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Background: The salivary gland lesions constitute around 3–6% of all head-and-neck lesions and have always posed a diagnostic riddle for the cytopathologists around the world. Since the majority of these lesions need surgical excision, it is, therefore, important to diagnose these lesions with utmost precision to prevent over or under stage procedures. The recent adaption of Milan system of reporting aims to establish a uniform, accurate, and consensual reporting system which bridges the communication between the pathologists and the clinicians. Aims and Objectives: The current study aims to assess the diagnostic application of Milan system and aims to reclassify the lesions according to it. Materials and Methods: The current study was conducted at our institute during 1 year period. All salivary gland swellings presenting to the fine-needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) section during this period were included in the study. Along with this, records and slides of cases of salivary gland lesions were retrospectively assessed. All relevant data and radiologic findings were retrieved from the case records. FNAC was done using 23 G needle. The slides were stained with both Leishman and Papanicolaou stain wherever possible. Quantitative data were expressed as mean and standard deviation and percentages. All the 83 lesions were reclassified as per the Milan system. Histopathology was available in 42 cases. Inclusion criteria: All the samples of the patient having salivary gland lesion(s) whose FNAC were performed in the department of pathology. Statistical Analysis: Data were be entered into Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. For quantitative data, mean and standard deviation were calculated. For qualitative data, percentage and proportion were calculated. Sensitivity, specificity, and spearman correlation between FNAC and histopathology were calculated. P

Psoriasis is an incurable, immune-mediated inflammatory disease characterized by the hyperproliferation and abnormal differentiation of keratinocytes. To study in depth the pathogenesis of this disease and possible therapy options suitable, pre-clinical models are required. Three-dimensional skin equivalents are a potential alternative to simplistic monolayer cultures and immunologically different animal models. However, current skin equivalents lack long-term stability, which jeopardizes the possibility to simulate the complex disease-specific phenotype followed by long-term therapeutic treatment. To overcome this limitation, the cell coating technique was used to fabricate full-thickness human skin equivalents (HSEs). This rapid and scaffold-free fabrication method relies on coating cell membranes with nanofilms using layer-by-layer assembly, thereby allowing extended cultivation of HSEs up to 49 days. The advantage in time is exploited to develop a model that not only forms a disease phenotype but can also be used to monitor the effects of topical or systemic treatment. To generate a psoriatic phenotype, the HSEs were stimulated with recombinant human interleukin 17A (rhIL-17A). This was followed by systemic treatment of the HSEs with the anti-IL-17A antibody secukinumab in the presence of rhIL-17A. Microarray and RT-PCR analysis demonstrated that HSEs treated with rhIL-17A showed downregulation of differentiation markers and upregulation of chemokines and cytokines, while treatment with anti-IL-17A antibody reverted these gene regulations. Gene ontology analysis revealed the proinflammatory and chemotactic effects of rhIL-17A on the established HSEs. These data demonstrated, at the molecular level, the effects of anti-IL-17A antibody on rhIL-17A-induced gene regulations. This shows the physiological relevance of the developed HSE and opens venues for its use as an alternative to

The failure of cancer therapies in clinical settings is often attributed to the lack of a relevant tumor model and pathological heterogeneity across tumor types in the clinic. The objective of this study was to develop a robust in vivo tumor model that better represents clinical tumors for the evaluation of anti-cancer therapies. We successfully developed a simple mouse tumor model based on 3D cell culture by injecting a single spheroid and compared it to a tumor model routinely used by injecting cell suspension from 2D monolayer cell culture. We further characterized both tumors with cellular markers for the presence of myofibroblasts, pericytes, endothelial cells and extracellular matrix to understand the role of the tumor microenvironment. We further investigated the effect of chemotherapy (doxorubicin), nanomedicine (Doxil®), biological therapy (Avastin®) and their combination. Our results showed that the substantial blood vasculature in the 3D spheroid model enhances the delivery of Doxil® by 2.5-fold as compared to the 2D model. Taken together, our data suggest that the 3D tumors created by simple subcutaneous spheroid injection represents a robust and more vascular murine tumor model which is a clinically relevant platform to test anti-cancer therapy in solid tumors.

To assess the incidence of postpartum depression, maternal confidence about parenting and maternal-infant bonding characteristics in first-time mothers.: First-time mothers are usually unprepared for the transition into motherhood and may find it difficult to cope-up with this challenge leading to parenting stress, maternal-infant bonding disorders, and mental health problems.: This cross-sectional study was conducted in a tertiary centre in South India, on 151 primigravid mothers who delivered a live-born healthy infant after 37 weeks' gestation. Assessment was done using Patient Health Questionnaire scale, Tamil version of the Postpartum Bonding Questionnaire and Maternal Confidence Questionnaire on the 2nd or 3rd postpartum day.: Incidence of postpartum depression was found to be 18.5%, with 6% having features of severe depression. All mothers had good perceived maternal confidence. Nearly one-third had one or more of the maternal-infant bonding disorders. Those who had a vaginal delivery were associated with bonding disorders (OR = 10.3; 95% CI 2.13-47.21) whereas moderate to severe postpartum depression was not associated with it on multivariate analysis.: First-time mothers were found to have good confidence in the transition to motherhood. However, the high incidence of maternal-infant bonding difficulty, especially in those with moderate to severe depression, suggests the need for initiating systematic and routine screening for postpartum mental health problems.

Liquid biopsy has emerged as a promising non-invasive way to diagnose tumor and monitor its progression. Different types of liquid biopsies have different advantages and limitations. In the present research, we compared the use of two types of liquid biopsy, extracellular vesicle-derived DNA (EV-DNA) and cell-free DNA (cfDNA) for identifying tumor mutations in patients with colon carcinoma. Method: DNA was extracted from the tumor tissue of 33 patients diagnosed with colon carcinoma. Targeted NGS panel, based on the hotspots panel, was used to identify tumor mutations. Pre-surgery serum and plasma were taken from the patients in which mutation was found in the tumor tissue. Extracellular vesicles were isolated from the serum followed by the extraction of EV-DNA. CfDNA was extracted from the plasma. The mutations found in the tumor were used to detect the circulating tumor DNA using ultra-deep sequencing. We compared the sensitivity of mutation detection and allele frequency obtained in EV-DNA and cfDNA. Results: The sensitivity of mutation detection in EV-DNA and cfDNA was 61.90% and 66.67%, respectively. We obtained almost identical sensitivity of mutation detection in EV-DNA and cfDNA in each of the four stages of colon carcinoma. The total DNA concentration and number mutant copies were higher in cfDNA vs. EV-DNA (p value = 0.002 and 0.003, respectively). Conclusion: Both cfDNA and EV-DNA can serve as tumor biomarkers. The use of EV-DNA did not lead to improved sensitivity or better detection of tumor DNA in the circulation.

In 1947 India was violently partitioned into the States of India and Pakistan. The political leaders behind this partition justified their decision based on the two-nation theory which had presented the two major religions namely Hindu and Muslim as two distinct civilizations that could not coexist. By marginalising and ignoring other important aspects of Indian society, and by magnifying only the religious aspect, they successfully created the metanarrative that would strengthen the ‘imagined’ border. Salman Rushdie, a postmodernist at heart, in Midnight’s Children artistically brings the minute details of common Indian lives to the fore and thereby compels the readers to reanalyse the validity of the theory. This study, thus, by referring to the postmodern theory propounded by Jean François Lyotard, has tried to examine the legitimacy of two-nation theory in the light of the micronarratives portrayed in the Midnight’s Children.

Television shows play an important role inpropagating societal norms. Owing to the popularity of the situational comedy (sitcom) genre, it contributes significantly to the over-all development of society. In an effort to analyze the content of television shows belong-ing to this genre, we present a dataset of dialogue turns from popular sitcoms annotated for the presence of sexist remarks. We train a text classification model to detect sexism using domain adaptive learning. We apply the model to our dataset to analyze the evolution of sexist content over the years. We propose a domain-specific semi-supervised architecture for the aforementioned detection of sexism.Through extensive experiments, we show that our model often yields better classification performance over generic deep learn-ing based sentence classification that does not employ domain-specific training. We find that while sexism decreases over time on average,the proportion of sexist dialogue for the most sexist sitcom actually increases. A quantitative analysis along with a detailed error analysis presents the case for our proposed methodology

Advanced materials technologies 2100009 (2021). doi:10.1002/admt.202100009, Published by Wiley, Weinheim

Perfusion January 21, 026765912198923 (2021). doi:10.1177/0267659121989231, Published by Sage, London [u.a.]

Targeted delivery of antigens to immune cells using micro/nanocarriers may serve as a therapeutic application for vaccination. However, synthetic carriers have potential drawbacks including cytotoxicity, low encapsulation efficiency of antigen, and lack of a morphological design, which limit the translation of the delivery system to clinical use. Here, we report a carrier-free and three-dimensional (3D)-shape-designed antigen nanoparticle by multiphoton lithography-based 3D-printing. This simple, versatile 3D-printing approach provides freedom for the precise design of particle shapes with a nanoscale resolution. Importantly, shape-designed antigen nanoparticles with distinct aspect ratios show shape-dependent immune responses. The 3D-printing approach for the rational design of nanomaterials with increasing safety, complexity, and efficacy offers an emerging platform to develop vaccine delivery systems and mechanistic understanding.

Open vSwitch is a multilayered software switch which is used with hypervisors to combine virtual machines beyond networks and within a host. It is responsible for the implementation of switching functionality within a computer network whereas a controller is responsible for the traffic routing of the data packets. The relationship between a similar Open vSwitch and controller is analyzed in this research. Controller and switch functioning are studied to comprehend the functionality of the whole network. A virtual network is implemented using Mininet where nodes communicate with each other via a centralized controller. Further, through this research, it is aimed to enhance the network security by analyzing this communication and making this communication secure by applying SSL encryption. This approach simplifies the network and improves the data security by applying encryption on the data between the nodes.

BACKGROUND The aim and objective of the study is to assess the effect of continuing antiplatelet therapy during hand surgery on bleeding and fundamental outcome. MATERIALS AND METHODS Between January 2012 to January 2018, 336 patients underwent hand surgery for removal of ganglion under intravenous local anaesthesia. They were divided into three groups: group 1 was made of 61 patients on aspirin 75 mg/d as monotherapy, in group 2 there were 63 patients on aspirin (75 mg/d) and clopidogrel (75 mg/d) as dual antiplatelet therapy, in both group antiplatelet drug never stopped. Group 3 acted as a control, with 212 patients who did not receive any antiplatelet drug. The incidence of clinically significant pre or post-operative complications was recorded. Patients were reviewed at 7 and 14 days after surgery. RESULTS There were no significant difference in the incidence of complications in monotherapy antiplatelet group and control group. Hematoma was observed in six patients; four patients from group 2 and one patient from each group 1 & 3. Wound dehiscence was observed in seven patients; one patient from each group 1 & 3; five patients from group 2; Bleeding were observed in four patients from group 2 only. Infections were observed in four patients: one patient from group 1 & 3 each; two patients from group 3. CONCLUSION Our study demonstrates that continuation of aspirin did not increase the risk of complications. It is unnecessary to stop aspirin before hand and wrist surgery with good surgical techniques. However, complications were increased in dual antiplatelet therapy group

Background: Epilepsy is a treatable chronic neurological disorder which is often linked to supernatural activities, due to lack of knowledge and awareness among the common people. The beliefs that outbreak of epilepsy as an unnatural or supernatural activities can be most frequently seen in rural population. One cannot say that the perception of urban populace is different from that of rural populace, but yes, they do differ at some extent. Objective: Knowledge, superstition, and myth toward epilepsy in North India. Methods: This is a questionnaire-based study (12 questions) conducted in neurology outpatient department of Banaras Hindu University, visited by more than hundreds of people from different province of northern India. This survey was also conducted in nearby areas of holy city Varanasi. People belonging to different socioeconomic background and educational level were surveyed to know their view regarding epilepsy. Results: In this survey conducted by our team, we came to the truth that urban population do consider epilepsy as an unnatural phenomenon and adopted different treatment tactics as given in this article. Conclusion: There is the urgent need of creating awareness among the common people through different means such as newspaper, television, organizing health camps, and training local health practitioners for epilepsy management.

Background Asthma disproportionately affects minority populations and is associated with psychosocial stress such as racial/ethnic discrimination. We aimed to examine the association of perceived discrimination with asthma and poor asthma control in African American and Latino youth. Methods We included African American (n = 954), Mexican American (n = 1,086), other Latino (n = 522), and Puerto Rican Islander (n = 1,025) youth aged 8 to 21 years from the Genes-Environments and Admixture in Latino Americans study and the Study of African Americans, Asthma, Genes, and Environments. Asthma was defined by physician diagnosis, and asthma control was defined based on the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute guidelines. Perceived racial/ethnic discrimination was assessed by the Experiences of Discrimination questionnaire, with a focus on school, medical, and public settings. We examined the associations of perceived discrimination with each outcome and whether socioeconomic status (SES) and global African ancestry modified these associations. Results African American children reporting any discrimination had a 78% greater odds of experiencing asthma (OR, 1.78; 95% CI, 1.33-2.39) than did those not reporting discrimination. Similarly, African American children faced increased odds of poor asthma control with any experience of discrimination (OR, 1.97; 95% CI, 1.42-2.76) over their counterparts not reporting discrimination. These associations were not observed among Latino children. We observed heterogeneity of the association between reports of discrimination and asthma according to SES, with reports of discrimination increasing the odds of having asthma among low-SES Mexican American youth (interaction P = .01) and among high-SES other Latino youth (interaction P = .04). Conclusions Perceived discrimination is associated with increased odds of asthma and poorer control among African American youth. SES exacerbates the effect of perceived discrimination on having asthma among Mexican American and other Latino youth.

Aims: This study aims to assess glycemic and lipid derangement in acute and chronic liver disorders. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted on 104 patients diagnosed with acute or chronic liver disorder. Acute liver disease (ALD) patients were 40 and chronic liver disease (CLD) patients were 64. Results: The mean value of fasting plasma glucose (FPG) in patients with ALD was 91.8 ± 5.4 mg/dl and in CLD was 115.7 ± 17.9 mg/dl, the difference was significant. The mean value of A1c was 4.3 ± 0.6 in ALD and 6.1 ± 0.8 in CLD, the difference was significant. In patients with CLD mean cholesterol was higher 177.4 ± 28.8 mg/dl when compared to ALD 140 ± 35.1 mg/dl, but the difference was not significant. ALD patients’ high-density lipoprotein (HDL) was 50.4 ± 5.1 mg/dl, and in CLD patients, HDL was 44.4 ± 6.1 mg/dl. In CLD mean triglyceride (T) was 148.9 ± 6.4 mg/dl while in ALD T was 134.8 ± 14.2 mg/dl, the difference was significant. Conclusions: CLD is associated with glycemic derangement demonstrated by deranged FPG and A1c. In patients of ALD, no metabolic derangement was observed.

Availability of millions of products and services on e-commerce sites makes it difficult to search the best suitable product according to the requirements because of existence of many alternatives. To get rid of this the most popular and useful approach is to follow reviews of others in opinionated social medias, who have already tried them. Almost all e-commerce sites provide facility to the users for giving views and experience of the product and services they experienced. The customers reviews are increasingly used by individuals, manufacturers and retailers for purchase and business decisions. As there is no scrutiny over the reviews received, anybody can write anything unanimously which conclusively leads to review spam. Moreover, driven by the desire of profit and/or publicity, spammers produce synthesized reviews to promote some products/brand and demote competitors products/brand. Deceptive review spam has seen a considerable growth overtime. In this work, we have applied supervised as well as unsupervised techniques to identify review spam. Most effective feature sets have been assembled for model building. Sentiment analysis has also been incorporated in the detection process. In order to get best performance some well-known classifiers were applied on labeled dataset. Further, for the unlabeled data, clustering is used after desired attributes were computed for spam detection. Additionally, there is a high chance that spam reviewers may also be held responsible for content pollution in multimedia social networks, because nowadays many users are giving the reviews using their social network logins. Finally, the work can be extended to find suspicious accounts responsible for posting fake multimedia contents into respective social networks.

Background Occupation was assessed as possible risk factors for prostate (PCa) and pancreatic cancer in a large Canadian worker cohort. Methods The Canadian Census Health and Environment Cohort (CanCHEC) was derived from linking the 1991 Canadian Census Cohort to the Canadian Cancer Database (1969–2010), Canadian Mortality Database (1991–2011), and Tax Summary Files (1981–2011). From the total sample of 1,931,110 persons, we identified and derived two samples of 28,610 men and 3,220 men and women with a past history of PCa and pancreatic cancer diagnoses, respectively. Cox proportional hazards models were used to estimate hazards ratios and 95% confidence intervals for occupation. Results In Canadian men aged 24–64 years, the highest elevated risks of PCa were observed for library clerks (HR = 2.36, 95% CI:1.12–4.97), medical radiation technologists (HR = 1.66, 95% CI:1.04–2.65), telecommunications and line cable workers (HR = 1.62, 95% CI: 1.22–3.16) and commissioned police officers (HR = 1.54, 95% CI: 1.10–2.16. The highest elevated risk for pancreatic cancer were observed for commissioned police officers (HR = 4.34, 95% CI: 1.85–10.21), photographic and film processors (HR = 3.97, 95% CI:1.69–9.34), railway and motor transport labourers (HR = 3.94, 95% CI: 1.67–9.29), and computer engineers (HR = 3.82, 95%CI: 1.52–9.61). Conclusion These findings emphasize the need for further study of job-related exposures and the potential influence of non-occupational factors such as screening practices.

Background and Purpose: Neurolathyrism is now a disease of the past and also the causative agent, Lathyrus sativus (Khesari Pulse or keerai in Local Hindi and Bhojpuri language) has now been proven to be harmless and has become part of the usual diet. Materials and Methods: The population at risk was screened and studied for demography, economic status, knowledge about Khesari pulse, awareness about so-called harmful effects of Khesari pulse intake in humans, and the effects of ban of Khesari pulse on the population which is using Lathyrus (Khesari) as a major source of pulse since the past 4 years through a questionnaire of three pages. Results: Nearly 97% of total screened population totally fed on Khesari pulse as their major source of food and we did not found a single case of primary walking difficulty. We did find three cases of poststroke paralysis, a case of post-GBS lower limb weakness, and a case of recurrent myelitis as a part of questionnaire-based study and then followed by personally examining the patients to confirm the diagnosis. Conclusion: Khesari pulse if consumed in smaller quantities as a part of a normal mixed diet, its nutritional values can be optimally utilized.

Myocardial infarction (MI) induces a complex inflammatory immune response, followed by the remodelling of the heart muscle and scar formation. The rapid regeneration of the blood vessel network system by the attraction of hematopoietic stem cells is beneficial for heart function. Despite the important role of chemokines in these processes, their use in clinical practice has so far been limited by their limited availability over a long time-span in vivo. Here, a method is presented to increase physiological availability of chemokines at the site of injury over a defined time-span and simultaneously control their release using biodegradable hydrogels. Two different biodegradable hydrogels were implemented, a fast degradable hydrogel (FDH) for delivering Met-CCL5 over 24 hrs and a slow degradable hydrogel (SDH) for a gradual release of protease-resistant CXCL12 (S4V) over 4 weeks. We demonstrate that the time-controlled release using Met-CCL5-FDH and CXCL12 (S4V)-SDH suppressed initial neutrophil infiltration, promoted neovascularization and reduced apoptosis in the infarcted myocardium. Thus, we were able to significantly preserve the cardiac function after MI. This study demonstrates that time-controlled, biopolymer-mediated delivery of chemokines represents a novel and feasible strategy to support the endogenous reparatory mechanisms after MI and may compliment cell-based therapies.

Background: Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a rapidly growing health problem in India. Diet and physical activity are important modifiable risk factors affecting the incidence, severity and management of DM. The aim of the study was to assess diet of diabetes mellitus patients. 87 adults from a cohort of diabetic patients attending the Medical Clinics at the Hamidia Hospital Bhopal were invited for the study.Methods: Information about their nutritional status & food consumption pattern was taken by 24-hour dietary recall and food frequency questionnaire. Data was analysed using Epi Info and MS Excel. Frequency counts and percentages were used to describe the demographic characteristics of the participants while the significance difference in between male and female participants. The significance level was set at P

Latinos have a higher rate of mortality and lower rate of colorectal cancer (CRC) screening than most racial groups in the United States. This study examines the predictors of screening colonoscopy (SC) for CRC among Latinos in a patient navigation (PN) intervention. Participants were randomized to either a culturally-targeted PN group (n = 225) or a standard PN group (n = 167). Each completed an interview assessing sociodemographic and intrapersonal information. There was no difference in SC completion between PN groups (80.9 and 79.0 %). Logistic regression revealed that low language acculturation (OR = 2.22) and annual income above $10,000 (OR = 1.97) were independent predictors of completion. Both standard and culturally-targeted PN successfully increased SC completion by nearly 30 % above the recent estimation for physician-referred patients. Our findings suggest a need to further reduce barriers to SC in low income and highly acculturated Latino groups.

Inefficiency of cancer chemotherapy to improve life expectancy in majority of patients raises serious concern and warrants development of novel therapeutic strategies. Immunotherapy in combination with chemotherapy has shown promising outcomes in recent years. Herein, we report better tumor regression and enhancement of antitumor immune response at the tumor microenvironment by co-delivery of paclitaxel and a TLR4 agonist through a PLGA based nanoparticle preparation (TLNP). Particle characterization showed high encapsulation of both components and retention of their biological activities. In vivo tumor regression studies demonstrated clear benefit of TLNP over the paclitaxel. The mean tumor volume of the TLNP treated animals was found to be 40% less than that of the Paclitaxel treated animals. Flow cytometric analysis of tumor infiltrating immune cells indicated activation of antigen presenting cells and T-cells providing evidence of Th1 immune response. In vivo results are promising and could pave way for novel chemo-immunotherapeutic treatment modality.

Objectives For patients with a severe acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) represents a life-saving measure. Frequently, patients with severe ARDS also show signs of severe sepsis. As blood contact with the membrane oxygenator surface leads to adverse effects due to insufficient biocompatibility partly caused by activation of platelets, coagulation factors and leucocytes, we hypothesized that these adverse effects would be amplified if septic blood in a preactivated state came into contact with the membrane oxygenator. Methods In a previously established in vitro 12-h ECMO test system (mock loop), we used septic or healthy domestic pig blood to analyse coagulation and inflammatory parameters. Sepsis was induced by a caecal ligation and puncture model in pigs. Results At the beginning of the mock loop experiments, the septic blood showed significantly increased thrombin-antithrombin complexes (76.9 vs 27.7 µg/l), D-dimers (1.2 vs 0.3 mg/l) and fibrinogen concentration (1.8 vs 1.5 g/l), as well as elevated extrinsic coagulation activity (shorter EXTEM-CT: 44.2 vs 57 s) and higher lactate (3.4 vs 1.5 mmol/l) and cytokine levels (interleukin-6: 827 vs 31 pg/ml) when compared with the blood from healthy animals. Despite the preactivated status of the septic blood, no further increase of coagulation activity, inflammatory response or increased oxygenator resistance was observed in comparison to the control experiments. Conclusion Septic porcine blood was not further activated due to the contact with an oxygenator, and no increased clot formation or biocompatibility problems were observed.

Expression of opinions is basic human nature. With the advent of various online platforms, this expression has largely taken digital form. More often than not, it is in the interest of enterprises and individuals to know the sentiment of these opinions, be them in the form of reviews, blogs or articles. Given the humungous amount of this data, it becomes essential to analyze it programmatically and with accuracy. The paper looks at various methods of doing this and also suggests one which takes into account the sentence constructs and the way the sentences are framed. One of the primary concerns is also to detect and handle negations and contradictions occurring in the sentences.

Coal being a limited source of energy, extraction of energy from other sources like lignite, coal-refuse, and biomass is being attempted worldwide. The minerals and inorganic elements present in fuel feeds pose different technological and environmental concerns. Lignite ash, refuse ash, and biomass ash collected from Indian power plants burning lignite, coal-refuse, and mustard stalk, respectively, were analyzed for physico-chemical characteristics and trace elements. The lignite ash has high SiO 2 , CaO, MgO, Al 2 O 3, and SO 3 ; the refuse ash has high SiO 2 and Fe 2 O 3 , but low SO 3 ; the biomass ash has high SiO 2 (but low Al 2 O 3 ), and high CaO, MgO, K 2 O, Na 2 O, SO 3 , and P 2 O 5 . A substantial presence of chloride (2.1%) was observed in the biomass ash. Quartz is the most abundant mineral species. Other minerals are mullite, hematite, gehlenite, anhydrite, and calcite in the lignite ash; orthoclase in the refuse ash; albite, sanidine, gehlenite, anhydrite, and calcite in the biomass ash. Ashes with high concentrations (> 100 mg/kg) of trace elements are: lignite ash (V

RNA therapeutics could represent the next generation personalized medicine. The variety of RNA molecules that can inhibit the expression of any mRNA using, for example, RNA interference (RNAi) strategies, or increase the expression of a given protein using modified mRNA together with new gene editing strategies open new avenues for manipulating the fate of diseased cells while leaving healthy cells untouched. In addition, these therapeutic RNA molecules can maximize the treatment of diseases and minimize its adverse effects. Yet, the promise of RNA therapeutics is hindered by the lack of efficient delivery strategies to selectively target these molecules into specific cells. Herein, we will focus on the challenges and opportunities of the delivery of therapeutic RNAi molecules into cancer cells with special emphasis on solid tumors. Solid tumors represent more than 80 percent of cancers and some are very challenging to treat, not merely due to physiological barriers but also since the tumor microenvironment (TME) is a complex milieu of accessory cells besides the cancerous cells. In this review, we will highlight various limiting factors to successful delivery, current clinical achievements and future outlook focusing on RNAi therapeutics to the TME.

Background: The present study has been conducted to compare regimens containing either of nevirapine (NVP) and efavirenz (EFV) and two or more nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs) among HIV infected patients in respect to clinical outcome and to compare incidence of opportunistic infections among these patients.Methods: This study was an observational study conducted at a tertiary care centre over 105 patients, who were evenly matched and received three antiretroviral drug one of the drug was either nevirapine (NVP) or efavirenz (EFV) and these patients were followed up for 6 months for occurrence of any opportunistic infections during these 6 months.Results: 105 patients were followed for 6 months, the maximum incidence of opportunistic infection (OI’s) was found among patients who were on ZLN (zidovudine, lamivudine, nevirapine) regime i.e. 60% followed by patients who changed their regime from ZLN to TLE i.e. 36.5%, while the least incidence of OI’s was noted among the patients who were on TLE (tenofovir, lamivudine, efavirenz) regime i.e. 28.5%. These differences were found to be statistically significant (p

The objective of this study was to evaluate the immediate effect of slow pace bhastrika pranayama (respiratory rate 6/min) for 5 minutes on heart rate and blood pressure and the effect of the same breathing exercise for the same duration of time (5 minutes) following oral intake of hyoscine-N-butylbromide (Buscopan), a parasympathetic blocker drug.Heart rate and blood pressure of volunteers (n = 39, age = 25-40 years) was recorded following standard procedure. First, subjects had to sit comfortably in an easy and steady posture (sukhasana) on a fairly soft seat placed on the floor keeping head, neck, and trunk erect, eyes closed, and the other muscles reasonably loose. The subject is directed to inhale through both nostrils slowly up to the maximum for about 4 seconds and then exhale slowly up to the maximum through both nostrils for about 6 seconds. The breathing must not be abdominal. These steps complete one cycle of slow pace bhastrika pranayama (respiratory rate 6/min). During the practice the subject is asked not to think much about the inhalation and exhalation time, but rather was requested to imagine the open blue sky. The pranayama was conducted in a cool, well-ventilated room (18-20 degrees C). After 5 minutes of this breathing practice, the blood pressure and heart rate again were recorded in the aforesaid manner using the same instrument. The other group (n = 10) took part in another study where their blood pressure and heart rate were recorded following half an hour of oral intake of hyoscine-N-butylbromide 20 mg. Then they practiced the breathing exercise as stated above, and the abovementioned parameters were recorded again to study the effect of parasympathetic blockade on the same pranayama.It was noted that after slow bhastrika pranayamic breathing (respiratory rate 6/min) for 5 minutes, both the systolic and diastolic blood pressure decreased significantly with a slight fall in heart rate. No significant alteration in both blood pressure and heart rate was observed in volunteers who performed the same breathing exercise for the same duration following oral intake of hyoscine-N-butylbromide.Pranayama increases frequency and duration of inhibitory neural impulses by activating pulmonary stretch receptors during above tidal volume inhalation as in Hering Bruer reflex, which bring about withdrawal of sympathetic tone in the skeletal muscle blood vessels, leading to widespread vasodilatation, thus causing decrease in peripheral resistance and thus decreasing the diastolic blood pressure. After hyoscine-N-butylbromide, the parasympathetic blocker, it was observed that blood pressure was not decreased significantly as a result of pranayama, as it was observed when no drug was administered.Vagal cardiac and pulmonary mechanisms are linked, and improvement in one vagal limb might spill over into the other. Baroreceptor sensitivity can be enhanced significantly by slow breathing (supported by a small reduction in the heart rate observed during slow breathing and by reduction in both systolic and diastolic pressure). Slow pace bhastrika pranayama (respiratory rate 6/min) exercise thus shows a strong tendency to improving the autonomic nervous system through enhanced activation of the parasympathetic system.

Personal health budgets (PHBs) were introduced at 61 sites across England; 20 of which were evaluated in a report published in November 2012. There has been collective resistance to PHBs and negative reporting in the professional healthcare press. However, there is some early evidence that PHBs are proving to be successful. Nurses in the community are having a pivotal role in their implementation. This article addresses a number of negative and often misleading myths about PHBs that have been publicised in some areas of the professional press.

In this paper we report our work on building a POS tagger for a morphologically rich language- Hindi. The theme of the research is to vindicate the stand that- if morphology is strong and harnessable, then lack of training corpora is not debilitating. We establish a methodology of POS tagging which the resource disadvantaged (lacking annotated corpora) languages can make use of. The methodology makes use of locally annotated modestly-sized corpora (15,562 words), exhaustive morpohological analysis backed by high-coverage lexicon and a decision tree based learning algorithm (CN2). The evaluation of the system was done with 4-fold cross validation of the corpora in the news domain (www.bbc.co.uk/hindi). The current accuracy of POS tagging is 93.45% and can be further improved.

Research in cancer immunotherapy has gained momentum in the last two decades, with many studies and clinical trials showing positive therapeutic outcomes. Immunotherapy can elicit not only a strong anticancer immune response which could even control metastases, but could also induce immunological memory, resulting in long-lasting protection in the prophylactic setting and protection against possible recurrence. Nanocarriers offer an attractive means for delivery of a multitude of therapeutic immunomodulators which are readily taken up by immune cells and can initiate a particular arm of an immunostimulatory cascade leading to tumor cell killing. This review focuses on recent advances in nanocarrier-mediated immunotherapy for the treatment of cancer. Both in vitro and in vivo studies as well as clinical progress are discussed in various sections. Description of the specific role of nanoparticle technology in immunotherapy highlights the way particles can be tailor-made in terms of size, structure, payload, and surface properties for active targeting to antigen-presenting cells and/or enhanced accumulation in the solid tumor., Video abstract