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This work proposes an energy-efficient duty-cycle-based hybrid medium access control protocol. The proposed protocol optimally adjusts the turn-on and off time of the trans-receiver radio to save energy consumption. Both cluster head and sensing devices save energy by estimating the utilization of slots. In reserved slot duration, each sensor device checks its buffer status in a regular interval and turns off its radio when the buffer becomes empty. Each sensor device transmits a slot utilization status to the cluster head device. Cluster head device also turn-on and off its radio based on slot utilization status of sensing devices. A duty cycle approach is proposed for optimal energy consumption. The proposed protocol uses less energy than existing equivalent protocols, according to the mathematical and simulation results. For simulation study, the network is analysed for low, medium, and high data traffic conditions. Simulation results depict, exactly similar results of analytical and mathematical analysis prove the validity of the work.

A platform is a business model that allows business-to-business (B2B) participants to connect, interacts, create and exchange value. B2B exploits social media for brand building and branding is vulnerable to attacks, which leads to a brand crisis. B2B should characterise such crisis and respond proportionally to avert damage to social listening (SL). To diminish damages, the solution is to measure customer experience (CX), especially in a crisis situation. The study proposes an analytics-enabled customer experience (AeCX) platform for emotion detection in social media and measures CX after recovering from such crisis, by exploring recovery time objective (RTO), recovery point objective (RPO), techno-business features (TBF), SL and perceived risk (PR). A quantitative research methodology is used on primary data collected from 302 B2B participants. The study reveals improvement in CX and the results provide evidence that social media channels and the TBF of AeCX have become important.

Pine needles are the by-product from the pine forest and cause of wild forest fire. A batch type portable charring drum was evaluated for converting pine needles to char and product gas with an aim to produce good quality char on-site. Char and product gas were characterized for their suitability as biochar and compared with chars derived from electrically heated batch type tubular reactor. The maximum conversion efficiency was found to be 29.3% at 80% loading, 50 m3 h−1 air flow rate and 90-min gasification time. Elemental analysis showed the maximum carbon content of 76.5% in the derived char which was comparable to the char derived at 400 °C. Other chemical properties also resembled the char produced at 400 °C. For good quality char which can qualify as biochar as per the guideline of European Biochar Certificate, gasification time is needed to continue up to 120 min at 60% loading.

A. baumannii belongs to the ESKAPE family of pathogens and is a multi-drug resistant, gram-negative bacteria which follows the anaerobic form of respiration. A. baumannii is known to be the causative agent of hospital-related infections such as pneumonia, meningitis, endocarditis, septicaemia and a plethora of infections such as urinary tract and wound infections found primarily in immunocompromised patients. These attributes of A. baumannii make it a priority pathogen against which potential therapeutic agents need to be developed. A. baumannii employs the formation of a biofilm to insulate its colonies from the outer environment, which allows it to grow under harsh environmental conditions and develop resistance against various drug molecules. Acyl-homoserine lactone synthase (AHLS) is an enzyme involved in the quorum-sensing pathway in A. baumannii, which is responsible for the synthesis of signal molecules known as acyl-homoserine lactones (AHL), which trigger the signalling pathway to regulate the factors involved in biofilm formation and regulation. The current study utilised a homology modeled structure of AHLS to virtually screen it against the ZINC in trial/FDA approved drug molecule library to find a subset of potential lead molecules. These molecules were then filtered based on Lipinski’s, toxicological and ADME properties, binding affinity, and interaction patterns to delineate lead molecules, which were then validated using molecular docking. The identified molecules and a control molecule were subsequently subjected to molecular dynamics simulations to mimic physiological conditions of protein-ligand binding under the influence of a forcefield. The MM/PBSA based binding free energy calculations showed favourable results for Droperidol (-50.02 ± 4.67 kcal/mol) and Cipargamin (-42.29 ± 4.05 kcal/mol). The global and essential dynamics analyses, free energy landscape and dynamical cross-correlation matrix and MM/PBSA based binding free energy suggested Droperidol (ZINC000019796080) and Cipargamin (ZINC000049037032) as potential inhibitors against the acylated-ACP substrate-binding site in AHLS from A. baumannii.

ABO incompatibility is not a barrier to allogeneic stem cell transplant but may result in acute hemolytic reactions. As stem cell product manipulation is cumbersome, we are reporting the effectiveness and safety of donor-type red cell infusion as a method of reducing acute hemolytic reaction while using marrow as stem cell source. In major ABO-mismatched bone marrow transplants, manipulation of marrow product requires expertise and expensive equipment, which may not be readily available to transplant centers in low- and middle-income regions. The aim behind our study is to report a safe and effective strategy to reduce isohemagglutinin titers and prevent donor marrow infusion reactions in major ABO-mismatched transplants. We retrospectively analyzed 303 consecutive allogeneic bone marrow transplants (BMTs) for beta thalassemia major, between August 2015 and March 2020, with either major (n = 41) or bidirectional (n = 14) mismatches. When isohemagglutinin titers were 1:32 or higher, donor-type packed red blood cell was divided into 4 aliquots, irradiated and administered over 4 days at incremental volumes. Patients were observed for hemolytic reaction, and if no reaction, bone marrow was infused without manipulation. Out of 55 patients, 20 received donor-type blood infusion. Twelve patients showed evidence of mild hemolysis. None developed severe hemolytic or anaphylactic reaction. Titers were rechecked in 14 patients and all had reduction in titers, except for one. Our experience demonstrated that donor-type PRBC infusion is safe and effective in preventing acute hemolysis in major ABO-mismatched stem cell transplants even with bone marrow as graft source.

Eltrombopag has shown efficacy in the treatment of thrombocytopenia and poor graft function (PGF) after allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) in retrospective observational studies, but is not approved for this indication. The cost of this drug is also a major concern in publicly funded health care systems. We collected data about patients who received eltrombopag for thrombocytopenia or PGF after HCT. Post-HCT thrombocytopenia, PGF, and eltrombopag response were defined as per previously published criteria. Primary outcome was treatment efficacy and secondary outcome was cost comparison between estimated treatment cost prior to and after initiation of eltrombopag. Seventeen patients (males 70.6%; median age = 58) received eltrombopag. Isolated thrombocytopenia was present in 11.8% (n = 2) patients while PGF was present in 88.2% (n = 15) of patients. After 8 weeks of treatment at the maximum dose of 150 mg orally daily, overall response rate (ORR) was seen in 76.5% (13/17) of patients: complete response (CR) in 10/13 patients and partial response (PR) in 3/13 patients. The use of eltrombopag was associated with an overall decrease in the total weekly care costs (5021 vs 2,524 CA$; P = 0.04). Thus, Eltrombopag is an efficacious and possibly cost-effective therapy for thrombocytopenia and PGF after allogeneic HCT.

Sudoku is an NP-complete-based mathematical puzzle, which has enormous applications in the domains of steganography, visual cryptography, DNA computing, and so on. Therefore, solving Sudoku effectively can bring revolution in various fields. Several heuristics are there to solve this interesting structure. One of the heuristics, genetic algorithm, is used by many researchers to solve Sudoku successfully, but they face various problems. Genetic algorithm has so many lacunas, and to overcome these, we have hybridised it in a novel way. In this paper, we have developed a hybrid genetic algorithm-based firefly mating algorithm, which can solve Sudoku instances with a greater success rate for easy, medium, and hard difficulty level puzzles. Our proposed method has controlled “getting stuck in local optima”, considering a smaller population and lesser generation.

The impact of adverse risk genetic profiles on outcomes in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients following allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HCT) has not been fully elucidated. Accordingly, we have profiled somatic mutations at diagnosis using next-generation sequencing (NGS) in 178 AML patients who received allogeneic HCT. NGS revealed 598 somatic mutations in 165/178 patients (92.7%). Frequently mutated genes include DNMT3A, TET2, NPM1, RUNX1, IDH2, and FLT3. Commonly detected cytogenetic profiles include normal karyotype, trisomy 8, monosomal karyotype (MK), deletion 5, complex karyotype (CK), and monosomy 7. In univariate analyses, TP53 mutation, MK, CK, and monosomy 7 were associated with decreased overall survival (OS), relapse-free survival (RFS), and a higher relapse incidence (RI). We defined adverse molecular-genetic profile as harboring at least one of the molecular/genetic abnormalities of TP53 mutation, MK, CK, monosomy 7, and deletion 5. The patients harboring adverse molecular-genetic profile (n = 30) showed a lower 2-year OS (24.9% vs. 57.9%; p = 0.003), RFS (23.7% vs. 57.9%; p = 0.002), and higher RI (47.2% and 17.2%; p = 0.001) after HCT when compared to patients without those lesions. Multivariate analysis confirmed adverse molecular-genetic profile as an independent prognostic factor, associated with decreased OS (HR 2.19), RFS (HR 2.23), and higher RI (HR 2.94).

Avascular necrosis (AVN) is a debilitating complication of allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT). A retrospective review of 845 patients who underwent HCT was conducted. Cumulative incidence of AVN was 6.3% at 4 years. The following risk factors were significantly associated with AVN risk on univariate analysis: age < 45 (p=0.004), moderate to severe chronic GvHD (p

This paper introduces a time-aware hybrid expertise retrieval (TaHER) system for community question answering (CQA) services. It comprises of a text-based part and a network-based part. The text-based part makes use of the textual and the temporal information associated with questions and answers. Moreover, it assesses the recent interests and the activities of answerers. For a given question, it determines the knowledge of each answerer and identify active answerers with adequate knowledge. The network-based part is composed of several period-dependent networks. It uses the relationships among the answerers along with temporal information. Next, it applies a link analysis technique on the networks to determine the time-aware authority of each answerer in the community. We, nonetheless, propose a fusion strategy for combining the offshoots of these two parts. Using 5 performance measures, TaHER system is compared with 20 state-of-the-art algorithms on 4 real-world datasets. According to our experiments, in 93.75% (375 out of 400) cases, the proposed approach outperforms the comparing approaches. We also experimentally validate the importance of each assumption used by us.

This paper deals with the experimental analysis of Friction Stir Welding (FSW) of AA1100 aluminum alloy joined by means of a square pin tool. During the process, temperature measurement has been done by means of K-type thermocouples and it has been noticed that the temperature in the advancing side (AS) of the weld is about 20-25 °C higher than its retreating side (RS). The ultimate tensile strength (UTS) of the welded specimen is increased by 20% of the parent material due to the uniform dispersion of silicon particles present within the base material. Microstructural observations revealed finely arranged equiaxed grains in the nugget region of the weld. X-ray diffraction results showed the formation of alumina (Al2O3) in the weld nugget due to high heat generation and exposure to atmospheric oxygen during welding. Residual stress measurement exhibited a M-shaped distribution. The samples joined at low travel speed and high tool rotational speed showed compressive residual stress in the joint region. Residual stress of the material lying below the tool shoulder is found to be tensile in nature. Also, it has been noticed that the residual stress in the AS is superior in magnitude than the RS of the weld specimen.

To find out incidence, prevalence, various modes and pattern of cutthroat injury during COVID-19 pandemic and compare with prior non pandemic period. To find out the various factor influencing the suicidal cutthroat and establish the temporal association of suicidal cutthroat with COVID-19 pandemic. It is a retrospective study of cutthroat patients who were managed in ENT Dept. VIMSAR, Burla, Sambalur, Odisha, India from 1st September 2019 to 31st August 2020. Source of information are casualty, IPD and OT registers and online data. Total cases were divided into group-A (prior to COVID-19 pandemic) and group-B (during COVID-19 pandemic) and analysed. Total 24 cutthroat injury cases were treated over 1 year in department of ENT, VIMSAR, Burla, which was 0.054% of total cases attended at casualty and 2.371% of total IPD patients treated. In GROUP-A, total 10 cases with M:F = 9:1,suicidal 4 cases (40%), homicidal 6 cases (60%), and no accidental cases were recorded. While in GROUP-B, total 14 case with M:F = 14:0, suicidal 9 cases (64.28%), homicidal 3 cases (21.42%) and accidental 2 (14.28%) cases were recorded. In our study majority of cases were male with M:F = 23:1. Common age group belongs to 20–30 years with LSES and farmer by occupation. Zone II injury had incidence of 70.83%. Homicide cases proportionally high during non-COVID period while suicide cases high during COVID-19 pandemic. Association of COVID-19 pandemic with suicidal cut throat injury is seems to be significant. Among predisposing risk factors for suicidal, depression during COVID-19 pandemic had seen in 53.84% of total suicidal cases. Incidence and prevalence of Cut throat injury is comparatively high in western odisha which again increases during months of July and August parallel to COVID-19 pandemic. The common mode of cutthroat injury is homicidal, which suddenly changes to suicidal during COVID-19 pandemic. More vulnerable groups were young unemployed male, farmers and labours. Cutthroat injury cases definitely increases during COVID-19 pandemic with most common mode of injury being suicidal attempt, which may be due to economical and psychological imbalances, due to loss of job and fear and social stigma for COVID-19 diseases.

The standard IEEE 802.15.4 fails to perform optimally for railway monitoring applications due to the deficiency of guaranteed time slots (GTSs). In the present work, an adaptive GTS allocation algorithm (AGAA) is proposed which efficiently deals with a deficiency of GTSs and slot underutilization problem. The proposed AGAA algorithm saves unutilized bandwidth of GTS and the saved bandwidth is utilized by the needy nodes in contention access period (CAP) and contention-free period (CFP). An independent superframe order ( $$SO_{CFP}$$ ) is introduced for adaptive adjustment of slot size in the CFP. The proposed AGAA protocol also deals with the problem of GTS request-failure due to congestion during CAP. A separate contention period is used for GTS request in AGAA protocol. The comparison has been done between the proposed AGAA protocol and the standard IEEE 802.15.4 medium access control (MAC) protocol. Throughput and energy consumption are analyzed and results show that the slot optimization using $$SO_{CFP}$$ saves a fair amount of bandwidth which improves the throughput of the network $$\approx $$ 22%. Moreover, the separate contention period for the GTS request frame reduces the idle state energy consumption of those devices which generate time-constraint data frames. The proposed AGAA protocol consumes $$\approx $$ 18% less energy than the standard IEEE 802.15.4 MAC protocol. The analysis of results also reveals an important fact that the algorithm saves more energy for homogeneous traffic in comparison to heterogeneous traffic which can further be improved in future works.