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During COVID-19 pandemic qRT-PCR, CT scans and biochemical parameters were studied to understand the patients' physiological changes and disease progression. There is a lack of clear understanding of the correlation of lung inflammation with biochemical parameters available. Among the 1136 patients studied, C-reactive-protein (CRP) is the most critical parameter for classifying symptomatic and asymptomatic groups. Elevated CRP is corroborated with increased D-dimer, Gamma-glutamyl-transferase (GGT), and urea levels in COVID-19 patients. To overcome the limitations of manual chest CT scoring system, we segmented the lungs and detected ground-glass-opacity (GGO) in specific lobes from 2D CT images by 2D U-Net-based deep learning (DL) approach. Our method shows $\ >\!90\%$ accuracy, compared to the manual method ($\sim\!80\%$), which is subjected to the radiologist's experience. We determined a positive correlation of GGO in the right upper-middle (0.34) and lower (0.26) lobe with D-dimer. However, a modest correlation was observed with CRP, ferritin and other studied parameters. The final Dice Coefficient (or the F1 score) and Intersection-Over-Union for testing accuracy are 95.44% and 91.95%, respectively. This study can help reduce the burden and manual bias besides increasing the accuracy of GGO scoring. Further study on geographically diverse large populations may help to understand the association of the biochemical parameters and pattern of GGO in lung lobes with different SARS-CoV-2 Variants of Concern's disease pathogenesis in these populations.

Background: Citrus limon a small evergreen plant belongs to the family Rutaceae. These species are extensively cultivated throughout the world because of their multiple health benefits for humans and their applications in the pharmaceutical and food industries. Various studies were conducted using their plant parts (fruits, flowers, peels, leaves, blossoms) but the studies on peel extracts are very limited. However, the anticonvulsant activity of peels has not been studied yet. Objective: The main goal of this study is to appraise the anticonvulsant effect stimulated by the antioxidant property of hydroalcoholic extracts of Citrus limon (HAECL) peels in various animal models. Methods: The anticonvulsant and in vivo antioxidant activity of HAECL peels was observed by Maximal electric shock (MES) model, pentylenetetrazole (PTZ) induced clonic convulsion model and PTZ induced kindling test. The extract was administered to test groups at doses of 200, 400 and 600 mg/kg. orally in PTZ and MES methods. The highest dose of extract was given to the test grouped animals in case of a kindling test. After completion of the time period of kindling, the brains of all grouped animals were isolated and subjected to analyse oxidative stress parameters such as malondialdehyde (MDA), superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT) and glutathione (GSH) biochemically to investigate the antioxidant profile of the plant. Results: HAECL peels at doses of 400 and 600 mg/kg significantly (p<0.01) delayed the onset, decreased the duration of myoclonic spasm in PTZ induced seizure model and also significantly (p<0.01) decreased the duration of hind limb tonic extension (HLTE) as well as significantly (p<0.05) increased the postictal depression (PID) in MES model compared to control. In the PTZinduced kindling model, the malondialdehyde (MDA) level was elevated with a diminished level of SOD, CAT, GSH compared to the control group but pretreatment with HAECL at the highest dose reduced the MDA level and refined SOD, CAT and GSH status effectively. Conclusion: From the above investigation, it was concluded that HAECL could produce significant anticonvulsant activity and also attenuate oxidative stress-induced during a seizure.

In this paper, a differential chaos shift keying bidirectional relaying (DCSK-BDR) scheme is proposed in which two source nodes exchange their information through a relay node. By using network coding at the relay, the proposed scheme offers spectrum and energy efficiency over the conventional DCSK transmission scheme for end-to-end communication. Analytical expressions for the probability density function (PDF) of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of each hop are derived for Nakagami-mfading channel. The end-to-end average bit error rate (BER) of the system is evaluated. Throughput of the proposed schemes is also presented and compared. Numerical results are verified with the simulation results and plotted for different parameters.