelerator in the form of secret security constraints. Results show that the proposed approach outperforms a recent approach in terms of enhanced security.

The focus of this is to make available clean energy, where there is a need for electricity production or energy infrastructure. An anaerobic digester contains an oxygen free environment that allows microorganisms to break down the organic material to harvest biogas (methane). Once the biogas is formed it can be used for different applications to aid the developing world. There are already millions of biogas plants in operation throughout the world. In Germany and other industrialized countries, power generation is the main purpose of biogas plants; conversion of biogas to electricity has become a standard technology. Biomass can become a reliable and renewable local energy source to replace conventional fossil fuels in local industries and to reduce reliance on overloaded electricity grids. The concept presented is to use manure from farms to produce methane gas using anaerobic digestion.

Background Fast‐acting insulin aspart (faster aspart) is a novel formulation of insulin aspart (IAsp) ensuring ultrafast absorption and effect. Aim To compare the pharmacokinetics between faster aspart and IAsp, based on free or total IAsp measurement, and investigate the association between anti‐IAsp antibodies and faster aspart and IAsp pharmacological properties in children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes (T1D). Methods In a randomized, two‐period crossover trial, 12 children, 16 adolescents, and 15 adults (6‐11, 12‐17, and 18‐64 years) received 0.2 U/kg double‐blindsingle‐dose subcutaneous faster aspart or IAsp followed by a standardized liquid meal test. Results Across age groups, the pharmacokinetic profile was left‐shifted including greater early exposure for faster aspart vs IAsp irrespective of free or total IAsp assay. Onset of appearance occurred 2.4 to 5.0 minutes (free) or 1.8 to 3.0 minutes (total) earlier for faster aspart vs IAsp (P

Security of Digital Signal Processing (DSP) based Intellectual Property (IP) core is very important for the overall security and reliability of Consumer Electronics (CE) systems. These DSP based IP cores are highly vulnerable to threats such as reverse engineering (RE) leading to Trojan insertion, counterfeiting and cloning. Thus developing robust defense mechanisms is highly significant for these DSP circuits used in CE systems, especially to thwart the aforesaid threats. This article presents for the first time a double line of defense mechanism using robust multi-key based structural obfuscation integrated with tamper-tolerant physical level watermarking to counter such hardware threats. The proposed approach introduces novel key-driven partitioning based obfuscation and key-driven folding knob based obfuscation, along with other key-driven transformation based obfuscations. Additionally, the proposed approach presents novel multi-variable signature encoding based physical-level watermarking on key-based structurally obfuscated DSP circuits. The presented double line of defense incurs zero overhead as well yields high tamper tolerance during hardware watermarking. The proposed approach yields stronger strength of obfuscation, lower probability of co-incidence and larger key-space at low design cost against attacks.

All groups/patient's quality of life (QOL) is affected because of overactive bladder (OAB), which leads to symptoms like urgency/urinary frequency/incontinence and nocturia. Several patients do not undergo management because of the embarrassment/misconception i.e. it is related to aging only and even discontinue the treatment due to side effects (repeated incidences). The objective of this review is to explore all management methods (including active ingredients involved in the treatment) and envisage the future scope of the different nano methods with minimizing apparent side effects to achieve a significant effect.

Name Data Networking (NDN) is a new and proposed Future Internet Architecture inspired by unsolved problems in current Internet architectures like IP. There can be a multitude of applications realized through Information Centric Network (ICN) in various domains where data is the focal point of communication. One such domain is the Intelligent Transport System which can be realized through Vehicular Ad hoc Network (VANET) and Vehicular Sensor Network (VSN). The VSN has grown rapidly to exchange information, especially in the area of safe and efficient driving. Despite the broad interest, there is a shortage of publicly accessible resources to assess the efficiency of caching systems effectively. To address these issues, we have developed a python-based caching simulator for Wireless Named Data Networking considering vehicular network caching. This tool allows users to evaluate caching strategies and also provides modelling tools useful for caching research.

The steady-state experiment using liquid crystal thermography has been conducted for the analysis of Nusselt number distribution over the absorber surface of solar air heater (SAH) duct having a gap with the staggered arrangement in inclined rib geometry to recuperate its thermal performance. The heat transfer experiment is performed with uniform heat flux and thermo-chromic liquid crystal (TLC) is utilized to show the temperature distribution profile over the ribbed surfaces of the rectangular duct of aspect ratio of 5. The colored pattern image of TLCs was acquired using a 3CCD (charged couple device) camera and exported to a Tagged Image File Format (TIFF) file format using frame grabbing SOFTWARE SAPERALT which was further processed to get hue, saturation, intensity (HSI) values. The flow parameters considered in this present investigation are Re, d/W, and g/e varied from 4000 − 12,500, 0.15 − 0.45, and 1 − 4, respectively. Experiments has been performed with fixed P/e, r/e, p′/P, α, and e/Dh of 10, 2, 0.6, 60 deg, and 0.0303, respectively. The influence of relative gap position and relative gap width on flow pattern has been analyzed. The maximum augmentation in Nu and f over the smooth duct was obtained as 4.01 and 4.28 times, respectively, at the optimum value of d/W = 0.35 and g/e = 2 under similar flow conditions. The maximum value of THPP obtained at d/W and g/e of 0.35 and 2, respectively, and Reynolds number of 12,445.

Idiopathic granulomatous mastitis is a benign chronic inflammatory condition of the breast, the etiology of which has not been identified yet; it mimics two common breast disorders: breast carcinoma and tuberculous mastitis. Hence, this clinical entity poses difficulties in the diagnostic work-up. As clinical presentation and imaging findings often simulate other infectious and neoplastic etiologies, an accurate and early diagnosis is crucial to prevent misdiagnosis. Clear guidelines have yet to be established regarding treatment. In this report, we describe a case in which a patient presented with a painful breast mass and was diagnosed with idiopathic granulomatous mastitis after histological evaluation. We managed this patient with a combination of surgical excision and, subsequently, a course of antibiotics and steroids. To conclude, idiopathic granulomatous mastitis must be considered a possible differential while treating a patient with a lump in the breast tissue.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the efficacy and safety of fast-acting insulin aspart (faster aspart) compared with insulin aspart (IAsp), both with insulin degludec with or without metformin, in adults with type 2 diabetes not optimally controlled with a basal-bolus regimen. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS This multicenter, double-blind, treat-to-target trial randomized participants to faster aspart (n = 546) or IAsp (n = 545). All available information, regardless of treatment discontinuation or use of ancillary treatment, was used for evaluation of effect. RESULTS Noninferiority for the change from baseline in HbA1c 16 weeks after randomization (primary end point) was confirmed for faster aspart versus IAsp (estimated treatment difference [ETD] −0.04% [95% CI −0.11; 0.03]; −0.39 mmol/mol [−1.15; 0.37]; P < 0.001). Faster aspart was superior to IAsp for change from baseline in 1-h postprandial glucose (PPG) increment using a meal test (ETD −0.40 mmol/L [−0.66; −0.14]; −7.23 mg/dL [−11.92; −2.55]; P = 0.001 for superiority). Change from baseline in self-measured 1-h PPG increment for the mean over all meals favored faster aspart (ETD −0.25 mmol/L [−0.42; −0.09]); −4.58 mg/dL [−7.59; −1.57]; P = 0.003). The overall rate of treatment-emergent severe or blood glucose (BG)–confirmed hypoglycemia was statistically significantly lower for faster aspart versus IAsp (estimated treatment ratio 0.81 [95% CI 0.68; 0.97]). CONCLUSIONS In combination with insulin degludec, faster aspart provided effective overall glycemic control, superior PPG control, and a lower rate of severe or BG-confirmed hypoglycemia versus IAsp in adults with type 2 diabetes not optimally controlled with a basal-bolus regimen.

Objective: The objective of the present study was formulation and evaluation of new medicated chewing for the treatment of nausea and vomiting induced by chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and post-operative conditions in cancer using ondansetron hydrochloride as drug candidate. Methods: The medicated chewing gum of ondansetron hydrochloride (OHC) was prepared by direct compression mold method. Four formulations were selected for study which was showing good physicochemical properties and drug release. Formulations were characterized for physical evaluation, weight variation, stickiness, hardness/plasticity, in vitro drug release, estimation of chewing gum consistency and drug release study in saliva. Results: All the formulations gave satisfactory results in physical evaluation, weight variation, stickiness, and hardness. The formulation medicated chewing gum II (MCG II) showed best in vitro drug release which is 97% in 30 min and it is also more accepted by the people. Drug release in saliva also indicated that more than 50% drug release occurs within 15 min. Conclusion: Medicated chewing gum is a cost-effective product and also showed better compliance and increase in bioavailability.

A hardware accelerator is a pivotal component of a system-on-chip (SoC) employed in modern electronic systems. However, the design of hardware accelerators can be infected by inserting malicious logic (hardware Trojan) through reverse engineering (RE) by an adversary. Rising threats of RE and Trojan necessitates the security of hardware accelerator based SoCs. The proposed methodology secures the hardware accelerators using a novel structural obfuscation using key-driven transformation techniques such as key-based loop unrolling, key-based partitioning, key-based redundant operation elimination and key-based tree height transformation, which makes the design unobvious (non-interpretable) to an attacker. The results of the proposed approach on DSP hardware accelerators indicated 2.3x enhancement in strength of obfuscation (at gate level) compared to a recent approach (indicating enhanced security), at nominal design cost.

An N-point Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) has wide application such as speech signal amplitude/phase/frequency spectrum analysis and solving complex numerical problems etc. However a N-point DFT Application Specific Processor (ASP) can be prone to several hardware threats such as reverse engineering, counterfeiting, cloning and fraudulent ownership. This letter proposes a novel design flow of secured N-point DFT application specific processor using high-level transformation based structural obfuscation and crypto-steganography. The proposed design methodology integrates both obfuscation and steganography to yield a robust secured N-point DFT application specific processor design that is capable of achieving 75.28 percent obfuscation at gate-level structure and 99.5 percent enhanced in security w.r.t key-size than recent hardware steganography approach.

In modern healthcare technology involving diagnosis through medical imaging systems, compression and data transmission play a pivotal role. Medical imaging systems play an indispensable role in several medical applications where camera/scanners generate compressed images about a patient’s internal organ and may further transmit it over the internet for remote diagnosis. However, tampered or corrupted compressed medical images may result in wrong diagnosis of diseases leading to fatal consequences. This paper aims to secure the underlying JPEG compression processor used in medical imaging systems that generates the compressed medical images for diagnosis. The proposed work targets to secure the JPEG compression processor against well-acknowledged threats such as counterfeiting/cloning and Trojan insertion using double line of defense through integration of robust structural obfuscation and hardware steganography. The second line of defense incorporates stego-key based hardware steganography that augments the following: non-linear bit manipulation using S-box (confusion property), diffusion property, alphabetic encryption, alphabet substitution, byte concatenation mode, bit-encoding (converting into stego-constraints) and embedding constraints. The results of the proposed approach achieve robust security in terms of significant strength of obfuscation, strong stego-key size (775 bits for JPEG compression processor and 610 bits for JPEG DCT core) and probability of coincidence of 9.89e-8, at nominal design cost.

In an untrustworthy foundry, an intellectual property (IP) core is susceptible to piracy. Moreover, an adversary can deceitfully claim the ownership of a pirated IP core. In such cases of ownership conflict, the true ownership of an IP core should be provable. This letter presents a novel approach of securing IP cores against piracy/ false claim of ownership using crypto-based dual phase hardware steganography. By detecting the embedded robust stego-mark in the design, the ownership can be awarded to the genuine IP owner. The paper presents a novel security algorithm that leverages crypto-modules and security properties to generate stego-constraints and embeds them into a hardware IP design during two distinct phases of behavioural synthesis. Because of using large size stego-keys and embedding steganography at two distinct phases, the proposed approach achieves robust security and high reliability than existing recent approaches.

Intellectual Property (IP) core protection of Digital Signal Processing (DSP) kernels is an important subject of research for Consumer Electronics (CE) systems. An IP core may be prone to piracy, forgery and counterfeiting. The need of the hour is developing effective technique that is robust and incurs low overhead to detect IP core infringement. This paper presents a novel ‘IP core steganography’ methodology for DSP kernels that is capable of detecting IP piracy. The proposed methodology is capable of implanting concealed information into the existing IP core design of DSP datapath without using any external signature, to reflect the IP core ownership. The presented ‘IP core steganography’ methodology is non-intuitive in nature indicating that the intended secret information does not attract attention to itself from an adversary’s perspective. The implanted information incurs almost no design overhead and yields lower design cost than signature-based IP core protection techniques. Further, in the presented approach the amount of concealed information embedded is fully designer controlled through a ‘thresholding’ parameter, unlike signature-based techniques where signature pattern impacts the robustness and overhead. Results of proposed approach yielded lower cost and stronger proof of authorship compared to a signature-based approach.

The paper proposes an efficient deep learning and AI approach for video event recognition. The proposed approach consists of several steps as video acquisition, framing, object detection, joint velocity detection, heat map generation, pose data collection, finally, the classification using deep neural network. The proposed approach is divided into two parts; the first part is object detection, in which we use bounding boxes to detect human presence. The second part is posing detection, which includes identifying human body joints by using open pose. Then, we extract features of body velocity; normalize joint positions and joint velocity. After this step we apply Principle Component Analysis (PCA) to reduce the features and then classify by using Deep Neural Network (DNN) of 3 layers of 50 × 50 × 50. The proposed approach can render up to 6 fps; however, it can be improved with the GPU. The performance of the proposed approach is quite satisfactory with the accuracy of 94.67%.

Power generation from solar PV sources is increasing exponentially due to increased requirement of green energy. The penetration of renewable energy sources like solar Photo Voltaic (PV) and wind energy is increasing. In this study, electrical power is generate from solar energy using solar photovoltaic cell. The system is designed of PV module with associated with MPPT control DC/DC boost converters with load and connected with power grid by using 3-Φ inverter (DC-AC converter). Various control techniques are adopted to make the output suitable for controlling the converter. The Perturb & Observe (P&O) method used for the MPPT with boost converter. The PI control technique with and without Fuzzy Logic Controller (FLC) are utilized with inverter (DC/AC converter) to observe various output response and analysis of total harmonics distortion in ac output current at grid side. This study presents comparison between the PI control technique with and without Fuzzy Logic Controller (FLC) are utilized with inverter (DC/AC converter) to observe various output response and analysis of total harmonics distortion in ac output current at grid side for grid connected Solar PV system which provides a convenient choice of right technique for system.

Thyroid surgeons should be able to identify factors that prevent parathyroid damage. The aim of the study was (i) to compare the effectiveness of using Zuckerkandl’s Tubercle (ZT) versus superior thyroid artery (STA) and inferior parathyroid artery (ITA) as markers for identification of superior and inferior parathyroid glands and (ii) to demonstrate a series of detailed, logical and orderly operative steps to identify ZT during thyroidectomy operation. This 1-year prospective observational study was carried out in the Department of Otolaryngology in a tertiary medical institute. Out of 36 cases of thyroidectomy, parathyroid identification in Group A was based on STA and ITA and in Group B was based on ZT. The surgical steps, parathyroid location, preservation and its anatomical relations were noted. The mean age in Group A and Group B was 38.8 years and 44.9 years respectively with 77.4 and 62.5% SPT identified above the intersection of RLN and ITA respectively. On left side 62.5% SPT were located at 2 o’clock position and 50% at 10 o’clock location in right side. In Group A, 60.7% of IPT glands were related close to ITA while in Group B it was 44.4%. Group B reported a higher rate of successful identification and preservation (93.75%). ZT greatly improved the reliability for localising and preserving the parathyroid glands during thyroidectomy. SPT is usually found to lie cranial to ZT, above the intersection of RLN & ITA and behind RLN whereas IPT is variable and lies below the intersection.

Timely and accurate mealtime insulin dosing can be an ongoing challenge for people with type 1 diabetes. This multinational, online study aimed to explore attitudes and behaviors around mealtime insulin dosing and the impact of mealtime dose timing, particularly with regard to premeal dosing (15–20 minutes before a meal). Although the majority of surveyed participants (96%) recognized the importance of accurate mealtime bolus insulin dosing, only a small proportion (35%) reported being “very confident” in accurate bolus insulin estimation. Given the choice, the majority of participants would prefer to administer insulin immediately before or after a meal, as this timing would improve their quality of life.

This paper details the implementation of Radar Receiver and Signal Processing algorithms on a Kintex-7 FPGA based board and the results obtained. Radar receiver receives and enhances the target echoes with noise and clutter. The major blocks of a Digital Radar Receiver are Digital Down Converter (DDC) which is used to convert an RF or IF signal down to baseband by sampling the signal at suitably high sample rates and then using purely digital techniques to obtain baseband data. Radar Signal Processing algorithms extracts targets from the background interference (noise + jammer) and passes the information to Data Processor for tracking and further action. The major blocks of Radar Signal Processing are Pulse Compression, MTI, Doppler Filtering, CFAR and target angle estimation. The conventional DDC (Single Stage FIR filter) was implemented on a Kintex-7 FPGA – XC7K325TFBG900-1 device using Vivado 2014.4 tool and the Radar Signal Processing chain was implemented using Code Blocks IDE Software using C/C++ language. The implementation was targeted to reduce hardware complexity, enhance speed and reduce power dissipation. The results are analysed using Vivado Simulator and MATLAB tools.

Background Obesity in adolescence presents a major public health challenge, often leading to obesity in adulthood with associated chronic disease. Objectives This study aimed to perform a population pharmacokinetic and exposure-response analysis of liraglutide by meta-analysis of data from trials conducted in children, adolescents and adults with obesity. Methods The population pharmacokinetic analysis investigated the effect of covariates body weight, age group (children, adolescents and adults) and sex on liraglutide exposure in adolescents compared with previous results in adults. The exposure-response relationship of liraglutide for the change from baseline in body mass index standard deviation score (BMI SDS) was evaluated in adolescents and compared to that in adults. Results Body weight was the main covariate affecting liraglutide exposure, with lower exposures at higher body weights, whereas age group was of no importance and sex was of little importance. An exposure-response relationship was demonstrated for liraglutide in both adolescents and adults as the decrease in BMI SDS from baseline increased in an exposure-dependent manner with increasing liraglutide exposure. Conclusions The population pharmacokinetic analysis supported similar liraglutide exposures in adolescents and adults; body weight was the most important covariate affecting exposure. An exposure-response relationship was established for liraglutide.

The most successful and cost-effective method used for car identifying purposes is detection of the License Plate. These approaches and methods differ depending on factors such as image quality, the vehicle at fixed locations, light conditions, single image, etc. The differences in license plates from various nations and states should also be able to deal with it. The method should also be able to work smoothly with the number of characters in the captured images that differ in plate size or plate size.This product-oriented project involves the design and development of a License Plate recognition software system that would be useful in vehicle identification as well as in-vehicle parking services and even e challan. We will concentrate primarily on identifying and recognizing multiple license plate cars from a single frame. The proposed system consists of two steps: Identification of plate numbers and identification of them.The number plate is identified from the picture taken in the plate number detection process and then the segmented plate is transferred to the plate recognition in the second phase to determine the characters and numbers.

We report co-infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and Mycoplasma pneumoniae in a patient with pneumonia in India. Atypical bacterial pathogens causing community-acquired pneumonia may share similar clinical presentations and radiographic features with SARS-CoV-2 making a thorough differential diagnosis essential. The co-infection of SARS-CoV-2 and M. pneumoniae is infrequently reported in the literature. Broader testing for common respiratory pathogens should be performed in severe COVID-19 cases to rule out other concurrent infections. Early identification of co-existing respiratory pathogens could provide pathogen-directed therapy, and can save patient lives during the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak.

The availability and quality of pedestrian infrastructure play key roles in enabling access to transit. Many transit operators face challenges in facilitating this access, however, because they lack land use authority and encounter other institutional and programmatic impediments to effecting changes in the pedestrian environment. This report identifies the barriers to pedestrian access to transit in suburban communities located in the Pace Suburban Bus service area in northeastern Illinois and suggests potential solutions to overcome these barriers. The research team led several activities to collect data, including: conducting an academic literature review; reviewing pedestrian plans, policies, and programs in the region; surveying and interviewing key stakeholders; reviewing pedestrian funding sources; surveying and conducting case studies of peer transit agencies; conducting physical audits of pedestrian infrastructure; and interviewing residents of six municipalities about their transit access experiences. Lack of adequate funding, difficulties planning across jurisdictional boundaries, and conflicts in transportation priorities are major impediments to building pedestrian infrastructure. While planners and decision-makers tend to value pedestrian planning, challenges such as funding constraints and the need to retrofit suburban infrastructure are key barriers to implementation. Peer transit agencies face similar barriers to Pace and use strategies such as plan and policy development, diverse funding opportunities, and collaborative partnerships with stakeholder agencies and advocacy groups to overcome these barriers. Transit riders generally reported positive experiences with pedestrian access to transit in their communities. Many locations had robust infrastructure, but common deficiencies included poor sidewalk connectivity, incomplete crossings, lack of lighting and transit shelters, and deficiencies in Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) infrastructure. A suite of policy recommendations for Pace and other partners that focus on planning, policy, funding, interagency coordination, education and training, infrastructure prioritization, and transit amenities address the full range of physical and institutional barriers identified in the research.

In early December 2019, a novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), the global pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) commenced in Wuhan, China, and WHO declared the outbreak a pandemic and Public Health Emergency of International Concern. An ample number of clinical trials with multiple drugs is underway to overcome the current perilous condition. Still, the situation is alarming with no therapeutic measure in our hand at present. Keeping the present scenario in mind, this review comprises the research, clinical knowledge, and repurposed herbals with regard to COVID-19. Preventive measures such as yoga, nasal breathing, and herbal administration could also provide protection and beneficial effects against coronavirus. Innumerable clinical trials are ongoing to manage COVID-19 and the drugs were selected on the basis of life cycle of coronavirus. The selection of herbals was done on the basis of the previous reported pharmacological activities and docking study. The results concluded that garlic, liquorice, and Ashwagandha have a potential against SARS-CoV-2, which was further proved via a docking study and their reported biological functions. The very well-known fact "prevention is always better than cure" is applied to overcome with coronavirus infection. It is expected that following the preventive measures could impede or lessen the adverse effect of SARS-CoV-2.

Introduction This study investigated glycaemic control in individuals with type 1 (T1D) or type 2 diabetes (T2D) 6 months after initiating fast-acting insulin aspart (faster aspart) in a real-world setting. Methods This was a single-arm, observational study using extracted patient data from the IBM® Explorys® database (USA) for individuals with T1D or T2D initiating faster aspart (at least one prescription of faster aspart) in the study period 1 January 2018 to 27 October 2020. Clinical characteristics, including age, body mass index, and baseline HbA1c, were extracted, as well as recorded events of hypoglycaemia. The primary endpoint was the change in HbA1c from baseline to 6 months. Results A total of 787 individuals were included; 36.6% of these individuals had T1D and 63.4% had T2D (of whom 46.9% were new users of rapid-acting insulin when initiating faster aspart [T2D new users] and 53.1% were switching from another rapid-acting insulin to faster aspart [T2D switchers]). For individuals with T1D, T2D new users, or T2D switchers, estimated mean change in HbA1c from baseline to 6 months was − 0.20% (95% CI − 0.53, 0.14; p = 0.252), − 1.00% (95% CI − 1.34, − 0.67; p 8.5% subgroup, there was a significant estimated decrease in HbA1c from baseline to 6 months in individuals with T1D (− 1.2% [95% CI − 1.80, − 0.60]; p = 0.0001) or T2D (− 0.6% [95% CI − 0.92, − 0.35]; p 8.5% had significant HbA1c reductions regardless of diabetes type. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13300-021-01165-0.

There is a social relation between animals and humans. Both are directly or indirectly dependent on each other. Therefore, it is our duty to maintain the healthy existence of both. To maintain this situation, we have to develop an efficient model that is able to protect the life of animals. To do the same, first it is necessary to identify different animals so that we can concentrate more on the endangered species (animal). But due to various varieties of animals, we need a system to recognize such type of animals automatically. In this paper, we propose a system based on two-layered machine learning architecture by using histogram of oriented gradients (HOG) method and local binary pattern (LBP) to perform the detection of animal. SVM and gradient boosting classifiers are used on different layers to classify the object efficiently. The result analysis shows that our proposed model works efficiently and effectively with an acceptable accuracy, i.e., 95.15%.

Recognition of plant species based on images of leaves has been one of the important challenges faced in the field of machine learning. In this paper, we propose a machine learning-based model which can automatically extract relevant features like edges, shape, etc. using two feature extraction algorithms: Histogram of Oriented Gradients and Kaze. The feature vectors are combined to form a final vector which is then fed into 3 classification algorithms, Support Vector Machine (SVM), K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN), and Random Forest algorithm. The result of these classifiers is used to create an ensemble, based on the probabilistic voting approach. The accuracy of our proposed system is more than any single classifier i.e. 92.30%.

The Internet of Things (IoT) marks clever objects the last word structure blocks interior the time of computer-generated right persistent contexts. The IoT carries a type of utility fields, alongside health care. The IoT revolutions is restructuring stylish fitness care with talented scientific, financial, and then common views. This article studies progresses in IoT mostly generated health care technologies and analyses the progressive community planning/platforms, applications, and engineering trends in IoT-based fitness care solution. There are some Objectives-to check the user’s health details and update to Server via an advanced Internet of Things [IOT] and the Care takers or other persons can immediately check the patient’s condition without any hidden activities, reduced duplication of diagnostic testing. Emotion is a strong instinctive and intuitive feeling in people who arise from one’s situations, circumstances, mood and dating with others. So, emotions are a mental state of person which cannot be stopped. Thus, Emotion Recognition is an important challenge when speaking about human-system interplay and to doing the evaluation and controlling of feelings. Emotion can be detected using many strategies like facial expressions, speech, body gesture and mental signals. We have used facial expression based on total health emotion identity approach.