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Objective: To evaluate the influence of thyroid hormones as well as the effect of treatment choice on the quality of life of patients visiting / admitted in tertiary healthcare centers in Karachi, Sindh Pakistan. Study Design: Cross-sectional study. Setting: Rafae Aam General Hospital Federal Area Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan. Period: March 2022 to June 2022. Material & Methods: Patient’s data related to their socio-demographic and clinical details was collected by using a pre-tested written questionnaire. Brazilian version of 36-Item Short Form Health Survey questionnaire was completed by all the study participants. Results: Total 337 participants were included in the study. Mean age of the study participants was 34.03 ± 10.06. Majority of them were females while most of them belonged to the age group of 18-29 years. Most of our study participants were urban residents, married, having no any formal education and suffering from comorbidities. Based on clinical examination, 272 (80.7%) patients were found euthyroidism while 65 (19.3%) were hyperthyroid. Thus, hyperthyroid patients displayed a greater toll on the quality of life, particularly in areas of physical (59.62 vs. 82.81; p

Machine learning is explored to predict diabetic foot complication development among type-2 diabetes mellitus patients.

Enhanced high repetition rate coherent extreme ultraviolet (XUV) harmonics represent efficient probe of electron dynamics in atoms, molecules and solids. In this work, we used orthogonally-polarized two-color laser field to generate strong even and odd high order harmonics from molecular gas targets. The dynamics of odd and even harmonics from O2, and N2 gases were investigated by employing single- and two-color laser fields using the fundamental radiation and second harmonic of 1030 nm, 37 fs, 50 kHz pulses. The relative efficiencies of harmonics were analyzed as a function of the thickness of the barium borate crystal used for second harmonic generation. Defocusing-assisted phase matching conditions were achieved in N2 gas for different groups of XUV harmonics.

We—Waheed Ahmad, Andleeb Farooq, Tazeen, Maham Irfan and Nawal Naveed Abbasi— have made an attempt to explain the Retrospective review of microbial ecological processes to understand environmental biotechnology. The fields of environmental biotechnology and microbial ecology are two blossoming fields that have greatly benefited from the advancements in biology, engineering, computing and materials. Although both of the fields are traditionally varied, but the future of both the disciplines are linked to one another. Both the fields, together, provide and promise so much to help society, face and eradicate an environmental problems and challenges, sustainability, human health and security. Moreover, we have also talked about the microbial ecological processes to better understand environmental biotechnology, potential applications of these processes towards our own environment and the future perspective that where this technology is accelerating and heading towards, and what more methods and processes will be witnessed in near future to successfully eradicate and degrade the pollutants and contaminants from the environment through the interaction between microbial communities and their environment for a better, secure and sustainable ecosystem.

Ultrafast laser ablation of metal surfaces is a common physical process used to generate periodic surface structures with tuneable multifunctionality for various applications in science and technology. In this work, the formation of femtosecond laser-induced periodic surface structures (LIPSSs) is investigated with 50 kHz repetition rate laser of 40 fs pulse duration and a central wavelength ( λ w = 1030 nm ) along with its second ( λ 2 w = 515 nm ) and third ( λ 3 w = 343 nm ) harmonic components. The variation in the LIPSS periodicity is demonstrated by changing the wavelength of the ablating laser pulses. LIPSS with periodicity ∼0.85 μ m at the fundamental ablating pulses, ∼0.42 μ m periodicity at the second harmonic, and ∼0.35 μ m periodicity at the third harmonic were observed. The third harmonic radiation was generated in an air-filament with minimal temporal delay with respect to the fundamental driving pulses to structure Nickel surfaces at ambient conditions. The approach demonstrates the potential for generating very fine LIPSS on materials’ surfaces using the efficient high-order harmonics of an infrared fundamental laser beam.

Application of high pulse repetition rate lasers opens the way for increasing the average flux of the high-order harmonics generating in the ions- and nanoparticles-containing plasmas ablated on the surfaces of various metal targets. We demonstrate the harmonic generation of 37 fs, 150 kHz, 1030 nm, 0.5 mJ pulses in different plasmas. The formation of plasma plumes on the surfaces of carbon, titanium, boron, zinc, and manganese targets was performed during laser ablation, using 250 fs pulses from the same laser. The ablation of the mixed powder of boron nanoparticles and silver microparticles was used for generation of harmonics with high yield. Harmonics up to the fortieth orders from the carbon plasma were obtained. The estimated conversion efficiencies in laser-produced plasmas were &le, 10&minus, 5. The photon flux for a single harmonic generating in carbon plasma was estimated to be 8 &times, 1013 photons/s.

High-pulse repetition rate lasers allow significant enhancement in the average power of the low-order harmonics generation in isotropic media. We report on the third (343-nm) and fifth (206-nm) harmonics generating in air and different nanoparticle-containing laser-produced plasmas by applying Yb-doped fiber laser delivering 37-fs, 100-kHz, 1030-nm, 0.5-mJ pulses. Different characteristics of these processes (power and density dependences, influence of impeding processes, role of synthesized nanoparticles, variations of the spectral modulation of driving pulses, etc.) are analyzed. We compare the formation of the plasmas on the surfaces of aluminum, carbon, manganese, and titanium bulk species, as well as quantum dots of metal sulfides as the media for low-order harmonics generation, using 250-fs (1030-nm) and 5-ns (1064-nm) heating pulses at different delays between the heating and driving pulses. Average power of about 20 mW was estimated for the third harmonic emission from metal plasmas, with 3 × 1016 UV photons (343 nm) emitted per second.

We present a systematic study on the control of Cooper minimum (CM) in the high-order harmonics spectra generated during the interaction of Ar gas with ultrashort near-infrared laser pulses. Tailoring the width and depth of CM in argon is demonstrated by changing the gas jet position with respect to the focal plane of focusing lens and by defocusing-assisted phase-matching. We further analyze the influence of single- and two-color laser pump schemes on the appearance of CM. The application of two orthogonally-polarized fields of fundamental radiation and its second harmonic, which is also used to generate controllable yields of odd and even harmonics, led to diminishing the CM in the harmonic spectra. Our experimental findings are supported by theoretical calculations that solve the time-dependent Schrödinger equation in the microscopic domain, and take into account the phase matching in the macroscopic domain.

We analyze the high-order harmonics generation using 1 kHz and 100 kHz lasers by ablating different rotating targets. We demonstrate the high average flux of short-wavelength radiation using the latter laser, while comparing the plasma formation conditions at different pulse repetition rates. The analysis of harmonic stability in the case of the 100 kHz experiments showed the two-fold decay of the 27th harmonic generating in silver plasma after 3.5×106 shots. The advantages of shorter pulse–induced ablation for the improvement of harmonic generation stability are demonstrated. Two-color pump of plasma, resonance enhancement of single harmonic, and quasi-phase matching studies are presented for 1 kHz laser applications. The formation of modulated multi-jet plasma on the plane and curved surfaces during ablation by 100 kHz pulses is demonstrated. In the case of the 25th harmonic of 1030 nm radiation (E=30 eV) generated during experiments in carbon plasma, at 100 kHz and 40 W average power of driving pulses, 0.4 mW of average power for single harmonic in the 40 nm spectral range was achieved.

This paper presents a neural network technique combined with an optical measurement system for the characterization of mechanical vibrations in industrial machinery. In the proposed system, the Gaussian beam of a laser source illuminates on an array of photodetectors. If either the laser source or the photodetector array is coupled with a vibrating system, then the optical powers detected by the photodetectors will vary accordingly, and are expected to reflect the magnitude and frequency of the X–Y planar vibrations of the monitored system. The time-varying optical powers are input to an artificial neural network-based vibration monitoring system which maps the power distributions to the X–Y position of the laser beam center. An experimental setup of the system is built and used for training and testing purposes. The obtained experimental results demonstrate the adequacy of combining optical techniques with neural networks to estimate the vibration frequency and magnitude. Estimated frequencies were within 1% of the actual ones, and the estimated magnitudes were within 29% of the actual magnitudes when using a chirp signal in the training phase. The magnitude estimation percentage error was further reduced below 12% when the neural network was trained with a decaying chirp signal.

The objective of this research is to present a neural network based optical vibration sensor using a quad-cell photo-detector array. The proposed system uses a He-Ne laser source whose Gaussian beam impinges on the photo-detector array. The optical power distribution from the photo-detectors is fed to vibration monitoring system which maps the power distribution to the x-y position of the laser beam center. The vibration monitoring system uses artificial neural networks for function approximation to yield the correct mapping and estimate the x-y positions of the laser beam center which are then used for vibration characterization. An experimental setup of the system is developed and then trained using neural networks. The results obtained show the effectiveness of neural networks to estimate the vibration frequency and magnitude of a vibrating system.