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There are limited data to provide better understanding of the knowledge/awareness of general population towards liver health in Asia. We sought to identify the knowledge gaps and attitudes towards liver health and liver diseases as well as evaluate associated individual-level and macro-level factors based on contextual analysis. An online survey assessing knowledge, awareness and attitudes towards liver health and disease was conducted among 7500 respondents across 11 countries/territories in Asia. A liver index was created to measure the respondents' knowledge level and the degree of awareness and attitudes. Multilevel logistic regression was performed to identify individual factors and contextual effects that were associated with liver index. The overall liver index (0-100-point scale) was 62.4 with 6 countries/territories' liver indices greater than this. In the multilevel model, the inclusion of geographical information could explain for 9.6% of the variation. Residing in a country/territory with higher HBV prevalence (80% IOR: 1.20-2.79) or higher HCV death rate (80% IOR: 1.35-3.13) increased the individual probability of obtaining a high overall liver index. Individual factors like age, gender, education, household income, disease history and health screening behaviour were also associated with liver index (all p-values0.001). The overall liver index was positively associated with the two macro-level factors viz. HBV prevalence and HCV death rate. There is a need to formulate policies especially in regions of lower HBV prevalence and HCV death rate to further improve the knowledge, awareness and attitudes of the general public towards liver diseases.

This paper explores the barriers which hamper the utilization and the routinization of product lifecycle management (PLM) practices in manufacturing organizations. The paper aims to confirm the barriers and their rank in order to improve the PLM institutionalization status in firms. Core barriers have been explored in an automotive firm by applying multicriteria decision-making techniques. Further, the significance of these barriers were corroborated with the executives in the broader PLM domain through a t-test. This study confirmes the “lack of advanced IT infrastructure,” “lack of integration and interoperability,” and “training on the PLM systems” as the top three barriers to PLM utilization and routinization in manufacturing firms in India.

Most surgical procedure articles throughout the last three decades, especially those dealing with newer techniques, have included explanations of indications and contraindications, as well as the benefits and drawbacks of individual treatments. However, only a few authors have recently focused on periodontal surgical indications. In light of our current understanding of periodontal disease and therapy, this review will examine the indications for certain periodontal surgical procedures.

As there is a quick development in human populace and clinical use and furthermore the medical services have gotten quite possibly the most critical issue for the two people just as the public authority. Then, as per a report from World Health Association (WHO), the issue of an exceptionally expanding populace is getting more genuine. The strength of matured individuals should be checked all the more often, which represents a more noteworthy challenge to the existing clinical framework. Henceforth, to distinguish human illnesses as expected and precise way with minimal effort has been given an expanding consideration. Because of the strength in the conclusion of heart-related infections, electrocardiogram (ECG) observing has been broadly utilized in the two emergency clinics and clinical examination. An electrocardiogram gadget screens the cardiovascular status of a patient by recording the heart’s electrical potential versus time. Such gadgets assume a vital part to save the existence of patients who endure a respiratory failure or experience the ill effects of these patients. Early identification of conditions that lead to the beginning of heart failure permits specialists to give legitimate treatment on time and keeps passing or incapacity from heart failure. Most non-industrial nations have very helpless data about these medical services issues. Here we proposed an approach that is able to check the ECG level with low cost and power consumption.

Product lifecycle management (PLM) is an engineering management approach which helps organizations to manage product-related technical data for its complete lifecycle. The right product data enables better business functioning in organizations. PLM systems are recent and upcoming information technology tools in manufacturing firms. Although PLM systems were initially introduced as the on-premise tools, the current cloud technology is taking it from organizational boundaries to a global level through the Internet. Most enterprise applications have already started moving to clouds; PLM is also all set to be utilized through clouds. But it brings various challenges during cloud PLM adoption. Hence, this paper aims to empirically investigate the critical challenges that manufacturing firms face while adopting cloud PLM. There is rare academic research in the cloud PLM domain. This paper results in the three most significant challenges viz., “Data security on clouds,” “Lack of trust on services,” and “Lack of customization.” These critical challenges not only help the managers in manufacturing firms in planning to migrate on clouds but also the technical cloud providers to improve the cloud services and systems appropriately in order to increase the compatibility of cloud PLM in firms. The present paper uniquely identifies the critical challenges for cloud PLM adoption in large manufacturing firms.

Background and aim Despite efforts in controlling and managing liver diseases, significant health issues remain. This study aims to evaluate the degree of public awareness and knowledge regarding liver health and diseases in Singapore. Methods A cross-sectional, self-reported, web-based questionnaire was administered to 500 adult individuals. Questionnaire items pertained to knowledge and awareness of overall liver health, liver diseases and their associated risk factors. Results Sixty-four percent of respondents were ≥35 years old and 54.0% were males. While majority agreed regular screening was important for liver health (91.2%), only 65.4% attended health screening within recent 2 years. Hepatitis B had more awareness than hepatitis C among the respondents. About 70% agreed the consequences of viral hepatitis included liver cirrhosis, failure and/or cancer. Yet, only 15% knew hepatitis C is not preventable by vaccination and more than half mistaken hepatitis B and C are transmissible via contaminated or raw seafood. Despite 75% being aware of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, many were not aware of the related risk factors and complications. Awareness of specific screening and diagnostic tests for liver health was poor as one-fifth correctly identified the diagnostic tests for viral hepatitis. Preferences for doctor's consultation, TV, or newspapers (online) as information channels contrasted those currently used in the public health education efforts. Conclusions The level of understanding of liver diseases, risk factors and potential complications are suboptimal among the Singapore public. More public education efforts aligned with respondents' information-seeking preferences could facilitate addressing misperceptions and increase knowledge about liver diseases.

Objective- Endometrial thickness

Due to presence of external loads, the bolt providing stability to the structure which on failure may create a hazardous situation in case of mining and construction activities. The failure may be due to the failure of bolt itself or the failure of grout (in case of grouted bolt) along the bolt grout interface or the grout rock interface. It is thus necessary to study the effect of variation of a number of factors on the pull-out resistance and hence the failure of bolt. These factors comprise of the kind of bolt used, kind of grout material used, dimensions of bolt used etc. The objective of this research is to simulate the pull-out behaviour of cable bolt using 3DEC software and study the influence of various factors for the cases of grouted and non-grouted bolt. These factors are diameter of the bolt, length of the bolt, rate of extraction of the bolt, confining pressure, thickness of grout material and angle of friction of the grout material.

Background: Carotid intimal-medial thickness (CIMT) has recently emerged as one of the early markers of atherosclerosis and is helpful in providing direct evidence in comparison to traditional biochemical screening parameters. Objective: The objective of the study was to determine the change in the CIMT in children with celiac disease (CD) aged 1–14 years after 6 months of gluten-free diet (GFD). Materials and Methods: A total of 31 consecutive children with newly diagnosed CD (anti-tissue transglutaminase antibody titer of >10 U/L and intestinal biopsy histology of either Marsh Grade 3B or 3C) were enrolled in the study. CIMT was measured at the time of diagnosis and after 6 months follow-up on GFD by a single experienced radiologist who was blinded to the participant’s casestatus and risk factors. Results: The mean age of enrolled cases in our study was 7.58±3.38 years. The mean CIMT among enrolled children before GFD (0.0523±0.0069 cm) and after 6 months of GFD (0.0537±0.0063 cm) was greater than that of expected CIMT for this age (0.0411±0.5 cm). After 6 months of GFD, mean values on the right side (anterior wall, posterior wall, and mean; p=0.27, 0.794, and 0.557, respectively) or the left side (anterior wall, posterior wall, and mean; p=0.122, 0.063, and 0.078, respectively) were not statistically significantly. Conclusion: CIMT among children with CD was increased at enrolment but did not decrease significantly after 6 months of GFD. Further, studies are needed to be conducted with longer duration of follow-up for more insight into the subject.

International audience; This work follows the multi-label classification based paradigm for non-intrusive load monitoring (NILM). Power consumption signals used for NILM are inherently time varying. However prior multi-label classification techniques could not model this dynamical behaviour. They used off-the-shelf algorithms for classifying static signals on NILM problems. This is the first work that shows how to account for the temporal variability of input signals in a multi-label classification framework. Results on benchmark datasets like REDD and Pecan Street show considerable improvement over several state-of-the-art shallow and deep techniques.

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a perplexing disease characterized by chronic mucosal inflammation. It results from a complex interplay of various factors including genetic and environmental and adaptive immunity of the host. Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis (UC) are the two broad phenotypes of IBD. The incidence of pediatric IBD seems to be increasing globally. The common age of presentation of pediatric IBD is between 5 and 15 years of age with a mean duration between the onset of symptoms and diagnosis being 96 months. Children usually present with the classic symptoms of weight loss, abdominal pain, and bloody diarrhea. They may sometimes present with non-classic symptoms of poor growth, anemia, or extraintestinal manifestations. We report a case of UC in a 5-year-old child in whom the diagnosis was clinched within 1 month of onset of symptoms.

This work follows the approach of multi-label classification for non-intrusive load monitoring (NILM). We modify the popular sparse representation based classification (SRC) approach (developed for single label classification) to solve multi-label classification problems. Results on benchmark REDD and Pecan Street dataset shows significant improvement over state-of-the-art techniques with small volume of training data.

Agriculture is the basis of every economy worldwide. Crop production is one of the major factors affecting domestic market condition in any country. Agricultural production is also a major prerequisite of economic development, be it any part of any country. It plays a crucial role as it even provides raw material, employment and food to different citizens. A lot of issues are responsible for estimated crop production varying in different parts of the world. Some of these include overutilization of chemical fertilizers, presence of chemicals in water supply, uneven distribution of rainfall, different soil fertility and others. Other than these issues one of the commonly faced challenges across the globe equally includes destruction of the major part of production due to diseases. After providing effective resources to the fields, major section of the production is diminished by the presence of diseases in the plants grown. This leads to focus on effective ways of detection of disease in plants. Presence of various diseases in plant is a major concern among farmers. Plant diseases acts as a major threat to small scale farmers as they lead to major destruction in overall food supply. To provide effective measures for detection and avoidance of the destruction requires an early identification of type of plant disease present. In recent time major work is being done for the identification of plant disease presents in varied parts of the world affection varied crops. Major work is being done in the domain of identification of causing factors of these diseases. Some of the diseases are marked by the presence of viruses while some are resultant of fungal infection. This becomes a major issue when the causing factor is not traceable before it has already spread to major production section. This paper brings a review on effective use of different imaging techniques and computer vision approaches for the identification and classification of plant diseases. Detection of Plant disease is initiated with image acquisition followed by pre-processing while using the process of segmentation. It is further accompanied by different techniques used for feature extraction along with classification. In this Paper we present the Current Trends and Challenges for detection of plant disease using computer vision and advance imaging technique.

CONTEXT: Inflammatory pseudotumor (IPT) of the liver is a rare, tumor-like lesion that is considered to be biologically benign but often mimics malignancy. AIMS: The aim of the study was construe clinicopathological features, imaging findings, differential diagnosis, management, and follow-up of IPT involving the liver. SETTINGS AND DESIGN: It is a retrospective study. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: Cases included were of IPT, diagnosed on histopathology, at our center from June 2009 to December 2016. Details studied were clinical presentation, imaging studies, laboratory investigations, pathological features, treatment, and follow-up of the cases and compared with reports in the literature. RESULTS: A total of cases of IPT included were 17. The age of the patients ranged from 21 to 62 years. Common presenting features were intermittent fever, upper abdominal pain, and weight loss. Radiological diagnosis varied from neoplastic (13) to infectious etiologies (4), with hepatocellular carcinoma being the most common differential (7/17). Laboratory investigations revealed leukocytosis, hyperbilirubinemia, raised transaminases, and raised serum alkaline phosphatase. Core biopsy of a tumor conceded increased fibrosis along with mixed inflammatory cell infiltrates. Eleven cases were managed conservatively and showed regression or complete recovery. Six patients underwent surgical resection. None of these had any recurrence in median follow-up of 22 months. CONCLUSIONS: IPT of the liver can masquerade as a fatality, either primary or metastatic. It will be well managed with conservative modalities and can avoid redundant hepatectomy, reserved for complicated cases. For this intent, accurate preoperative diagnosis is the requisite, and needle biopsy with or without fine-needle aspiration cytology plays as a significant rescuer in this field.

Product lifecycle management (PLM) systems are increasingly expansive enterprise systems manufacturing firms used to help build their capabilities and competitive advantages. Adoption and implementation of an enterprise system does not ensure its organizational acceptance and routinization. We identify the bottlenecks for PLM institutionalization; these systems are becoming the norm for organizational operations and routines. We surveyed 207 executives to determine some critical barriers, potential stumbling blocks, to PLM routinization in daily organizational practices. We found that lack of information technology (IT) infrastructure, integration, and interoperability of PLM systems to be major stumbling blocks for PLM postimplementation routinization.

The present study has been undertaken with the purpose of investigating the critical success factors for the implementation of product lifecycle management (PLM) systems in manufacturing companies....

Objectives To examine population awareness of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) hepatitis C virus (HCV) testing recommendation for the 1945 to 1965 birth cohort and explore the factors associated with awareness of the testing recommendation, its association with HCV testing, and respondents' data sources about the recommendation. Methods A cross-sectional survey was conducted to assess awareness of the CDC birth cohort testing recommendation among adults born 1945-1965 who were managed at a single academic center's internal medicine clinics or by visiting a local health fair. Data were collected on respondents' demographics and HCV-related domains, including risk factors, awareness, data sources, prior testing, and interest in information about testing. Results There were a total of 563 respondents to the survey. Forty percent were aware of the CDC's testing recommendation, with Hispanic ethnicity being the only significant predictor (odds ratio 0.59, 95% confidence interval 0.38-0.90). HCV testing rates were higher among those aware of the CDC's recommendation, as compared with those unaware (33.6% vs 24.0%, P = 0.0269). Television was the most common initial data source for the testing recommendation (64.8%), whereas healthcare providers accounted for 22.4%. Conclusions Awareness of the CDC's testing recommendation was reported in fewer than half of the respondents and was adversely affected by minority status. Although mass media may be a key venue for HCV-related data outreach, further studies are needed on interventions to enhance the role played by healthcare providers.

Agent-based Modelling is a simulation technique that is used to solve critical problems in several fields. Separate agents are used as the input, and then the simulation starts. In this paper, a literature review of 10 years papers is done to analyze the basic features, benefits, applications and challenges of using Agent-based modelling in different sectors. A detailed description is given about the characteristics of Agent-based Modelling in the operational sector.

Introduction We aimed to identify gaps in knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours towards viral hepatitis among the Hong Kong public and provide insights to optimise local efforts towards achieving the World Health Organization's viral hepatitis elimination target. Methods A descriptive, cross-sectional, self-reported web-based questionnaire was administered to 500 individuals (aged ≥18 years) in Hong Kong. Questionnaire items explored the awareness and perceptions of viral hepatitis-related liver disease(s) and associated risk factors in English or traditional Chinese. Results The majority (>80%) were aware that chronic hepatitis B and/or C could increase the risks of developing liver cirrhosis, cancer, and/or failure. Only 55.8% had attended health screenings in the past 2 years, and 67.6% were unaware of their family's history of liver diseases. Misperceptions surrounding the knowledge and transmission risks of viral hepatitis strongly hint at the presence of social stigmatisation within the community. Many misperceived viral hepatitis as airborne or hereditary, and social behaviours (casual contact or dining with an infected person) as a transmission route. Furthermore, 62.4% were aware of hepatitis B vaccination, whereas 19.0% knew that hepatitis C cannot be prevented by vaccination. About 70% of respondents who were aware of mother-to-child transmission were willing to seek medical consultation in the event of pregnancy. Gaps in knowledge as well as the likelihood of seeking screening were observed across all age-groups and education levels. Conclusions Comprehensive hepatitis education strategies should be developed to address gaps in knowledge among the Hong Kong public towards viral hepatitis, especially misperceptions relevant to social stigmatisation and the importance of preventive measures, including vaccination and screening, when exposed to risk factors.

Acceptability of mobile robots in various applications has led to an increase in mobile robots’ research areas. Path planning is one of the core areas which needs to be improvised at a higher level. Optimization is playing a more prominent role these days. The nature-inspired algorithm is contributing to a greater extent in achieving optimization. This article presents the modified cuckoo search algorithm using tournament selection function for robot path planning. Path length and Path time are the algorithm’s parameters to validate the effectiveness and acceptability of the output. The cuckoo search algorithm’s fundamental working principle is taken as the baseline, and the tournament selection function is adapted to calculate the optimum path for robots while navigating from its initial position to final position. The tournament selection function is replacing the concept of random selection done by the cuckoo search algorithm. The use of tournament selection overcomes local minima for robots while traversing in the configuration space and increases the probability of giving more optimum results. The conventional cuckoo search algorithm whose random selection mechanism may lead to premature convergence may fall into the local minima. The use of tournament selection function increases the probability of giving better results as it allows all the possible solution to take part in the tournament. The results are analysed and compared with other relevant work like cuckoo search algorithm and particle swarm optimization technique and presented in the article. The proposed method produced a better output in terms of path length and path time.

In this paper, Detailed study is done for power quality and role of Dynamic Voltage Restorer (DVR) in solutions of power quality problems those occur into the power supply at the time of power distribution and improper loading such as mitigation of voltage dips for aim of protection of power quality sensitive devices. Further we will be comparing the compensation results DVR with compensation results of FACTS devices.

Education loan is a significant factor contributing to one’s decision to pursue studies. Students now do not hesitate about taking the risk of being in debt of thousands of dollars. They believe in getting the highest quality of academic qualification first without realizing how risky it can get to be in such an enormous amount of debt. Banks nowadays are also wary of approving loans because they face difficulty in analyzing how credible the borrower is. It makes the whole process very tedious and time taking and often proves to be inefficacious. Prediction of education loan repayment rate can make the job easier for both banks and the applicants. This research paper aims at analyzing the education loan repayment rate by the use of machine learning algorithms. Machine learning is extensively used now and finds application in almost every domain. Predictions and analysis carried out using ML helps in making an informed decision and gives an idea of how future trends predict to look. In this research, various features are analyzed and researched thoroughly by the use of Python language. Its extensive set of libraries enables easy manipulation and visualization of the data. The paper contains a description of the analysis and rich visuals to produce a clearer image of the dataset. Various models are implemented, and their accuracy is measured using the R2 score.

Motion planning problems of a wheeled robot remain challenging for the researchers and are being solved by applying various nature-inspired algorithms. Therefore, this article implements the sunflower optimization algorithm and tries to solve the motion control and planning of a wheeled robot. A sunflower optimization algorithm is a newly invented algorithm, and it is inspired by the motion of sunflowers to capture solar radiation. In this study, the differential driven two-wheeled Pioneer P3-DX (P3D) robot has been chosen for experiments. The real-time ultrasonic sensors data (obstacles distance) information have been taken as inputs of the algorithm, and the steering control angle of the P3D robot is an output of the algorithm. The objective function of the algorithm has been made by taking these inputs and output data. Further, the implemented algorithm has been tested in the Virtual Robot Experimentation Platform (V-REP) software scenarios on differential driven two-wheeled P3D robot. Next, this implemented algorithm has been compared with previously developed particle swarm optimization algorithm to verify the effectiveness and authenticity of the implemented algorithm.

In non-intrusive load monitoring (NILM), an increase in sampling frequency translates to capturing unique signal features during transient states, which, in turn, can improve disaggregation accuracy. Smart meters are capable of sampling at a high frequency (typically 20kHz). However, transmitting signals continuously would choke the network bandwidth. Given the deployment of millions of smart meters which communicate over a wireless wide-area network (WAN), utilities can only collect power signals at very low frequencies. We propose a compressive sampling (CS) approach. After measuring the high-frequency power signal from a smart meter will be encoded (by a random matrix) to very few samples making the signal suitable for WAN transmission without choking network bandwidth. CS guarantees the recovery of the high-frequency signal from the few transmitted samples under certain conditions. This work shows how to simultaneously recover the signal and disaggregate it; hence, the name Compressive NILM.

In this article, an attempt has been made to examine the performance of an on-grid PV system located in an educational institution. The considered 56.7 kW PV system is installed over the Block-B1 of Shri Ramswaroop Memorial University (SRMU), Barabanki, Uttar Pradesh, India. The annual electricity yield and the payback period of the installed rooftop PV system has been calculated for reasserting the financial viability of the project. In addition, the comparison between real and approximated energy generation has also been analyzed. The impact of the subsidy on the payback period and the environmental benefits of the project have also been assessed.

An Electroencephalograph (EEG) is widely used to study the working of brain. The main challenge in dealing with such signals is its non-stationary nature and high dimensionality. The propagation of signals from one electrode to other gives rise to presence of artifacts in the data. This can lead to generation of false results while working on the data. Ocular, Muscular, and Cardiac are some of the very common artifacts for a dataset dedicated for motor imagery classification. This paper deals with the techniques and their comparative analysis for removal of ocular artifact from EEG signals. On the basis of dataset, the paper shows a study of how Linear Regression, Filtering, and Independent Component Analysis(ICA) works on the removal of ocular artifact in this data. To verify the effect of artifact removal technique features were extracted from the data, before and after applying different techniques and further fed to the classifier. An improvement in the accuracy of motor imagery classification is observed when we apply various techniques of artifact removal. ICA proves to remove the artifacts most efficiently as compared to the other two techniques on this dataset. Precision, Recall, and F1-Score values are also determined for the comparative analysis.

In the competitive world, many semiconductor organizations are facing difficulties due to the scarcity of resources, and this creates a challenge for organizations to sustain in the market. Cloud technology is boon for these organizations, as cloud technology facilitates the pay per use model. Even after the acquaintance of the benefits of the cloud, the organization faces difficulties while adopting this technology in the semiconductor domain. The objective of our research is to understand the factors which impact the adoption of cloud technology in the semiconductor industry and how these factors are inter-related. We adopted the TOE (technical, organizational, and environmental) framework to determine the success factors. In this research, we used multiple criteria decision-making methods to assess the causal relationship among the dimensions and their corresponding factors, which further helps to calculate the overall priority of factors. We found that factors under technological and organizational dimensions are the causal factors that are affecting the adoption of cloud technology in the semiconductor industry.

Convolutional transform learning is an unsupervised framework we introduced recently, for feature generation based on learnt convolutions. In this work, we propose a supervised formulation for convolutional transform so as to address the multi-label classification problem. Unlike the simple multiclass classification, in multi-label problems, each sample can correspond to multiple classes simultaneously, making the problem quite challenging. We propose to make use of a label consistency penalty and develop a suitable minimization algorithm for the training step. We illustrate the performance of the developed formulation on the practical problem of nonintrusive load monitoring. Comparisons with popular techniques show that our proposed approach yields better results on benchmark datasets.

Background: The major bulk of histopathological specimens are the gynecological specimens consisting of hysterectomies or biopsies of cervix. Routine histopathological evaluation of suspicious lesions can lead to early detection of cancerous lesions. Objective: All specimens were studied histologically and a diagnosis was made. Sociodemographic profile of neoplastic and non-neoplastic lesions was compared using chi-square test. Material and Methods: The study consisted of 279 cases of uterine cervix that were submitted for histopathological evaluation. Result: Benign lesions constituted the major bulk (75.6%) followed by malignant lesions (21.5%) and premalignant lesions (2.87%). The most common benign lesion was chronic cervicitis (33.69%) and most common malignant lesion was keratinizing squamous cell carcinoma (10.39%). Chi square test revealed significant association of malignancy with tobacco use, multiparity and marriage before 18 years. Conclusion: Screening of sexually active females along with awareness against causal factors might help in reducing cervical malignancies.

Background: Existence of smear layer in root canals caused by instrumentation is believed to prevent penetration of irrigating agents, thereby resulting in endodontic treatment. Aims and Objectives: To compare and evaluate the effectiveness of two irrigants: 17% ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) and mixture of tetracycline isomer, an acid, and a detergent (MTAD) as final agents for eliminating the smear layer. Materials and Methods: We included 50 human lower premolar teeth whose crowns were sectioned at cementoenamel junction. The sample was randomly grouped into five groups, each with 10 teeth. Group 1: 1 mL of 17% EDTA as final rinse for 1 min, Group 2: 1 mL of 17% EDTA for 30 s, Group 3: 5 mL of MTAD for 2.5 min, Group 4: 5 mL of MTAD for 5 min, and Group 5: saline. The specimens were sectioned vertically all along the long axis and fixed on an aluminum stub for gold ion sputtering. Scanning electron microscope was used to observe the specimens, and photomicrographs were taken at coronal, middle, and apical thirds of canal, and assessed by Torabinejad scoring system by two examiners, and the observations were analyzed statistically. Results: When Group 1 and Group 2 and Groups 3 and 4 were compared, we found a significant variation in removal of smear layer at cervical and middle thirds, and insignificant difference at apical third. In comparison with EDTA and saline, MTAD was more efficient significantly in middle and cervical thirds and insignificant at apical third. Conclusion: MTAD is an efficient irrigant for removing smear layer than EDTA and saline.

Energy disaggregation is the task of segregating the aggregate energy of the entire building (as logged by the smartmeter) into the energy consumed by individual appliances. This is a single channel (the only channel being the smart-meter) blind source (different electrical appliances) separation problem. The traditional way to address this is via stochastic finite state machines (e.g., factorial hidden Markov model). In recent times, dictionary learning-based approaches have shown promise in addressing the disaggregation problem. The usual technique is to learn a dictionary for every device and use the learned dictionaries as basis for blind source separation during disaggregation. Prior studies in this area are shallow learning techniques, i.e., they learn a single layer of dictionary for every device. In this paper, we propose a deep learning approach—instead of learning one level of dictionary, we learn multiple layers of dictionaries for each device. These multi-level dictionaries are used as a basis for source separation during disaggregation. Results on two benchmark datasets and one actual implementation show that our method outperforms state-of-the-art techniques.

Background: Cushing syndrome (CS) is well known to be associated with metabolic syndrome, venous thromboembolism, hypertension, left ventricular hypertrophy, and rarely dilated cardiomyopathy. The pathophysiological effects of hypercortisolism on the myocardium results in cardiomyocyte hypertrophy, myofibrillolysis, myocardial fibrosis, global longitudinal and circumferential strain. Our patient presents an example of CS in the setting of chronic heart failure with reduced ejection fraction, multiple thromboembolic events, and diabetes mellitus in a young adult. Clinical Case: A 34-year male with a past medical history of dilated cardiomyopathy with biventricular failure and left ventricle ejection fraction of 10%, pulmonary embolism, diabetes mellitus, and gout presented with shortness of breath. On physical exam he presented with symptoms of CS: moon facies, supraclavicular fat pads, dorsal fat pads, purple striae of abdominal skin, truncal obesity, ecchymosis, and skin atrophy. Labs showed elevated morning cortisol after overnight 1 mg dexamethasone suppression test (cortisol 8.6 mcg/dl, n< 5 mcg/dl), repeat morning cortisol after overnight 1 mg dexamethasone suppression test (cortisol 5.7 mcg/dl, n< 5 mcg/dl), and ACTH-concentrations Conclusion: The occurrence of CS induced heart failure results in increased mortality. There have been numerous accounts of resolution of cardiomyopathy after surgical treatment for CS secondary to adrenal adenoma. Our patient had a 10-year history of chronic dilated cardiomyopathy prior to cushingoid symptoms and confirmatory endocrinological data. The definitive treatment for CS syndrome in our patient would eventually be surgery targeting the source of hypercortisolism, however his cardiovascular risk factors would make him a poor surgical candidate. Severely reduced ejection fraction is a contraindication for generalized anesthesia needed for surgery. When surgery is contraindicated in CS medical management is recommended according to guidelines that target pituitary-directed medical treatments for Cushing’s disease and targeted therapies to treat ectopic ACTH syndrome. To our knowledge there have been few studies that demonstrate the effects of CS treatment on chronic conditions such as dilated cardiomyopathy. Studies have shown that surgical treatment for CS have reversed cardiomyopathy caused by CS but it still remains to be answered whether this same effect is achieved to some degree in chronic dilated cardiomyopathy.

Edible medicinal plants Curcuma longa, Kaempferia galanga and Zingiber officinale are considered to be suitable for pregnant mother and neonates. Their essential oils are claimed to have therapeutic effects, yet its immunomodulatory activities need to be investigated. To validate the immunomodulatory effect, cord blood monocyte cells (CBMCs) treated with different concentrations of essential oils ranging from 0 to 40 µg/ml. K. galanga oil at 40 µg/ml concentrations upregulated IFN-γ at 49.23 pg/ml, while C. longa oil downregulated the IL-10 at 10.45 pg/ml showing immunostimulant activity on CBMCs. However, Z. officinale oil showed no significant result at any concentration. K. galanga and C. longa oils also showed an increase in lymphocyte proliferation in a dose-dependent manner. The present study was aimed to evaluate the immunomodulatory potentialities of essential oils which will attract the interest of researchers and pharmaceutical industries for clinical studies and other applications in the therapy of diseases related to neonatal infections.

Introduction : Most colonoscopies are completed in the left lateral (LL) position but in cases of suboptimal caecal preparation, changing the patient’s position to supine (S) and, if needed, to right lateral (RL) improves caecal intubation rate, mucosal visibility, and adenoma detection. Aim : To determine if position change during colonoscopy facilitates optimal visualisation of the caecum. Material and methods : A total of 359 patients were grouped into three categories based on the initial caecal intubation position. After caecal intubation, caecal visibility was scored on a four-point scale depending on the number of imaginary quadrants of the caecum completely visualized – Arya Caecal Prep Score. A score of 1 or 2 was unsatisfactory, while 3 or 4 was considered satisfactory. In patients with unsatisfactory score, position was changed from LL to S and then RL and visibility was scored again. Results : The initial caecal intubation in the LL position was achieved in 66.8% of patients, S in 28.5%, and RL in 4.8% of patients. 84.5% (300/355) of patients had an acceptable visualisation score at the initial caecal intubation position. Of the 55 patients with unsatisfactory caecum visualisation scores in the initial intubation position, 30 (8.5%) had satisfactory scores after the first position change (95% CI: 5.77–11.84). Twenty-five (7.04%) subjects required two position changes (95% CI: 4.61–10.22%). An additional 9.3% (11/118) of adenomas were detected in caecum and ascending colon following position change. Conclusions : Changing patient position improves caecal intubation rate, mucosal visibility, and adenoma detection.

NO donor drugs showed a significant therapeutic effect in the treatment of many diseases, such as arteriopathies, various acute and chronic inflammatory conditions, and several degenerative diseases. NO-releasing anti-inflammatory drugs are the prototypes of a novel class of compounds, combining the pharmacological activities of anti-inflammatory and anti-nociceptive of drugs with those of NO, thus possessing potential therapeutic applications in a great variety of diseases. In this study, we designed and predicted biological activity by targeting cyclooxygenase type 2 (COX-2) and NF-κB subunits and pharmacological profiling along with toxicity predictions of various N-aryl piperamides linked via an ester bond to a spacer that is bound to a NO-releasing moiety (-ONO2). The result of absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion and Docking studies indicated that among 51 designed molecules PA-3'K showed the best binding potential in both the substrate and inhibitory binding pocket of the COX-2 enzyme with affinity values of -9.33 and -5.12 for PDB ID 1CVU and 3LN1, respectively, thereby having the potential to be developed as a therapeutic agent. The results of cell viabilities indicated that PA-3'k possesses the best cell viability property with respect to its dose (17.33 ng/ml), with 67.76% and 67.93% viable cells for CHME3 and SVG cell lines, respectively.

How to cite this article Garg R, Malhotra J, Singh S, Singh R, Kokila BT, Agrawal P. Relationship between Vitamin D and Insulin Resistance in Polycystic Ovary Syndrome Women. J South Asian Feder Obst Gynae 2017;9(3):211-215.

The concept of Multi-Scale Transform (MST) based image de-noising methods is incorporated in this paper. The shortcomings of Fourier transform based methods have been improved using multi-scale transform, which help in providing the local information of non-stationary image at different scales which is indispensable for de-noising. Multi-scale transform based image de-noising methods comprises of Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT), and Stationary Wavelet Transform (SWT). Both DWT and SWT techniques are incorporated for the de-noising of standard images. Further, the performance comparison has been noted by using well defined metrics, such as, Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) and Computation Time (CT). The result shows that SWT technique gives better performance as compared to DWT based de-noising technique in terms of both analytical and visual evaluation.

Saliva is known to be protective for esophageal mucosa. Increased chewing strokes result in a quantitative and qualitative enhancement of saliva. Reduction in the amount of saliva produced results in an increased incidence of gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), which can be objectively measured by the DeMeester score. The impact of increased chewing strokes on the DeMeester score remains largely unknown, thus this study aimed to find out their impact on the value of the DeMeester score and its individual components.The effect of increased chewing strokes on the DeMeester score was investigated in 12 subjects (5 male and 7 female) who were diagnosed with GERD. All subjects underwent a 48-hour pH monitoring using the Bravo® pH capsule. All the patients chewed their food 20 times more on Day 2 as compared to Day 1. The data were analyzed for change in the DeMeester score and its individual components in 2 days.In patients with GERD (DeMeester score > 14.72 on Day 1), the number of long refluxes (>5 minutes) on Day 2 (mean = 3.2, SD = 2.3) was significantly lower than on Day 1 (mean = 6.4, SD = 2.7); Z = -2.032, p = 0.04. Though, the DeMeester score and its other individual parameters decreased on Day 2, they were not statistically significant.In patients with GERD, increased chewing strokes lead to a decrease in the number of long reflux episodes. Though there is a decrease in the DeMeester score and its other individual components, larger randomized controlled studies are required to reach statistical significance.

Bluish discoloration of the skin and mucous membrane is known as cyanosis which is a clinical sign that occurs in many diseases. Thecauses of central cyanosis are cardiac shunts causing mixing of oxygenated and deoxygenated blood, lung diseases with ventilationperfusionmismatch, polycythemia, and methemoglobinemia. Methemoglobin is the oxidized form of hemoglobin, which doesnot bind oxygen and increases the affinity of oxygen for the partially oxidized portion of hemoglobin. Methemoglobinemia maybe congenital or acquired (usually drug induced). Congenital methemoglobinemia is a very rarely reported disease that is causedby a deficiency of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate-cytochrome b5 reductase enzyme deficiency or by an abnormalhemoglobin called hemoglobin H. Acquired methemoglobinemia is caused by drugs, namely the sulfonamide group and localanesthetics such as benzocaine and prilocaine. Here, we present the case of a 4-year-old girl who presented with complaints ofbluishness of the fingers and lips without any other associated symptoms and later on diagnosed as congenital methemoglobinemia

Caroli’s disease and Caroli’s syndrome are rare congenital disorders. Caroli’s disease is characterized by multiple sequential cystic or saccular dilatations of the large intrahepatic biliary ducts while Caroli’s syndrome has small bile duct involvement and congenital hepatic fibrosis. The incidence of Caroli’s disease is as low as 1/1,000,000 people. The average age of presentation is early adolescence. Magnetic resonance cholangiopancreatography is a most valuable investigation in diagnosis. Here, we report the case of Caroli’s Type II without renal involvement as late as 6 years of age with severe portal hypertension and hypersplenism. The child had no history of jaundice or recurrent abdominal pain in the past.

Sleep spindles are one of the unique rhythmic activities observed in sleep electroencephalogram (EEG). Detecting sleep spindles visually by sleep spindles is a difficult task as high skills and efforts are required. In this study, a methodology for detecting sleep spindles automatically has been proposed using band-pass filtering. Time domain features (energy and entropy) are used for classification. The extracted features have been used as inputs to Linear, Quadratic, and Mahalanobis classifier for spindle detection. Results show that the proposed method yields best results when using a Mahalanobis Classifier. The accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity recorded are 91.11%, 84.86%, and 89.73%, respectively. The sensitivity obtained in this study is more than most of the work done in sleep spindles detection using the same dataset.

Due to anthropogenic activities, agricultural land tends to face several abiotic stress conditions, including heat, ultraviolet, and metal. Different problems are being faced today, including crop loss, which is a serious concern worldwide in the increasing population era. To minimize these problems, plants adapt several endogenous strategies, including phytohormone action. Recent studies have shown that phytohormones, including auxin, cytokinins, gibberellin, and several groups of brassinosteroids, jasmonic acid (JA), etc., may prove to be important for plants to cope with stress conditions. Under stress conditions, plant physiology is also disturbed and their defense mechanism lowers, which leads to weak, stress-tolerant plants. Several strategies have been adopted by people to minimize the crop loss which has not been very effective till now. Phytohormones are known to regulate the plant growth and development under different stress conditions. In this regard, phytohormone engineering could be a way to minimize the loss and improve the crops which would be environment friendly. Therefore in this study we will discuss about the prevailing role of phytohormones and their signaling mechanism under abiotic stress condition which ultimately leads to increased tolerance capacity and decrease in crop productivity loss.

E-commerce is the most efficient and time-effective method to promote a product to worldwide customers. Its transaction may require submitting customer’s personal information such as username, password, credit card numbers, and financial data. Unified Modeling Language (UML) or Object Constraint Language (OCL) was one of the standardized languages for software developers with visualizing the software system in e-commerce. In e-commerce, purpose security is the primary issue meant for transferring personal data, online payment, and user details. Due to the lack of such security, a significant portion of the customers is feeling uncomfortable to send their respective information over the Internet. This study investigated completely 40 different kinds of literature which are collected from standard publications. Each research paper analyzes different ideas to secure online shopping based on the UML/OCL. In the existing papers, some of the security drawbacks are pointed out and they are overcome by various languages with different software effectively is reviewed by using new research papers.