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OBJECTIVES: This study was conducted to assess poultry farmers’ knowledge and practices regarding antibiotics, antimicrobial usage (AMU), and antimicrobial resistance (AMR), and to identify the sociodemographic factors of inappropriate use of antibiotics in commercial poultry farms in Bangladesh. METHODS: A qualitative survey of 140 farmers in Bangladesh was conducted from March to May 2019. A logistic regression model was used to identify factors associated with the inappropriate use of antibiotics. RESULTS: 47.1% of farmers were unable to explain antibiotics, 42.9% used antibiotics for preventive purposes, 4.3% used them as growth promoters, 25.7% used them as suggested by veterinarians, 42.9% used leftover antibiotics, 50% did not maintain antibiotics residual withdrawal period, and 98.6% did not know about AMR. In bivariable regression analysis, sex and primary occupation of poultry farmers, their knowledge about withdrawal periods for antibiotics, and no contact with veterinary surgeons (VS) were found to be significantly associated with the inappropriate use of antibiotics, while only ‘no contact with VS’ was identified in multivariable regression analysis. CONCLUSIONS: The findings suggest an urgent need to improve understanding of antibiotics and AMR. Adequate supervision by veterinarians would ensure adherence to appropriate AMU patterns, and would limit the misuse of antibiotics and associated AMR development in farms.

The potential challenges encountered for setting up a robotic assisted surgical facility in developing country like India are many. We describe the initial hurdles and troubleshooting in establishing a facility of such kind. This experience might help to decrease initial hiccups in setting up such an innovative technology at other institutes.

As the size of web increases along with number of users, it is very much essential for the website owners to better understand their customers so that they can provide better service, and also enhance the quality of the website. To achieve this they depend on the web access log files. The web access log files can be mined to extract interesting pattern so that the user behaviour can be understood. This paper presents an overview of web usage mining and also provides a survey of the pattern extraction algorithms used for web usage mining.

Introduction: Male urethral reconstruction for anterior urethral stricture has become increasingly popular and effective. Little is known about its potential impact on subsequent sexual performance. Patients and Methods: Thirty-four patients of anterior urethral stricture disease were studied from January 2008 to November 2009. The data were collected before surgery and at a follow-up of 3 months after completing the treatment. Evaluation of sexual function was done using O’Leary’s Brief Male Sexual Function Inventory. Results: Patients were divided into two categories: 40 years of age. Younger patients had more improvement in ejaculatory function and overall satisfaction after surgery than elderly. Elderly males had lower sexual drive scores. Patients with traumatic stricture had significant improvement in ejaculation and overall satisfaction. Patients without history of prior optical internal urethrotomy or dilatations reported a significant improvement in their ejaculatory function and overall satisfaction. Conclusion: Erectile dysfunction is not significant after anterior urethral reconstruction. The improvement is most pronounced in ejaculation and overall satisfaction, which was mostly appreciated by younger men. A successful urethral reconstructive procedure leads to rehabilitation of the patient back into a healthy sexual life. Dorsomedial dissection of bulbar urethra should be limited and cautery use should be minimized in that area.

An inertial, active device running on its internal feedback is proposed for controlling the self-excited vibration of a single degree-of-freedom Rayleigh oscillator. The control strategy utilizes the time-delayed feedback of the acceleration of the sprung mass of the device. The feedback law is recursive in nature and based on large amount of weighted information regarding the past history of the dynamics. The proposed device, when properly tuned, either completely quenches or reduces the amplitude of vibration. A comparison with a passive absorber reveals that the proposed active absorber can achieve better stability conditions. However like a passive absorber, the device has finite robustness, i.e., it can control only a certain level of instability inherent in the primary self-excited system.

Inflammatory myopathies like dermatomyositis are associated with increased incidence of malignancies. This association has been commonly reported with malignancies of ovaries, gastro-intestinal tract, breast and non-Hodgkin's lymphomas but occurrence of dermatomyositis with bladder cancer has been rarely reported. We report a patient with carcinoma bladder who developed dermatomyositis while being treated for the bladder cancer.

Superior mesenteric artery (SMA) injury is a rare event during abdominal surgery. We report the first case of inadvertent injury of the superior mesenteric artery during surgery of a large malignant adrenocortical tumor with inferior vena cava thrombus. The cause of inadvertent injury was anatomical distortion of the great vessels due to the massive nature of the tumor. The case was managed successfully by immediate end-to-end anastomosis of the superior mesenteric artery.

The high current injector (HCI) provides intense ion beams of high charge state using a high temperature superconducting ECR ion source. The ion beam is accelerated upto a final energy of 1.8 MeV/u due to an electrostatic potential, a radio frequency quadrupole (RFQ) and a drift tube linac (DTL). The ion beam has to be transported to superconducting LINAC which is around 50 m away from DTL. This section is termed as high energy beam transport section (HEBT) and is used to match the beam both in transverse and longitudinal phase space to the entrance of LINAC. The HEBT section is made up of four 90 deg. achromatic bends and interconnecting magnetic quadrupole triplets. Two RF bunchers have been used for longitudinal phase matching to the LINAC. The ion optical design of HEBT section has been simulated using different beam dynamics codes like TRACEWIN, GICOSY and TRACE 3D. The field computation code OPERA 3D has been utilized for hardware design of all the magnets. All the dipole and quadrupole magnets have been field mapped and their test results such as edge angles measurements, homogeneity and harmonic analysis etc. are reported. The whole design of HEBT section has been performed such that the most of the beam optical components share same hardware design and there is ample space for beam diagnostics as per geometry of the building. Many combination of achromatic bends have been simulated to transport the beam in HEBT section but finally the four 90 deg. achromatic bend configuration is found to be the best satisfying all the geometrical constraints with simplified beam tuning process in real time.

The measurement of liquid droplet parameters such as size, number, concentration, viscosity, and refractive index is reported. The droplets are sprayed either from a pressure nozzle or a gas atomizing nozzle. The parameters are measured by detecting the clad mode power in the leaky ray zone of a three-region fiber by a new clad-probing technique, using normal core-clad fiber. The refractive index of the liquid is close to that of cladding. Taking the loss characteristics into account, the variation of output power with the deposition of droplets on the fiber is analyzed and compared with experimental results. The measurement sensitivity for different probing conditions is shown experimentally and verified by theoretical analysis. The change in bound power with the number of liquid droplets depositing on unclad fiber is also shown. >

We present a case of bicornuate uterine horns with complete cervico-vaginal agenesis and associated congenital uterovaginal fistula. The patient presented with cyclical hematuria, amenorrhea, and abdominal lump. The vagina was blind-ending. The cystoscopic examination during cyclical hematuria revealed bloody efflux through a small fistula on the posterior wall of the urinary bladder. The magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) showed bicornuate uterus and cervical agenesis. Hysterectomy and repair of the uterovesical fistula was done. The vagina was reconstructed using an amniotic mould. The report underlies the importance of MRI in diagnosing complexity of such rare anomalies. It also stresses for the need of hysterectomy if cervicovaginal agenesis is present.

The paper provides an exhaustive overview of the conflict resolution strategies used in the existing rule-based expert systems and proposes new strategies based on heuristic functional approach for the expert systems of future generations. The proposed technique is superior to the rule existing ones since it improves stability in the line of reasoning of expert for such systems. Illustrations have been chosen from an expert system for Trigonometric theorem proving.

The paper presents a new technique for revision of fuzzy belief of a set of imprecise information embedded in fuzzy Petri net. Limit cycle behaviour, which is often exhibited during the belief revision process in the network, paralyses the mechanism of drawing inference in an expert system,embodying the fuzzy Petri net as the inference engine. The paper provides new algorithms for detection and elimination of limit cycles from a fuzzy Petri net. Instability in the reasoning process in expert systems can therefore be easily eliminated with the help of the proposed technique.

We report the case of an 8-year-old boy with a parotid mass diagnosed to be a leiomyosarcoma. Considering the unresectable extent of the mass, the patient was subjected to radiotherapy. The patient developed distant metastasis following the course of radiotherapy and was put on chemotherapy. The child was lost to further follow up. To our knowledge, this is the first reported case in the English-language literature of such an entity in the pediatric age group.

A probing technique to measure the effect of fiber cladding in the leaky-ray zone is presented. The experimental variation of output power with the change of refractive index due to liquid placed over core-clad fiber coating is compared with the simple analysis for loss characteristics of cladding modes propagating through the fiber. The measurement of temperature, refractive index, and concentration in terms of the refractive index variation of liquid is shown. Parameters such as concentration, viscosity, and refractive index for liquids sprayed from a pressure nozzle over a normal, core-clad, three-region fiber are measured using a clad-probing technique. >

An artificial neural network is useful for modeling enzyme release and estimation of myocardial infarction size (MIS). The backpropagation technique is used for adjusting the weights of the network with a measured enzyme activity in blood serum together with histologic value of infarction size (HIS). Once the weights of the interlayer connections are fixed, the network is used to estimate the MIS for unknown cases. With a proper choice of nonlinear function, the results are excellent. >

The paper aims at extending the scope of application of Widrow-Hoff's ADALINE model from binary to gray level (fuzzy) pattern recognition. The condition of stability for the extended ADALINE model is derived, and the algorithm for training the multilayer feedforward neural net consisting of ADALINE neurons is presented. The time required for training the neural net is insignificantly small. The scheme for the recognition of objects from their gray level images using the fuzzy ADALINE model is translation, rotation and size invariant.

Presents a method for automated estimation of certainty factors of knowledge from the proven and historical databases of a typical reasoning system. Certainty factors, here, have been modeled by weights in a special type of recurrent fuzzy neural Petri net. The beliefs of the propositions, collected from the historical databases are mapped at places of a fuzzy Petri net and the weights of directed arcs from transitions to places are updated synchronously following the Hebbian Learning principle until an equilibrium condition is reached. The model for weight adaptation has been chosen for maintaining consistency among the initial beliefs of the propositions and thus the derived steady-state weights represent a more accurate measure of certainty factors than those assigned by a human expert.

Endovascular management of intraparenchymal renal artery pseudoaneurysms is a reasonable and effective therapeutic technique. Endovascular management preserves the maximum amount of renal tissue and reduces the potential risk of nephrectomy. We present the case of an angiocatheter that became stuck in the renal artery following the injection of cyanoacrylate glue for angioembolization of an intrarenal pseudoaneurysm.

Pheochromocytoma of urinary bladder are rare tumors. They present with nonspecific clinical signs and symptoms, so imaging plays an important role in diagnosing and localizing the tumor. We present two cases of bladder pheochromocytoma, one of them presented with vague abdominal pain and the other with hematuria. Biphasic CT in both the cases showed hypervascular intravesical mass suggestive of bladder pheochromocytoma. The lesions were confirmed biochemically or on postoperative histopathology. A brief review of the imaging in bladder pheochromocytoma is also presented.

Escalating petroleum prices and alarmingly depleting fossil fuel reserves have brought biofuel to the forefront of energy crisis management plans in many developing countries. Due to stagnating domestic crude oil production, India imports approximately 72 percent of its petroleum requirement. The best alternatives are bio-fuels (nontoxic and biodegradable) and among them, bio-diesel have immense potential to mitigate the current and future energy needs of the country. To meet this challenging and catastrophic situation, Jatropha can act as an environmental friendly alternative feedstock for bio-diesel production. The ‘Jatropha oil’ can be easily processed to partially or fully replace petroleum-based diesel fuel. Thus, the use of this plant for large-scale biodiesel production is of great interest with regard to solving the energy shortage, reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, rural employment generation and increasing the income of farmers. For this, vast area should have to be brought under Jatropha plantation with quality planting material particularly in terms of higher yield and oil content of the seeds. With the objective of evaluating the potential and performance of superior accessions of Jatropha under tropical climate, a systematic research has been conducted at Tropical Forest Research Institute, Jabalpur under the national network programme of National Oilseeds and Vegetable Oils Development Board. In the study 33 accessions were evaluated for their growth performance (height, collar diameter, no. of branches, fruiting pattern, fruit yield, seed characteristics and oil percentage). The trials were established during 2005 in randomized block design with three replications. Growth data was recorded regularly and statistically analyzed. The study revealed that IGAU-1, TNMC-5 and TFRI-2 accessions are performing better among all other accessions. This study will provide baseline information for planning further Jatropha curcas improvement programmes.