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It is crucial to comprehend how fertilization and cultivation management alter the composition of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and microbial communities to regulate the biogeochemical cycling of soil nutrients and mitigate adverse impacts on soil–water quality. Based on 15 years of long-term field trials conducted in purple soil on farmland with a slope of 15° in southwestern China, the following five treatments were examined: CK (no fertilizer was applied), T1 (NPK plus organic manure and downslope cultivation), T2 (NPK and downslope cultivation), T3 (1.5-fold NPK and downslope cultivation), and T4 (NPK and contour cultivation). Soil samples were obtained from summer maize at two soil depths (0–10 and 10–20 cm) and from rhizospheric soil, and the changes in the DOC content, UV–visible (UV–Vis) absorptivity, and phospholipid fatty acids (PLFAs) were assessed. Our results revealed a significant change in the DOC content following fertilization, especially in T1, as it was 136.0%, 179.4%, and 132.2% higher, respectively, than that in CK at the 0–10 and 10–20 cm depths and rhizospheric soil. Fertilization decreased the UV–Vis absorptivity variables of DOC (i.e., SUVA254, SUVA260, SUVA400, SUVA465, SUVA665, and C:C ratio) and raised the E4:E6 ratio (fulvic acid to humic acid in DOC), regardless of T2 and T3 at the 10–20 cm depth and in the rhizospheric soil compared with those in CK, respectively. Fertilization significantly increased the total PLFA content and selected microbial groups relative to CK. Among the treatments, T1 significantly increased the total PLFA content by 50.6%, 59.0%, and 46.2%, respectively, relative to CK, at the 0–10 and 10–20 cm depths and in the rhizospheric soil. The microbial community structure in contour cultivation (T4) was significantly greater than in downslope cultivation (T2). Random forest analysis (RFA) revealed that SOC and DOC were likely the primary variables for regulating the total PLFAs in the examined soil. Partial least squares path modeling (PLS-PM) further indicated that the DOC content and the ratio of E4:E6 among DOC compositions had greater effects on the soil microbial community structure in the examined soil. These observations suggested that long-term fertilization and cultivation management are effective approaches to regulating the soil microbial community structure by altering the composition of DOC in sloping farmland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contrasting fertilization modifies soil phosphorus (P) transformation and bioavailability, which impact crop P uptake and P migration in the soil profile. A long-term (25-year) fertilizer experiment was employed to investigate crop yield, P uptake and changes in sequentially extracted P fractions in the soil profile, and their relationships on a calcareous soil derived from loess material under a winter wheat and summer maize double-cropping system. The experiment involved seven nutrient management treatments: control (CK, no nutrient input), N, NK, NP, and NPK, representing various combinations of synthetic nitrogen (N), phosphate (P), and potassium (K) applications, as well as combinations of NPK fertilizers with either crop residues (SNPK, where S refers to maize stalk or wheat straw) or manure (MNPK, where M refers to dairy manure). Wheat and maize yields were significantly higher with P input fertilizer relative to the P-omitted treatments. Long-term application of P-containing fertilizers markedly raised the contents of inorganic (Pi) and organic (Po) P fractions at 0–20 cm depth compared with the P-omitted treatments. Moreover, both Pi and Po fractions were markedly higher under MNPK than under NPK and SNPK treatments. For achieving high yield for wheat and maize, the critical contents of labile P were 54 and 63 mg kg−1, and those of moderately labile P were 48 and 49 mg kg−1, respectively, defined by the linear plateau model. In addition, the change points of labile P and moderately labile P were 99 and 70 mg kg−1, above which CaCl2-P content significantly increased. Moreover, long-term P input significantly accumulated different P fractions in the deeper soil layers up to 100 cm, with large portions of organic P being a composite of labile and moderately labile P, especially in MNPK treatment. Our results suggest that excessive P supply with organic manure resulted in massive P accumulation in the topsoil and promoted soil P fraction transformation and availability in the deep soil layers, especially in an organic P form that has often been neglected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traffic flow analysis is essential to develop smart urban mobility solutions. Although numerous tools have been proposed, they employ only a small number of parameters. To overcome this limitation, an edge computing solution is proposed based on nine traffic parameters, namely, vehicle count, direction, speed, and type, flow, peak hour factor, density, time headway, and distance headway. The proposed low-cost solution is easy to deploy and maintain. The sensor node is comprised of a Raspberry Pi 4, Pi camera, Intel Movidius Neural Compute Stick 2, Xiaomi MI Power Bank, and Zong 4G Bolt+. Pre-trained models from the OpenVINO Toolkit are employed for vehicle detection and classification, and a centroid tracking algorithm is used to estimate vehicle speed. The measured traffic parameters are transmitted to the ThingSpeak cloud platform via 4G. The proposed solution was field-tested for one week (7 h/day), with approximately 10,000 vehicles per day. The count, classification, and speed accuracies obtained were 79.8%, 93.2%, and 82.9%, respectively. The sensor node can operate for approximately 8 h with a 10,000 mAh power bank and the required data bandwidth is 1.5 MB/h. The proposed edge computing solution overcomes the limitations of existing traffic monitoring systems and can work in hostile environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Development of superior quality cotton varieties is the only way to meet the demand for the fast-growing textile sector. Fifty interspecific lines were screened to select the diverse lines for expression analysis. Comparative expression and promoter analysis were carried out to comprehend the role of fibre genes (APX1, ATP Synthase, and GhMYB 25-like) in three interspecific lines (SL-19, SL-79 and SL-369) and three Gossypium species (Gossypium hirsutum, Gossypium arboreum & Gossypium anomalum). Among the interspecific lines, the maximum expression was noted in SL-19 for all fibre genes with varying levels at different fibre developmental stages while minimum fibre genes transcripts were present in SL-3.69. Among the species, maximum expression was noted in G. hirsutum while the minimum was noted in G. anomalum. The GhMYB25-like gene was involved in fibre initiation, showing its maximum expression at initial fibre development stages (0 & 5 DPA). APX1 and ATP synthase genes were involved in fibre elongation with more expression at 10 DPA & 15 DPA. Moreover, the identification of various important promoters in APX1, ATP synthase & GhMYB25-like genes was done which makes it an important tool for engineering extra-long fibre traits leading to the development of high-quality cotton varieties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The significance of nanomaterials in biomedicines served as the inspiration for the design of this study. In this particular investigation, we carried out the biosynthesis of calcium oxide nanoparticles (CaONPs) by employing a green-chemistry strategy and making use of an extract of Ficus carica (an edible fruit) as a capping and reducing agent. There is a dire need for new antimicrobial agents due to the alarming rise in antibiotic resistance. Nanoparticles' diverse antibacterial properties suggest that they might be standard alternatives to antimicrobial drugs in the future. We describe herein the use of a Ficus carica extract as a capping and reducing agent in the phyto-mediated synthesis of CaONPs for the evaluation of their antimicrobial properties. The phyto-mediated synthesis of NPs is considered a reliable approach due to its high yield, stability, non-toxicity, cost-effectiveness and eco-friendliness. The CaONPs were physiochemically characterized by UV-visible spectroscopy, energy-dispersive X-ray (EDX), scanning-electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). The biological synthesis of the calcium oxide nanoparticles revealed a characteristic surface plasmon resonance peak (SPR) at 360 nm in UV-Vis spectroscopy, which clearly revealed the successful reduction of the Ca2+ ions to Ca0 nanoparticles. The characteristic FTIR peak seen at 767 cm−1 corresponded to Ca-O bond stretching and, thus, confirmed the biosynthesis of the CaONPs, while the scanning-electron micrographs revealed near-CaO aggregates with an average diameter of 84.87 ± 2.0 nm. The antibacterial and anti-biofilm analysis of the CaONPs showed inhibition of bacteria in the following order: P. aeruginosa (28 ± 1.0) > S. aureus (23 ± 0.3) > K. pneumoniae (18 ± 0.9) > P. vulgaris (13 ± 1.6) > E. coli (11 ± 0.5) mm. The CaONPs were shown to considerably inhibit biofilm formation, providing strong evidence for their major antibacterial activity. It is concluded that this straightforward environmentally friendly method is capable of synthesizing stable and effective CaONPs. The therapeutic value of CaONPs is indicated by their potential as a antibacterial and antibiofilm agents in future medications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, Shehu has introduced an integral transform called Shehu transform, which generalizes the two well-known integrals transforms, i.e. Laplace and Sumudu transform. In the literature, many integral transforms were used to compute the solution of integro-differential equations (IDEs). In this article, for the first time, we use Shehu transform for the computation of solution of nth-order IDEs. We present a general scheme of solution for nth-order IDEs. We give some examples with detailed solutions to show the appropriateness of the method. We present the accuracy, simplicity, and convergence of the proposed method through tables and graphs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blind image super-resolution (Blind-SR) is the process of leveraging a low-resolution (LR) image, with unknown degradation, to generate its high-resolution (HR) version. Most of the existing blind SR techniques use a degradation estimator network to explicitly estimate the blur kernel to guide the SR network with the supervision of ground truth (GT) kernels. To solve this issue, it is necessary to design an implicit estimator network that can extract discriminative blur kernel representation without relying on the supervision of ground-truth blur kernels. We design a lightweight approach for blind super-resolution (Blind-SR) that estimates the blur kernel and restores the HR image based on a deep convolutional neural network (CNN) and a deep super-resolution residual convolutional generative adversarial network. Since the blur kernel for blind image SR is unknown, following the image formation model of blind super-resolution problem, we firstly introduce a neural network-based model to estimate the blur kernel. This is achieved by (i) a Super Resolver that, from a low-resolution input, generates the corresponding SR image; and (ii) an Estimator Network generating the blur kernel from the input datum. The output of both models is used in a novel loss formulation. The proposed network is end-to-end trainable. The methodology proposed is substantiated by both quantitative and qualitative experiments. Results on benchmarks demonstrate that our computationally efficient approach (12x fewer parameters than the state-of-the-art models) performs favorably with respect to existing approaches and can be used on devices with limited computational capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) is a considerably beneficial and economically profitable fruit crop. Female date palm plants produce fruit that is rich in fiber and sugar. Date palm is propagated by two means: suckers and seed. The propagation of date palm through seeds is very necessary for germplasm conservation and breeding. The late reproductive age (4–5 years) and dioecious nature of date palm make genetic improvement and breeding difficult. Early sex determination is the only way to improve breeding by selecting experimental male and female plants at the seedling stage. The primers for Tapetum Determinant 1 (TPD1-like) were designed using Amplify software. The DNA amplification of selected date palm suckers of three genotypes (Ajwa, Amber, and Medjool) was observed through PCR. Expression profiling of selected genotypes was carried out through semi-q PCR and RT-PCR by using the cDNA of suckers and unknown seedlings. Different in silico analyses were performed for the gene and protein characterization and identification of cis-acting elements in the promoter region. The promoter was identified along with the protein's properties and functionality. The expression of TPD1-like gene was found in the leaves of three selected genotypes of male sucker and in some plants of selected unknown seedlings that are considered male plants, and no expression was observed in female suckers and unknown seedlings that are considered female plants. The findings suggested that the TPD1-like gene has the potential for sex differentiation at the seedling stage, as the TPD1-like gene is essential to the specialization of tapetal cells and plays a critical role in plant reproduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) have recently created previously unimaginable opportunities for boosting clinical and patient services, reducing costs and improving community health. Yet, a fundamental challenge that the modern healthcare management system faces is storing and securely transferring data. Therefore, this research proposes a novel Lionized remora optimization-based serpent (LRO-S) encryption method to encrypt sensitive data and reduce privacy breaches and cyber-attacks from unauthorized users and hackers. The LRO-S method is the combination of hybrid metaheuristic optimization and improved security algorithm. The fitness functions of lion and remora are combined to create a new algorithm for security key generation, which is provided to the serpent encryption algorithm. The LRO-S technique encrypts sensitive patient data before storing it in the cloud. The primary goal of this study is to improve the safety and adaptability of medical professionals' access to cloud-based patient-sensitive data more securely. The experiment's findings suggest that the secret keys generated are sufficiently random and one of a kind to provide adequate protection for the data stored in modern healthcare management systems. The proposed method minimizes the time needed to encrypt and decrypt data and improves privacy standards. This study found that the suggested technique outperformed previous techniques in terms of reducing execution time and is cost-effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Neuromyelitis optica is a relapsing–remitting disease characterized by a recurrent attack of optic neuritis and transverse myelitis; sometimes associated with acute brainstem syndrome. Systemic lupus erythematosus is an autoimmune multisystem disorder in which ocular involvement such as acute ischemic optic neuropathy is a rare manifestation. However, neuromyelitis optica can be associated with systemic lupus erythematosus. Case presentation: A 24-year-old Bangladeshi woman was admitted to the hospital with complaints of sudden, progressive, painless vision loss in both eyes, and progressive weakness in both lower limbs for 48 hours. She also gave a history of arthralgia, a photosensitive skin rash, intermittent fever, oral ulcerations, and alopecia for the last 2 months. On examination, the fundus was suggestive of bilateral acute ischemic neuropathy, and examinations of the lower limb revealed spastic paraparesis with sensory abnormality. Laboratory investigations revealed the presence of positive anti-aquaporin 4 antibody, strongly positive antinuclear antibody, and anti-ds DNA with the longitudinally extensive lesion on magnetic resonance imaging of the spinal cord. She was treated with methylprednisolone, hydroxychloroquine, and mycophenolate, and was discharged with improvement of her paraparesis. However, her vision did not improve substantially. Conclusion: The importance of this report is to shed some light on the occurrence of two devastating complications that is, bilateral acute ischemic optic neuropathy in systemic lupus erythematosus complicated by neuromyelitis optica, as well as evidence of rare presentations for systemic lupus erythematosus and treatment modalities of ischemic optic neuropathy with systemic lupus erythematosus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paediatric pneumonia is a respiratory infection that affects infants and young children under the age of 3. This disease is the leading cause of infant and child mortality in developing countries because of the weak immune system of young children. The difficulty and length of time required to identify the pathogen and causative agent are the main reasons for this high mortality rate. In addition, the identification of certain causative agents is particularly important for the treatment of paediatric pneumonia. In this study, we explored the possible mechanisms by which pathogenic Enterococcus faecalis induced pneumonia in vivo. The potential virulence factors of bacteria isolated from the intestines of paediatric pneumonia patients were determined. Taken together, the results suggested that lysophosphatidic acid (LTA) from pathogenic E. faecalis decreases the expression of platelet-activating factor receptor (PAFR), which in turn disrupts the function of intestinal tight junctions (Occ and Ccldn1), leading to the entry of LE-LTA into the bloodstream because of the disruption of the intestinal barrier. Although LTA can enter circulation, it cannot directly infiltrate the lungs, which indicates that lung inflammation in mice is not caused by the direct entry of LE-LTA into the lungs. We further found that LTA activates immune cells, such as CD8 + T cells and type 2 innate lymphocytes, in vivo. Interleukin-6 and interleukin-17 can produce large amounts of inflammatory factors and thus promote the development of pneumonia. In conclusion, our findings demonstrate that the LTA of pathogenic E. faecalis in the intestine is a virulence factor that can cause paediatric pneumonia. This study found that intestinal bacterial virulence factors can induce immune responses in the lungs and blood. These findings could provide further insight into the mechanism of infectious diseases in the lung that are caused by bacteria in the intestine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To share experience feasibility and safety of pyeloplasty as day care procedure in pediatric patients. Study Design: Prospective Quasi Experimental study. Setting: Department of Urology, Saidu Teaching Hospital, Swat. Period: 1st July 2018 to 31st March 2020. Material & Methods: Pediatric patients presented with complaints of pelviureteric junction obstruction (PUJO) were carefully selected for day care pyeloplasty. They were electively admitted on the same day and operated in the morning hours and discharged after check by the operating surgeon if they fulfill criteria for day care surgery. Results: A total of 82 patients were planned for pyeloplasty 86.16% patients selected for day care surgery and discharged within 12 hours while 13% patients were admitted for 24 hour or more. Among day care patients 4.2% were readmitted for social reasons, 2.8 % patients had fever and admitted to in patient facility for intravenous antibiotics. 1.4% patients readmitted for gross hematuria and managed conservatively, 4.2% patient were complaining of pain and adjusted pain medication on outpatient basis and 4.2% patients had telephonic contact for stent symptoms and were reassured. Conclusion: Day care pyeloplasty is safe and cost effective procedure in careful selected pediatric patients who were complaining of symptoms due to PUJO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To share experience feasibility and safety of pyeloplasty as day care procedure in pediatric patients. Study Design: Prospective Quasi Experimental study. Setting: Department of Urology, Saidu Teaching Hospital, Swat. Period: 1st July 2018 to 31st March 2020. Material & Methods: Pediatric patients presented with complaints of pelviureteric junction obstruction (PUJO) were carefully selected for day care pyeloplasty. They were electively admitted on the same day and operated in the morning hours and discharged after check by the operating surgeon if they fulfill criteria for day care surgery. Results: A total of 82 patients were planned for pyeloplasty 86.16% patients selected for day care surgery and discharged within 12 hours while 13% patients were admitted for 24 hour or more. Among day care patients 4.2% were readmitted for social reasons, 2.8 % patients had fever and admitted to in patient facility for intravenous antibiotics. 1.4% patients readmitted for gross hematuria and managed conservatively, 4.2% patient were complaining of pain and adjusted pain medication on outpatient basis and 4.2% patients had telephonic contact for stent symptoms and were reassured. Conclusion: Day care pyeloplasty is safe and cost effective procedure in careful selected pediatric patients who were complaining of symptoms due to PUJO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large component of the Health Information Systems now comprises numerous independent apps created in the past that need to be merged to provide a more uniform service. In addition to affecting the Intelligent Health Board Functionality and dependability, the quality of these additional apps may also have an impact. A critical characteristic of the SHS's management and upkeep is the SHS's reliance on the real benefits provided to it. In speaking, an HMIS (Healthcare Management Information System) is a computer-based device that benefits medical practitioners to perform their duties more efficiently by coordinating all of their data. Even though these systems are widely used by most of the world, there is a significant need to comprehend these technologies and indeed the potential they provide. Healthcare data warehouses in Saudi Arabia have evolved through time, and this research examines how key service improvements in Saudi present varied viewpoints on how premium initiative help may be attained in health as well as how this could be done. When it comes to understanding how different types of medical professionals interact with healthcare systems throughout history, researchers developed stages of the maturity model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, the advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) of autonomous vehicles (AVs) has offered substantial benefits to drivers. Improvement of passenger safety is one of the key factors for evolving AVs. An automated system provided by the ADAS in autonomous vehicles is a salient feature for passenger safety in modern vehicles. With an increasing number of electronic control units and a combination of multiple sensors, there are now sufficient computing aptitudes in the car to support ADAS deployment. An ADAS is composed of various sensors: radio detection and ranging (RADAR), cameras, ultrasonic sensors, and LiDAR. However, continual use of multiple sensors and actuators of the ADAS can lead to failure of AV sensors. Thus, prognostic health management (PHM) of ADAS is important for smooth and continuous operation of AVs. The PHM of AVs has recently been introduced and is still progressing. There is a lack of surveys available related to sensor-based PHM of AVs in the literature. Therefore, the objective of the current study was to identify sensor-based PHM, emphasizing different fault identification and isolation (FDI) techniques with challenges and gaps existing in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Edible mushrooms have now been suggested as promising sources of biological functional ingredients and are the subject of the most recent nutrition research and novel functional foods. Polysaccharides from mushrooms exhibit impressive biological effects, notably against obesity. Obesity is a chronic metabolic disorder characterized by chronic inflammation, gut dysbiosis, and hyperpermeability of the colon. Here, we prove that mushrooms Morchella esculenta polysaccharide (MEP) effects on HFD-induced obesity, colonic inflammation, and gut microbiota dysbiosis. Our findings demonstrate MEP supplementation attenuates obesity parameters and reduces inflammation in the colon via regulation of Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4), nitric oxide synthase (iNOS), cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2), and inactivation of nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB). Furthermore, MEP administration restores gut microbiota dysregulation by ameliorating Firmicutes to Bacteroidetes proportion as well as enhancing beneficial bacteria, like Lactobacillus, and inhibiting pathogenic bacteria like Enterococcus. MEP improves gut integrity by increasing tight junction proteins (TJs) and reducing endotoxin levels by controlling Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) in HFD-induced obese mice. These results demonstrated the therapeutic efficacy of MEP in attenuating HFD-induced obesity via regulating inflammatory cascades, ameliorating the gut microbiome, and modulating gut integrity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The estimated 30 million children and adults are suffering with diabetes across the world. A person with diabetes can recognize several symptoms, and it can also be tested using retina image as diabetes also affects the human eye. The doctor is usually able to detect retinal changes quickly and can help prevent vision loss. Therefore, regular eye examinations are very important. Diabetes is a chronic disease that affects various parts of the human body including the retina. It can also be considered as major cause for blindness in developed countries. This paper deals with classification of retinal image into diabetes or not with the help of deep learning algorithms and architecture. Hence, deep learning is beneficial for classification of medical images specifically such a complex image of human retina. A large number of image data are considered throughout the project on which classification is performed by using binary classifier. On applying certain deep learning algorithms, model results into the training accuracy of 96.68% and validation accuracy of 66.82%. Diabetic retinopathy can be considered as an effective and efficient method for diabetes detection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we obtain new Ostrowski type inequalities by using the extended version of Montgomery identity and Green's functions. We also give estimations of the difference between two integral means. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The gut microbiota is important in regulating host metabolism, maintaining physiology, and protecting immune homeostasis. Gut microbiota dysbiosis affects the development of the gut microenvironment, as well as the onset of various external systemic diseases and metabolic syndromes. Cyclophosphamide (CTX) is a commonly used chemotherapeutic drug that suppresses the host immune system, intestinal mucosa inflammation, and dysbiosis of the intestinal flora. Immunomodulators are necessary to enhance the immune system and prevent homeostasis disbalance and cytotoxicity caused by CTX. In this study, shrimp peptide hydrolysate (SPH) was evaluated for immunomodulation, intestinal integration, and microbiota in CTX-induced immunosuppressed mice. It was observed that SPH would significantly restore goblet cells and intestinal mucosa integrity, modulate the immune system, and increase relative expression of mRNA and tight-junction associated proteins (Occludin, Zo-1, Claudin-1, and Mucin-2). It also improved gut flora and restored the intestinal microbiota ecological balance by removing harmful microbes of various taxonomic groups. This would also increase the immune organs index, serum levels of cytokines (IFN-γ, IL1β, TNF-α, IL-6), and immunoglobin levels (IgA, IgM). The Firmicutes/Bacteroidetes proportion was decreased in CTX-induced mice. Finally, SPH would be recommended as a functional food source with a modulatory effect not only on intestinal microbiota, but also as a potential health-promoting immune function regulator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With increased penetration of the converter dominated renewables, the overall inertial response and frequency stability of the power grid has been reduced. Low inertia contributes to maximum frequency deviations with higher rate of change of frequency that undermines the reliability of the power system. In the case of type-4 grid connected wind turbines, the kinetic energy of the rotor cannot be directly used to mitigate frequency excursions in the AC grid since fully-rated converters decouple the grid from the turbine rotor. Nonetheless, by designing an adequate control system for full converters, emulated inertia of the rotor can be propagated to the grid. In this paper, we present inertia emulation control strategy based on second order differential equation analogous to the swing equation of classical synchronous machines employed in machine side converter of the permanent magnet synchronous generator wind turbines. The proposed control allows the management of virtual inertia, damping and reactance. The performance of the proposed controller is verified through time-domain simulations and eigenvalue analysis performed in MATLAB Simulink. • The proposed control emulates SMs' behaviour and renders inertia support to the grid. • Unlike typical inertia controllers, proposed scheme does not rely on derivative term. • Enables power oscillation damping without affecting the steady state of the frequency. • Offers better RoCoF mitigation, and nadir improvement over PD-based controllers. • Its features include simple control design, easily scalable, efficient, and reliable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drought is one of the major abiotic stresses that significantly reduces seed cotton yield worldwide. Therefore, Drought tolerance is a complex phenomenon that comprises a combination of morphological and physiological parameters which results in the enhancement of drought tolerance in cotton. Therefore, in the present study 150 cotton genotypes were evaluated for drought tolerance by planting at two water regimes i.e., normal water and limited water conditions. Data were recorded for morphological and physiological parameters i.e. root fresh length (FRL), shoot fresh length (FSL), lateral root numbers (LRN), root fresh weight (FRW), shoot fresh weight (FSW), shoot dry weight (DSW), weight /length ratio(W), root dry weight (DRW), plant weight (PW), the difference in shoot fresh weight and shoot dry weight (SDWR), stomatal conductance (SC), canopy temperature (CT), water potential (WP), osmotic potential (OP) and relative water contents (RWC) at the seedling stage. Principal component analysis (PCA) of seedling at normal water conditions explained PCA1 35.21% and PCA2 15.25% of the total variance. The cluster analysis of the recorded data for the morpho-physiological parameters grouped 150 genotypes into six clusters. First Cluster included 16 cotton genotypes, 2nd cluster having 44, clusters 3, 4, 5, and 6 contains 22, 52, 10, and 6 genotypes respectively. In water stress conditions PCA1 containing 18 cotton genotypes, 2nd cluster having of 32 cotton genotypes, clusters 3, 4, 5, and 6 contain 14, 35, 30, and 21 genotypes, respectively. The use of morpho-physiological seedling traits associated with drought resistance can facilitate breeding strategies to evolve cotton genotypes having tolerance against drought stress in the changing climatic conditions. Screening of available cotton genotypes for drought tolerance in controlled greenhouse conditions can shorten the duration with improvement in efficiency for screening. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To compare the efficacy of total laryngeal anesthesia and simple local anesthesia during awake fiberoptic bronchoscopy. Study Design: Quasi-experimental study. Place and Duration of Study: Department of Pulmonology, Combined Military Hospital Lahore, from Jan to Jul 2020. Methodology: A total of 70 patients, who were undergoing fiberoptic bronchoscopy were divided into two groups. Group-I patients were given topical anesthesia with 2% Lignocaine while group-II patients, in addition to topical Lignocaine, had 2% Lignocaine injected into bilateral internal laryngeal nerves for total laryngeal anesthesia. Assessment of efficacy of anesthesia was evaluated by Reasoner scale. Results: In group-I, 26 (74.28%) patients showed mild or moderate cough and gagging during stage-1. Fifteen (42.85%) patients showed moderate cough and gagging that interfered with the procedure during stage-2 and 19 (54.28%) patients showed mild cough or gagging that did not interfere with the procedure in stage-3. In group-II, 17 (48.57%) patients exhibited mild cough or gagging during stage-1. Sixteen (45.71%) exhibited mild cough or gagging that did not interfere with the procedure during stage-2 with all the patients showing either no cough or mild cough and gagging that did not interfere with the procedure during stage-3. More patients of group-II 32 (91.42%) agreed to a repeat test if required medically as compared to group-I 28 (80%). Conclusion: Patients undergoing fiberoptic bronchoscopy who underwent total laryngeal anesthesia and sedation, in addition to topical anesthesia experienced less cough and gagging than those receiving only local anesthesia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Patient perspective is an important and increasingly sought-after complement to clinical assessment. The aim of this study was to transcribe individual patients' experience of treatment in a dupilumab clinical trial through free-text responses with analysis using natural language processing (NLP) to obtain the unique perspective of patients on disease impact and unmet needs with existing treatment to inform future trial design. Patients and Methods: Patients with chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps (CRSwNP) who were enrolled in a Phase IIa randomized controlled trial comparing dupilumab with placebo (NCT01920893) were invited to complete a self-assessment of treatment (SAT) tool at the end of treatment, asking, "What is your opinion on the treatment you had during the trial? What did you like or dislike about the treatment?" Free-text responses were analyzed for the overall cohort and according to treatment assignment using natural language processing including sentiment scoring. In a mixed-methods approach, quantitative patient-reported outcome (PRO) results were utilized to complement the qualitative analysis of free-text responses. Results: Of 60 patients enrolled in the study, 43 (71.6%) completed the SAT and responses from 37 patients were analyzed (placebo, n = 16; dupilumab, n = 21). Word analyses showed that the most common words were "smell," "improve," "staff," "great," "time," and "good." Across the whole cohort, "smell" was the most common symptom-related word. The words "smell" and "experience" were more likely to occur in patients treated with dupilumab. Patients treated with dupilumab also had more positive sentiment in their SAT responses than those who received placebo. The results from this qualitative analysis were reflected in quantitative PRO results. Conclusion: "Smell" was important to patients with CRSwNP, highlighting its importance as a patient-centric efficacy outcome measure in the context of clinical trials in CRSwNP. Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT01920893. Registered 12 August 2013, https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01920893. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In-package DRAM-based Last-Level-Caches (LLCs) that cache data in small chunks (i.e., blocks) are promising for improving system performance due to their efficient main memory bandwidth utilization. However, in these high-capacity DRAM caches, managing metadata (i.e., tags) at low cost is challenging. Storing the tags in SRAM has the advantage of quick tag access but is impractical due to a large area overhead. Storing the tags in DRAM reduces the area overhead but incurs tag serialization latency for an associative LLC design, which is inevitable for achieving high cache hit rate. To address the area and latency overhead problem, we propose a block-based DRAM LLC design that decouples tag and data into two regions in DRAM. Our design stores the tags in a latency-optimized DRAM region as the tags are accessed more often than the data. In contrast, we optimize the data region for area efficiency and map spatially-adjacent cache blocks to the same DRAM row to exploit spatial locality. Our design mitigates the tag serialization latency of existing associative DRAM LLCs via selective in-DRAM tag comparison, which overlaps the latency of tag and data accesses. This efficiently enables LLC bypassing via a novel DRAM Absence Table (DAT) that not only provides fast LLC miss detection but also reduces in-package bandwidth requirements. Our evaluation using SPEC2006 benchmarks shows that our tag-data decoupled LLC improves system performance by 11.7 percent compared to a state-of-the-art direct-mapped LLC design and by 7.2 percent compared to an existing associative LLC design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present new perturbed inequalities of Ostrowskitype, for twice differentiable functions with absolutely continuous first derivative and second-order derivative in some Lp-space for 1< P < ∞. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Groundwater heavy metal pollution is a major concern all around the world. For the assessment of heavy metals and physico-chemical characteristics, groundwater samples were collected from different locations of the Karak District, Pakistan. With the help of the global information system device (GIS), groundwater samples were collected and studied from 47 locations. The present study focused on the water table (WT), water source depth (WSD), pH, electrical conductivity (EC), dissolved oxygen (DO), total dissolved solids (TDS), lead (Pb(II)), silver (Ag(I)), iron (Fe(II)) and chromium (Cr(VI)) parameters. Heavy metals were analyzed by the Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometer (AAS). The Pearson's matrix of correlation showed relationships between several parameters, such as the EC and the TDS which had close interactions between all the three different groundwater samples (collected by hand pump (HP), bore holes (BH) and tube wells (TW)). The strong correlation was detected in all the sources of water between the TDS and the EC, the regression coefficient (r) of which was 1. In the hierarchical clustering (by dendrograms) the HP samples show two clusters: Cluster 1 contains seven parameters and Cluster 2 has four parameters. The BH samples have two clusters: Cluster 1 contains three parameters and Cluster 2 has eight parameters. The TW dendrogram also shows two clusters: Cluster 1 contains six parameters while Cluster 2 has five parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we would like to state generalized results related to well-known Hermite -- Hadamard dual inequality for p--convex functions using the newly introduced notion of (s; r)--convexity (s--convex function in mixed kind) with different techniques. Hence various established and new results would be captured as special case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the paper is to introduce a new analogue of Phillips-type Bernstein operators B m , q u f u , v and B n , q v f u , v , their products P m n , q f u , v and Q n m , q f u , v , their Boolean sums S m n , q f u , v and T n m , q f u , v on triangle T h , which interpolate a given function on the edges, respectively, at the vertices of triangle using quantum analogue. Based on Peano's theorem and using modulus of continuity, the remainders of the approximation formula of corresponding operators are evaluated. Graphical representations are added to demonstrate consistency to theoretical findings. It has been shown that parameter q provides flexibility for approximation and reduces to its classical case for q = 1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to study a new generalization of Lupaş-type operators whose construction depends on a real-valued function ρ by using two sequences u m and v m of functions. We prove that the new operators provide better weighted uniform approximation over [ 0 , ∞) . In terms of weighted moduli of smoothness, we obtain degrees of approximation associated with the function ρ. Also, we prove Voronovskaya-type theorem, quantitative estimates for the local approximation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present article, we give new techniques for proving general identities of the Popoviciu type for discrete cases of sums for two dimensions using higher-order ∇-divided difference. Also, integral cases are deduced by different methods for differentiable functions of higher-order for two variables. These identities are a generalization of various previously established results. An application for the mean value theorem is also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Novel mutant camelina has become a crop of interest inspired by its short growing season, low harvesting costs and high oil composition. Despite those advantages, limited research has been done on novel mutant lines to determine applicability for biodiesel production. Jatropha is an extremely hardy, frugal and high oil yielding plant species. The major aim of the present study was not only to compare biodiesel production from jatropha and camelina but was also to test the efficacy of camelina mutant lines (M6 progenies) as superior feedstock. The biodiesel yield from camelina oil and jatropha oil was 96% and 92%, respectively. The gas chromatographic analysis using flame ionization detector (GC-FID) showed that mutant camelina oil biodiesel sample contain major amount of oleic acid (46.54 wt%) followed by linolenic acid (20.41 wt%) and linoleic acid (16.55 wt%). Jatropha biodiesel found to contain major amount of oleic acid (45.03 wt%) followed by linoleic acid (25.07 wt%) and palmitic acid (19.31 wt%). The fuel properties of produced biodiesel were found in good agreement with EN14214 and ASTM D6751 standards. The mutant camelina lines biodiesel have shown comparatively better fuel properties than jatropha. It has shown low saponification value (120.87–149.35), high iodine value (130.2–157.9) and better cetane number (48.53–59.35) compared to jatropha biodiesel which have high saponification value (177.39–198.9), low iodine value (109.7–123.1) and lesser cetane number (47.76–51.26). The results of the present student of utilizing novel mutant camelina lines for biodiesel production are quite promising and are helpful in turning out the outcomes of the previous studies suggesting that C. sativa biodiesel presents serious drawbacks for biodiesel applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Auricularia cornea, jelly mushroom, is a popular ingredient of traditional Chinese cuisine. This study aimed at evaluating the growth, yield, biological efficiency, total phenolic and flavonoid contents, the antioxidant activity, elemental composition, and molecular structure of the wild and domesticated strain Ac24 and the commercially cultivated edible mushroom A. cornea strains Ac1, Ac3 and Ac15. Based on the weight of the fresh fruiting bodies of A. cornea strains, the maximum yield was obtained from commercial strain Ac1 (237.10 g), followed by Ac3 (224.47 g), Ac15 (158 g) and Ac24 (132.37 g), while the biological efficiency range of A. cornea strains was 52.94–94.84%, with significant differences among the A. cornea strains. Our results revealed that Ac24 contained the highest phenolic content (20.10 mg GAE · g−1), while the highest flavonoid content was found in Ac1 (35.13 mg CE · g−1). The maximum mineral contents and the strains were as follows: copper (7.2 mg · kg−1) and zinc (310 mg · kg−1) in Ac1, manganese (788 mg · kg−1) in Ac3 and iron (310 mg · kg−1) in Ac24. DPPH assay found maximum antioxidant activity in Ac24 (IC50 0.233 mg TX · mL−1), FRAP (591 mg TX · g−1) in Ac15, and erythrocyte haemolysis in Ac24. SEM-EDX and FTIR analyses verified the differences among A. cornea strains. The results revealed that wild, domesticated A. cornea strain Ac24 is a promising dietary source of natural antioxidants and is of high nutritional value, compared to commercially cultivated strains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional memory hierarchy designs, primarily based on SRAM and DRAM, become increasingly unsuitable to meet the performance, energy, bandwidth, and area requirements of modern embedded and high-performance computer systems. Racetrack memory (RTM), an emerging nonvolatile memory technology, promises to meet these conflicting demands by offering simultaneously high speed, higher density, and nonvolatility. RTM provides these efficiency gains by not providing immediate access to all storage locations, but by instead storing data sequentially in the equivalent to nanoscale tapes called tracks. Before any data can be accessed, explicit shift operations must be issued that cost energy and increase access latency. The result is a fundamental change in memory performance behavior: the address distance between subsequent memory accesses now has a linear effect on memory performance. While there are first techniques to optimize programs for linear-latency memories, such as RTM, existing automatic solutions treat only scalar memory accesses. This work presents the first automatic compilation framework that optimizes static loop programs over arrays for linear-latency memories. We extend the polyhedral compilation framework Polly to generate code that maximizes accesses to the same or consecutive locations, thereby minimizing the number of shifts. Our experimental results show that the optimized code incurs up to 85% fewer shifts (average 41%), improving both performance and energy consumption by an average of 17.9% and 39.8%, respectively. Our results show that automatic techniques make it possible to effectively program linear-latency memory architectures such as RTM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Objective: Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs) can sample broad domains of knowledge efficiently and reliably. The MCQs of lower order C1(Cognitive Level1=Recall of knowledge) do not fulfill this purpose and those of higher cognitive order C2 (Cognitive Level2=Interpret) &C3(Cognitive Level3=Analyze) are better at assessing the problem solving capabilities of the student. Every good educational activity must be supported by quality examination to complete the objectives of a curriculum. The objective of the study was to evaluate MCQs presently being used in internal examinations of medical colleges in Lahore. Methods: Papers consisting of MCQs from Orthopedics other specialties were collected in June 2019 from different medical colleges of Lahore and reviewed by a senior medical teacher without blinding and without his knowing the scores the students had been awarded before. Question statement, clinical scenarios, options and other mistakes were assessed in each item on predetermined criteria. Cognitive level of the item was determined if it was asking for a recall/identify/analyze response. The results were tabulated and compared in two groups i.e. Miscellaneous and Orthopedics. Results: Most of the items(total=589) in both groups were of C1 cognitive level though Orthopedics (229) were slightly better (X2 = 49.882 P-Value = 0.000 (Statistically Significant). Miscellaneous group (360) was better in quality in making clinical scenarios (X2 = 29.952 P-Value = 0.000 (Statistically Significant) and writing a question statement without confusion. Options were better written in both groups. A good percentage of items needed to be corrected for mistakes in spellings, grammar and segregation into under graduate level. Conclusions: The cognitive level of assessment tool s MCQs is quiet low in both groups especially clinical scenario construction can be improved. Mistakes in spellings, grammar and conceptual mediocrity is common in both groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to give the refinement of Niezgoda's inequality with its applications to Ky Fan inequality and cyclic mixed symmetric means. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main intent of this paper is to innovate a new construction of modified Lupaş-Jain operators with weights of some Beta basis functions whose construction depends on σ such that σ 0 = 0 and inf x ∈ 0 , ∞ σ ′ x ≥ 1. Primarily, for the sequence of operators, the convergence is discussed for functions belong to weighted spaces. Further, to prove pointwise convergence Voronovskaya type theorem is taken into consideration. Finally, quantitative estimates for the local approximation are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using an extension of Montgomery's identity and the Green's function, we obtain new identities and related inequalities for weighted averages of n-convex functions, i.e. the sum ∑ i = 1 m ρ i h (λ i) and the integral ∫ a b ρ (λ) h (γ (λ)) d λ where h is an n-convex function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Zinc (Zn) is needed for plants growth and human's balanced diet. The non-availability or less mobilization of Zn affects crop yield and nutritional quality and when such produce is consumed, it causes malnutrition in the consumers. Biofortification of staple cereals and vegetables like tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) is one of the strategies to fight such type of hidden hunger, particularly to crumble Zn deficiency. This needs the understanding of the molecular mechanism of Zn assimilation in plants. ZIP genes have not been annotated and characterised earlier. Therefore, the genes of ZIP family were identified from genome database by homology search. After carrying out the phylogenetic analysis, the 10 diverse genes of tomato ZIP family were selected for the transcript profiling in two selected genotypes; one with the highest Zn assimilation (LA-2662) and the other with the lowest one (NTH-242) was done. The RT-PCR results showed that in genotype LA-2662, genes SLZIPL, SLZIP3 SLZIP5L and SLZIP5 were upregulated in roots and leaf tissues, while their transcript level was the lowest in genotype NTH- 242. In addition, the genes; SLZIPL, SLZIP3, LeIRT1 and LeIRT2 were upregulated under Zn deficient environment and downregulated in high Zn environment. The better performance of LA-2662 for Zn assimilation might be linked to the upregulation of SLZIPL and SLZIP3 genes. It showed that the attenuation of these candidate genes might improve the capability of tomato for the development of Zn fortified tomato genotypes. It further showed that tomato can be bred for biofortification of various nutritional elements to fight hidden hunger. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The sequence diversity of dengue virus (DENV) is one of the challenges in developing an effective vaccine against the virus. Highly conserved, serotype-specific (HCSS), immune-relevant DENV sequences are attractive candidates for vaccine design, and represent an alternative to the approach of selecting pan-DENV conserved sequences. The former aims to limit the number of possible cross-reactive epitope variants in the population, while the latter aims to limit the cross-reactivity between the serotypes to favour a serotype-specific response. Herein, we performed a large-scale systematic study to map and characterise HCSS sequences in the DENV proteome. Methods: All reported DENV protein sequence data for each serotype was retrieved from the NCBI Entrez Protein (nr) Database (txid: 12637). The downloaded sequences were then separated according to the individual serotype proteins by use of BLASTp search, and subsequently removed for duplicates and co-aligned across the serotypes. Shannon's entropy and mutual information (MI) analyses, by use of AVANA, were performed to measure the diversity within and between the serotype proteins to identify HCSS nonamers. The sequences were evaluated for the presence of promiscuous T-cell epitopes by use of NetCTLpan 1.1 and NetMHCIIpan 3.2 server for human leukocyte antigen (HLA) class I and class II supertypes, respectively. The predicted epitopes were matched to reported epitopes in the Immune Epitope Database. Results: A total of 2321 nonamers met the HCSS selection criteria of entropy < 0.25 and MI > 0.8. Concatenating these resulted in a total of 337 HCSS sequences. DENV4 had the most number of HCSS nonamers; NS5, NS3 and E proteins had among the highest, with none in the C and only one in prM. The HCSS sequences were immune-relevant; 87 HCSS sequences were both reported T-cell epitopes/ligands in human and predicted epitopes, supporting the accuracy of the predictions. A number of the HCSS clustered as immunological hotspots and exhibited putative promiscuity beyond a single HLA supertype. The HCSS sequences represented, on average, ~ 40% of the proteome length for each serotype; more than double of pan-DENV sequences (conserved across the four serotypes), and thus offer a larger choice of sequences for vaccine target selection. HCSS sequences of a given serotype showed significant amino acid difference to all the variants of the other serotypes, supporting the notion of serotype-specificity. Conclusion: This work provides a catalogue of HCSS sequences in the DENV proteome, as candidates for vaccine target selection. The methodology described herein provides a framework for similar application to other pathogens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nanofluids are suspensions of nanoparticles with small concentration spread in base fluids such as water, oil and ethylene glycol. Nanofluid boiling is an important research area which provides many chances to explore new frontiers but also poses great challenges. Over the last decade, various studies have been carried out on pool boiling of nanofluids for the enhancement of critical heat flux which is otherwise limited by the use of base fluids. Several efforts have been made in the literature on nanofluid boiling, however, data on the boiling heat transfer coefficient and the critical heat flux have been unpredictable. Current study is a review of the status of research work on effects of nanofluids on heat transfer coefficient and critical heat flux. An emphasis is put in a review form on the recent progresses in nanofluid heat transfer coefficient and critical heat flux of pool boiling. This study also focuses on advancements in nanofluids, their properties and various parameters affecting boiling critical heat flux and heat transfer coefficient. At the end correlations used by different researchers to find out the critical heat flux and heat transfer coefficient are listed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider the positivity of the sum Σi=1n ρiF(ξi), where F is a convex function of higher order, as well as analogous results involving the integral ∫aobo ρ(ξ)F(g(ξ))dξ . We use a representation of the function F via the Fink identity and the Green function that leads us to identities from which we obtain conditions for positivity of the above-mentioned sum and integral. We also obtain bounds for the integral remainders which occur in these identities, as well as corresponding mean value results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper proposes a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) based approach for the classification and prediction of various types of in-plane and through-the-thickness delamination in smart composite laminates using low-frequency structural vibration outputs. An electromechanically coupled mathematical model is developed for the healthy and delaminated smart composite laminates, and their structural vibration responses are obtained in the time domain. Short Time Fourier Transform (STFT) is employed to transform the transient responses into two-dimensional spectral frame representation. A convolutional neural network is incorporated to distinguish between the damaged and undamaged states, as well as various types of damage of the laminated composites, by automatically extracting discriminative features from the vibration-based spectrograms. The CNN showed a classification accuracy of 90.1% on one healthy and 12 delaminated cases. The study of the confusion matrix of CNN provided further insights into the physics of the problem. The predictive performance of a pre-trained CNN classifier was also evaluated on unseen cases of delamination, and physically consistent results were obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper proposes the synergetic integration of system identification and artificial intelligence for the detection and assessment of delamination damages in smart composite laminates. An electromechanically coupled mathematical model is developed for the healthy and delaminated smart composite laminates on the basis of improved layerwise theory, higher order electric potential field and finite element method. A discriminative feature space is constructed for the healthy and delaminated structures via system identification from their structural vibration responses. The discriminative features are used for the training and cross-validation of various supervised machine learning classifiers and an optimal classifier is identified. The optimal classifier is employed to make predictions on unseen test delamination cases, and its predictions are validated via a dimensionality reduction tool. The obtained results show that the proposed technique could be employed as a reliable tool for nondestructive evaluation of smart composite laminates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To identify the prevalence and predictors of metabolic syndrome using NCEP ATP III guidelines in patients with CAD who underwent angiography at Karachi Institute of Heart Disease (KIHD). Methodology: This cross-sectional study was conducted at the Department of Cardiology; Karachi Institute of Heart Disease from 1st March to 31st December 2016. Patients with confirmed diagnosis of CAD after satisfying the inclusion and exclusion criteria were recruited in this study through non-probability consecutive sampling technique. Data was collected on demographics (i.e. age, gender, and ethnicity) and co-morbidities (i.e. diabetes and hypertension). Metabolic syndrome in patients with CAD was assessed according to the 2011 NCEP ATP III guidelines. Moreover, severity of CAD in patients was also recorded as well as systolic and diastolic blood pressure and biochemical parameters. The data was analysed using SPSS version 21. Objective: To identify the prevalence and predictors of metabolic syndrome using NCEP ATP III guidelines in patients with CAD who underwent angiography at Karachi Institute of Heart Disease (KIHD). Methodology: This cross-sectional study was conducted at the Department of Cardiology; Karachi Institute of Heart Disease from 1st March to 31st December 2016. Patients with confirmed diagnosis of CAD after satisfying the inclusion and exclusion criteria were recruited in this study through non-probability consecutive sampling technique. Data was collected on demographics (i.e. age, gender, and ethnicity) and co-morbidities (i.e. diabetes and hypertension). Metabolic syndrome in patients with CAD was assessed according to the 2011 NCEP ATP III guidelines. Moreover, severity of CAD in patients was also recorded as well as systolic and diastolic blood pressure and biochemical parameters. The data was analysed using SPSS version 21. Results: Among 400 participants, majority (60%) of the participants with CAD were diagnosed with metabolic syndrome. Significantly greater proportion of females (51.2% vs. 21.9%; p = 0.001) were diagnosed with metabolic syndrome. The mean weight, height, BMI and waist circumference was significantly higher in CAD patients diagnosed with metabolic syndrome. Significant difference was not observed in severity of CAD between patients with and without metabolic syndrome. Conclusion: The study highlighted a higher prevalence of metabolic syndrome evaluated using the 2011 NCEP ATP III guidelines among patients with CAD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, statistical approximation properties of Lupa,s (p; q)-analogue of Bernstein operators are studied. Rate of statistical convergence by means of modulus of continuity and Lipschitz type maximal functions has been investigated. Further Limit Lupa,s (p; q)-Bernstein operators are defined and some results are investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are amongst the leading causes of death worldwide. The Internet of Things (IoT) is an emerging technology that enables the healthcare system to identify cardiovascular diseases. In this article, a novel cardiovascular disease prediction framework combining Predator Crow Optimization (PCO) and Deep Neural Network (DNN) is designed. In the proposed PCO-DNN framework, DNN is used to predict cardiac disease, and the PCO is utilized to optimize the DNN parameters, thereby maximizing the prediction performances. The proposed framework aims to predict and classify cardiovascular diseases accurately. Further, an intensive comparative analysis is performed to validate the obtained results with the existing classification models. The results show that the proposed framework achieves an accuracy of 96.6665%, a precision of 97.5256%, a recall of 97.0953%, and an F1-measure of 96.4242% and can outperform the existing CVD predictors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a case of tension gastrothorax in a 27 year old primigravida with the complaints of respiratory distress. She was hypoxic and tachycardiac. Left thorax was resonant to percussion and had no air entry. Chest X ray was not helpful to reach the diagnosis. Later on tracheal deviation was noted and thoracostomy was done. The patient aborted overnight. Greenish fluid in the chest drain led to investigation with computed tomography which revealed massive vicerothorax. Review of her history revealed that she had blunt abdominal injury as child. Laparotomy confirmed the above findings along with a gastric perforation. Diaphragm and stomach were repaired, gastropexy and caecopexy was done. Occult diaphragmatic injury can complicate the pregnancy. High intra-abdominal pressure during the pregnancy can push much of abdominal contents through the diaphragmatic defect. Creation of angulation at gastro esophageal junction acts as a one way valve and thus leads to progressive dilation of the stomach, resulting in tension gastrothorax. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New identities and inequalities are given for weighted majorization theorem for n-convex functions by using extension of the Montgomery identity and Green function. Various bounds for the reminders in new generalizations of weighted majorization formulae are provided using Čebyšev type inequalities. Mean value theorems are also discussed for functional related to new results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The incidence of Cotton Leaf Curl Disease (CLCuD) and low crop stand are major impediments to sustainable cotton production in Pakistan. Early sowing provides protection against CLCuD but causes low seed germination. Early cotton planting overlaps with wheat harvesting, thus causing conflict with Wheat-Cotton-Wheat cropping pattern. To address these problems and suggest improvements, a series of field experiments was conducted to optimize cotton planting technology. Three sowing methods viz., transplanting cotton nursery in May, direct seeding in March, and direct seeding in May were compared for physiological indices, CLCuD incident and yield of seed cotton. For the production of seedlings, four nursery media were evaluated for their efficiency in terms of germination percentage, seedling survival, and convalescent period. On the basis of these parameters, SSM (Soil+Sand+Manure) media produced better seedlings. The early sown (transplanted) cotton gave good escape from CLCuD. The maximum incidence was observed in May sowing (22.2%) while the severity was maximum in the month of August. Maximum seed cotton yield was recorded in March sown-transplanted cotton. Income generated from March sowing was more than transplanting due to labor cost in transplanted cotton. The income from transplanted cotton was 60% more than the May sowing, on account of better production due to improved crop stand, number of growing days and escape from CLCuD. Therefore, early planting of cotton through seedlings transplantation is suggested to improve cotton production through better crop stand and escape from CLCuD in a cotton-wheat production cropping system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Ebolavirus (EBOV) is responsible for one of the most fatal diseases encountered by mankind. Cellular T-cell responses have been implicated to be important in providing protection against the virus. Antigenic variation can result in viral escape from immune recognition. Mapping targets of immune responses among the sequence of viral proteins is, thus, an important first step towards understanding the immune responses to viral variants and can aid in the identification of vaccine targets. Herein, we performed a large-scale, proteome-wide mapping and diversity analyses of putative HLA supertype-restricted T-cell epitopes of Zaire ebolavirus (ZEBOV), the most pathogenic species among the EBOV family. Methods: All publicly available ZEBOV sequences (14,098) for each of the nine viral proteins were retrieved, removed of irrelevant and duplicate sequences, and aligned. The overall proteome diversity of the non-redundant sequences was studied by use of Shannon's entropy. The sequences were predicted, by use of the NetCTLpan server, for HLA-A2, -A3, and -B7 supertype-restricted epitopes, which are relevant to African and other ethnicities and provide for large (~86%) population coverage. The predicted epitopes were mapped to the alignment of each protein for analyses of antigenic sequence diversity and relevance to structure and function. The putative epitopes were validated by comparison with experimentally confirmed epitopes. Results & discussion: ZEBOV proteome was generally conserved, with an average entropy of 0.16. The 185 HLA supertype-restricted T-cell epitopes predicted (82 (A2), 37 (A3) and 66 (B7)) mapped to 125 alignment positions and covered ~24% of the proteome length. Many of the epitopes showed a propensity to co-localize at select positions of the alignment. Thirty (30) of the mapped positions were completely conserved and may be attractive for vaccine design. The remaining (95) positions had one or more epitopes, with or without non-epitope variants. A significant number (24) of the putative epitopes matched reported experimentally validated HLA ligands/T-cell epitopes of A2, A3 and/or B7 supertype representative allele restrictions. The epitopes generally corresponded to functional motifs/domains and there was no correlation to localization on the protein 3D structure. These data and the epitope map provide important insights into the interaction between EBOV and the host immune system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]