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A low-cost carwash wastewater reclamation unit comprising a lamella settler and filtration unit was designed and fabricated in the laboratory. A newly designed lamella settler, Reflux Lamella Settler (RLS), consisting of two inclined sections, was incorporated for the first time in the reclamation unit with the objective of enhancing the sedimentation process. Furthermore, organoclay was employed as a component of the filtration unit to remove oil contents. The analysis of the reclaimed water demonstrated a notable reduction in the Total Suspended Solids (TSS), from 821 mg/L to 98 mg/L, in turbidity from 253 Nephelometric Turbidity units (NTU) to 2.70 NTU, and in the oil content from 26 mg/L to zero. This implies a substantial removal of the above substances of 88%, 98.9%, and 100%, respectively. Similarly, the concentration of hardness was reduced by 62.8%, from 321.6 to 120 mg/L, that of Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) by 65.3%, from 274 mg/L to 95 mg/L, that of total solids by 65%, from 1590 mg/L to 543 mg/L, and that of total dissolved solids by 47.9%, from 769 mg/L to 400 mg/L. These results indicate that the reclaimed water was suitable for car washing. Moreover, a study on the RLS demonstrated a reduction in turbidity from 253 NTU to 175 NTU, 150 NTU, 130 NTU, and 10 NTU, respectively, after 0.5, 1, 1.5, and 24 hours. The RLS is an effective method for the removal of solid particles/sludge as a primary treatment step in carwash reclamation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The classification of a pre-processed fMRI dataset using functional connectivity (FC)-based features is considered a challenging task because of the set of high-dimensional FC features and the small dataset size. To tackle this specific set of FC high-dimensional features and a small-sized dataset, we propose here a conditional Generative Adversarial Network (cGAN)-based dataset augmenter to first train the cGAN on computed connectivity features of NYU dataset and use the trained cGAN to generate synthetic connectivity features per category. After obtaining a sufficient number of connectivity features per category, a Multi-Head attention mechanism is used as a head for the classification. We name our proposed approach "ASD-GANNet", which is end-to-end and does not require hand-crafted features, as the Multi-Head attention mechanism focuses on the features that are more relevant. Moreover, we compare our results with the six available state-of-the-art techniques from the literature. Our proposed approach results using the "NYU" site as a training set for generating a cGAN-based synthetic dataset are promising. We achieve an overall 10-fold cross-validation-based accuracy of 82%, sensitivity of 82%, and specificity of 81%, outperforming available state-of-the art approaches. A sitewise comparison of our proposed approach also outperforms the available state-of-the-art, as out of the 17 sites, our proposed approach has better results in the 10 sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simulations were performed under continuous processing conditions using the 2D continuum model to describe the internal state of a multi-solid system, comprising solid particles of different sizes and densities at the same time. The feed consisted of 35 types of solid particle species with five different sizes, 1.70, 1.20, 0.85, 0.60 and 0.35 mm, and seven different densities ranging from 1400 to 2000 kg/m3. The simulations results have been used to plot the concentration profiles of solid particles along the bed height. The concentration profiles of the solid particles depicted that the fine dense particles, 0.60 mm, having density equal to 1900 kg/m3 and terminal velocity 0.058 m/s moved downwards and discharged into the underflow. However, the low-density coarse particles, 1.20 mm, having density equal to 1400 kg/m3 and terminal velocity 0.068 m/s moved upwards and conveyed to the overflow, hence, show a separation process based on the density difference. Furthermore, simulation results showed that the particle species having densities close to the value of the separation relative density exhibited higher concentrations along the system height, and the suspension within the system was mainly composed of these species.

Introduction: Congenital anomalies vary substantially in severity. Anomalies which affect an infant's life expectancy, health status, physcial or social functioning may be described as "major anomalies". In contrast, "minor anomalies" are those with little or no impact on health or short term or long term function. Prenatal screening for fetal malformations is an important component of prenatal care. Recent progress in the fields of maternal fetal medicine, radiology, and genetics has resulted in great advances in prenatal diagnosis. The use of fetal MRI can confirm the presence of lesions noted by ultrasound and may demonstrate additional anomalies. Fetal MRI has been performed since 1983, primarily to study central nervous system(CNS).Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is now being used in conjunction with ultrasound to provide additional information for prenatal diagnosis. The advantages of MRI include the lack of ionizing radiation, superior spatial and soft tissue resolution, relatively operator independent, better fetal anatomy delineation independent of fetal position and maternal obesity, use of multiple planes for reconstruction & a large field of view, making the visualization of complicated anomalies easier. Aim & objective: The present study was conducted with the aim to study the additional value of fetal MRI in assessment of fetuses with abnormal findings on ultrasound and focus on, Confirmation of inconclusive sonographic findings on MRI & detection of additional anomalies on MRI leading to a change in diagnosis, prognosis and management during pregnancy. Material and methods: Present study was conducted in the Postgraduate Department of Radiodiagnosis and Imaging, Government Medical College, Srinagar over a period of 18 months, after obtaining ethical clearance from institutional ethics committee. This cross- sectional study where pregnant patients with detected congenital fetal anomalies on ultrasonography were subjected to fetal MRI. The study included 68 patients with ultrasound documented fetal anomaly. The age of pregnancy was confirmed. It was made sure that the mother takes nothing by mouth for at least 4 h prior the scan to prevent postprandial motion and that she empties her bladder before the study. Results: The mean age of study group was 29 years with age ranging from 18-40 years. Maximum number of pregnant females with congenital fetal anomalies were in the age group of 28-32 years followed by 23-27 years. Most of the studies were done in 3rd trimester at 34-35 weeks followed by 28-29 weeks. The highest number (16%) of subjects were within the Gestational age 34-35 weeks. Ultrasonography detected 74 anomalies in 65 patients of the study group. The maximum anomalies detected included fetal brain and spine malformations followed by urogenital malformations. Among craniospinal anomalies the most commonly detected abnormality was Ventriculomegaly (17% ) and Chiari 2 malformation (10 %). MRI detected 88 anomalies in 65 patients of the study group. The maximum anomalies detected included fetal brain and spine malformations followed by urogenital malformations. Corpus callosum agenesis/dysgenesis and Chiari 2 malformations were the most commonly detected craniospinal malformations by MRI with a prevalence of 9.1 % each. MRI confirmed USG diagnosis with additional findings in 29.5% of cases, changed USG diagnosis in 20.5% of cases and changed USG diagnosis to normal in 9% of the cases resulting in an overall Change in diagnosis in 59% patients of the study group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extracting information using an automated system from unstructured medical documents related to patients discharge summaries in the health care centers is considered a big challenge. Sentiment analysis of medical records has gained significant attention worldwide to understand the behaviors of both clinicians and patients. However, Sentiment analysis of discharge summary still does not provide a clear picture of the information available in these summaries. This study proposes a machine learning-based novel sentiment analysis unsupervised techniques to classify discharge summaries using TF-IDF, Word2Vec, GloVe, FastText, and BERT as deep learning approaches with statistical methods, and clustering. Our proposed model is an unsupervised sentiment framework that provides good understanding and insights of the clinical features that are not captured in the electronic health data records. Moreover, it’s a hybrid sentiment model consisting of clustering technique and vector space models for selecting the distinctive terms. The main intensity of measured sentiment is captured using the polarity of positive and negative terms in the discharge summary. The combination of SentiWordNet platform and our approach is used to build a lexicon sentiment dataset (assignment polarity). Experiments shows that our suggested method achieves 93% accuracy and significantly outperforms other state of the art approaches based on the inspiration of sentiment analysis technique to examine the treatment quality for discharge summaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cracking of edible oils occurs at high temperature and forms valued low molecular weight chemical species. The aim of the current study was to find a catalyst which can break these heavy molecules at the lower ranges of temperatures. From the analysis prospective, the non-condensable hydrocarbons (gaseous product species) were not determined and reactions study was carried out in a batch reactor. There was no evident conversion up to a temperature of 450 °C in the absence of catalyst whereas the reaction mixture was left inside a batch reactor for a long duration of an hour. Reaction parameters, such as catalyst types (ZnO and Al2O3), amount of catalyst, reaction temperature, residence or holding time, and heating rate to reach a reaction temperature were systematically examined. Powdered form of catalyst samples (ZnO and Al2O3) were characterized by using XRD, EDX, and Nitrogen adsorption isotherms. Temperatures studied over ZnO catalyst were 400 °C, 425 °C, 450 °C, 475 °C, and 500 °C. The maximum oil conversion was 81 % at a temperature of 450 °C. We observed that the conversion increases from 400 °C to 450 °C, whereas above 450 °C it starts to decrease. However, in comparison to ZnO catalyst the reaction rate was much higher over the Al2O3, i.e. a considerable conversion occurred at lower ranges of temperatures. Thus here a different set of temperatures (330 °C, 370 °C, 390 °C, 410 °C, and 430°C) were used. When reacting for an hour at a temperature of 390 °C, and in the presence of 8 wt.% of Al2O3 (same catalyst mass was used in ZnO reacting system) the conversion reached to 71 %. Above 390 °C the conversion decreased. Over both tested metal oxide catalysts the caloric value, density, flash point, and kinematic viscosity of the liquid product species were similar to petro fuels. The XRD and EDX signature of the catalyst samples corresponds to the standard ZnO and Al2O3 patterns. Finally, when compared to ZnO the better activity over the Al2O3 (higher conversion at lower temperature) catalyst can be linked with a high external surface area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, influence of the dispersion coefficient on the internal state of a multicomponent mixture comprising 35 types of particle species with five different sizes ranging -2.0+0.25 mm and seven different densities, 1400 to 2000 kg/m3, in a reflux classifier under continuous process conditions is presented. Simulations were performed to study the effect of dispersion coefficient on the separation density, D50, separation efficiency, Ep, and solid volume fraction of the multicomponent mixture. The simulation results provided a good agreement with the published experimental results of the reflux classifier, operated at full scale in 2005, for a relatively high value of the dispersion coefficient, 0.0030 m2/s, and a relatively small value of the dispersion, 0.00030 m2/s, in the fluidization and inclined sections of the device, respectively. Moreover, different fixed values of the dispersion coefficient and a published proposed model of the dispersion coefficient were incorporated in the model to examine variations in the system and were compared with the validated simulation results. It was found that the selected values of the dispersion coefficient had not much effect on the D50 values. However, the Ep values changed significantly with changes in the dispersion coefficient values. The smaller values of the dispersion coefficient provided lower values of the Ep that did not match well with the validated simulation results. Furthermore, the variations in the total solid volume fraction within the reflux classifier for different values of the dispersion coefficient has been demonstrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, a fluidized bed separator incorporating inclined channels, the Reflux Classifier (RC), was modeled to describe the transport behavior of mono-sized solid particles using a 2D computational segregation-dispersion model. The model is a volume flux-based model comprising the dispersion and segregation fluxes. Simulations were performed to examine variations in the solid volume fraction of particle species of size 0.163 mm and density 2450 kg/m3 by altering variables such as fluidization velocity, underflow rate and water flux in the feed. The system achieved a maximum solid volume fraction of 0.50 (v/v) near the base at a fluidization velocity 0.00020 m/s, that reduced to 0.20 at the fluidization velocity 0.0060 m/s. Overall, the results showed a decrease in the average solid volume fraction from 0.37 to 0.21 for the corresponding fluidization velocities. Simulation results also successfully demonstrated the capacity of the RC in retaining the solid particles at a superficial fluidization velocity 0.020 m/s, significantly higher than the terminal settling velocity, 0.015 m/s, of the solid particles, due to the presence of an inclined channel. Similarly, with increasing the underflow rate, the average solid volume fraction decreased from 0.29 to 0.055 due to the discharge of a larger quantity of solid particles from the base. Furthermore, a higher concentration of solid particles was observed in the inclined section at lower water flux in the feed stream. Additionally, flux balance calculations were carried out at different points within the RC to ensure the accuracy of the model predictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, a careful survey was conducted at twenty-nine different car-wash stations in Peshawar city to collect wastewater samples and evaluate the usage of fresh water in those stations. Experiments were carried out on a prototype treatment unit comprising sedimentation and filtration. After treatment, the TSS reduced from 1000 to 200 mg/L, hardness 321.60 to 120 mg/L and turbidity 253 to 3.70 NTU, TDS 591 to 400 mg/L and oil contents 27 to 14 mg/L. The quality of treated water was found suitable for car washing again. Furthermore, a design and cost estimation of a commercial scale low-cost wastewater treatment unit has been provided. It was found that the installation of low-cost wastewater treatment units can save 12 m3/day offresh water in a carwash station. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To compare the efficacy of metformin in the treatment of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) with insulin and to compare the frequency of hypoglycaemia in neonates of the mothers treated with metformin and insulin. Study Design: Randomized control trial to compare the efficacy of metformin with insulin in the treatment of GDM. Place and Duration of Study: Outpatient department and labour ward of Obstetric and Gynaecology department of Benazir Bhutto Hospital Rawalpindi from August 2012 to January 2013. Patients and Method: A total of 110 pregnant ladies with GDM diagnosed after 20 weeks of gestation were included and divided into group A and group B with 55 patients in each group. Group A patients were treated with insulin and group B with metformin. Plasma fasting glucose and two hours postprandial glucose levels were determined on weekly basis for four weeks after starting the treatment to determine the efficacy of insulin and metformin. At birth plasma glucose levels of all the neonates were carried out two hourly, and more frequently depending upon the requirement, during first 24 hours in both the groups to determine neonatal hypoglycaemia. Results: Fasting plasma glucose in group A and B were calculated as 5.96 ± 0.58 and 5.76 ± 0.46 mmol/L respectively (p=0.280), while two hours post-prandial plasma glucose levels were 7.34 ± 0.48 and 7.28 ± 0.58 mmol/L respectively (p=0.650). Efficacy in group A was 78.18% and in group B was 70.91% (p=0.381) while frequency of neonatal hypoglycaemia was calculated as 61.54% in group A and 41% in group B (p=0.113). Conclusion: The efficacy of metformin in treatment of gestational diabetes mellitus is similar as with insulin and the frequency of hypoglycemia in neonates of the mother treated with metformin and insulin is also similar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To determine the frequency of asymptomatic spontaneous bacterial peritonitis in patients of liver cirrhosis with ascites. Study Design: Descriptive study. Place and Duration of Study: The study was conducted at indoor and outpatient departments of Medicine, Military Hospital, Rawalpindi, Pakistan from 29th February 2008 to 28th August 2008. Subject and Methods: One hundred and ninety five patients of liver cirrhosis with ascites were selected. To standardize the study; patients of both genders over 18 years of age, diagnosed with liver cirrhosis and ascites were included in the study after obtaining their informed consent. Patients with abdominal tenderness and fever, hepatic encephalopathy, intra-abdominal surgically treatable cause, with any co-morbid disease (hypertension and diabetes mellitus) or refusing to give consent were excluded from the study. Strict inclusion/exclusion criteria were observed to control the confounding variables. Diagnosis of spontaneous bacterial peritonitis was based on increased ascitic fluid absolute polymorphonuclear leukocyte (PMN) count (≥ 250 cells / mm³) and/or positive bacterial culture. Results: Out of 195 patients, 10 patients (5%) had neutrocytic ascites (absolute neutrophil count ≥ 250 cell/mm³). Out of these 195 patients, three patients (1.5%) were found to have positive ascitic fluid culture. Conclusion: In our study the frequency of asymptomatic spontaneous bacterial peritonitis in patients of liver cirrhosis with ascites turned out to be 5% which is low. Therefore, analysis of ascitic fluid through diagnostic paracentesis should be reserved for inpatient or outpatient with clinically apparent new onset ascities or in cirrhotic patients with ascities whose general condition deteriorates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Thrombocytopenia is often seen in the patients of malaria infected with Plasmodium vivax. We studied patients admitted in hospital having coexisting thrombocytopenia and malaria, and recorded the response to anti-malarial therapy., Methods: In this cross-sectional descriptive study, a total of 120 patients admitted in medical ward with Plasmodium vivax malaria and co-existing thrombocytopenia were studied., Results: Out of total 120 slide positive Malaria patients who had low platelet count (<150x10(9) /L), platelet count increased to ≥150x10(9) /L in 73 (60.8%) patients after five days of anti-malarial therapy while in 47 (39.2%) patients thrombocytopenia persisted. After ten days of anti-malarial therapy, platelet count in all the patients recovered to ≥ 150x10(9) L. None of the patients required platelet transfusion., Conclusion: In majority of the patients of Plasmodium vivax malaria having thrombocytopenia, platelet count returns to normal within five to ten days of start of anti-malarial treatment and nlatelet transfusion is not required.