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Background: Hypertension is a leading contributor to global morbidity and mortality rates, particularly in urban areas where lifestyle and socioeconomic factors significantly influence its prevalence. Understanding these factors is crucial for developing effective public health interventions. Methods: This cross-sectional study involved 200 urban adults to assess the prevalence of hypertension and identify its associated risk factors. Participants underwent blood pressure measurement and completed questionnaires on lifestyle behaviors and socioeconomic status. Statistical analysis was conducted to evaluate the relationships between hypertension and various risk factors. Results: The prevalence of hypertension increased with age, with the highest prevalence (25%) observed in individuals over 60 years. Lifestyle factors such as smoking and obesity were significantly associated with hypertension, with odds ratios of 1.7 and 2.2, respectively. High stress was also a notable risk factor, with an odds ratio of 1.9. A strong correlation was found between lower socioeconomic status and higher prevalence of hypertension (odds ratio of 2.3 for lowincome groups). Conclusion: The study highlights the significant impact of age, lifestyle, and socioeconomic status on the prevalence of hypertension among urban adults. These findings suggest that public health strategies focusing on lifestyle modifications and socioeconomic improvements could be effective in managing and preventing hypertension in urban populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Free space optical (FSO) communication has shown promising advantages among other wireless schemes. It provides a very high data rate, freedom from licensing, low cost of deployment and requires low power. FSO is a technology that has undergone rapid development over the last several years. These communication systems are a line-of-sight technology in which information is transmitted through the atmosphere on modulated laser beams or light-emitting diode (LED) beams. When FSO technology was first introduced, it was seen as an attractive option to bridge the "last mile bottleneck" that is present in many of today's optical fiber-based networks. As compared to existing radio frequency (RF) based wireless systems, this technology possesses multiple advantages, such as high bandwidth, license-free band use, long operational range, spatial reusability, security and immunity to electromagnetic interference. The narrow and directional characteristics of a laser beam employed in FSO enable spatial reuse and make it hard to eavesdrop, thus raising the level of security. The use of light as carrier in this technology provides immunity to electromagnetic interference. Despite its many advantages, this technology is susceptible to some weather conditions, such as fog, rain, sleet and snow, and to misalignment of transmitter–receiver terminals. Atmospheric conditions will impair the propagation of an optical signal because the propagation of light may undergo absorption and scattering. Pointing error caused by misalignment of the transceivers is another major challenge in FSO communication system. The pointing error may result in degradation or even total loss of the received signal. This error may arise because of transceiver sway, platform vibration, the motion of mobile stations, errors or uncertainties in the tracking system. Another type of pointing error is beam wandering caused by the in-homogeneity of large-scale eddies in the atmosphere (i.e., atmospheric turbulence), where the transmitted beam may deviate from its intended path. This survey paper focuses on the systems involved in the alignment of the transmitter and the receiver so that the maximum amount of power is collected by the receiver and the analysis of beam profile in various atmospheric conditions and their mitigation methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Distress is very common in patients with cancer but it often goes unidentified. Sociodemographic, clinical, and psychosocial variables have been identified as major risk factors for distress and it extends along a continuum, ranging from common feelings of vulnerability, sadness, and alarming to problems that can become disabling. Objectives: To determine the level of distress among cancer patients and sociodemographic factors affecting distress among the cancer patients. Materials & Methods: The study was a cross sectional study using purposive sampling technique. All the patients above 18 years who were admitted from 1st March 2021 to 31st August 2021 were included in the study. The information was collected from patients using NCCN Distress Thermometer (DT) and problem checklist, a validated tool to assess the distress levels and their association of distress with problems. The data was compiled and statistically analysed using Statistical package for social sciences (SPSS Software 23.0 version) IBM Chicago. Results: out of 567 participants, 64.6% study subjects were above 50 years. This shows that the number of patients were increasing with increasing age. In all, 60.5 % were females and 39.5% were males. Majority of patients were having moderate to severe distress (50.6%) followed by 37.9% who had mild stress and 11.5% had no stress. It was observed that education, occupation and socio-economic status were significantly associated with the level of distress while age, sex and marital status had no association. Conclusion: Holistic approach in cancer treatment including psychological, spiritual and emotional evaluation and its solution for the same at appropriate time enhances the quality of life of the patients. It is recommended that all health care providers should address these as a part of their routine practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present era of technology, it is quite fascinating to design a system capable of transmitting information from one end to another by using the optical spectrum. This system differs from optical fibre communication in terms of channel medium. Optical fibre technology uses the end-to-end physical connection via fibre. In contrast, Light-based wireless communication networks, also known as wireless optical communication (WOC) networks or fibreless optical communication networks, use light as a carrier and air as an unguided propagation media for transmission. Fibreless optical communication eliminates the need for Licensing and Buried Fibre Cables; also, its installation is relatively easy. This survey article describes the evolution of WOC technologies right from the old methods of communication to today's deep-space optical satellite communication. This article briefly describes the WOC system working principle, categorization of wireless optical systems (based on the carrier frequency wavelength, distance covered, and application), different modulation techniques adopted for wireless optical communication, challenges associated with channel medium and channel modelling, performance analysis of WOC system, various application areas of WOC network, commercial developments in the field of WOC, and some other emerging trends associated with WOC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globally, people are in great threat due to the highly spreading of viral infectious diseases. Every year like 100–300 million cases of infections are found, and among them, above 80% are not recognized and irrelevant. Dengue virus (DENV) is an arbovirus infection that currently infects people most frequently. DENV encompasses four viral serotypes, and they each express comparable sign. From a mild febrile sickness to a potentially fatal dengue hemorrhagic fever, dengue can induce a variety of symptoms. Presently, the globe is being challenged by the untimely identification of dengue infection. Therefore, this review summarizes advances in the detection of dengue from conventional methods (nucleic acid‐based, polymerase chain reaction‐based, and serological approaches) to novel biosensors. This work illustrates an extensive study of the current designs and fabrication approaches involved in the formation of electrochemical biosensors for untimely identifications of dengue. Additionally, in electrochemical sensing of DENV, we skimmed through significances of biorecognition molecules like lectins, nucleic acid, and antibodies. The introduction of emerging techniques such as the CRISPR/Cas' system and their integration with biosensing platforms has also been summarized. Furthermore, the review revealed the importance of electrochemical approach compared with traditional diagnostic methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Food is a basic thing without which, life is impossible. Without proper food, body will not thrive to its optimum potential and Chronic Energy Deficiency (CED) is the state, where there is a lack of food intake over a prolonged period of time. Aims & Objectives: To find the association of dietary habits with CED in ethnic Punjabi population. Methodology: The study was a cross-sectional study using simple random sampling technique. Taking the prevalence of CED as 30% in India, the sample size came out to be 336 but, 400 subjects were selected equally from rural and urban areas for convenience. Results: Subjects having lesser calorie intake than RDA, developed CED more 62(82.9%) than meeting RDA 13(17.1%). Subjects who skipped meals had higher CED rates. Pure vegetarians had higher rates of CED 71(93.4%) than non-vegetarians 5(6.6%). People consuming milk or milk products more than once daily developed lesser CED 1(1.3%) than those taking once daily 15(19.7%) and ones taking only once a week 60(79.0%). Conclusion: According to the study, persons with adequate calorie intake, who do not skip meals, take some kind of non-vegetarian food, and consume milk on daily basis have lesser tendency to develop CED. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Chronic Energy Deficiency is a condition characterized by a long-term insufficient intake of calories and/or nutrients relative to a person’s energy expenditure, leading to a negative energy balance. It is typically associated with inadequate nutrition and can result in various health issues. Objectives: 1) To find out prevalence of CED in ethnic Punjabi population. 2) To determine the sociodemographic factors affecting CED the study subjects. Materials & Methods: The study was a cross sectional study using simple random sampling technique. Taking the prevalence of CED as 30%, sample size came out to be 336, but for ease of convenience, 400 subjects were selected. Results: The study subjects comprised of 183 males and 217 females and there were 24 cases of CED in males and 52 in females. Maximum cases of CED were found in the age group of 20-29 years, in lower castes and low-income groups and in illiterates. Conclusion: According to this study, maximum number of CED was found in the age group of 20-29 years. Prevalence was significantly higher in females than males and its was maximum in lower castes at 35.8%. In lower income group and in the illiterate group, it was maximum and the results were statistically significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Coronary Artery Disease (CAD) is a complex metabolic disorder in which lifestyle and genetic factors are known to play key roles in pathogenesis. Extensive studies have examined the role of Paraoxonase 1 (PON1) polymorphisms as genetic markers of CAD. However, the evidence regarding their role in the aetiology of CAD remains contradictory. Aim: The aim of this study was to determine the genotypic/ allelic frequency of the Q192R polymorphism of the PON1 gene and its association with the risk of CAD. Materials and Methods: A case-control study was conducted at the Department of Biochemistry in collaboration with the Department of Medicine, Sri Guru Ram Das Institute of Medical Sciences and Research, Amritsar, Punjab, India, from November 2019 to December 2022. A total of 100 participants were divided into two groups: group I (CAD patients) and group II (healthy controls) to investigate the association between the Q192R polymorphism and CAD risk. The genotypic and allelic frequencies of the Q192R polymorphism of the PON1 gene and its association with CAD were determined using Polymerase Chain Reaction and Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism (PCR-RFLP), followed by 2% agarose gel electrophoresis. The data were statistically analysed using the Chi-square test. Results: There were a total of 50 participants in each group (29 males and 21 females), with a mean age of 47.02±8.79 years in group I and 37.70±7.29 years in group II (p-value <0.001). The present study confirmed that individuals with QR+RR genotype compared to QQ genotype (OR: 2.47; 95% CI: 1.10-5.55; p-value=0.03) of the Q192R polymorphism were associated with an increased risk of CAD. A higher frequency of the RR genotype of the Q192R polymorphism was detected in CAD patients, and it was associated with a 3-fold increased risk of developing CAD (p-value <0.05). However, the difference between QR versus QQ genotypes {Odds Ratio (OR): 2.13; 95% CI: 0.89-5.12, p-value=0.09} was found to be statistically insignificant. Furthermore, a significantly higher frequency of the R allele was observed in CAD patients compared to controls (OR 2.12, 95% CI: 1.18-3.84, p-value=0.01). Conclusion: In conclusion, the Q192R polymorphism of the PON1 gene was associated with an increased risk of CAD in the Punjabi population. The results confirmed that the presence of the R allele was associated with an increased risk of CAD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) secretes extracellular vesicles (EVs) containing a variety of proteins, lipoproteins, and lipoglycans. While emerging evidence suggests that EVs contribute to tuberculosis pathogenesis, the factors and molecular mechanisms involved in mycobacterial EV production have not been identified. In this study, we use a genetic approach to identify Mtb proteins that mediate vesicle release in response to iron limitation and antibiotic exposure. We uncover a critical role for the isoniazid‐induced, dynamin‐like proteins, IniA and IniC, in mycobacterial EV biogenesis. Further characterization of a Mtb iniA mutant shows that the production of EVs enables intracellular Mtb to export bacterial components into the extracellular environment to communicate with host cells and potentially modulate the immune response. The findings advance our understanding of the biogenesis and functions of mycobacterial EVs and provide an avenue for targeting vesicle production in vivo. Synopsis: The iron‐regulated, dynamin‐like proteins IniAC promote the production and release of extracellular vesicles from Mycobacterium tuberculosis.Induction of iniAC expression in response to infection‐relevant conditions such as iron limitation or antibiotic exposure is associated with enhanced release of mycobacterial extracellular vesicles (MEVs).Inactivation of the dynamin‐like proteins iniAC abrogates MEV production and is associated with impaired vesicle‐mediated, mycobactin‐dependent iron acquisition, and export of bacterial products out of infected macrophages via extracellular vesicles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aortic stenosis (AS) is a common valve pathology experienced by patients worldwide. There are limited population-based studies assessing its prevalence; however, epidemiological studies emphasize that the burden of disease is growing. Recognizing AS relies on accurate clinical assessment and diagnostic investigations. Patients who develop severe AS are often referred to the heart team for assessment of aortic valve intervention. Although echocardiography has traditionally been used to screen and monitor the progression of AS, there can be discordance between measurements in a low-flow state. Such patients may have truly severe AS and potentially derive long-term benefit from aortic valve intervention. Accurately identifying these patients with the use of ancillary testing has been the focus of research for several years. In this article, we discuss the contemporary approaches and challenges in identifying and managing patients with low-flow, low-gradient severe AS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Effective on‐road safety requires proper maintenance of vehicles. In the trucking sector in India, there is a need for supporting predictive maintenance to decrease downtime and improve safety. Improving maintenance in this sector involves certain challenges. First, most trucks are owned by small‐scale fleet owners (trucks < 5). Second, maintenance is often handled by small‐scale mechanic workshops. The fault diagnosis is very often limited to recognition by the driver and later reassessed by the mechanic by relying on the feel or the sound of the vehicle. Third, a majority of stakeholders in this sector—drivers, mechanics, and owners—have low levels of education. Despite these challenges, with the increase in the rate of digitalization, in the future, it will be easier to monitor the health of the parts of a truck. In addition, there is a developing trend of mobile phone and internet penetration in India that has leapfrogged a majority of Indians into becoming "emergent users" of information technology. Therefore, this article shows that sociotechnical approaches such as ecological interface design can be used to develop mobile interfaces for supporting predictive maintenance through health and usage monitoring of trucks for small‐scale fleet owners in India. To develop the interface, a field study was conducted at several sites in the state of Tamil Nadu, India. The insights were used to develop scenarios and the abstraction hierarchy, which were later used creatively to develop the interface design for emergent users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Byline: Pooja. Bhangui, Prashant. Bhangui, Nikunj. Gupta, Annu. Jolly, Seema. Bhalotra, Nishant. Sharma, A. Soin, Vijay. Vohra Background and Aims: Fast tracking (FT) for more efficacious use of resources may [...]

Plant disease phenotyping using technology assures a promising step in sustainable agriculture. Solanum Tubrosum (Potato) is a highly cultivated vegetable plant, which is affected by fungal pathogens that leads to Early Blight and Late Blight diseases. Continuous monitoring of plant disease is a challenging task in identifying diseased leaves. This paper proposes a novel deep Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) for classifying the potato disease by reducing the computational time of learnable parameters using image phenotyping. A meta-heuristic algorithm known as the Whale Optimization Algorithm (WOA) is used in training to optimize the hyperparameters of the proposed CNN network. Potato disease is classified using optimized CNN called POT-Net, and the performance is analyzed using performance metrics: precision, recall, F1-score, and accuracy of each class. The performance POT-Net is compared with pre-trained DL and optimized algorithms using performance metrics and it is better than the state-of-the-art models, with an accuracy of 99.12%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To survive and establish its niche, Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) engages in a steady battle against an array of host defenses and a barrage of antibiotics. Here, we demonstrate that Mtb employs HupB, a nucleoid-associated protein (NAP) as its key player to simultaneously battle and survive in these two stress-inducing fronts. Typically, NAPs are key to bacterial survival under a wide array of environmental or host-mediated stresses. Here, we report that for Mtb to survive under dierent macrophage-induced assaults including acidic pH, nutrient depletion, oxidative and nitrosative stresses, HupB presence is critical. As expected, the hupB knockout mutant is highly sensitive to these host-mediated stresses. Furthermore, Mtb aptly modulates HupB protein levels to overcome these stresses. We also report that HupB aids Mtb to gain tolerance to high levels of rifampicin (RIF) and isoniazid (INH) exposure. Loss of hupB makes Mtb highly susceptible to even short exposures to reduced amounts of RIF and INH. Overexpressing hupB in Mtb or complementing hupB in the hupB knockout mutant triggers enhanced survival of Mtb under these stresses. We also find that upon loss of hupB, Mtb significantly enhances the permeability of its cell wall by modulating the levels of several surface lipids including phthiocerol dimycocerosates (PDIMs), thus possibly influencing overall susceptibility to host-mediated stresses. Loss of hupB also downregulates eux pump expression possibly influencing increased susceptibility to INH and RIF. Finally, we find that therapeutic targeting of HupB with SD1, a known small molecule inhibitor, significantly enhances Mtb susceptibility to INH and THP-1 macrophages and significantly reduces MIC to INH. Thus, our data strongly indicate that HupB is a highly promising therapeutic target especially for potential combinatorial shortened therapy with reduced INH and RIF doses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reinforced Concrete (RC) frame buildings with shear wall are widely used in severe seismic zones. However, the underlying soil-foundation system modifies the conventional fixed-base natural period through imparted flexibility. The currently available relationships for the modified natural period are mostly applicable to shallow foundations. Hence, those are not suitable for RC frame-wall buildings with pile foundation. Based on an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) architecture model, the current study establishes a relationship for the effective natural period of such buildings. A comparison of the proposed relationship with the existing ones demonstrates its applicability to RC frame-wall buildings on pile foundation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most pathogenic bacteria require iron for growth. However, this metal is not freely available in the mammalian host. Due to its poor solubility and propensity to catalyze the generation of reactive oxygen species, host iron is kept in solution bound to specialized iron binding proteins. Access to iron is an important factor in the outcome of bacterial infections; iron limitation frequently induces virulence and drives pathogenic interactions with host cells. Here, we review the response of Mycobacterium tuberculosis to changes in iron availability, the relevance of this response to TB pathogenesis, and its potential for the design of new therapeutic interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This study was conducted to assess the feasibility of extended use of N95 masks in our hospital during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. We also studied the use pattern, user satisfaction, and issues faced during extended use of the mask. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted among health-care providers in a large tertiary care teaching hospital in northern India from April 1 to May 31, 2020. A list was prepared from the institute's register, and participants were chosen by random sampling. The data collected from the physical forms were transferred to excel sheets. Results: A total of 1121 responses were received. The most common problem stated with reuse of N95 masks was loss of fit followed by damage to the slings, highlighted by 44.6% and 44.4% of the participants, respectively. A total of 476 (42.5%) participants responded that they would prefer "cup-shaped N95 mask with respirator". The median scores regarding the satisfaction with the quality of masks and their fit was also 4 each. Conclusions: It was concluded that the extended use of N95 masks was acceptable, with more than 96% of the participants using these masks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amidinate compounds with stabilized aluminium(II) and gallium(II) elements of composition L2M2X2 (3 and 4) have been prepared from their LMX2 (1 and 2) precursor, where M = Al (1 and 4) and Ga (2 and 3); L = PhC(NiPr2C6H3)2 (1 and 4) and PhC(NtBu)2 (2 and 3); and X is I (1 and 4) and Cl (2 and 3) and insights into their bonding are gained. The M–M bond lengths are reported along with the single-crystal X-ray structures of 1–4. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]