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Inherited thrombophilic disorders are well‐established predisposing factors for venous thromboembolism, but their role in arterial ischaemic stroke is uncertain. The exact mechanism of arterial thrombosis in thrombophilias remains elusive. Herein, we report a case of a 30-year-old woman who was admitted to our facility with sudden-onset right-sided ptosis and ophthalmoplegia. Detailed clinical features, neuroimaging and laboratory evaluation clinched the diagnosis of ischaemic stroke in midbrain due to microvascular obstruction associated with isolated protein S deficiency. She was treated with oral anticoagulant (warfarin) and physiotherapy; without any improvement of her symptoms at 2 months of follow-up. A high index of clinical suspicion is needed in any case of young ischaemic stroke in absence of common cardiac and vascular risk factors, to recognise the presence of inherited thrombophilia.

The current pavement design guidelines, for example, Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide (MEPDG), heavily rely on the resilient moduli of pavement materials. Some locally available pavement materials may not meet the design requirements and often require the application of efficient stabilizers. Therefore, the characterization of natural and treated subgrade soils using resilient modulus is important for the design of durable flexible pavements. A research study was designed and conducted to investigate the effect of polymer emulsion treatment on the resilient characteristics of sandy soil, which is used in constructing highways and airport surfaces. A commercially available polymer emulsion was used to stabilize cohesionless soil, and an attempt was made to understand the influence of polymer emulsion dosage and curing time on the strength and resilient characteristics of treated soil mixtures. Several laboratory tests were conducted on mixtures prepared with different dosages and curing times to evaluate the improvement in unconfined compressive strength and resilient moduli properties of treated sandy soil. Multiple regression analyses were conducted on resilient moduli test results using two- and three-parameter models and identified the best model exhibiting a good fit with the experimental data. A case study was demonstrated using the resilient moduli of untreated and polymer emulsion-treated soil to determine the thickness of airfield pavement. Overall, the outcome of the study is expected to assist the state and federal agencies in stabilizing and using problematic sandy soils for constructing various pavement structures.

A research study was designed and conducted to evaluate the applicability of using crystalline silica-rich material as a co-additive with calcium-based stabilisers to treat sulfate-rich expansive soils. Extensive laboratory tests were conducted on lime-treated sulfate-rich soils, with and without crystalline silica admixture, to evaluate the improvements in engineering properties, including swell strain, unconfined compressive strength and resilient moduli properties. The influence of co-additive dosage, curing period and duration of moisture exposure was studied to gain insights into the behaviour of treated soils. Supplementary mineralogical and microstructural studies including X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscope imaging and differential scanning calorimetry studies were performed on the treated soils to detect the formation of ettringite mineral and cementitious gel compounds. Test results indicated that the use of crystalline silica facilitated enhancement of both the strength before and after capillary soaking, and the resilient moduli properties, while suppressing ettringite mineral formation and associated free swell strains in the treated soils. Mineralogical and engineering studies showed the dominance of pozzolanic activity between lime and crystalline silica over ettringite formation and hence contributed to the effective stabilisation of sulfate-rich soils. Overall, the paper provides a comprehensive understanding of the role of crystalline silica admixture for mitigating deleterious sulfate heaving in lime-treated soils.

Four rice (Oryza sativa L.) starches widely differing in amylose content were subjected to acetylation, hydroxypropylation, and dual modification involving acetylation followed by hydroxypropylation. The starches showed a higher affinity to hydroxypropyl substitution. However, acetylation caused a significant alteration in the glycosidic matrices. The changes in physicochemical properties were most prominent in the dual-modified samples. Hydroxypropylated and dual-modified granules showed greater swelling power with structural retention. Degrees of acetylation were high in the amorphous regions of waxy and low amylose starches (0.04 and 0.05). Minor granular swelling was observed under SEM. Substitution partially dissociated side-chain superhelices, lowering crystallinity values by 3.12-4.58%, however retaining the native A-type XRD patterns. Glycosidic dissociation and enhanced hydrophilicity caused a significant lowering of gelatinization temperature (To, Tp, Tc), enthalpy (H), and cooking time as observed from DSC and RVA results. Low setback viscosity and low syneresis during freeze-thaw cycles indicated the decreased tendency of modified starch chains to realign. Dual modified starches could be cooked to thinner and more precise pastes, which are highly resilient to retrogradation. Significant increases in enzyme-resistant RS and SDS (up to 20% of each) were recorded. The dual modification method could suitably alter the properties of starches for food use.

Stowing is an important aspect for mine stability and surface subsidence. In general, sand is used as a standard stowing material in most of the underground coal mines in India. But now-a-days, sand is being excessively used in construction industry, whereas its replenishment is very slow. Thus, the study's significance is to identify alternate material for stowing which can replace sand. The aim of the study is to find the suitability of bottom ash as stowing material with and without addition of settling agent. Potassium aluminium sulphate [K2(SO4).Al2(SO4)3·24H2O] is used as the settling agent. Different experiments are conducted for physical and drainage characterization of bottom ash. A prototype for simulating stowing operation in the laboratory is fabricated and the efficacy of the bottom ash with and without addition of settling agent is calculated by conducting various experiments. The experiments have been carried out using different percentages (i.e. 2%, 4%, 6%, and 8%) of settling agents. Bottom ash-water slurry at 50% concentration (by weight) with addition of 4% settling agent (by weight of solid) has found to be most effective for stowing operations based on faster percolation, quick settlement and good permeability characteristics. Load-bearing capacity test of the filled solid after stowing is carried out to find the empirical equation to predict the percentage of settlement with respect to in situ stress for particular range of depths. Settlement percentage of the stowed bottom ash is found to be in the range of 10.34–12.71% for the depth of 50–90 m.

This study proposes a prototype And a possibility to converge both classical databases and fully quantum databases. This study mostly identifies the gap between this classical database and quantum database and proposes a hypothesis and prototype that can be implemented in future products. It is a way that can be used in future industrial product development on hybrid quantum computers. The existing concept used to consider oracle as a black box in this study opens up the possibility for the quantum industry to develop the QASAM module so that we can create a fully quantum database instead of using a classical database as BlackBox.As the Toffoli gate is basically an effective NAND gate it is possible to run any algorithm theoretically in quantum computers. So we will propose a logical design for memory management for the quantum database, security enhancement model, Quantum Recovery Manager & automatic storage management model, and more for the quantum database which will ensure the quantum advantages. In this study, we will also explain the Quantum Vector Database as well as the possibility of improvement in duality quantum computing. It opens up a new scope, possibilities, and research areas in a new approach for quantum databases and duality quantum computing.

This study proposes a prototypeAnd a possibility to converge both this quantum database and classical database. This study mostly identifies the gap between this classical database and quantum database and it proposes a hypothesis and prototype which can be implemented in future products. It is a way that can be used in future industrial product development on hybrid quantum computers. The existing concept used to consider oracle as a black box this study opens up the possibility for the quantum industry to develop the QASAM module so that we can develop a fully quantum database instead of using a classical database as BlackBox.As the Toffoli gate is basically an effective NAND gate it is possible to run any algorithm theoretically in quantum computers. So we will propose a logical design for memory management for the quantum database, security enhancement model, Quantum Recovery Manager & automatic storage management model and more for the quantum database which will ensure the quantum advantages.In this study, we will also explain the Quantum Vector Database as well as the possibility of improvement in duality quantum computing.It opens up a new scope, possibilities and research area in a new approach for quantum database and duality quantum computing.

This is a survey for the comparison between existing model which is used in classical database and quantum computing. Theoretically it is possible to converge both of this quantum database in classical database as we will always have Hamiltonian of the signal which are written in binary.Quantum computing holds immense amount of capabilities to solve any classical problems those are unresolved.This report mostly identifies the gap between these classical database and quantum database but it shows no result rather it proposes only the hypothesis of existing mechanism / architecture with new perspective.

Hypertension is a global public health problem. This article aimed to estimate the national prevalence of hypertension in India for both women and men. The study had also examined the demographic and socioeconomic status of hypertensive women and men.The study used the National Family Health Survey 4 from all over India. Hypertension of 661 771 women (15-49 years) and 104 357 men (15-54 years) and their demographic and socioeconomic variables were assessed. Crosstabulation, chi-square tests, and multivariate logistic regression were used.The prevalence of hypertension in women and men were 11.40% and 18.10%, respec- tively. State-wise, Sikkim had shown the maximum prevalence. Older women (45-49 years) and men (50-54 years) had the highest hypertension prevalence among all age groups. Urban people had shown proportionately more hypertension than rural people. Education, working status, and richer economic status emerged as significant risk factors. Women with lower edu- cational status and men with higher educational status were more likely to be hypertensive. Working people were more hypertensive than their non-working peers. Economically, sound men were more hypertensive than poor people. Hypertensive people accessed medical care more.There are various modifiable risk socioeconomic factors associated with hyperten- sion. Policymakers can consider the current findings for better preventive planning. The risk factors identified in the study should be considered with appropriate weightage.

This is a short research that describe a survey on multicloud that already exists and deployed by the existing big vendors and their approaches to the multiclouds. and In the simplest terms, federation is a means to enable interaction or collaboration of some sort. Federation is an overloaded term with different meanings to different stakeholders. What does it entail in this context and with regard to the cloud computing model? What is the scope of capabilities it can or must support? Of course, federation can have multiple definitions in different use cases, in different application domains, and at different levels in the system stack. In some situations, federation is used to mean identity federation. This means being able to ingest identity credentials from external identity providers. This can be used to provide single sign-on (SSO) – a very useful capability. 1. SSO allows a single authentication method to access different systems within external identity providers based on mutual trust. Here we will refer federation as federation in cloud sense and 2. we will take a deep dive into federation cloud and multi cloud. 3. At first we will have a quick look at Federation cloud high level architecture. 4. Then we will go for IaaS multi cloud ,PaaS multi cloud and task scheduling methods in multi cloud and other related topics. Key products which are considered in collaboration : 1. Oracle single sign on 2. Zimbra collaboration etc. The above diagram describes the generic federated cloud. We will look into this in upcoming slides. They are too similar to the generic one but they are more useful as they are already a part of some clouds.

Expansive soils are conventionally treated with chemical stabilizers manufactured by energy-intensive processes that significantly contribute to carbon dioxide emissions globally. Geopolymers, which are synthesized from industrial byproducts rich in aluminosilicates, are a viable alternative to conventional treatments, as they are eco-friendly and sustainable. In this study, a metakaolin-based geopolymer was synthesized, and its effects on the strength and volume-change behavior of two native expansive soils from Texas, with a plasticity index over 20 were investigated. This paper elaborates on the geopolymerization process, synthesis of the metakaolin-based geopolymer, specimen preparation, and geopolymer treatment of soils. Comprehensive material testing revealed two clays with a plasticity index over 20. They were each treated with three dosages of the metakaolin-based geopolymer and cured in 100% relative humidity for three different curing periods. The efficiency of geopolymer treatment was determined by testing the control and geopolymer-treated soils for unconfined compressive strength (UCS), one-dimensional swell, and linear shrinkage. Field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM) imaging was performed on the synthesized geopolymer, as well as on the control and geopolymer-treated soils, to detect microstructural changes caused by geopolymerization. A significant increase in UCS and reduction in swelling and shrinkage were observed for both geopolymer-treated soils, within a curing period of only 7 days. The FESEM imaging provided new insights on the structure of geopolymers and evidence of geopolymer formation in treated soils. In conclusion, the metakaolin-based geopolymer has strong potential as a lower-carbon-footprint alternative to conventional stabilizers for expansive soils.

The longevity and performance of a pavement section depend on the characteristics of the subgrade soil. A majority of the pavements in North Texas, U.S., are constructed on expansive soils. The deterioration of the pavement performance because of rutting, cracking, and differential heaving is a regular phenomenon in the regions predominantly distributed with expansive soils. The pavements, particularly those built for low-volume traffic conditions, experience distress because of the high swelling and shrinkage characteristics of the underlying problematic soils. Geosynthetics have been traditionally used to improve such poor subgrades because of their many benefits, such as ease of installation, and ample mechanical and hydraulic properties. In the last decade, a newly available wicking geotextile, with a moisture redistribution capacity, has been developed to improve the performance of pavements constructed over expansive and frozen soils. In this study, small-scale laboratory and full-scale field studies were conducted to comprehend the wicking ability of this innovative geotextile in an expansive soil environment. Full-scale test sections were constructed with reclaimed asphalt pavement aggregate and traditional crushed stone aggregates in the base layer near North Texas. Details of the construction and instrumentation procedure are discussed in this paper. A comparative study between the performance of the pavement sections subjected to traffic loads and moisture intrusion was also performed. Furthermore, the rutting life of the sections, estimated using a linear elastic model, was compared and validated using the in situ data. The observations during the initial phase indicated that the wicking geotextile has the potential to improve the long-term pavement performance.

A comprehensive investigation was designed and conducted to identify the potential causes of failure of a highway embankment slope in Texas and evaluate the effectiveness of lime treatment to rehabilitate the failed slope. Highway slopes built with high plasticity clays often experience shallow slope failures after exposure to repeated wet–dry weathering cycles. Lime stabilization generally reduces the swell–shrink potential, enhances the engineering properties of problematic clayey soils, and can potentially prevent surficial slope failures. However, exposure to wet–dry cycles can negate some of the benefits of lime treatment and therefore a study was conducted to address the use of this lime treatment to stabilize embankment slopes. Extensive laboratory tests were conducted to study the effect of weathering cycles on the degradation of hydro-mechanical properties of untreated and lime-treated soils. Rainfall-induced slope stability analyses were performed to investigate the probable causes of slope failure and evaluate the stability of lime-treated surficial slope. The optimum stabilizer dosage and treated layer thickness required for the slope rehabilitation were determined based on laboratory tests and numerical analysis results. The stability analysis results indicate that the degradation of surficial soil’s hydro-mechanical properties and the development of a perched water table during prolonged rainfall possibly caused the slope failure. The post-treatment increase in shear strength properties, reduction in moisture fluctuations recorded by embedded moisture sensors, and the presence of newly installed underlying drains are expected to prevent recurrence of surficial slope failures. Salient results from this study are covered in this paper.

The seismic response of a highly heterogeneous hydraulic fill dam was evaluated by studying the natural frequencies of the first and second modes of vibration and analyzing the crest accelerations of different two-dimensional or 2D sections of the dam when subjected to two different earthquake excitations. The existing methods for determination of the natural frequency of earthen embankment structures can only be used to analyze the structural response at small strain levels. However, during seismic events, the natural frequency of an earthen dam is significantly affected by the nonlinear material behavior exhibited by the geomaterials at high strain levels. Hence, a novel method was devised to evaluate the strain-dependent natural frequency for plane strain 2D dam sections, using a synthesized multi-sine base excitation. The degradation of first and second natural frequencies of transverse vibration for all the 2D sections followed a linear trend when plotted against the respective crest’s root mean square strain on a logarithmic scale. The slope of the degradation curve was found to depend on the constituent material properties prevalent in the individual sections. The observed variations in natural frequencies and crest accelerations of the 2D dam sections were also used to assess the suitability of using two-dimensional plane strain analyses for studying the response of a long earthen dam having variability in material properties. Results indicate that there is a considerable chance of erroneous estimation of the seismic response of such highly heterogeneous earthen dams that are conventionally analyzed using plane strain models. A 2D analysis was found to merely capture the seismic response of the individual sections of the dam as independent entities while ignoring the stiffening or weakening effect of the adjacent neighboring segments that may have different material properties.

Temsula Ao and Esther Syiem, two Indigenous poets from Ao-Naga and Khasi community of India’s Northeast, want to tell traditional stories as community Elders to orally pass on the tradition to the ...

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia. Although genetic mutations are known in rare familial form, exact cause of neurodegeneration in sporadic AD is still unknown. While ApoE ε4 and IL-6 C-174G/C patterns have been found to increase the risk of AD in Caucasians, the results are inconsistent in other ethnic groups.The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of ApoE and IL-6-174G/C polymorphisms among patients of AD in the Eastern part of India.Consecutive patients of probable AD diagnosed as per National Institute on Aging-Alzheimer's Association (NIA-AA) criteria with age, gender, and education-matched healthy controls were recruited between December 2015 and September 2018. Patients were clinically evaluated and along with controls were genotyped for ApoE and IL-6-174G/C polymorphisms by the polymerase chain reaction method.A total 115 patients and 162 controls showed a similar pattern of ApoE and IL-6-174G/C polymorphism pattern. While ε3ε3 and GG patterns were the commonest, followed by ε3ε4 and GC pattern in ApoE and IL-6 respectively, the effect of ApoE ε4 and IL-6-174 C allele on AD symptoms could not be established. However, patients with onset before 50 years were found to have significantly higher proportion of ApoE ε4 and C allele of IL-6-174 in comparison to patients with onset above 50. These young patients were also having more atypical presentation than their older counterpart.Our study revealed a novel role of both ApoE ε4 and C allele of IL-6-174 together in developing early onset AD with more atypical clinical features.

Expansive clayey soils undergo significant volumetric changes, and desiccation cracks develop due to wetting and drying cycles. The presence of desiccation cracks changes the soil's hydro-mechanical properties and allows rapid infiltration of rainwater to the underlying deeper layers. The abrupt increase in moisture content and swelling reduces the soil's peak strength to fully softened strength. Consequently, these slopes experience shallow failures that are approximately parallel to the slope surface. The purpose of this study is to assess the impact of weathering cycles by studying the failed highway embankment slope located in Denison, Texas. The experimental laboratory studies, including direct shear test, fully softened strength test, soil water characteristic curve, and soil hydraulic conductivity tests, were conducted on samples that were collected from scarp of the failed slope. A comprehensive inverse analysis was conducted using a finite element method-based software package. The analyzed results suggest that the surficial slope failure was attributed to (i) the formation of desiccation cracks, (ii) increase in soil permeability, (iii) reduction in shear strength, and (iv) the formation of the perched water table in the weathered surficial soil during intense rainfall events.

In this work, we prove a novel one-shot ‘multi-sender’ decoupling theorem generalising Dupuis' seminal single sender decoupling theorem. We start off with a multipartite quantum state, say on $A_{1}A_{2}R$ , where $A_{1}, A_{2}$ are treated as the two ‘sender’ systems and $R$ is the reference system. We apply independent Haar random unitaries in tensor product on $A_{1}$ and $A_{2}$ and then send the resulting systems through a quantum channel. We want the channel output $B$ to be almost in tensor with the untouched reference $R$ . Our main result shows that this is indeed the case if suitable entropic conditions are met. An immediate application of our main result is to obtain a one-shot simultaneous decoder for sending quantum information over a $k$ -sender entanglement unassisted quantum multiple access channel (QMAC). The rate region achieved by this decoder is the natural one-shot quantum analogue of the pentagonal classical rate region. Assuming a simultaneous smoothing conjecture, this one-shot rate region approaches the optimal rate region of Yard et al. [20] in the asymptotic iid limit. Our work is the first one to obtain a non-trivial simultaneous decoder for the QMAC with limited entanglement assistance in both one-shot and asymptotic iid settings; previous works used unlimited entanglement assistance.

Age-associated low-grade sterile inflammation, commonly referred to as inflammaging, is a recognized hallmark of aging, which contributes to many age-related diseases. While tissue-resident macrophages are innate immune cells that secrete many types of inflammatory cytokines in response to various stimuli, it is not clear whether they have a role in driving inflammaging. Here we characterized the transcriptional changes associated with physiological aging in mouse resident macrophage populations across different tissues and sexes. Although the age-related transcriptomic signatures of resident macrophages were strikingly tissue-specific, the differentially expressed genes were collectively enriched for those with important innate immune functions such as antigen presentation, cytokine production, and cell adhesion. The brain-resident microglia had the most wide-ranging age-related alterations, with compromised expression of tissue-specific genes and relatively exaggerated responses to endotoxin stimulation. Despite the tissue-specific patterns of aging transcriptomes, components of the hedgehog (Hh) signaling pathway were decreased in aged macrophages across multiple tissues. In vivo suppression of Hh signaling in young animals increased the expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines, while in vitro activation of Hh signaling in old macrophages, in turn, suppressed the expression of these inflammatory cytokines. This suggests that hedgehog signaling could be a potential intervention axis for mitigating age-associated inflammation and related diseases. Overall, our data represent a resourceful catalog of tissue-specific and sex-specific transcriptomic changes in resident macrophages of peritoneum, liver, and brain, during physiological aging.

“Gitanjali”, a Nobel Prize winning literature, is a collection of poems of one of the greatest poets of all time, Rabindranath Tagore. The literature was written by him at first in Bengali and then in English. This paper aims to correlate between the evolving behavior of the thoughts over a decade in both versions of the texts using chaos based non-linear Multifractal Detrended Cross-Correlation Analysis (MFDXA), a noble state of the art methodology. The study shows a nonlinear pattern of correlation with high degree of complexity.

The Main Central Thrust (MCT) features prominently in the Cenozoic evolution of the Himalaya, but no consensus exists on its definition and position. The MCT is best defined by a protolith ...

Automated brain tumor detection from MRI images is a very challenging job in today's modern medical imaging research. MRI is used to take image of soft tissues of human body. It is very helpful for analyzing human organs without surgical intervention. For automatic detection of tumor, segmentation of brain image is required. Segmentation partitions the image into distinct regions based on various parameters. It is the most important and challenging area of computer aided clinical diagnostic tools. Although Conventional segmentation approaches are computationally efficient, but have low quality of edge and feature detection. Here, we propose an algorithm on frame theoretic methods and the discrete wavelet transform and apply it to brain MRIs. Significant gains in performance are observed over conventional segmentation algorithms.

A method is proposed to estimate the degradation of the first natural frequency of vibration of earthen dams with increase in strain levels induced due to seismic events. A synthesised wave, referred to as the ‘sum of sines’, generated by the superposition of sinusoidal waves with frequencies ranging from 0.01 Hz to 25 Hz, is scaled to different peak accelerations and used to simulate seismic excitations at the base of the dam. The natural frequency is then determined by studying the response of the structure in the frequency domain. For this study, four dams with varying complexities of geometry, constituent material properties, and known natural frequencies were at first selected from previously published literature to establish the validity of the proposed method for determining natural frequencies of the dams at small strain levels. Plane strain models of these structures were constructed and analysed, using a commercially available finite element method-based software that is capable of performing time-history analyses. Results from the analyses indicate a good agreement between the natural frequencies predicted using the proposed method and the frequency values reported in the literature for the corresponding structures at small strain levels. The method was later used to determine the strain-dependent natural frequency of a hydraulic-fill dam in North Texas. Twenty-one different earthquake conditions, with different peak ground accelerations, frequency contents, and mean periods, were used to thoroughly validate the applicability of the developed methodology. Numerical analyses indicate that the strain-dependent variation of the first natural frequency follows a similar trend as that obtained using the ‘sum of sines’ excitation when the dam is subjected to widely different earthquake conditions.

Cardiovascular responses to changes in posture have been the focus of numerous investigations in the past. Analysis of ECG and arterial blood pressure (ABP) data for different postures, obtained from ‘Physionet’ was done from a new perspective of analyzing nonlinear time series having multifractal features. Multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis (MFDFA) and also the cross-correlation between ECG and BP with another technique Multifractal detrended cross-correlation analysis (MFDXA) reveals ECG and ABP time series of different subjects to be multifractal in nature with different degree of complexity. Different degree of auto and cross-correlation for both ECG and ABP signals is also observed for all subjects. Further significant information obtained from the cross-correlation parameters obtained from MFDXA analysis is very important and relevant particularly for understanding the dynamics of orthostatic stress.