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Objective: The primary aim of this investigation was to appraise the effectiveness of supplementary tamsulosin in augmenting the stone-free rate subsequent to extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy (ESWL) in managing renal calculi. Study Design: Employing a randomized controlled trial methodology, participants diagnosed with renal calculi were allocated to either a control group or an experimental group receiving tamsulosin. The experimental group was administered oral tamsulosin concomitantly with ESWL, whereas the control group underwent ESWL exclusively. Method: This study was conducted at Liaquat National Hospital Karachi in the duration from June, 2022 to November, 2022 over 100 patients presenting with renal calculi was enrolled and indiscriminately segregated into two equivalent groups, each containing 50 participants. Those in the tamsulosin group were prescribed oral tamsulosin for a four-week period before and after ESWL, while the control group received ESWL alone. The primary outcome metric was the stone-free rate following a three-month treatment regimen. Results: The tamsulosin group demonstrated a significantly elevated stone-free rate in comparison to the control group (80% vs 60%, p

Objective: In order to ascertain the impact of silent inflammatory prostatitis on the clinical results of individuals receiving trans urethral prostate resection owing to benign prostatic hyperplasia. Study Design: Retrospective study Place and Duration: This retrospective study was conducted at Liaquat National Hospital Karachi in the period from April, 2022 to September, 2022. Methods: Total 330 patients were presented in this study. In this study, individuals over 45 years without a history of urologic surgery who presented to a urology clinic with lower urinary tract symptoms related to benign prostatic hyperplasia were included. Pathological outcomes and clinical indicators were evaluated before and one year after surgery. Mean Standard deviation was used to present data and categorical variables were assessed by frequencies and percentages. Results: Mean age of the patients was 61.3±10.42 years. Among 330 cases, 200 (60.6%) patients were had benign prostatic hyperplasia and 130 (39.4%) cases had both prostatic inflammation (category-IV) and benign prostatic hyperplasia. Before TURP, mean prostate volume in BP patients was 55.7±8.11 m3 and in BPH/PI patients was 55.3±10.6 m3 and after TURP mean prostate volume in BP patients was 23.2±1.20 m3 and in BPH/PI group 23.4±8.17 m3. We found that people with prostate inflammation had lower Qmax values and a higher preoperative prostate score compared to those who had no signs of inflammation before to prostate transurethral resection. Conclusion: In this study, we came to the conclusion that in individuals with benign prostatic hyperplasia, prostate inflammation without symptoms might worsen lower urinary tract symptoms and the rate of urine flow. Keywords: Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH), Prostate Pathology, Prostatic Inflammation

Introduction:incidental prostate cancer findings reflect the great burden of prostatic cancer across the globe. Our 10 year retrospective analysis aimed to identify the incidence and clinic-pathologic features of prostate cancer incidentally detected in patients undergoing transurethral resection of the prostate (TURP) for benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), and to estimate the clinical value of pathologic review of all TURP specimens. Methods:after excluding patients with a known diagnosis of prostate cancer prior to TURP a total of 2,386 men (ages 25-98) were identified by pathology (TURP) specimens. Yearly incidences, Gleason score, grade, pathologic stage were recorded for all incidental prostate cancer patients. Results:a total of 256 (10.7%) patients were found to have prostate cancer. Mean Age was 68.51±9.22 years. T1a and T1b stage prostatic carcinoma was found in 9.9% and 90.1% of these patients respectively. Forty-nine (49%) patients had higher Gleason scores (>7). After subtracting average incidences between 5-year intervals, a statistical rise of almost 4% was found. Conclusion:our analysis concludes that a large proportion (10.7%) of patients had incidental prostate cancer and the incidence was increasing in recent years in Pakistan and in comparison, to Asian countries. In Pakistan there is a scarcity of updated national cancer registries. The growing incidence of high Gleason scores requires keen and prompt attention. The diverse ethnic and socioeconomic background of patients propels their propensity towards loss of follow up with already limited tertiary healthcare institutes in Pakistan. This pathologic review of TURP specimens is valuable for Asiatic and non-Asiatic populations.

Patients with various movement hampering illnesses who have been admitted to hospitals are at low risk of being injured as they are under strict observation by hospital staff and electronic systems. However, once these patients move into their homes, it becomes difficult to monitor them and warn them of potential hazards. For example, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is a group of progressive lung diseases that obstruct airflow. It affects millions of adults in the USA alone, with a world estimate of 64 million by the World Health Organization. COPD patients have breathing apparatus attached to their mouth, which is then connected to oxygen tanks via pipes. These individuals run into various problems such as walking too far away from the tank, tripping over the plastic pipes, etc. Most of these patients have limited resources to invest in expensive tracking devices, or to get personalized help at home. To solve some of these problems, one must first be able to reliably locate them and keep track of them at all times. The objective of this work is to propose a comprehensive, multi-sensor platform that can be reliably installed at homes. We explore a variety of low-cost tools and techniques available. This includes satellite tracking of cell phones attached to the patient, ultrasound and laser range finders mounted on walls, iBeacons, etc. We also discuss some of the fancier tools on the horizon, which may soon be available for household applications.

Community detection in microblogging environment has become an important tool to understand the emerging events. Most existing community detection methods only use network topology of users to identify optimal communities. These methods ignore the structural information of the posts and the semantic information of users’ interests. To overcome these challenges, this paper uses User Interest Community Detection model to analyze text streams from microblogging sites for detecting users’ interest communities. We propose HITS Latent Dirichlet Allocation model based on modified Hypertext Induced Topic Search and Latent Dirichlet Allocation to distil emerging interests and high-influence users by reducing negative impact of non-related users and its interests. Moreover, we propose HITS Label Propagation Algorithm method based on Label Propagation Algorithm and Collaborative Filtering to segregate the community interests of users more accurately and efficiently. Our experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our model on users’ interest community detection and in addressing the data sparsity problem of the posts.

The article User interest community detection on social media using collaborative filtering, written by Liang Jiang, Leilei Shi, Lu Liu, Jingjing Yao, Muhammad Ali Yousuf.

Image Processing is a subject of wide interest in STEM-related fields and its applications range from cell biology to astrophysics. Learning the concept and mathematics behind Image Processing is difficult and requires training not readily available to high school students. Various ready-made free tools (like ImageJ) are available, but younger students still find it difficult to understand what is really going on behind the scenes. Pre-built functions in languages like Octave provide a better approach, but the real image processing is still buried under layers of sophisticated functions.As such, we experimented with various Image Processing techniques in Microsoft Excel to make the process simple and understandable to younger students. The applications required to teach this (Excel, Google Sheets, etc.) are easily available to school students and many of the aspects can be taught with minimal to no programming.This method will help in three key areas needed in various fields of research:1.Developing skills in analyzing and manipulating Excel files with a deeper level of understanding.2.Converting mathematical equations and ideas into algorithms which can be implemented into Excel.3.Laying the groundwork for more advanced image processing techniques and applications in the future.We present some of our experiments and results in this area involving a high school student (first author) and an undergraduate student (second author). Image Processing techniques presented include binary operations (addition/subtraction), thresholding (converting gray images to binary), edge detection, image recognition, etc. Sample Excel/Google Sheets will be available for download from our website.

Tactile sensing is commonly carried out by humans using their fingers or hands to estimate the physical properties of an object. A large body of literature covers a range of applications of these methods in clinical situations. The objective of this work is to show the breadth of application areas explored and the achievements that have been made in the measurement of physical variables of interest to physicians using tactile force and resonance sensors. Although a broad spectrum of applications has been considered, of particular interest is the application of these methods to determine tissue properties in vivo. Progress in this direction has been made by various groups particularly with respect to piezoelectric and capacitance sensors. Also described are the findings of a preliminary study of a tactile system designed to examine the abdomen of the clinically super-obese patient.

In Linked Data, owl:sameAs predicate is used for linking different datasets. However, there are reservations about its use and its role in linking data. In linking different datasets, owl:sameAs can lead to violation of the strict identity semantics of this predicate, because it is symmetric and transitive, meaning that anyone can link their data with your dataset, from anywhere. Consequently, the growth of the sameAs network raises concerns as to how accurate different datasets will be in the future. Therefore, there is a need for more sophisticated applications and systems built upon different published datasets that verify and optimize the accuracy of the Linked Datasets. To achieve that goal, we purpose a method that provides a similarity-based numeric identification score, which reviews different constraints and measuring metrics, and verifies the accuracy of the use of sameAs in the selected datasets. The system utilizes different matching algorithms on datasets comprising of three features, URI data management, statistical data and similarity matching score. The functionalities developed in this system were compared with its closest equivalents. The results obtained from the system indicate that not all claimed subjects linked via owl: sameAs across different entities are similar.

Purpose: To characterize the performance of a novel treatment couch designed and developed for respiration‐induced real‐time tumor motion tracking and to investigate its behavior with real tumor trajectories. Method and Materials: A new treatment couch has been developed to track targets in real‐time. The system is capable of tracking targets with less than 0.5 mm accuracy. The max physical velocity for the couch is 13 cm/sec along SI and ML directions and 10 cm/sec along AP direction. It can reach a maximum acceleration of 100 cm/sec2 along all the three axes. To quantify the performance of the couch we used 25 tumor trajectories showing a peak‐to‐peak displacement in the range of 20 – 39 mm and sampled at 38 ms. These trajectories were fed to 3D time‐varying trajectories derived from patient data. The motion of the phantom measured in real‐time via a camera system was feed into the couch control system. Tracking errors were analyzed.Results: We found that the mean error in tracking for 20 tumor trajectories was 0.37 mm with a standard deviation of 0.29 mm. The system dead time was approximately 40ms. For individual trajectories, the median error varied from 0.15 mm to 0.70 mm whereas the individual mean values varied from 0.17 mm to 0.74 mm. Couch speed and acceleration were acceptable for real‐time target tracking.Conclusion: We have developed a new couch for use with a linear accelerator that can track and correct for intrafraction (including respiration‐induced) target motion. Mean and median tracking errors are less than 0.5 mm even for peak‐to‐peak displacements up to 4 cm. The couch shows a fairly stable and vibration free behavior over a wide range of tumor displacements studied. Conflict of Interest: NIH grant CA124766

Purpose: To investigate the dynamics and control of an experimental couch for respiration‐induced real‐time tumor motion tracking. Method and Materials: The couch dynamics were evaluated using time constants and latency times, and were investigated using step input responses varying from 0.5–2.0 cm in the superior‐inferior (SI), anterior‐posterior (AP) and medial‐lateral (ML) directions. The resulting couch step data was fit to a second order linear system with two equal time constants, τ and latency, θ. The feedback control system was modeled with the couch as a second‐order system and a first‐order control algorithm with a first‐order robustness filter. Control of 3D real‐time lungtumor motion data from 20 patients was evaluated by simulating the experimental couch dynamics and control algorithm in Simulink. The ability of the couch to reproduce the 3D motion of the tumor trajectories was also evaluated. Results: For step inputs of 0.5–2.0 cm, τ and θ varied from 50–270 ms and 100–210ms, respectively. No differences were observed in the dynamics by varying the load on the couch. The variation of τ and θ is a consequence of the underlying nonlinear dynamics. Simulations were performed by approximating the controller as a linear system with τ=160 ms and θ=100 ms. The net tumor displacement following control of 3D lungtumor motion ranged from 0.1–4.8 mm with an average of 1.4 mm (standard deviation = 1.2 mm). Finally the couch was made to follow patient tumor centroids trajectories. The average error was 1 mm (range = 0–4 mm) and the standard deviation was 0.8 mm. Conclusion: We have evaluated an experimental couch which has the dynamic characteristics needed for real‐time respiration‐induced motion control. Even though the couch exhibited nonlinear behavior, a linear control approximation provided good control of clinically exhibited lung‐tumor motion trajectories.