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As the wealth of online information is increasing tremendously, the need for question-answering systems is evident. Current search engines return ranked lists of documents to the users query, but they do not deliver the precise answer to the queries. The goal of a question-answering system is to retrieve answers to questions rather than full documents or best-matching passages, as most information retrieval systems currently do. Patients/Medical students have many queries related to the medical terms, diseases, and its symptoms. They are inquisitive to find these answers using search engines. But due to keyword search used by search engines it becomes quite difficult for them to find the correct answers for the search item. This paper proposes the architecture of question-answering system for medical domain and discusses the rule-based question processing and answers retrieval. Rule formation for retrieval of Answers has also been discussed in the paper.

Hypoxia is a condition of low pO2, which creates a unique microenvironment affecting cell phenotype and subsequent immune response generation. Little is known about the impact of hypoxia on the phenotypic expression of NK cell, TREM-1, TLR-4 and inflammatory chemokines. In the present study we have determined the frequency of peripheral blood populations of CD16/CD56 (NK Cells) expressing cells, presence of activation marker CD354 (TREM-1), Toll like receptor (CD 284) on the cell surface and chemokines IL-8 and RANTES in the cellular supernatant of normoxia and hypoxia exposed cells by flow cytometry. GRP-78 expression was determined by reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction. The blood was collected from healthy individuals and exposed to normoxic and hypoxic (0.5 %) environment for 24 h. The percentage of NK cells (CD 16/56) was marginally up regulated while TLR-4 expression was diminished in hypoxia exposed cells as compare to the normoxic cells. TREM-1 expression was significantly up-regulated (p

The launch of a new drug into the market requires a unique and complex process initiating from development (R&D) to its commercialization (marketing authorization and selling of these products). Due to increased burden by regulatory authorities, the medical affairs evolved as separate medical organization to bifurcate medical and commercial functions. It is closely associated with development but works mainly on post-approval activities by providing both the scientific and clinical expertise. The core functional areas of medical affairs (MA) include: medical communications/publications, medical science liaisons (MSLs) and medical information. In the recent years ethical and evidence-based medical communications has attained increasing importance in emerging pharmaceutical markets. A successful product launch is based on both promotional (medico-marketing) and non-promotional (medical information services, publications) material to support the product and to report clinical trials in peer-reviewed international journals. Local clinical or observational studies and medical surveys can provide sufficient information about the product. Besides, a number of medical communication like product monographs, brochures, slide kits, leave behind literature (LBL), continuous medical education (CME) slides, training modules, key opinion leader documents(promotional inputs) and conference posters, abstracts, and journal articles (research based inputs)are other ways to aid in an effective product launch. In the last 10 years medical writers in India have developed the capability to meet this challenge through their training and work experience making India hub for medical communications services. KEYWORDS: Key opinion leaders; Medical affairs; Medical communications; Medical science liaisons; Medical writing.

The objective of this review article is to discuss the potential of sodium alginate as a biopolymer in the formulation development and its allied applications. There is a growing trend in pharmaceutical in food industry to avoid the harsh condition in the preparation for administration to the body or for the storage purpose as it induce the side effects, instability or loss of therapeutic effect of the medicament. The immobilization method is a versatile functional biomaterial for viscosity enhancement, stabilizer, matrixing agent, encapsulation polymer, bio adhesive and film former in transdermal and transmucosal drug delivery. Among various tested methods of this process that make use of different enzyme-carrier interactions, immobilization by adsorption on solid carriers has appeared most common. According to these ?ndings, in this review we present a comparative analysis of the literature reports on the recent trends in the immobilization of the enzymes by adsorption. In this review article, the various aspects of pharmaceutical microemulsin where compile together and the target audience are specifically the M. Pharm and B. Pharm student so that their knowledge towards the subject concern can be enhanced and also at the same time can be motivated towards the publication.

Current Information retrieval systems like Google are based on keywords wherein the result is in the form of list of documents. The number of retrieved documents is large. The user searches these documents one by one to find the correct answer. Sometimes the correct or relevant answer to the searched keywords is difficult to find. Studies indicate that an average user seeking an answer to the question searches very few documents. Also, as the search is tedious it demotivates the user and he/she gets tired if the documents do not contain the content which they are searching for. Question-answering systems (QA Systems) stand as a new alternative for Information Retrieval Systems. This survey has been done as part of doctoral research work on “Medical QA systems”. The paper aims to survey some open and restricted domain QA systems. The surveyed QA systems though found to be useful to obtain information showed some limitations in various aspects which should resolved for the user satisfaction.

We investigate the effect of a high-k dielectric in the tunnel layer to improve the erase speed-retention trade-off. Here, the proposed stack in the tunnel layer is AlLaO3/HfAlO/SiO2. These proposed materials possess low valence band offset with high permittivity to improve both the erase speed and retention time in barrier engineered silicon-oxide-nitride-oxide-silicon (BE-SONOS). In the proposed structure HfAlO and AlLaO3 replace Si3N4 and the top SiO2 layer in a conventional oxide/nitride/oxide (ONO) tunnel stack. Due to the lower conduction band offset (CBO) and high permittivity of the proposed material in the tunnel layer, it offers better program/erase (P/E) speed and retention time. In this work the gate length is also scaled down from 220 to 55 nm to observe the effect of high-k materials while scaling, for the same equivalent oxide thickness (EOT). We found that the scaling down of the gate length has a negligible impact on the memory window of the devices. Hence, various investigated tunnel oxide stacks possess a good memory window with a charge retained up to 87.4% (at room temperature) after a period of ten years. We also examine the use of a metal gate instead of a polysilicon gate, which shows improved P/E speed and retention time.

Angiomyxoma is a rare, slow-growing myxoid neoplasm that occurs almost exclusively in the genital, perineal, and pelvic regions of adult women. It mostly occurs during the reproductive years. It has propensity for local recurrence [1–4]. Macroscopically, they are soft, partly circumscribed, polypoids; across cross section, they have a glistening, homogeneous, gelatinous appearance; and sizes range from a few cm to 20 cm. The typical characteristics are slow growth, gelatinous appearance and locally infiltrative without evidence of nuclear atypia or mitosis [4, 5]. Treatment consists of local excision with tumour-free margins; however, local recurrence is high inspite of apparently complete surgical resection [5, 6].

Abdominoscrotal hydrocele is an uncommon clinical entity and so is intestinal malrotation. We report a case of 15 year old boy who presented with lump in abdomen previously diagnosed as mesenteric cyst on ultrasound. A multislice CT scan and repeat ultrasound not only diagnosed the case as abdominoscrotal hydrocele but also detected intestinal malrotation with positive whirl sign. This is the first reported case of abdominoscrotal hydrocele with intestinal malrotation.

The Web provides an enormous amount of learning tutorials. Searching standard content is not easy for common user of traditional search engine. The user only focuses on the top results from the enormous quantity of the arrived results. So the Re-ranking problem turns into the significant responsibility for the search systems. This paper proposes a novel model of Re-ranking Agent on Hybrid search engine (Meta-search engine and Topical search engine) for helping learners searching online Learning tutorials efficiently and in the effective way. With the aim of providing users with relevant tutorials we have proposed model classified by subject topic, prepared by professional persons and preferred by learners.

Tubercular dactylitis, a term used for tuberculosis of short and tubular bones of hands and feet, rarely shows involvement of the foot. It is more commonly found in children as compared with adults. A 27-year-old male, came with history of discharging sinus over dorsum of great toe of right foot. Clinical assessment led to the suspicion of tuberculosis which was later confirmed by biopsy. This case highlights the importance relying on clinical impression and considering tuberculosis as an aetiology even at unusual sites of involvement.

Tuberculosis has always been a menace for both clinicians and radiologists due to its often non-specific and protean manifestations. Isolated tubercular involvement of sacrum is very rare. The authors present the case of a 38-year-old man with history of low-grade fever, pain and swelling in the sacral region. Skiagram revealed an osteolytic lesion of sacrum leading to the provisional diagnosis of chordoma and osteoclastoma. However, MRI was suggestive of a chronic infective condition like tuberculosis and fine needle aspiration cytology was positive for acid-fast bacilli and revealed epitheloid granulomas with caseous necrosis. Culture was positive for Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Antitubercular therapy was commenced and surgical decompression of cold abscess was done and with good clinical response. This case highlights the importance of remaining cognisant of the manifestations and the importance of considering tuberculosis as a diagnosis at unusual sites of involvement.

Abdominal pregnancy is a rare and life-threatening ectopic pregnancy, defined as an intraperitoneal implantation exclusive of tubal or ovarian implantation. Ectopic pregnancy represents about 1–2 % of all pregnancies with 95 % occurring in the fallopian tube. Abdominal pregnancies represent just 1 % of all ectopic pregnancies. The incidence of abdominal pregnancy is 1:10,000 live births, but advanced abdominal pregnancy is seen in 1:25,000 live births [1]. Its prognosis is poor, with a maternal mortality rate of 5–18 % and perinatal mortality rate of 40–90 %. Abdominal pregnancy with a live fetus at term is a rare condition. We present one such case.

This study is aimed at making a calculation about the impact of the two most commonly used solar EUV flux models -- SOLAR2000 (S2K) of \cite{Tobiska04} and EUVAC model of \cite{Richards94} -- on photoelectron fluxes, volume emission rates, ion densities and CO Cameron and CO$_2^+$ UV doublet band dayglow emissions on Mars in three solar activity conditions: minimum, moderate, and maximum. Calculated limb intensities profiles are compared with SPICAM/Mars Express and Mariner observations. Analytical yield spectrum (AYS) approach has been used to calculate photoelectron fluxes in Martian upper atmosphere. Densities of prominent ions and CO molecule in excited triplet a$^3\Pi$ state are calculated using major ion-neutral reactions. Volume emission rates of CO Cameron and CO$_2^+$ UV doublet bands have been calculated for dif{}ferent observations (Viking condition, Mariner and Mars Express SPICAM observations) on Mars. For the low solar activity condition, dayglow intensities calculated using the S2K model are $\sim$40% higher than those calculated using the EUVAC model. During high solar activity, due to the higher EUV fluxes at wavelengths below 250 \AA\ in the EUVAC model, intensities calculated using EUVAC model are slightly higher ($\sim$20%) than those calculated using S2K model. Irrespective of the solar activity condition, production of Cameron band due to photodissociative excitation of CO$_2$ is around 50% higher when S2K model is used. Altitude of peak limb brightness of CO Cameron and CO$_2^+$ UV doublet band is found to be independent of solar EUV flux models. Calculated limb intensities of CO Cameron and CO$_2^+$ UV doublet bands are on an average a factor of $\sim$2 and $\sim$1.5, respectively, higher than the SPICAM Mars Express observation, while they are consistent with the Mariner observations., Comment: 27 Pages, 12 Figures; Planetary and Space Science, 2011

A model for N2 Vegard-Kaplan (VK) band (A^3Sigma_u^+ - X^1Sigma_g^+) emissions in Martian dayglow has been developed to explain the recent observations made by the Spectroscopy for Investigation of Characteristics of the Atmosphere of Mars (SPICAM) ultraviolet spectrograph aboard Mars Express. Steady state photoelectron fluxes and volume excitation rates have been calculated using the analytical yield spectra technique. Since interstate cascading is important for triplet states of N2, the population of any given level of N2 triplet states is calculated under statistical equilibrium considering direct excitation, cascading, and quenching effects. Relative population of all vibrational levels of each triplet state is calculated in the model. Line of sight intensities and height-integrated overhead intensities have been calculated for VK, first positive (B^3Pi_g - A^3Sigma_u^+), second positive (C^3Pi_u - B^3Pi_g), and Wu-Benesch (W^3Delta_u - B^3Pi_g) bands of N2. A reduction in the N2 density by a factor of 3 in the Mars thermospheric general circulation model is required to obtain agreement between calculated limb profiles of VK (0-6) and SPICAM observation. Calculations are carried out to asses the impact of model parameters, namely, electron impact cross sections, solar EUV flux, and model atmosphere, on the emission intensities. Constraining the N2/CO2 ratio by SPICAM observations, we suggest the N2/CO2 ratios to be in the range 1.1-1.4% at 120 km, 1.8-3.2% at 140 km, and 4-7% at 170 km. During high solar activity the overhead intensity of N2 VK band emissions would be ~2.5 times higher than that during low solar activity., Comment: Journal of Geophysical Research (Planet), 2011

Malignant melanoma with its varied clinical presentations and histomorphological patterns is a perplexing problem both for the diagnosticians and clinicians. A small proportion of melanomas present with metastatic tumors with unknown primary sites and at these sites they mimic the more common primary neoplasms. We hereby report a case of malignant melanoma presenting as a submandibular lump in a 40 year old female. This lump was present for six months and was rapidly increasing in size. On cytology it was diagnosed as salivary gland neoplasm.

A model for N2 triplet states band emissions in the Venusian dayglow has been developed for low and high solar activity conditions. Steady state photoelectron fluxes and volume excitation rates for N2 triplet states have been calculated using the Analytical Yield Spectra (AYS) technique. Model calculated photoelectron flux is in good agreement with Pioneer Venus Orbiter-observed electron flux. Since inter-state cascading is important for the triplet states of N2, populations of different levels of N2 triplet states are calculated under statistical equilibrium considering direct electron impact excitation, and cascading and quenching effects. Densities of all vibrational levels of each triplet state are calculated in the model. Height-integrated overhead intensities of N2 triplet band emissions are calculated, the values for Vegard-Kaplan (A^3Sigma_u^+ - X^1Pi_g^+), First Positive (B^3Pi_g - A^3Sigma_u^+), Second Positive (C^3Pi_u - B^3Pi_g), and Wu-Benesch (W^3Delta_u - B^3Pi_g) bands of N2, are 1.9 (3.2), 3 (6), 0.4 (0.8), and 0.5 (1.1) kR, respectively, for solar minimum (maximum) conditions. The intensities of the three strong Vegard-Kaplan bands (0, 5), (0, 6), and (0, 7) are 94 (160), 120 (204), and 114 (194) R, respectively, for solar minimum (maximum) conditions. Limb profiles are calculated for VK (0, 4), (0, 5), (0, 6) and (0, 7) bands. The calculated intensities on Venus are about a factor 10 higher than those on Mars. The present study provides a motivation for a search of N2 triplet band emissions in the dayglow of Venus., Comment: Icarus, 2011

The Janus-associated Kinase-2 mutation JAK2 V617F in chronic myeloproliferative disorders (CMPDs) has been described as a frequent genetic event in majority of patients with polycythemia vera (PV), essential thrombocythemia (ET) and idiopathic myelofibrosis (IMF). Its frequency varies in different populations but there are no data from India. We therefore, looked for JAK2 V617F mutation in Indian patients with chronic myeloproliferative disorders.Mutation screening for JAK2 V617F in patients with polycythemia vera, essential thrombocythemia and idiopathic myelofibrosis was performed in 75 patients attending Haematology clinic in a tertiary care hospital in north India, by polymerase chain reaction and restriction enzyme-based assay.JAK2 V617F mutation was found in 51 of 75 cases (68%) of CMPD, 82 per cent in PV, 70 per cent in ET and 52 per cent of IMF. The presence of JAK2 V617F mutation was associated with a higher haemoglobin level (P0.05), a higher white blood cell count (P0.01) and higher age (P0.05).The JAK2 V617F mutation was detected in 86 per cent of patients with CMPD disorders. Peripheral blood mutation screening for JAK2 V617F can be incorporated into the initial evaluation of patients suspected to have CMPD.

With energetic development of the Internet, especially the web page interaction technology, online learning object repositories have become more and more realistic and popular in the past ten years. These repositories enable sharing and reuse of learning materials by different users. This information background is needed for querying services to perform accurate queries for learning object retrieval. The granularity of learning objects is one among several metadata attributes that has a crucial impact on the ability to adapt, aggregate, and arrange content suiting the needs and preferences of the learner. This paper showcases our work on redefining the Granularity level, more suited towards personalization of learning document and its automatic extraction using Natural Language Processing approach and with the help of Domain ontology.

The ability to judge the relevance of topics and related sources in information-rich environments is a key to success when scanning online learning environments. A Learner may be looking for learning materials explaining given topic or exercises on the topic. Any learning material may cover multiple topics related to multiple subject domains. This paper presents ontological approach for identifying major topics, covered in the learning material. Along with the topics, the subject and discipline to which those topics belongs to and relevance of the topic in the learning material as compared to other topics present in the same document are also discovered. Domain ontology is developed to retrieve the topics covered in the document. We present an evaluation against a manually categorized topics as well as author’s judgment of relevance of the topics discovered by our system. Evaluation results show that the technique presented by us is effective in identifying topics and subtopics covered in a single learning document. This work is part of research conducted on developing a web service for automatic semantic annotation of learning material.

A Monte Carlo model has been developed to study the degradation of

Blood donors are deferred from donating blood for several reasons, either permanently or temporarily. Losses related to disease marker rates are well established. Donor and donation losses for other reasons, however, have not been extensively quantified. This study quantified the rate of and reasons for donor deferral among Delhi donors. A retrospective study was conducted by reviewing the deferral donor records from 1 January 2007 to 31 December 2008. The percentage of deferred donors was 9% with majority of them (91.0%) being deferred for temporary reasons. Anemia was the most frequent cause for donor rejection (32.8%). Permanent deferral accounted for 9.1% with hypertension being the most common cause (29.4%) in this category.

Keyphrases play an important role in describing a document. In Learning management systems they lead to improved information retrieval. However, relatively few learning documents have keyterms assigned and therefore finding methods to automate the extraction is desirable. The main aim of this paper is to describe generation of list of keyphrases from a document using part of speech tagging and ranking them using formatting features applied on them by the author rather than relying only on statistics (such as term frequency).

One of the main applications of mobile robots is terrain coverage: visiting each location in known terrain. Terrain coverage is crucial for lawn mowing, cleaning, harvesting, search-and-rescue, intrusion detection and mine clearing. Naturally, coverage can be sped up with multiple robots. In this paper, we describe multi-robot forest coverage, a new multi-robot coverage algorithm based on an algorithm by Even et al. (2004) for finding a tree cover with trees of balanced weights. The cover time of multi-robot forest coverage is at most eight times larger than optimal, and our experiments show it to perform significantly better than existing multi-robot coverage algorithms.

Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) is characterized by splenomegaly, a high total leukocyte count, and cytomorphological features of granulocytic hyperplasia. The diagnosis is established by demonstrat...

The problem of stability and retention of conventional mandibular complete dentures is far from a solution that is universally satisfactory. However, the use of overdenture therapy preserves the sensation of proprioception, preserves the edentulous ridge, maintains the border seal and provides the patient with good speaking ability and chewing efficiency. The retention and stability of such prosthesis is enhanced greatly in bar-supported overdentures. This case report depicts the step by step procedure for the fabrication of a canine splint bar for a bar and clip-retained mandibular overdenture that opposes a conventional complete maxillary denture. The bar was fabricated from readily available castable bar system and female clips were attached by an indirect technique. The mode of retention was primarily through frictional resistance. It is a relatively simple and easy technique, overcoming the limitations of the direct technique for clip attachment.

To provide an adaptive guidance to the student through learning object repositories, a system needs to have knowledge about the learner as well as material. This paper discusses identification of metadata that describes the pedagogical aspects of a document. Learning goals and prerequisites, if stored as part of metadata, can be utilised for intelligent recommendations. Manual annotation is a time consuming and expensive process. Correct instantiation of learning object metadata requires combined educational and technical skills. This paper proposes natural language processing-based automatic concept extraction and outlines rule-based approach for separation of prerequisite concepts and learning outcomes covered in learning document. The importance of automatic extraction of prerequisite terms is strengthened after evaluation of this work, since results show that concepts missed by authors are suggested by the system. To increase precision of retrieval, subject domain ontology is used.

Tuberculosis is a major health issue in developing countries. The authors present a case of a 28-year-old male doctor, working as resident in the department of radiodiagnosis who attended orthopaedics outdoor with complaint of wrist pain over ulnar aspect. Radiograph of left wrist showed an oval shaped osteolytic lesion. Fine needle aspiration cytology was performed which produced only haemorrhage. Therefore, open biopsy was planned; yellowish coloured material was obtained which was sent for histopathological examination. Finally, Mycobacterium tuberculosis was isolated and thus the patient was immediately started with antitubercular therapy. This brief report emphasises upon the rare sites of skeletal tuberculosis which should always be kept in mind while diagnosing such lesions.

Pantoea agglomerans infections in humans are uncommon. Most common infections reported are septic arthritis or synovitis. We report the case of a 25-year-old, healthy male, who presented with indurated swelling over the posterolateral aspect of his right thigh, associated with pain for one month. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) revealed muscle edema with cystic areas in the posterior-most part of the vastus lateralis of the right thigh. The condition was clinically diagnosed as a right-sided benign tumor of the vastus lateralis muscle. However, Pantoea agglomerans was isolated on a culture of the excised muscle tissue. On the basis of the awareness of the common association of Pantoea with penetrating trauma by vegetation, the patient was asked to recollect any prior such injury. He then gave a history of a fall in the field and a plant thorn prick in the thigh four years back, when he was an agricultural worker. We emphasize the importance of Pantoea agglomerans infection of the soft tissues that can have an atypical presentation as a non-suppurative, indurated, muscle cyst in our case. Thorn injuries are usually ignored as trivial incidents, however, Pantoea infections should always be borne in mind when encountering soft tissue lesions, as antibiotic treatment is required for complete resolution of the lesion.

This study introduces a new multilevel converter topology, which can synthesise all possible additive and subtractive combinations of input DC levels in the output voltage waveform with fewer power electronic switches. An appropriate modulation scheme has also been proposed for low switching frequency operation of the proposed topology. As compared with the classic multilevel topologies, the proposed topology results in reduction of the number of switches and conduction losses. The operation and performance of the proposed multilevel converter has been ascertained through simulations and verified experimentally for single-phase nine-level multilevel inverter. Moreover, a 15-level inverter with asymmetric source configuration has been also investigated for charge balance control using the proposed modulation scheme. The same has been verified experimentally for effective balanced power delivery.

Neuropathic arthropathy of the shoulder is reported in only 5% of cases. Here, we report a rare case of neuropathic arthropathy of the shoulder, secondary to Chiari malformation Type I with associated syringomyelia, that remained undetected for four years. A 38-year-old female presented to our Department with a swelling over the right shoulder that had persisted for four years. X-ray of the joint showed destruction of the head of the right humerus, with typical blunt amputated appearance of the bone and increased joint space. Magnetic resonance imaging showed destruction and lateral dislocation of the head of the humerus. Large amount of fluid collection was seen in and around the right shoulder joint. Neuropathic osteoarthropathy can be defined as bone and joint changes that occurs secondary to loss of sensation. In our case, neuropathic shoulder joint was secondary to syringomyelia associated with Chiari I malformation.

Summarization: Robotics researchers have used auction-based coordination systems for robot teams because of their robustness and efficiency. However, there is no research into systematic methods for deriving appropriate bidding rules for given team objectives. In this paper, we propose the first such method and demonstrate it by deriving bidding rules for three possible team objectives of a multi-robot exploration task. We demonstrate experimentally that the resulting bidding rules indeed exhibit good performance for their respective team objectives and compare favorably to the optimal performance. Our research thus allows the designers of auction-based coordination systems to focus on developing appropriate team objectives, for which good bidding rules can then be derived automatically. Παρουσιάστηκε στο: 3rd International Multi-Robot Systems Workshop

Summarization: Recently, auction methods have been investigated as effective, decentralized methods for multi-robot coordination. Experimental research has shown great potential, but has not been complemented yet by theoretical analysis. In this paper we contribute a theoretical analysis of the performance of auction methods for multi-robot routing. We suggest a generic framework for auction-based multi-robot routing and analyze a variety of bidding rules for different team objectives. This is the first time that auction methods are shown to offer theoretical guarantees for such a variety of bidding rules and team objectives. Παρουσιάστηκε στο: Proceedings of Robotics: Science and Systems