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Background: Spontaneous intracranial haemorrhage (ICH) is the most severe type of stroke with high mortality rates. This entity accounts for 17 to 33% of all strokes and is associated with a higher mortality rate. Approximately, 35–50% of patients with ICH die within the 30 days after event. Long-term survivors are often remaining with permanent deficits, with up to 75% suffering permanent disability and only 12% to 39% of the survivors have favourable outcomes. Several studies aiming to explore the efficacy of surgery for patients with ICH have been carried out. However, the results were inconclusive. To provide evidence for clinical practice, here we present a retrospective study to explore the effect of surgery for patients with spontaneous basal ganglia haemorrhage. Methods: The present study was conducted in the Neurosurgery Department of a tertiary care hospital in the Northern part of India from January 2018 to March 2020. Sixty-one patients aged between 20-70 years of basal ganglia haemorrhage who presented within 24 hours of ictus and operated were included in this study. Results: A total of 61 patients underwent surgical intervention consisting of 49 (80%) males and 12 (20%) females. Their age varied from 27 to 70 with mean age ± SD 51.93 ± 13.19 years. Thirty-six patients were ≥ 50 years of age, out of which 72% patients had unfavourable outcomes (GOS 1-3) and 28% had favourable outcome (GOS 4-5). There were 31 patients with GCS 5-8. Most patients (81%) had GOS 1-3(at the time of discharge). Out of 25 patients with GCS 9-12; 64% had GOS 4-5. The patients with volume of haematoma 40-60 ml, 82% patients had GOS 4-5. The patients with midline shift > 5 mm; 78% patients had GOS 1-3. Patients with midline shift < 5 mm; 82% had GOS 4-5 (P=0.005). The mean hospital stays of unfavourable outcomes group was 28.71 ± 10.25 days and of favourable outcomes group was 22.07 ± 6.32 days (0.000). Conclusions: Early surgery (within 6 hours) along with multi-modality medical management has definite positive role in the outcome of patients with spontaneous basal ganglionic haemorrhage. Patients ≥ 50 years, signs of brain herniation, volume of haematoma ≥ 60ml, hydrocephalic dilatation due the intraventricular haemorrhage, midline shift > 5 mm, and GCS ≤ 8 at presentation had poor prognosis.

We investigate the potential in using of using a graphics processor unit (GPU) for Monte-Carlo (MC)-based radiation dose calculations. The percent depth dose (PDD) of photons in a medium with known absorption and scattering coefficients is computed using a MC simulation running on both a standard CPU and a GPU. We demonstrate that the GPU′s capability for massive parallel processing provides a significant acceleration in the MC calculation, and offers a significant advantage for distributed stochastic simulations on a single computer. Harnessing this potential of GPUs will help in the early adoption of MC for routine planning in a clinical environment.

A 4-year-old boy presented with history of left anterolateral neck swelling since birth. He was clinically diagnosed to have a branchial cleft cyst. A CT scan revealed findings suggestive of a thymic remnant cyst. The lesion was excised and the diagnosis was confirmed by histopathology.

Crop canopy temperature has proven beneficial for qualitative and quantitative assessment of plants' biotic and abiotic stresses. In this two-year study, water stress identification in okra crops was evaluated using thermal–RGB imaging and AI approaches. Experimental trials were developed for two irrigation types, sprinkler and flood, and four deficit treatment levels (100, 50, 75, and 25% crop evapotranspiration), replicated thrice. A total of 3200 thermal and RGB images acquired from different crop stages were processed using convolutional neural network architecture-based deep learning models (1) ResNet-50 and (2) MobileNetV2. On evaluation, the accuracy of water stress identification was higher with thermal imagery inputs (87.9% and 84.3%) compared to RGB imagery (78.6% and 74.1%) with ResNet-50 and MobileNetV2 models, respectively. In addition, irrigation treatment and levels had significant impact on yield and crop water use efficiency; the maximum yield of 10,666 kg ha−1 and crop water use efficiency of 1.16 kg m−3 was recorded for flood irrigation, while 9876 kg ha−1 and 1.24 kg m−3 were observed for sprinkler irrigation at 100% irrigation level. Developments and observations from this study not only suggest applications of thermal–RGB imagery with AI for water stress quantification but also developing and deploying automated irrigation systems for higher crop water use efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Communities of arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi assemble passively over time via biotic and abiotic mechanisms. In degraded soils, AM fungal communities can assemble actively when humans manage mycorrhizas for ecosystem restoration.We investigated mechanisms of urban AM fungal community assembly in a 2‐yr green roof experiment. We compared AM fungal communities in inoculated and uninoculated trays to samples from two potential sources: the inoculum and air.Active inoculation stimulated more distinct and diverse AM fungal communities, an effect that intensified over time. In the treatment trays, 45% of AM fungal taxa were detected in the inoculum, 2% were detected in aerial samples, 23% were detected in both inoculum and air, and 30% were not detected in either source.Passive dispersal of AM fungi likely resulted in the successful establishment of a small number of species, but active inoculation with native AM fungal species resulted in an immediate shift to a diverse and unique fungal community. When urban soils are constructed or modified by human activity, this is an opportunity for intervention with AM fungi that will persist and add diversity to that system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]